I can't see buying a console to run PC games. If I want to play PC games, I'd rather play them on a PC so I can upgrade my hardware if my system turns out to be a little too slow at the settings I want to play at. Fixed hardware that can't be upgraded sucks in that regard, which is why the XBox 360 and PS3 have overstayed their welcome. Games written to retain compatibility with them are holding things back on the PC side of things. I predict FAIL for any dedicated machine that runs PC games if it can't be upgraded. If I'm going to pay $400 for that, then I'd rather save up a few hundred more and get a full blown PC with expansion possibilities.

Interesting times. I don't want one of these things but I'm interested to see where Valve go with it, they seem like a pretty capable company and the Steam catalogue is a pretty big ace in the hole.

sliderider wrote:

I can't see buying a console to run PC games.

Given the new gamepad design and the increasing amount of hotseat games I can't see why not.

badmojo wrote:

I don't want one of these things but I'm interested to see where Valve go with it

That. If there's a market for those things, why not. I'm pretty certain many people why buy a regular PC might very well not need all the extra stuff they get with it if they want to focus on gaming, and vice versa, those who need a PC for work as a modern equivalent of a typewriter (roughly speaking), then they obviously don't need a powerful video card for example.

A thing that worries me personally a little though is that Valve pretty much seems to be bent on monopolizing the PC game market, or at least it has made a lot of steps in that direction. I might be old-fashioned but I never really liked the idea of Steam, or generally the idea that one needs to create an account and submit personal data in order to be able to, pardon me, download a bunch of demo versions of games. Valve's new consoles might very well be one further step in that direction, and it is not impossible that in near future people will be forced to buy a Steam Machine, or whatever, to be able to play (at least some of) PC games. Not a pretty prospect to my mind.

That's of course pure speculation, and my personal opinion on this.

Valve is a company I'm still pretty indifferent towards. I don't exactly love them or their Steam service, but I don't hate them either.

They've taken a lot of steps that I consider to be good, like having a system in place for indie developers to get their stuff published without having to go through a publisher, having an overlay system that integrates with games so that you can do things like look up something online while playing a full-screen game without having to alt-tab (a process that has always been hit-or-miss with games), plus the sales they run really make it easy to get games you're on the fence about without having to pay full price.

On the other hand, some of the things they say can be a bit misleading (such as "Full Controller Support" in their storefront only meaning "Full XInput Support"), they don't provide ample warning about buying a game if it doesn't work properly on newer operating systems, you can't even start your games up if you're having connection troubles with Steam or to the internet in general, and as nice as it is to have the Greenlight system now, some of the games that have been greenlit prove that Steam's not making a big enough effort to check for fraudulent up-voting in the system.

And on top of all of that, let's not forget, Valve made Portal. :P

So yeah, pros and cons to Valve and Steam, and I suspect it will be that way for a long time coming.

As for their new console, I have a 4 GHz system that can run almost everything I throw at it at 60 FPS with maximum detail settings. There's absolutely no reason for me to get such a console and I have to wonder what the target demographic for such a device would even be. :P

I used to really hate Steam, as it was crash prone, resource intensive, and would download things as slowly as molassas, but now that they've refined it, I actually quite like it. Granted, it is still annoying how you have to be logged in to play even single player stuff, but I can live with it. I think that when they decided to port it to Linux, that's what really forced them to actually reoptimize it and work out all of the annoying kinks.

Gemini000 wrote:

As for their new console, I have a 4 GHz system that can run almost everything I throw at it at 60 FPS with maximum detail settings. There's absolutely no reason for me to get such a console and I have to wonder what the target demographic for such a device would even be. 😜

I think there's a big market out there for people who call themselves gamers, but who want things to "just work" like a console. So when their PC can't handle the latest and greatest FPS anymore and they have the option of paying 400 bucks for a new graphics card - which means reading reviews, finding one for a decent price, and then opening the mysterious black box to install it - OR the option of just buying a console which runs the same game + the entire steam back catalogue + lets them easily hook it up to their telly + comes with a controller, then the choice will be easy.

I think we here are in the minority in that we like playing with the hardware too.

I like a lot of things about the Steam Machine, but there's one major problem with it that I've noticed; instead of going for one baseline set of specifications, the companies manufacturing it are offering different models that are more/less powerful than one another. I have almost no doubts that this will lead to some market fragmentation, which is a major no-no in the console industry. If you want to successfully market a console, you should NOT come up with something that will be completely eclipsed by a later/more expensive model in the same generation.

Then they shuold bring back MPC then to simplify it 😀

leileilol wrote:

Then they shuold bring back MPC then to simplify it 😀

I actually think something like a modern MPC standard would be a good idea.

mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:

Granted, it is still annoying how you have to be logged in to play even single player stuff, but I can live with it.

Of you could just set the thing into Offline Mode, but I don't think you can access your account from another computer when you do. (Don't know, never tried.) Plus, you only have to be logged in to START a game. Lose your connection when playing and you may not even realize it until five hours later. (Unless the game has its own always-on connection thing to deal with.)

That is one thing I REALLY like about Steam: The games you buy are linked to the USER, not the computer, so you can play your games from any system you can log into Steam from (that can also handle those games at the hardware level). Mind you, some commercial titles throw their own DRM into the mix to limit this, which is just sad but then, that's their problem if they want to be DRM-tastic and turn away people who would otherwise buy their stuff. For instance, the last game I ever got from EA was Need for Speed Hot Pursuit 2 when it was brand new in 2002... and that was a GIFT, I didn't buy it myself. :P

Anyone else remember the early 2003/2004 days when Steam was just released? Nicknames ridden with profanity towards Valve/Steam and all of that? Nothing has changed about the service, if anything it got more obnoxious over time, yet nowadays everyone loves it... a great example of how to successfully shove an inconvenient and restrictive business model down peoples' throats 😀

I certainly have no love for Steam. The excuse for starting it in the first place has worn thin, as any security measure can be circumvented if you have the game files stored locally.
To me, Steam & the like are just a way of eliminating hard copy ownership of software. Along with eliminating anonymity of offline installation.

I personally cringe at the idea of a Steam console and even more so about Steam OS. Sadly the PC is seen as an appliance more & more everyday. Which is why its days are numbered IMO.

d1stortion wrote:

Anyone else remember the early 2003/2004 days when Steam was just released? Nicknames ridden with profanity towards Valve/Steam and all of that? Nothing has changed about the service, if anything it got more obnoxious over time, yet nowadays everyone loves it...

Plenty has changed. Back then Steam was something obnoxiously forced upon people who bought Half-Life 2, and started a multi-gigabyte download right after installation. A download of that size is nothing to flinch at anymore. And their sale prices are rock-bottom.

Forevermore wrote:

The excuse for starting it in the first place has worn thin, as any security measure can be circumvented if you have the game files stored locally.

Nevertheless the concept of buying and immediately playing video games online proved to be very productive. Maybe Steam did start as a brand-new DRM measure but my opinion is that in the long run it is the profound opportunities to market games directly to the end user is what has made Steam economically successful. In fact, I think Valve makes such a profit they can just neglect any possibility of circumventing their copy protection routine.

And also, in a more of a conspiracy theory kind of thing, I believe that forcing the users to stay connected to play their games is not aimed towards preventing illegal copies of the games from running but to keep potential buyers of new titles at the counter so to speak all the time.

Sadly there are ways to circumvent. Those stats with their high peaks are pirates (especially spacewar which has a gamehub of obvious pirates)

Well, it's not like Valve is going to go out of business soon because of that anyway, is it?

I think one could even make these figures widely known just to show that if their games are wanted so badly that some people are willing to pirate them then those games must really be worth something.

leileilol wrote:

Sadly there are ways to circumvent. Those stats with their high peaks are pirates (especially spacewar which has a gamehub of obvious pirates)

I'm confused. What do those stats and screenshots have to do with piracy?

I personally would never by such a system. I have my 24inch monitor and my comfy computer chair so I don't see a couch and a tv as increasing my enjoyment to play games. I also convert all my steam games to offline copies every time I purchase one and I don't see a steam box making that easier.

But I'm obviously not their market, their market is a niche of so called PC gamers that don't want to deal with a PC....yet don't want a console? heh.

If you are fed up with PC then go get a console. Long gone are the days of PC gaming being complicated and as you can see long gone are the days of a console being simpler than a PC.

AFAICT portables are now the same as consoles used to be as far as simplicity and sadly they seem to be ever increasing in popularity.

Frankly I really don't give a crap where the market goes since my backlog is so huge I could stop playing new games today and be good until the day I die. Now if I could ever upload my brain to a computer then one day I could conceivably run out of games to play.....