Valve announces SteamOS and Steam Machines

[Wesley Pentz]

Valve announces SteamOS, a living-room operating system for games

 

 

Valve is done teasing. Today, Valve has revealed SteamOS, its own operating system based on Linux, designed for living room gaming PCs. It's the first step towards Valve's Steam Box, its vision for an open video game console. It combines Steam's preeminent video game digital distribution platform with a user interface designed for televisions and the Linux platform. It will also be free.

 

Valve says "It will be available soon as a free stand-alone operating system for living room machines."

 

According to the company, major game devleopers are already on board with Linux, and will be building triple-A game titles that will run natively on SteamOS in 2014. However, SteamOS boxes will also have a workaround for Windows and Mac OS X games: in-home streaming. Not unlike the Nvidia Shield, it will include a method for streaming games from your existing gaming computer to your TV.

 

Why an operating system? "As we've been working on bringing Steam to the living room, we've come to the conclusion that the environment best suited to delivering value to customers is an operating system built around Steam itself," the company's announcement reads. Valve says that by working at the operating system level, they've managed to improve graphics performance, and can also improve audio and reduce controller latency.

 

SteamOS is only the first of three announcements that Valve is expected to issue this week.

 

We've been following the Steam Box saga for well over a year now, watching Valve as it experimented with game controllers, denounced Windows 8 in favor of Linux, and called out Apple as a threat. We theorized about what the Steam Box could be. In January, we spoke to Valve co-founder Gabe Newell himself about his plans for the project, but it's only now that we're seeing the fruition of those dreams.

 

SteamOS is only the first of three announcements that Valve is expected to issue this week. Valve's countdown clock is ticking down again to Wednesday, Sepember 25th at 10AM PT / 1PM ET, when the company will likely unveil its own Steam Box hardware based on the SteamOS operating system.

 

In January, Newell told us that Valve was planning to create three tiers of the Steam Box, "good", "better", and "best", with "good" likely a $99 box that would stream games from other more powerful computers, and "better" being a $300 box that Valve would build itself, and also allow partners to build so long as they adhered to a certain hardware spec. On Wednesday, we'll likely hear about that "better" tier and all the ready-made hardware you can buy to get started with SteamOS. At CES, the company told us it already had 15-20 heardware partners lined up.

The Verge

Site Oficial

 

Valve announces Steam Machines, the Steam Box hardware beta

 

 

Valve is building a game console, but not just one. The company wants to create an entirely new class of computers that brings the power of Linux and the distribution might of Steam to the living room. That's why on Monday, it announced SteamOS. And today, that's why the company is announcing its hardware plans — barely.

 

"Beginning in 2014, there will be multiple SteamOS machines to choose from, made by different manufacturers," the company writes. Unfortunately, Valve doesn't say which manufacturers it's working with, or what the Steam Box will look like.

 

However, Valve confirms that it has created its own box optimized specifically for SteamOS, and today it's offering to ship a mere 300 of them to Steam users who sign up for a limited beta program by October 25th. If you're interested

 

While the company doesn't offer up any details about the box's size, shape, or hardware specs — "We promise we'll tell you more about it soon," the company says — there is a limited FAQ hosted at Valve's announce page which has a few more answers. There will be several Steam Box prototypes "with an array of specifications, price, and performance," all of which will be freely hackable by their users. You can even install another operating system on the boxes. The prototypes will ship this year.

 

While Valve has been clear since the beginning of the week that its SteamOS plans won't take effect until 2014, we were expecting quite a bit more from its hardware announcement today. As far as we knew, Valve had already commissioned some 15 to 20 hardware partners to create Steam Box prototypes, and already handed them out over the summer. What we were expecting to hear about today were the hardware specifications that set apart a genuine Steam Box from your run of the mill living room PC.

 

It's hard to underestimate the importance of a dedicated hardware specification. Game developers need to know what kind of hardware to target, which silicon chips, controllers, and technologies to develop for when they're building their games. Game consoles don't typically get upgraded year after year, giving developers confidence that their games will run the same way, but PCs are a moving target that's difficult to hit, and it's dogged game developers for years.

 

We'd heard from the very beginning that the Steam Box would be designed around a particular spec, originally a Core i7 CPU, an Nvidia GPU, and 8GB of RAM. In January, Valve co-founder Gabe Newell told us that the company's plans were a little bit more complicated. Instead of imposing a rigid set of specifications, the company would erect three tiers of "Good," "Better," and "Best." Good would an extremely cheap (think $100) box that merely streams content from another computer in your home with more muscle, while Better (think $300+) would be more tightly controlled to hit the center of the Venn diagram between powerful, cheap, small, and efficient. Best, he explained, could be whatever users or hardware manufacturers dream up, with no restrictions.

 

It's worth noting that this week's Valve news isn't done yet. The company's countdown clock has restarted for a third announcement at 10AM PT / 1PM ET on Friday, September 27th. If we had to guess, the company will reveal a game controller of some sort. The last line in today's FAQ reads: "We have some more to say very soon on the topic of input."

The Verge

Site Oficial

Editado 25 Setembro 2013 por cezarony

[What]

Não arriscava a usar isso. Nunca vai ter uma versão 3.0...

[Wesley Pentz]

:mrgreen:

[Hodor]

Não arriscava a usar isso. Nunca vai ter uma versão 3.0...

 

hehe :mrgreen:

[awk]

Não arriscava a usar isso. Nunca vai ter uma versão 3.0...

 

Geek comment...

[Bazuka]

provavelmente vai ter mais que isso!

 

a valve tem investido muito no linux e agora percebe-se o porquê.

[Mica]

Eu não vejo grandes vantagens neste PC/consola. A malta que tem Windows pode correr os seus jogos no seu ambiente familiar, o que se não representa 100% das ofertas da Steam, anda lá perto. A malta que tem Linux como SO primário com certeza não é grande adepta de jogos para PC, portanto para além da oferta que já existe para Linux, não estará interessada em muitos mais. O mesmo digo dos utilizadores do MacOS X.

 

Epah boa sorte com isso, mas eu não creio que existirá sequer uma Steam Box 2, quanto mais a 3...

Editado 23 Setembro 2013 por Mica

[Bazuka]

Mas ai é que está, com o SO disponivel não precisas de comprar a Steam Box para teres acesso a tudo.

[Mica]

Mas ai é que está, com o SO disponivel não precisas de comprar a Steam Box para teres acesso a tudo.

Mas o que não percebi da notícia foi: é um SO completamente dedicado a jogos ou tem essa componente como principal foco e tudo o que costumas fazer numa distro Linux poderás continuar a fazer? Lá por ter kernel Linux não quer dizer que eu possa levar lá a vida que levo no Ubuntu...

[Bazuka]

Mas o que não percebi da notícia foi: é um SO completamente dedicado a jogos ou tem essa componente como principal foco e tudo o que costumas fazer numa distro Linux poderás continuar a fazer? Lá por ter kernel Linux não quer dizer que eu possa levar lá a vida que levo no Ubuntu...

 

É uma versão que eles desenvolveram para correr o steam num htpc, ligado a uma tv.

 

Depois devem ter metido tweaks de performance, conforme aquilo que existe na maioria dos seus utilizadores.

[Liedson]

Meia-hora até ao próximo anúncio da Valve.

 

O que acham que poderá ser?

[Wesley Pentz]

Steam box quase de certeza.

[Liedson]

Foi anunciada a SteamMachines

 

Editado 25 Setembro 2013 por Paceco

[Wesley Pentz]

Meh, a única novidade é a cena dos 300 beta testers, de resto já se sabia praticamente tudo.

[awk]

A terceira surpresa será o Half life, pleaseeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

[What]

A terceira surpresa será o Half life, pleaseeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Exclusivo para Steam OS. :mrgreen:

[Wesley Pentz]

A terceira surpresa vão ser quase de certeza os input devices para as Steam Box. A Valve andou há uns tempos a registar patentes relacionadas com isso.

Para o Half Life 3 ainda é muito cedo :mrgreen:

Editado 26 Setembro 2013 por cezarony

[Vinyard]

Próximo anuncio:

Na compra de uma steam box recebem um HL3, Portal 3, L4D 3 e Team Fortress 3 todos gratuitos, todos exclusivos 8)

[Liedson]

Último anúncio da Valve

 

 

 

[Wesley Pentz]

A terceira surpresa vão ser quase de certeza os input devices para as Steam Box. A Valve andou há uns tempos a registar patentes relacionadas com isso.

Para o Half Life 3 ainda é muito cedo :mrgreen:

Obrigado 8)

 

É no mínimo estranho, mas há us anos atrás ninguém diria que grande parte dos FPS's iam passar a ser jogados em comandos.

Pode ser que seja uma nova mudança de paradigma.

[Vinyard]

Que comando :lol:

[Reddish Ruse]

STEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAM MACHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINE

[awk]

Na eurogamer é só malta a destilar ódio à steam e ao comando lol. Há lá tanto sony/m$ fanboys. Mas sinceramente isto é uma coisa com potencial, mais os exclusivos que poderão vir a ter... Depende muito do preço, mas era capaz de comprar só para jogar HL3, fora o resto que poderá sair também

[Bazuka]

O comando tem um aspecto interessante, pelo menos eu gosto!

[Kimi Raikkonen]

O comando parece demasiado formatado para certos jogos, pelo que nao acho que seja a estrategia correcta.