Here's what will make this attractive to consumers: Right now, if you want to play a game both on your PC and in your living room, you effectively have to buy it twice. Or you have to make a decision for one. Steam's proposition is that you buy it once, and you can play it on any of your computers, even the one in the living room that has a gamepad attached. Heck, even if you're an exclusive console gamer, it will be hard to pass up the psychology of getting more for your money.
This isn't just another console, it's a new value proposition entirely.
Posted Sep 24, 2013 1:21 UTC (Tue) by elanthis (guest, #6227)
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Or you just stream from the PC, which multiple devices can do, and which SteamOS it touting as a feature and is likely the only way a good number of current and even future AAA games will ever run "on" a SteamBox.
In the end, it'll come down to marketshare. If nobody makes games for it, consumers won't care about it. If consumers don't care about, nobody will make games for it. See the Ouja and it's level of success.
Valve launches SteamOS
Posted Sep 24, 2013 6:44 UTC (Tue) by k8to (subscriber, #15413)
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Comments from various gamers who have tried this generally have reported that it's quite difficult to get a realtime streaming system working that offers the necessary fidelity and latency for gaming.
It may be that you can do it just fine without Valve, but it seems to be a significant struggle, and Valve making it easy will matter. Since this device claims to offer that.
Valve launches SteamOS
Posted Sep 24, 2013 6:52 UTC (Tue) by NAR (subscriber, #1313)
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I guess they need to solve the bufferbloat problem to achieve this, don't they? An NX session on the company intranet 9 time zones away was barely usable, for games on the internet it must be horrible.
Valve launches SteamOS
Posted Sep 24, 2013 7:33 UTC (Tue) by speedster1 (subscriber, #8143)
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> I guess they need to solve the bufferbloat problem to achieve this, don't they? An NX session on the company intranet 9 time zones away was barely usable, for games on the internet it must be horrible.
Valve wasn't talking about games on the internet though -- they were talking about streaming to a Steam box from a Windows/Mac PC in the next room. On the other hand, I do wonder how they are dealing with wireless latency issues, since most non-geeks don't want to string cable from PC to living room in order to get a nice solid GigE wired connection.