PSA for those who have no Linux experience and want to have a go at a SteamOS box: use Nvidia. AMD's FGLRX driver is an abomination I wouldn't wish upon my worst enemy.
Intel is fully open source when it come for their driver on linux, so they usually have the best compatibility with with linux system of all manufacturer.
Usually when happen with intel hardware, is that there might be some feature missing, has they have not yet been integrated into the kernel driver.
Intel drivers for linux are fine, they have almost the same performance as the windows drivers, problem is IGP is useless for real gaming.
I personally don't have problem with proprietary binary drivers, if it works fine there is no reason I need the driver open. As it seems, open source drivers for high performance GPUs will be marginally slower for years to come.
I don't have a problem with proprietary binary drivers either but I do acknowledge one limitation: they depend on the hardware manufacturer to release and support them. This has led to delays in their arrival etc. Support on the Linux side is often short lived as they typically appear after their Windows release and are dropped at the same time.
I do like the option of having open source drivers as they tend to support the hardware longer. Addling new hardware support to open source drivers, again, depends heavily on how open the hardware manufacture is (both AMD has released all the low level documentation for build a driver and Intel's own drivers are open source).
They aren't that close to Windows performance across the board. In isolated samples they come close and sometimes win but for full commercial games at least one of the driver weaknesses generally comes up.
Also, it's a bit of a dead-end driver as it's not based on Gallium3D. Basically Intel/the rest of the community gets to do duplicate work because of it on things like state trackers and such.
Open source does not automatically make them good. Although I've also read they're making significant progress. Which may not be all that difficult if you're starting from zero..
Intel's drivers for linux are rock solid, the primary developers are employed by Intel, and they have a history of pushing stuff into the kernel way in advance of almost anyone else. Performance is typically better than OS X but worse than Windows by a not particularly significant margin either way. As ever, if the SteamOS starts to gain traction, there should be more development into the drivers so we may see parity or better.
When Valve started first working on the Source engine for Linux they found a series of performance quirks by the main gfx card companies that they were able to triage, report and have fixed in fairly short order, with the companies (apparently) bending over backwards to get them sorted out. We can only hope that continues.
I'm using AMD's binary on my Trinity 5800k system and getting wicked performance on Source titles (and non-Source) at 1080p and the highest settings. In some sense you are right though, it could be better. For one thing, even with the latest beta, I still have to use the gl_finish 1 hack to get Source games working smoothly. One problem: L4D2 doesn't support it! So it still runs stuttery without vsync at the highest settings. But for all other non-Source games I've tried, the AMD binary has been seriously sweet.
(There are a couple annoyances involving their drivers though, like having to manually sign betas so that a ridiculous watermark doesn't show up, and setting an Underscan variable with every fresh driver install.)
The thing with AMD is that they don't have the ressource of both Nvidia and Intel, while been split between two driver (mostly a legacy from ATI, who didn't want open source driver, before they were fully integrated into AMD), has they maintain the old proprietary stuff, until the open source one development catch up to it and thus finally been able to put old yeller to rest.
Then ... don't use the fglrx driver? The advantage on the AMD side of things is that the open source radeon driver is fairly mature. The present obvious disadvantage being the lack of Southern Islands support. That said, fglrx works fine for me. Steam runs fine and the Steam Linux games play fine on my 7950. As with many things YMMV.
I think you are mistaken about the whole WINE thing to get access to your whole Steam library of games.
Rather, they will use a solution to stream your games from your Windows/OS X/Linux desktop/laptop to your TV: "You can play all your Windows and Mac games on your SteamOS machine, too. Just turn on your existing computer and run Steam as you always have - then your SteamOS machine can stream those games over your home network straight to your TV!" http://store.steampowered.com/livingroom/SteamOS/
Ehh, it's just another option... I think a lot of PC gamers might actually appreciate it. I stopped gaming in consoles around 2001, and I've always had a desktop for gaming, but at the same time I've never bothered hooking one up to my living room TV... It's just too much of a hassle as a DVR and I rather enjoy playing a lot of games on my desk and high res displays... I wouldn't scoff at buying a hundred dollar box to steam certain specific titles to my TV tho. How well can that work? I imagine if Onlive can get it to work reasonably well across the internet then doing it over a home network can't be insurmountable.
Since Steam OS is just Linux, what they should do is require the hardware it runs on to support VT-d with VGA passthrough. That way, all you would need to run a Windows game on your Steam OS console is an extra graphics card and an extra HDMI cable to your TV or receiver, with an added benefit that if Windows crashes, you only have to reboot the Windows virtual machine, instead of the entire computer. After all, Linux is more stable than Windows, right?
I generally really respect writing quality at Anandtech. But it's very hard to take this article seriously when the writer doesn't seem to understand one of the major features of SteamOS - game streaming. Perhaps more time to research this topic was needed before commenting on Valve's new initiatives?
I have no idea where the WINE idea came from, as Valve has said nothing like that to my knowledge and no other news sites seem to be reporting that. Instead games will stream from your 'main' Windows PC to your Steambox hooked up to your TV.
Using this tech, Valve and/or it's partners could sell a $99 or less ARM box that runs SteamOS and streams games from your other computer. Additionally, it would stream movies, Netflix etc. This could be a major player against the Apple TV-type STB market. I'd buy one!
As noted above, the text has been updated. I was actually hoping for WINE or something similar and forgot about the small note where it talks about streaming games. Bleh. We'll see if we get more Linux ports going forward, and maybe if we're lucky Valve will put some real effort into emulation (or whatever you want to call it).
While SteamOS is being discussed in the context of consoles (ie couch gaming), whose to stay that the streaming has to go to a console plugged into a TV?
It's not "the couch factor." It's the "everywhere factor." Valve isn't concerned about consoles. Consoles are doomed. They'll be dead by the end of this gen or the next. It won't be cost effective to use specialized hardware in a world filled with tablets and Roku devices that do more than what anyone might need.
In fact, Valve is branching out in order to set themselves up to hit consoles while they're weak BEFORE tablets and smartphones can fully supplant them. Then use that as an entry point to go into tablets, both in apps that stream from modern high power machines and later into actual tablets based on SteamOS.
If Valve just sat on its hands and kept doing what they were doing, in due course they'd be so niche as to be irrelevant, much like MS and Sony if they didn't branch out and get Xbox and Playstation synonymous with "platforms" instead of "consoles." Even MS and Sony know consoles are doomed.
That's why you see Xbox in Windows Phone and Windows 8. That's why you see Playstation on Android. That's why MS is testing Halo 4 streaming to PC/Windows Phone and you have Sony talking about Gaikai to devices that aren't Playstations.
The future is platforms. If Steam sat on their butts and let the world keep going on by, then the world would go on by without them. This is why they must branch out while they still have easy access to a branching out point. From there, they can rapidly move to other adjacent spaces and become known for more than just PC gaming.
They don't want to run a console. They want to just run gaming.
.. Maybe a variant of the nVidia Shield hardware (without the Shield display) packaged in a small cube, wirelessly interfaced to the Steam controller, also wirelessly networked to the mainPC (a la Shield) running either SteamOS or Windows/Steam ?.....
Jarred, it won't be anything to do with Wine. It's a streaming solution similar to what Nvidia has with shield.
Performance, according to internal leaks I've heard, is much better than Windows. The achilles's hills has always been GPU drivers, but Nvidia is now very rapidly working on it.
SteamOS is going to be based on Ubuntu 12.04, at least for now.
Yup, fixed the text now. I'm curious about which performance will be better than Windows -- are we talking boot times and such, or actual frame rates in games that have native Linux versions? I'll be surprised if any titles actually run better on SteamOS with the initial release, but long-term there's more potential. And as bad as Windows drivers might be, NVIDIA/AMD/Intel Linux drivers tend to be worse (considering they get far less TLC).
A single engine running better under Linux in a few cases is by no means a guarantee of universally better performance. L4D2 with special optimizations and help from the GPU manufacturers ended up 10% faster under Linux a year ago in a non-public demo. Did that ever materialize in the real world for actual users of Linux? And even if it did, what about the hundreds of non-Source games out there?
Comparisons are great but even anecdotes demonstrate different experiences. My 660 TI with binary, A8-4500m with binary or kernel, and Intel HD 4k have demonstrated more stuttering on Linux than Windows across all Steam games and even some FOSS games.
The Unreal Engine 3 apparently had a Linux port early on but Epic never wanted to support any games using it. Code apparently was available to developers but no one until very recently have released UE3 based games. Similarly Unreal Engine 4 is getting a Linux port.
CryEngine 3 and iDTech 5 both have native Linux builds according to the respective developers but nothing for Linux has been released using it.
So developers are spending the money on the programming side at least but seem hesitant on the support side. Steam seems to be changing this.
Things to look for will be improved framerates from OpenGL, better input latencies, a better-tuned CPU scheduler, and a lower-latency kernel. Many of these things can be swapped out easily as configurable items.
Of course there is sometimes friction between latency and throughput, so that would have to be considered.
The thing that you are forgetting, is that Windows, by its nature, is a general purpose OS. Microsoft cannot tune it for any particular use case, it has to perform against a majority of benchmarks for a majority of use cases. And as important as gaming might be, it's still a niche, compared to the the overall PC users.
Once you go down the path of optimizing an OS for a particular use case, there's a lot of potential to be unlocked. And gaming is a very particular use case with its own set of requirements. What the Valve guys are now discovering is that, there are for example many different schedulers in the Linux kernel, each favouring different things. You can swap out a general purpose scheduler for one with prioritises latency, and generally that's a massive help for gaming (as long as you can manage throughput). Examples like this are plenty all across the stack. This is the advantage that consoles have always had, and Valve is trying to bring it, to some degree, to its Valve machines.
Another thing that your article implies is that Steam Machine game devs still have to target anything and everything, like in the PC world. To an extent, this is true, but there will be certification programs, and different certification levels. Being a "Steam OS Level 3 Certified" rig (for example) will ensure a certain amount of compatibility, and then a game can be advertised as "best played on Steam OS Level 3 machine or higher", which will help devs massively.
But e.g., L4D2 running natively on Linux has higher FPS than the Windows version. Note that Valve put years of tuning into the Windows version and that also includes a D3D->OGL translation layer that causes a hit.
Super interested in SteamOS and the Steam Controller. Not that much about the pre-built PCs, but that was expected. I'm still fine with Win7 and Win8 on my machines, but having this option if future Windows releases do actually become walled gardens is certainly nice. And that controller just looks soo freaky, it might actually be good. :D
The thing I can't understand is why would anyone install this OS on any powerful hardware? If you've already built a powerful PC, then it's not feasible to spend another bunch of money on a steam box, when it doesn't add much. And if you've bought steam box as your first PC, why not boot to Windows?
In my opinion, SteamOS adds nearly zero gaming benefits comparing to booting into Windows. Windows has the Big Picture and all those games (and more). If they come up with the compelling HTPC build, it'll be more beneficial for the end user to just install Windows on it.
Disclosure: I happen to like what Microsoft does right now (and am really puzzled about what Gabe Newell calls open and closed), but am really looking for some constructive discussion. What have I missed which makes everyone think that SteamOS/Steam Machine can be competitive with just Desktop OS/Desktop Machine?
Yes, has Steam Machine, will have SteamOS on them, so you have no Windows license coming with them.
But the nice thing about Steam Machine, is that it is also hardware that you know will have Linux driver, so I do see people wanting an OEM build Linux desktop, simply getting one, then installing their favorite distro on it.
So I get better hardware for the same price. That's a plus.
It also provides more incentive for the devs to port to Linux their future titles, because in addition to some hypothetical Linux geeks there will be some normal people using SteamOS.
But Windows allows me to do so much more even from the gaming perspective: not only steam has much more windows-compatible games, but Windows can support additional distribution platforms, which are guaranteed to be locked out of the SteamOS (my speculation).
What if I'm perfectly fine with paying $150 for Windows license? (And in fact, if you get it preinstalled, you pay much less, because OEMs have bulk deals.)
The platform is open; I don't see any reason why EA couldn't bring Origin to it. I don't know that I'd see them bringing Origin to it, but I think they could.
I believe I paid 109 for the Windows 8 license on this gaming machine I have. I consider it a waste of money since the OS is garbage and it's just a loader for Steam but I also considered it the price of admittance. But if I didn't have to pay that, I wouldn't. You like Windows so you see no advantage to an alternative platform; I abhor Windows so wouldn't even have it installed if I didn't need it for Steam. It's a waste of hard drive space. Different things for different folks.
I really think what SteamOS is, is a bargaining chip. I see SteamMachines eventually being sold with Windows for all of the reasons you state. However having SteamOS gives Valve or their OEM partners leverage for a better deal on those bulk Windows licenses. Then they'll have the base model running SteamOS and the Windows model for $100 more.
I see your point. Of course not everybody wants/needs the whole package that Windows is. And it makes sense not to install identical systems (and thus pay excessive price) on the hardware with different purposes.
Except that you need that Windows licence anyway. Sure, there will be a few more games with native linux support comming. But if you "want to play xyz now" instead of asking "OK guys, I'm bored.. what do you have in store?" you'll probably be disappointed by the answer for a long time.
You're forgetting about wine. It isn't unusual to see windows apps running faster under wine. Game support isn't bad as long as the title doesn't require more than d3d 9c (as I understand it that includes even new titles).
Most games that aren't console ports are now using at least DX10, and frequently DX11. While DX9 is still available in the vast majority of games, on newer titles it will mean giving up image quality and potentially performance.
I thought I had indicated as much, but, as you've stated, so much the clearer now. Additionally, there is this (http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&am... project. However, since that makes use of the gallium interface it will only be used by the oss drivers (but the radeon drivers are now pretty damn close to fglrx for gaming benchmarks with dvfs now enabled). All of this aside, the porting becomes a much smaller issue if games are written with a cross-platform graphics engine such as unity.
Windows over the years has gotten incredibly bloated. The only two advantages is the selection of games and the optimizations on the driver level. Steam for OS X/Linux have changed the game selection dynamic a bit while AMD/nVidia/Intel have all been putting more effort into driver optimizations on other platforms. I see SteamOS + AMD's Mantle has a great opportunity to increase performance and/or image quality for gaming.
I admire what Microsoft is doing with DirectX. The OS-level GPU scheduling is clearly the future of GPU handling on a general-purpose OS. (At least in my opinion, I am a software developer and architecturally it makes sense for me.) It allows for stability of the OS and seamless sharing of the GPU between multiple applications.
On the other hand, SteamOS could optimize for performance, because it's focused on the fullscreen one-at-a-time applications. The open console OS, if you like.
I agree that OS level scheduling of GPU resource is going to be important in the future. The combination of Grand Central Dispatch and OpenCL under OS X comes to mind.
I also see room for significant optimization in the software stack for Steam OS outside of the Linux kernel. The problem is that as long as Steam OS is open to run on a variety of hardware, the fat Steam OS can cut would be limited to legacy and deprecated functions of existing libraries. Cutting too much and the supported hardware range can narrow.
This also makes me wonder what the final minimum requirements for running Steam OS will ultimately be.
PS4 possible, has it has more standard embedded hardware, but you will most likely see people making BSD based PC out of them first, once those work, it will be easier to port to Linux.
Xbox One, I think will be much more troublesome, as Microsoft did their own custom firmware modification and the thing is basically an embedded hyper-V server.
Unless Sony changes their mind, both the PS4 and Xbox One will be locked down out of the factory to prevent alternative OS from booting on it. That's not to say that some skilled hackers will be able to dance around the restrictions as history has proven.
The other factor is that SteamOS itself will likely have some proprietary bits that may not work on a hacked console.
That would only be practical if Steam OS is as efficient as PS/Xbox because PS/Xbox hardware is not really superior, just superior for the price. Though I need to upgrade my computer sooner or later and the thought of everything I need to run being able to run on a $400 console that can play Gran Turismo is pretty sweet.
OK, So even though most of the games released already support the 360 controller, lets make a new one with no jump button to further confuse the market, so you can redundantly stream your games to our high spec box, that uses an OS that means the best looking game you can play is team fortress 2, but don't worry more developers will make games for it, even tho we haven't made the game we promised 5 years ago.
Currently the most graphic intensive game with confirmed Linux port is Metro: Last Light, which is one of the graphic heavy weight.
You do know you have 8 button you can press without even lifting your finger from the trackpads, how many button do you have access to with thumb on joysticks for Xbox and PS controller, answer is 6. (P.S. sticking to the basic controller, held in a normal fashion, I know very well you can press everything if you use your index for frontal control instead of shoulder button)
Not interested, sounds like a hodgepodge of about 10 different experimental PC/Linux/Android initiatives rolled up into a massive open beta. Seems to me like a solution to a question no one asked.
Also, does that controller remind anyone else of the NES Max? I personally prefer the analog sticks, don't think I would enjoy 2 massive touch pads over time.
I think I would agree with this. Steam machines basically give me the opportunity to buy parts for, upgrade, spend time on, tweak, troubleshoot, feed power to, and invest in yet another gaming rig, except this new one won't run Excel when I need it to.
Is Valve competing against Windows PC gaming, or console gaming? I think both. Not sure that anything useful is being offered here. I would much prefer to set my PC in my living room and use big picture mode if I wanted a big screen experience for my PC games. The problem is, when I want that experience, I buy the game on a console. And I guess I just don't have any problems with the way things currently are.
On the positive side, the controller looks very cool, I could see myself picking one up. I would love if they made the touch screen wide enough to fit a cell phone style virtual keyboard.
I don't think that WINE was ever really a viable option for this. It's always been a perpetual moving target and games which might have worked on it today, are broken by an update tomorrow. It adds overhead to playing games and it denies Microsoft revenue which might make them inclined to throw some more wrenches into the operation. It's a ton of work with minimal potential payoff. I think Valve realized they were either stuck tethering to a Windows machine or doing a native port. On this machine which dual boots, the games run just as fast in Linux as they do in Windows (provided you get the drivers running). There's just still not much content there.
I think the unwritten aspect to all of this is I imagine there will be Steam Machines running Windows. Similar to the Ubuntu laptops, you can get the Steam Machine with SteamOS or vendors will throw in a version running Windows for $100 more.
The real question is how much overhead / latency the streaming adds to the experience. I think for the games I play, that'll be fine. But we'll have to see. I want to know the bandwidth requirements as well. I have gigabit wired running to my TV; I imagine in a wifi-crowded apartment like mine the experience wireless might not be as enjoyable.
Well the meta would be windows steam titles shipping with WINE packaged for that specific release. It's a hell of a lot of work on valve's part but it might be easier than porting every single windows title to linux. Game gets updated? Get it working with WINE again and release it. They do something similar with C++ and DX redistributables but the WINE dream is asking a lot more.
As for streaming: it doesn't take too too much bandwidth to stream 1080p @ 60fps. I'd wager most basic 11n networks would be able to handle it. The real overhead comes in real time encoding. Even with fancy new GPUs it's a lot to ask while trying to render a game and have less than a few ms of latency. Obviously it can be done and we've all been waiting patiently for a soltion (WiDI was a fail, and UWB doesn't really solve the problem of getting media rendered in one room to another). Shield is nice but it's low level and nowadays everyone loves having everything high level so it can work with any system every time. There's nothing particularly challenging about encoding and streaming content otf and it's nice to finally see a few implementations.
"The combination of a touchscreen, various buttons, and the circular touchpads together provide the necessary platform, and a utility will allow users to customize any game for the new controller."
SUURRRRE I'd like to see them customize it for ARMA or any other game that has 200 key commands. Good luck with that.
"As noted above, Valve will be sending out 300 prototype"
According to their FAQ it will only be 30 testers. I wonder if the FAQ is missing a zero.
No, the FAQ says 30 testers will be chosen based on their record, with the remaining 270 randomly selected.
From the Steam Machine FAQ: "How will you choose the 300 beta participants? A small number of users (30 or less) will be chosen based on their past community contributions and beta participation. The remainder will be chosen at random from the eligible pool."
From the Controller FAQ: "How will the beta controller differ from the one that’s for sale next year? There are a couple important differences: the first 300 or so beta units won’t include a touch screen, and they won’t be wireless. Instead, they’ll have four buttons in place of the touch screen, and they’ll require a USB cable."
So yes, it's 300. Where'd you see one that says 30?
Source code for to kernel (which is Linux) does not mean full source code for everything. I suspect Steam will be an app that sits on top of the OS still, more or less, and I would be amazed if Valve were to open up any of the DRM related source code. We'll see I guess -- if they did the encryption/DRM properly, having it be open wouldn't hurt them, but that's rarely the case.
Who could forget "B-17 bomber"... And Sea Battle was it called? The was a cool naval warfare game I liked a lot. Even with a horrid controller, there are still a lot of good memories.
I remember Intellivision, and the 16 direction disc was actually pretty nice for things like Auto Racing. However I think the pads were prone to getting dirty/bad so I may have just been lucky to have a console where they worked well. This was an Intellivision 1 where the pads weren't removable.
I'm interested in everything...but the controller looks truly awful. This type of controller has been tried before. Spoiler alert: It was a disaster. Hopefully Valve do a better job.
I actually hope Valve endorses AMD more than Nvidia for the Steam machines. As John Carmack is saying, AMD's direct hardware access through the recently announced Mantle API could be KILLER for Steam machines:
Believe it or not, I think the success of this hinges more on the trackpads on the controller than anything else.
The streaming aspect is a way to nudge current steam users towards adoption and the critical mass required for the platform to be successful, but success is entirely contingent on the control scheme being 'close enough' to the mouse. One of the main problems with consoles is they can't play a wide array of games successfully because the mouse is far superior a device to the joystick/d-pad, a lot of these games being major players in the PC space. Add on to this the competitve aspect and there being no reasonable way to cordon off SteamBox users away from PC users, if the controller isn't competitive with the mouse, it will be an exercise in frustration for any FPS player since the games play completely different on controller vs. mouse due to huge accuracy and reaction time gains on the mouse. Console and PC userbases are relegated to different matchmaking pools for a very good reason, the control scheme.
I've been thinking that a trackpad of some type would be the only way to replicate mouse movement on a console for a few years now, and hope they succeed. I hope they did a lot of research into that aspect of the controller to make it as perfect as possible, because I can't see this console succeeding if it doesn't work out.
Their steam program is garbage on PC so I will believe they can make an entire OS when I see it. I'm not talking about the servers, steam workshop or the service of selling/providing games but the program used to interface all of that. It's horrendously slow, cumbersome, buggy, and has a need to validate itself like it has self esteem issues at every chance it gets. Origins' interfacing program is substantially better (not counting community features in-game) and that's a sad state of affairs.
I dont see how Steam OS is going to work when most of the steam games dont work on Linux. The only way that I see this going is them really pushing the streaming services, where you can use their small client steam OS box with the game running on their servers. Every company is trying to get people over on a subscription service anyways these days.
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Gloomy - Saturday, September 28, 2013 - link
PSA for those who have no Linux experience and want to have a go at a SteamOS box: use Nvidia. AMD's FGLRX driver is an abomination I wouldn't wish upon my worst enemy.Tibbs - Saturday, September 28, 2013 - link
How about Intel's latest integrated GPUs? I realize performance won't be amazing but the drivers are open source and heavily worked on by Intel.iniudan - Saturday, September 28, 2013 - link
Intel is fully open source when it come for their driver on linux, so they usually have the best compatibility with with linux system of all manufacturer.Usually when happen with intel hardware, is that there might be some feature missing, has they have not yet been integrated into the kernel driver.
ddriver - Saturday, September 28, 2013 - link
Intel drivers for linux are fine, they have almost the same performance as the windows drivers, problem is IGP is useless for real gaming.I personally don't have problem with proprietary binary drivers, if it works fine there is no reason I need the driver open. As it seems, open source drivers for high performance GPUs will be marginally slower for years to come.
Kevin G - Saturday, September 28, 2013 - link
I don't have a problem with proprietary binary drivers either but I do acknowledge one limitation: they depend on the hardware manufacturer to release and support them. This has led to delays in their arrival etc. Support on the Linux side is often short lived as they typically appear after their Windows release and are dropped at the same time.I do like the option of having open source drivers as they tend to support the hardware longer. Addling new hardware support to open source drivers, again, depends heavily on how open the hardware manufacture is (both AMD has released all the low level documentation for build a driver and Intel's own drivers are open source).
lmcd - Saturday, September 28, 2013 - link
They aren't that close to Windows performance across the board. In isolated samples they come close and sometimes win but for full commercial games at least one of the driver weaknesses generally comes up.Also, it's a bit of a dead-end driver as it's not based on Gallium3D. Basically Intel/the rest of the community gets to do duplicate work because of it on things like state trackers and such.
t.s - Wednesday, October 2, 2013 - link
AMD APU is not useless for real gaming, IMHO. APU GPU is integrated, no?MrSpadge - Saturday, September 28, 2013 - link
Open source does not automatically make them good. Although I've also read they're making significant progress. Which may not be all that difficult if you're starting from zero..Twirrim - Sunday, September 29, 2013 - link
Intel's drivers for linux are rock solid, the primary developers are employed by Intel, and they have a history of pushing stuff into the kernel way in advance of almost anyone else. Performance is typically better than OS X but worse than Windows by a not particularly significant margin either way. As ever, if the SteamOS starts to gain traction, there should be more development into the drivers so we may see parity or better.When Valve started first working on the Source engine for Linux they found a series of performance quirks by the main gfx card companies that they were able to triage, report and have fixed in fairly short order, with the companies (apparently) bending over backwards to get them sorted out. We can only hope that continues.
johnny_boy - Saturday, September 28, 2013 - link
I'm using AMD's binary on my Trinity 5800k system and getting wicked performance on Source titles (and non-Source) at 1080p and the highest settings. In some sense you are right though, it could be better. For one thing, even with the latest beta, I still have to use the gl_finish 1 hack to get Source games working smoothly. One problem: L4D2 doesn't support it! So it still runs stuttery without vsync at the highest settings. But for all other non-Source games I've tried, the AMD binary has been seriously sweet.(There are a couple annoyances involving their drivers though, like having to manually sign betas so that a ridiculous watermark doesn't show up, and setting an Underscan variable with every fresh driver install.)
iniudan - Saturday, September 28, 2013 - link
The thing with AMD is that they don't have the ressource of both Nvidia and Intel, while been split between two driver (mostly a legacy from ATI, who didn't want open source driver, before they were fully integrated into AMD), has they maintain the old proprietary stuff, until the open source one development catch up to it and thus finally been able to put old yeller to rest.quagga - Saturday, September 28, 2013 - link
Then ... don't use the fglrx driver? The advantage on the AMD side of things is that the open source radeon driver is fairly mature. The present obvious disadvantage being the lack of Southern Islands support. That said, fglrx works fine for me. Steam runs fine and the Steam Linux games play fine on my 7950. As with many things YMMV.Tibbs - Saturday, September 28, 2013 - link
I think you are mistaken about the whole WINE thing to get access to your whole Steam library of games.Rather, they will use a solution to stream your games from your Windows/OS X/Linux desktop/laptop to your TV:
"You can play all your Windows and Mac games on your SteamOS machine, too. Just turn on your existing computer and run Steam as you always have - then your SteamOS machine can stream those games over your home network straight to your TV!"
http://store.steampowered.com/livingroom/SteamOS/
JarredWalton - Saturday, September 28, 2013 - link
Sorry -- been a long day. I read that at one point, but that was a couple days back and in the re-reading I missed it. Text has been edited.B3an - Saturday, September 28, 2013 - link
Cool, so i need two computers just play over 95% of the games i own. That sounds great and really practical /s... Or i could just just connect my Windows PC straight to a TV.
Impulses - Saturday, September 28, 2013 - link
Ehh, it's just another option... I think a lot of PC gamers might actually appreciate it. I stopped gaming in consoles around 2001, and I've always had a desktop for gaming, but at the same time I've never bothered hooking one up to my living room TV... It's just too much of a hassle as a DVR and I rather enjoy playing a lot of games on my desk and high res displays... I wouldn't scoff at buying a hundred dollar box to steam certain specific titles to my TV tho. How well can that work? I imagine if Onlive can get it to work reasonably well across the internet then doing it over a home network can't be insurmountable.Ktracho - Monday, September 30, 2013 - link
Since Steam OS is just Linux, what they should do is require the hardware it runs on to support VT-d with VGA passthrough. That way, all you would need to run a Windows game on your Steam OS console is an extra graphics card and an extra HDMI cable to your TV or receiver, with an added benefit that if Windows crashes, you only have to reboot the Windows virtual machine, instead of the entire computer. After all, Linux is more stable than Windows, right?jeremynsl - Saturday, September 28, 2013 - link
I generally really respect writing quality at Anandtech. But it's very hard to take this article seriously when the writer doesn't seem to understand one of the major features of SteamOS - game streaming. Perhaps more time to research this topic was needed before commenting on Valve's new initiatives?I have no idea where the WINE idea came from, as Valve has said nothing like that to my knowledge and no other news sites seem to be reporting that. Instead games will stream from your 'main' Windows PC to your Steambox hooked up to your TV.
Using this tech, Valve and/or it's partners could sell a $99 or less ARM box that runs SteamOS and streams games from your other computer. Additionally, it would stream movies, Netflix etc. This could be a major player against the Apple TV-type STB market. I'd buy one!
JarredWalton - Saturday, September 28, 2013 - link
As noted above, the text has been updated. I was actually hoping for WINE or something similar and forgot about the small note where it talks about streaming games. Bleh. We'll see if we get more Linux ports going forward, and maybe if we're lucky Valve will put some real effort into emulation (or whatever you want to call it).Qwertilot - Saturday, September 28, 2013 - link
Well it should at least give the portion of the Wine (and add ons) folk who are into games a fixed target to polish for.ananduser - Saturday, September 28, 2013 - link
I get the AppleTV type market, but why add another link in the gaming chain ? Surely it can't all be about the "couch" factor.Kevin G - Saturday, September 28, 2013 - link
While SteamOS is being discussed in the context of consoles (ie couch gaming), whose to stay that the streaming has to go to a console plugged into a TV?HisDivineOrder - Saturday, September 28, 2013 - link
It's not "the couch factor." It's the "everywhere factor." Valve isn't concerned about consoles. Consoles are doomed. They'll be dead by the end of this gen or the next. It won't be cost effective to use specialized hardware in a world filled with tablets and Roku devices that do more than what anyone might need.In fact, Valve is branching out in order to set themselves up to hit consoles while they're weak BEFORE tablets and smartphones can fully supplant them. Then use that as an entry point to go into tablets, both in apps that stream from modern high power machines and later into actual tablets based on SteamOS.
If Valve just sat on its hands and kept doing what they were doing, in due course they'd be so niche as to be irrelevant, much like MS and Sony if they didn't branch out and get Xbox and Playstation synonymous with "platforms" instead of "consoles." Even MS and Sony know consoles are doomed.
That's why you see Xbox in Windows Phone and Windows 8. That's why you see Playstation on Android. That's why MS is testing Halo 4 streaming to PC/Windows Phone and you have Sony talking about Gaikai to devices that aren't Playstations.
The future is platforms. If Steam sat on their butts and let the world keep going on by, then the world would go on by without them. This is why they must branch out while they still have easy access to a branching out point. From there, they can rapidly move to other adjacent spaces and become known for more than just PC gaming.
They don't want to run a console. They want to just run gaming.
ddriver - Saturday, September 28, 2013 - link
Good luck streaming a fast pace FPS... Even RTS can be significantly botched by extra latency, and "remote gaming" comes with plenty of latency.kilkennycat - Sunday, September 29, 2013 - link
.. Maybe a variant of the nVidia Shield hardware (without the Shield display) packaged in a small cube, wirelessly interfaced to the Steam controller, also wirelessly networked to the mainPC (a la Shield) running either SteamOS or Windows/Steam ?.....aryonoco - Saturday, September 28, 2013 - link
Jarred, it won't be anything to do with Wine. It's a streaming solution similar to what Nvidia has with shield.Performance, according to internal leaks I've heard, is much better than Windows. The achilles's hills has always been GPU drivers, but Nvidia is now very rapidly working on it.
SteamOS is going to be based on Ubuntu 12.04, at least for now.
JarredWalton - Saturday, September 28, 2013 - link
Yup, fixed the text now. I'm curious about which performance will be better than Windows -- are we talking boot times and such, or actual frame rates in games that have native Linux versions? I'll be surprised if any titles actually run better on SteamOS with the initial release, but long-term there's more potential. And as bad as Windows drivers might be, NVIDIA/AMD/Intel Linux drivers tend to be worse (considering they get far less TLC).HendrikH - Saturday, September 28, 2013 - link
Some info about what you can expect performance-wise can be found here:http://lmgtfy.com/?q=steam+linux+faster+than+windo...
JarredWalton - Saturday, September 28, 2013 - link
A single engine running better under Linux in a few cases is by no means a guarantee of universally better performance. L4D2 with special optimizations and help from the GPU manufacturers ended up 10% faster under Linux a year ago in a non-public demo. Did that ever materialize in the real world for actual users of Linux? And even if it did, what about the hundreds of non-Source games out there?HendrikH - Saturday, September 28, 2013 - link
I don't expect any dramatic differences between the platforms. Phoronix has regular comparisons of Linux and Windows, like here:http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=17869
http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=18970
lmcd - Saturday, September 28, 2013 - link
Comparisons are great but even anecdotes demonstrate different experiences. My 660 TI with binary, A8-4500m with binary or kernel, and Intel HD 4k have demonstrated more stuttering on Linux than Windows across all Steam games and even some FOSS games.Kevin G - Saturday, September 28, 2013 - link
The Unreal Engine 3 apparently had a Linux port early on but Epic never wanted to support any games using it. Code apparently was available to developers but no one until very recently have released UE3 based games. Similarly Unreal Engine 4 is getting a Linux port.CryEngine 3 and iDTech 5 both have native Linux builds according to the respective developers but nothing for Linux has been released using it.
So developers are spending the money on the programming side at least but seem hesitant on the support side. Steam seems to be changing this.
jwcalla - Saturday, September 28, 2013 - link
Things to look for will be improved framerates from OpenGL, better input latencies, a better-tuned CPU scheduler, and a lower-latency kernel. Many of these things can be swapped out easily as configurable items.Of course there is sometimes friction between latency and throughput, so that would have to be considered.
aryonoco - Saturday, September 28, 2013 - link
The thing that you are forgetting, is that Windows, by its nature, is a general purpose OS. Microsoft cannot tune it for any particular use case, it has to perform against a majority of benchmarks for a majority of use cases. And as important as gaming might be, it's still a niche, compared to the the overall PC users.Once you go down the path of optimizing an OS for a particular use case, there's a lot of potential to be unlocked. And gaming is a very particular use case with its own set of requirements. What the Valve guys are now discovering is that, there are for example many different schedulers in the Linux kernel, each favouring different things. You can swap out a general purpose scheduler for one with prioritises latency, and generally that's a massive help for gaming (as long as you can manage throughput). Examples like this are plenty all across the stack. This is the advantage that consoles have always had, and Valve is trying to bring it, to some degree, to its Valve machines.
Another thing that your article implies is that Steam Machine game devs still have to target anything and everything, like in the PC world. To an extent, this is true, but there will be certification programs, and different certification levels. Being a "Steam OS Level 3 Certified" rig (for example) will ensure a certain amount of compatibility, and then a game can be advertised as "best played on Steam OS Level 3 machine or higher", which will help devs massively.
ananduser - Saturday, September 28, 2013 - link
Think a little, how can streaming games from YOUR OWN computer run better than on your original source of streaming, again YOUR computer.jwcalla - Saturday, September 28, 2013 - link
I think you misread his comment there.But e.g., L4D2 running natively on Linux has higher FPS than the Windows version. Note that Valve put years of tuning into the Windows version and that also includes a D3D->OGL translation layer that causes a hit.
Death666Angel - Saturday, September 28, 2013 - link
Super interested in SteamOS and the Steam Controller. Not that much about the pre-built PCs, but that was expected. I'm still fine with Win7 and Win8 on my machines, but having this option if future Windows releases do actually become walled gardens is certainly nice. And that controller just looks soo freaky, it might actually be good. :Deiriklf - Saturday, September 28, 2013 - link
The discussion in the podcast back in january seems pretty relevant even after the announcement:http://www.anandtech.com/show/6704/the-anandtech-p...
Zak - Saturday, September 28, 2013 - link
Steam Machines? I like that:) Way cooler than *box or *station.Gmanyy - Saturday, September 28, 2013 - link
The thing I can't understand is why would anyone install this OS on any powerful hardware? If you've already built a powerful PC, then it's not feasible to spend another bunch of money on a steam box, when it doesn't add much. And if you've bought steam box as your first PC, why not boot to Windows?In my opinion, SteamOS adds nearly zero gaming benefits comparing to booting into Windows. Windows has the Big Picture and all those games (and more). If they come up with the compelling HTPC build, it'll be more beneficial for the end user to just install Windows on it.
Disclosure: I happen to like what Microsoft does right now (and am really puzzled about what Gabe Newell calls open and closed), but am really looking for some constructive discussion. What have I missed which makes everyone think that SteamOS/Steam Machine can be competitive with just Desktop OS/Desktop Machine?
Death666Angel - Saturday, September 28, 2013 - link
The ~50 to 150€ you have to spend on a Windows licence comes to mind as a thing in favor of SteamOS, no? :)iniudan - Saturday, September 28, 2013 - link
Yes, has Steam Machine, will have SteamOS on them, so you have no Windows license coming with them.But the nice thing about Steam Machine, is that it is also hardware that you know will have Linux driver, so I do see people wanting an OEM build Linux desktop, simply getting one, then installing their favorite distro on it.
Gmanyy - Saturday, September 28, 2013 - link
So I get better hardware for the same price. That's a plus.It also provides more incentive for the devs to port to Linux their future titles, because in addition to some hypothetical Linux geeks there will be some normal people using SteamOS.
But Windows allows me to do so much more even from the gaming perspective: not only steam has much more windows-compatible games, but Windows can support additional distribution platforms, which are guaranteed to be locked out of the SteamOS (my speculation).
What if I'm perfectly fine with paying $150 for Windows license? (And in fact, if you get it preinstalled, you pay much less, because OEMs have bulk deals.)
quagga - Saturday, September 28, 2013 - link
The platform is open; I don't see any reason why EA couldn't bring Origin to it. I don't know that I'd see them bringing Origin to it, but I think they could.I believe I paid 109 for the Windows 8 license on this gaming machine I have. I consider it a waste of money since the OS is garbage and it's just a loader for Steam but I also considered it the price of admittance. But if I didn't have to pay that, I wouldn't. You like Windows so you see no advantage to an alternative platform; I abhor Windows so wouldn't even have it installed if I didn't need it for Steam. It's a waste of hard drive space. Different things for different folks.
I really think what SteamOS is, is a bargaining chip. I see SteamMachines eventually being sold with Windows for all of the reasons you state. However having SteamOS gives Valve or their OEM partners leverage for a better deal on those bulk Windows licenses. Then they'll have the base model running SteamOS and the Windows model for $100 more.
Gmanyy - Saturday, September 28, 2013 - link
I see your point. Of course not everybody wants/needs the whole package that Windows is. And it makes sense not to install identical systems (and thus pay excessive price) on the hardware with different purposes.Thanks!
MrSpadge - Saturday, September 28, 2013 - link
Except that you need that Windows licence anyway. Sure, there will be a few more games with native linux support comming. But if you "want to play xyz now" instead of asking "OK guys, I'm bored.. what do you have in store?" you'll probably be disappointed by the answer for a long time.tuxRoller - Sunday, September 29, 2013 - link
You're forgetting about wine. It isn't unusual to see windows apps running faster under wine. Game support isn't bad as long as the title doesn't require more than d3d 9c (as I understand it that includes even new titles).JarredWalton - Sunday, September 29, 2013 - link
Most games that aren't console ports are now using at least DX10, and frequently DX11. While DX9 is still available in the vast majority of games, on newer titles it will mean giving up image quality and potentially performance.tuxRoller - Sunday, September 29, 2013 - link
I thought I had indicated as much, but, as you've stated, so much the clearer now.Additionally, there is this (http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&am... project. However, since that makes use of the gallium interface it will only be used by the oss drivers (but the radeon drivers are now pretty damn close to fglrx for gaming benchmarks with dvfs now enabled).
All of this aside, the porting becomes a much smaller issue if games are written with a cross-platform graphics engine such as unity.
Kevin G - Saturday, September 28, 2013 - link
Windows over the years has gotten incredibly bloated. The only two advantages is the selection of games and the optimizations on the driver level. Steam for OS X/Linux have changed the game selection dynamic a bit while AMD/nVidia/Intel have all been putting more effort into driver optimizations on other platforms. I see SteamOS + AMD's Mantle has a great opportunity to increase performance and/or image quality for gaming.Gmanyy - Saturday, September 28, 2013 - link
I admire what Microsoft is doing with DirectX. The OS-level GPU scheduling is clearly the future of GPU handling on a general-purpose OS. (At least in my opinion, I am a software developer and architecturally it makes sense for me.) It allows for stability of the OS and seamless sharing of the GPU between multiple applications.On the other hand, SteamOS could optimize for performance, because it's focused on the fullscreen one-at-a-time applications. The open console OS, if you like.
Kevin G - Sunday, September 29, 2013 - link
I agree that OS level scheduling of GPU resource is going to be important in the future. The combination of Grand Central Dispatch and OpenCL under OS X comes to mind.I also see room for significant optimization in the software stack for Steam OS outside of the Linux kernel. The problem is that as long as Steam OS is open to run on a variety of hardware, the fat Steam OS can cut would be limited to legacy and deprecated functions of existing libraries. Cutting too much and the supported hardware range can narrow.
This also makes me wonder what the final minimum requirements for running Steam OS will ultimately be.
Rogatti - Saturday, September 28, 2013 - link
PS4 .. X1 will be able SteamOS ??iniudan - Saturday, September 28, 2013 - link
PS4 possible, has it has more standard embedded hardware, but you will most likely see people making BSD based PC out of them first, once those work, it will be easier to port to Linux.Xbox One, I think will be much more troublesome, as Microsoft did their own custom firmware modification and the thing is basically an embedded hyper-V server.
Kevin G - Saturday, September 28, 2013 - link
Unless Sony changes their mind, both the PS4 and Xbox One will be locked down out of the factory to prevent alternative OS from booting on it. That's not to say that some skilled hackers will be able to dance around the restrictions as history has proven.The other factor is that SteamOS itself will likely have some proprietary bits that may not work on a hacked console.
iniudan - Sunday, September 29, 2013 - link
I know they would be locked, thus why I only spoke of possibility.purerice - Wednesday, October 2, 2013 - link
That would only be practical if Steam OS is as efficient as PS/Xbox because PS/Xbox hardware is not really superior, just superior for the price. Though I need to upgrade my computer sooner or later and the thought of everything I need to run being able to run on a $400 console that can play Gran Turismo is pretty sweet.coburn_c - Saturday, September 28, 2013 - link
OK, So even though most of the games released already support the 360 controller, lets make a new one with no jump button to further confuse the market, so you can redundantly stream your games to our high spec box, that uses an OS that means the best looking game you can play is team fortress 2, but don't worry more developers will make games for it, even tho we haven't made the game we promised 5 years ago.iniudan - Saturday, September 28, 2013 - link
Currently the most graphic intensive game with confirmed Linux port is Metro: Last Light, which is one of the graphic heavy weight.You do know you have 8 button you can press without even lifting your finger from the trackpads, how many button do you have access to with thumb on joysticks for Xbox and PS controller, answer is 6. (P.S. sticking to the basic controller, held in a normal fashion, I know very well you can press everything if you use your index for frontal control instead of shoulder button)
chizow - Saturday, September 28, 2013 - link
Not interested, sounds like a hodgepodge of about 10 different experimental PC/Linux/Android initiatives rolled up into a massive open beta. Seems to me like a solution to a question no one asked.Also, does that controller remind anyone else of the NES Max? I personally prefer the analog sticks, don't think I would enjoy 2 massive touch pads over time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NES-Max-Controll...
LarsBars - Sunday, September 29, 2013 - link
I think I would agree with this. Steam machines basically give me the opportunity to buy parts for, upgrade, spend time on, tweak, troubleshoot, feed power to, and invest in yet another gaming rig, except this new one won't run Excel when I need it to.Is Valve competing against Windows PC gaming, or console gaming? I think both. Not sure that anything useful is being offered here. I would much prefer to set my PC in my living room and use big picture mode if I wanted a big screen experience for my PC games. The problem is, when I want that experience, I buy the game on a console. And I guess I just don't have any problems with the way things currently are.
On the positive side, the controller looks very cool, I could see myself picking one up. I would love if they made the touch screen wide enough to fit a cell phone style virtual keyboard.
quagga - Saturday, September 28, 2013 - link
I don't think that WINE was ever really a viable option for this. It's always been a perpetual moving target and games which might have worked on it today, are broken by an update tomorrow. It adds overhead to playing games and it denies Microsoft revenue which might make them inclined to throw some more wrenches into the operation. It's a ton of work with minimal potential payoff. I think Valve realized they were either stuck tethering to a Windows machine or doing a native port. On this machine which dual boots, the games run just as fast in Linux as they do in Windows (provided you get the drivers running). There's just still not much content there.I think the unwritten aspect to all of this is I imagine there will be Steam Machines running Windows. Similar to the Ubuntu laptops, you can get the Steam Machine with SteamOS or vendors will throw in a version running Windows for $100 more.
The real question is how much overhead / latency the streaming adds to the experience. I think for the games I play, that'll be fine. But we'll have to see. I want to know the bandwidth requirements as well. I have gigabit wired running to my TV; I imagine in a wifi-crowded apartment like mine the experience wireless might not be as enjoyable.
willis936 - Saturday, September 28, 2013 - link
Well the meta would be windows steam titles shipping with WINE packaged for that specific release. It's a hell of a lot of work on valve's part but it might be easier than porting every single windows title to linux. Game gets updated? Get it working with WINE again and release it. They do something similar with C++ and DX redistributables but the WINE dream is asking a lot more.As for streaming: it doesn't take too too much bandwidth to stream 1080p @ 60fps. I'd wager most basic 11n networks would be able to handle it. The real overhead comes in real time encoding. Even with fancy new GPUs it's a lot to ask while trying to render a game and have less than a few ms of latency. Obviously it can be done and we've all been waiting patiently for a soltion (WiDI was a fail, and UWB doesn't really solve the problem of getting media rendered in one room to another). Shield is nice but it's low level and nowadays everyone loves having everything high level so it can work with any system every time. There's nothing particularly challenging about encoding and streaming content otf and it's nice to finally see a few implementations.
piiman - Saturday, September 28, 2013 - link
"The combination of a touchscreen, various buttons, and the circular touchpads together provide the necessary platform, and a utility will allow users to customize any game for the new controller."SUURRRRE I'd like to see them customize it for ARMA or any other game that has 200 key commands. Good luck with that.
"As noted above, Valve will be sending out 300 prototype"
According to their FAQ it will only be 30 testers. I wonder if the FAQ is missing a zero.
KitsuneKnight - Saturday, September 28, 2013 - link
No, the FAQ says 30 testers will be chosen based on their record, with the remaining 270 randomly selected.From the Steam Machine FAQ:
"How will you choose the 300 beta participants?
A small number of users (30 or less) will be chosen based on their past community contributions and beta participation. The remainder will be chosen at random from the eligible pool."
From the Controller FAQ:
"How will the beta controller differ from the one that’s for sale next year?
There are a couple important differences: the first 300 or so beta units won’t include a touch screen, and they won’t be wireless. Instead, they’ll have four buttons in place of the touch screen, and they’ll require a USB cable."
So yes, it's 300. Where'd you see one that says 30?
dwade123 - Sunday, September 29, 2013 - link
Any game that is bloated with 200 keys is questionable.tuxRoller - Sunday, September 29, 2013 - link
With 16 buttons, and only looking at the number of combinations using up to three fingers, you have 696 mappings.hobbz - Saturday, September 28, 2013 - link
From http://steamcommunity.com/groups/steamuniverse/dis..."Can I download the OS to try it out?
You will be able to download it (including the source code, if you're into that) but not yet."
So, yes, source code will be available.
JarredWalton - Saturday, September 28, 2013 - link
Source code for to kernel (which is Linux) does not mean full source code for everything. I suspect Steam will be an app that sits on top of the OS still, more or less, and I would be amazed if Valve were to open up any of the DRM related source code. We'll see I guess -- if they did the encryption/DRM properly, having it be open wouldn't hurt them, but that's rarely the case.augiem - Saturday, September 28, 2013 - link
Circular trackpads?! This had been done before... anyone remember the Intellivision? Worst control EVER.augiem - Saturday, September 28, 2013 - link
Who could forget "B-17 bomber"... And Sea Battle was it called? The was a cool naval warfare game I liked a lot. Even with a horrid controller, there are still a lot of good memories.xrror - Sunday, September 29, 2013 - link
I remember Intellivision, and the 16 direction disc was actually pretty nice for things like Auto Racing. However I think the pads were prone to getting dirty/bad so I may have just been lucky to have a console where they worked well. This was an Intellivision 1 where the pads weren't removable.althaz - Saturday, September 28, 2013 - link
I'm interested in everything...but the controller looks truly awful. This type of controller has been tried before. Spoiler alert: It was a disaster. Hopefully Valve do a better job.Krysto - Monday, September 30, 2013 - link
I actually hope Valve endorses AMD more than Nvidia for the Steam machines. As John Carmack is saying, AMD's direct hardware access through the recently announced Mantle API could be KILLER for Steam machines:http://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-mantle-api-xb...
PPalmgren - Monday, September 30, 2013 - link
Believe it or not, I think the success of this hinges more on the trackpads on the controller than anything else.The streaming aspect is a way to nudge current steam users towards adoption and the critical mass required for the platform to be successful, but success is entirely contingent on the control scheme being 'close enough' to the mouse. One of the main problems with consoles is they can't play a wide array of games successfully because the mouse is far superior a device to the joystick/d-pad, a lot of these games being major players in the PC space. Add on to this the competitve aspect and there being no reasonable way to cordon off SteamBox users away from PC users, if the controller isn't competitive with the mouse, it will be an exercise in frustration for any FPS player since the games play completely different on controller vs. mouse due to huge accuracy and reaction time gains on the mouse. Console and PC userbases are relegated to different matchmaking pools for a very good reason, the control scheme.
I've been thinking that a trackpad of some type would be the only way to replicate mouse movement on a console for a few years now, and hope they succeed. I hope they did a lot of research into that aspect of the controller to make it as perfect as possible, because I can't see this console succeeding if it doesn't work out.
Lakku - Tuesday, October 1, 2013 - link
Their steam program is garbage on PC so I will believe they can make an entire OS when I see it. I'm not talking about the servers, steam workshop or the service of selling/providing games but the program used to interface all of that. It's horrendously slow, cumbersome, buggy, and has a need to validate itself like it has self esteem issues at every chance it gets. Origins' interfacing program is substantially better (not counting community features in-game) and that's a sad state of affairs.aj654987 - Monday, June 8, 2015 - link
I dont see how Steam OS is going to work when most of the steam games dont work on Linux. The only way that I see this going is them really pushing the streaming services, where you can use their small client steam OS box with the game running on their servers. Every company is trying to get people over on a subscription service anyways these days.