Gabe Newell: Valve will release its own console-like PC

Regarding Steam Link I only have one thing to say:

- Support multichannel surround sound on Steam In-Home Streaming or GTFO.

 

Steam is having a sale at the moment focused on SteamOS games. That's a very impressive list of big titles either already on SteamOS or coming soon.

 

I feel Steam has missed the boat with these Steam machines. Surely they should of decided on one spec and stuck with it. Having all these different specs is just confusing for the mainstream console gamer and normal pc guys will surely just build there own pc

 

Such is ever the issue with these PC's as consoles...

Anyways at Wal Mart again they had a whole kiosk dedicated to that Alienware Alpha. Really surprised how hard they push it. I didn't snap a photo of the setup but googled one




Really surprised the largest retailer in the world dedicates lots of precious shelf space to this surely short lived thing. Misguided for sure.

Of course as befitting WM, the kiosk I saw, the monitor is not displaying anything even though I'm sure it's meant to be functional. Anyways the box looks cool.

VR, even NVidia shield seem more interesting new things than steam machines already.

 

Alienware is surely paying Walmart for that space.

 

Here is a full list of different machines listed on Steam.
I really don't see how these things will sell.
Build your own, and save your money.

 

I can't say I get it either to be honest. The mobile crowd will have no interest, they will keep playing on their phones and similar such devices that give them liberty to play games anywhere and play more social games. The pc crowd won't care, they will continue to build their own for a fraction of the price and with more power to boot, or use their existing pc's to play games without having to spend another dime. The console crowd are typically not willing to spend more than $400. Sooooooooo....I dunno, I have no idea who will buy these.

 

After spending some time with Big Picture on a TV using Windows over the month, I've been convince that this is a waste of time. A PC will never match a console like experience.

If you want to play multiplayer games that has camera base action, all it takes is for someone to be sitting at their desk using a mouse with a stupidly high poll rate to crush any controller, and that's just the mouse; you include the keyboard and it's obvious. Even though there are titles that includes auto-aim support for e.g. the latest Call of Duty games, I question "why then compromise the experience for those at the desk?".

Ok, well, lets stick to Co-op multiplayer games then. In Left 4 Dead 2's case the UI is incompatible at the couch since you can not chat with desktop users. Maybe we will see some sort of standard with Steam couch in-game texting, who knows.

Now, here is where Big Picture shines, single player games, it works : ) Well, some of them. Remember there are single player games that ships with multiplayer features which goes back to my earlier reasons..

I'm not even going to dive into the software bugs, there's a laundry list of them.

Valve basically forgot the whole point of the couch which is comfort.

 

Yes lets blame big picture mode for a controller being less competitive in some games compared to a mouse and keyboard just because on consoles you don't get a choice...

Big picture mode works fine for what its intended to do; make the steam interface usable with a controller.

 

The only choice Valve should be worried about is what is the quickest way to navigate they desktop dolly carts back into the Half-Life cabal so they can stop wasting everybody's time', for the sake of humanity.

 

If you're expecting Steam's Big Picture Mode to make all of Windows (or OSX or Linux) controller friendly then you very much misunderstand what a single app can do in terms of the host OS's user interface. I really hope Microsoft are thinking about a controller/kiosk mode for the next version of Windows because having a PC I can link to the TV and never need to have a keyboard and mouse on hand would be a huge step forward but I think we're stuck with multiple store shopfronts on PC (Steam, EA's Origin, Blizzard's Battlenet, Ubisoft's UPlay) for the time being meaning a cohesive UI is going to be beyond reach.

 

You will get crushed with fighting games on your keyboard vs a controller, regardless of how you set your mouse up.

 

In Mortal Kombat X's case, at least my game will launch with the mouse. Good luck trying to launch it without it crashing while using your controller in the comfort of your couch.

 

There is no point for a controller mode in Windows.

 

Any half decent game will automatically switch between mouse and keyboard or controller depending on the buttons you press. Witcher 3 sometimes starts in KB mode but all I have to do is press a button on my controller and it switches to controller.

 

I disagree. I'd very much like one. It's basically the missing link in steams big picture mode. i.e. whenever a game forced you out of bp mode to say launch a 3rd party game service, you have to pick up the mouse. Gamepad control in windows would negate that need. I'd also like to see the centre 'X' button mappable so that you can launch bp mode from it directly. This two very simple changes would make for a much more end to end console like experience on the PC.

 

Finally someone is being discreet about discrete videocards!
Alienware on Amazon write "Custom Nvidia Maxwell GTX CPU" under the various Steam Machine builds.
http://www.amazon.com/Alienware-ASM100-1580-Console-i3-4130T-Processor/dp/B00MA7AMKY

They can't even bother to change frame buffer size typo from 2MB to 2GB and the page has been up for half a year.
Perhaps its not a typo and the max res these machines can get to its 1280x960 at 16bit color.

Their Dell Website isn't much better and states "NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX GPU 2GB GDDR5" but at least their videocards are equiped with 2GB vram and not 2MB blazing fast 33mhz dram.
http://www.dell.com/ca/p/alienware-steam-machine/pd?ST=alienware steam machine

 

You can already use the x to launch big picture. Though for me it only works when you have to steam window already opened, not when it's running in the background. Than it only brings steam to the front. You'd think pressing it again would then launch bp but on my pc it doesn't work for some reason. Atleast not the last time I tried though according to valve it should work

Isn't metro / the windows phone interface already pretty controller proof?

 

Weird, it doesn't do any of that for me under Windows 10, no matter what the current state of Steam is.

 

There is no "console like experience". Steam's Big Picture mode and a console are two totally different arenas, and I know which arena I personally would rather spend my time in.