The Valve and Steam Platform Discussion Thread

[Ulminati]

Why didn't you tell us you had gone into music, Multi-headed Cow?

 

[CorpseZeb]

Edgy.

Gee... edgy is passe or something. Anyway, all that steambox thingy sounds about fun, but I wonder, how much will it cost? Will it be upgradeable? Mouse and keyboard driven? Or joypad only? Because only handful batch of PC games are playable in the dude-on-the-couch-with-his-stick-in-the-hand style. Probably some sort of "steambox ready" certificate will be required. Or maybe, whole thing will be creating purely for guilty pleasures of causal crowd. In that case, they seriously think, they will win battle with the console world? Because they don't. Instead, they should bet on the more "serious" gamers audience, not the causality front. But then, Big Picture and joypad support, says all.

 

[potatojohn]

http://vglens.com/2013/01/steambox-is-linux-based-and-launching-this-year/

Ben Krasnow, Mechanical and Electrical Engineer at Valve attended a conference last Saturday on the 29th of December where he talked about their upcoming “Steambox” and new exciting hardware projects, that Valve will present in 2013.

German site Golem.de was at the conference and picked the most interesting stuff in this article.
Valve’s engineer talked about their labs and that they want to change the “frustrating lack of innovation in the area of computer hardware”. He also mentioned a console launch in 2013 and that it will specifically use Linux and not Windows. Furthermore he said that Valve’s labs will reveal yet another new hardware in 2013, most likely rumored controllers and VR equipment but we can expect some new exciting stuff.

So it’s going to be exciting, we can expect a concrete announcement on the GDC 2013 from March 25th till March 29th 2013 in San Francisco, or at E3 2013, which is going to take place in Los Angeles from June 11th till June 13th 2013.

Valve sees the writing on the wall - Microshit has decided to slowly start dominating software distribution for Windows and they will leave a lot of corpses in their wake. But Valve won't take it lying down. They're going to make their own fucking console!

Much as I dislike Steam DRM and Valve's games, I can respect that. It takes big balls to fight Microsoft. Even companies like IBM wouldn't dare to try.

Good luck Gabe. You're going to need it

 

[UserNamer]

I would like all the people praising HL series, especially the first game, to be the genre's brigthest examples, to list the other FPS games they have played before and after.

And I mean all of them.

I'm expecting a significant shortage of titles in those lists.

Ok, here's an incomplete list of singleplayer games I've played:

ARMA 2
Bioshock
Blood
Borderlands
Bulletstorm
Call of Duty Modern Warfare 1
Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2
Chronicles of Riddick
Crysis 1
Crysis 2
Delta Force: Black Hawk Down
Deus Ex 1
Deus Ex 2
Deus Ex 3
Doom 1
Doom 2
Doom 3
Duke Nukem 3D
Duke Nukem Forever
Eradicator
F.E.A.R.
Fallout 3
Fallout New Vegas
Far Cry 1
Far Cry 2
Halo 1
Halo 2
Halo 3
Ken's Labyrinth
Metro 2033
Quake 1
Quake 2
Quake 4
Rainbow Six 3
Rainbow Six Vegas 1
Rainbow Six Vegas 2
Redneck Rampage
Rise of the Triad
S.T.A.L.K.E.R 1
S.T.A.L.K.E.R 2
S.T.A.L.K.E.R 3
Serious Sam 3
Shadow Warrior
Singularity
Star Wars Republic Commando
SWAT 4
System Shock 1
System Shock 2
Wolfenstein 3D

I didn't mind the vehicles. I just hated Alyx to all hell. The guy from HL:Blue Shit was fine - at least he could look after himself, and they used the scripting to give a decent 'buddy cop film' feel to some of his parts in the revolution levels (you know, he busts the door open from the side so you get the drop on the enemies coming through, that sort of thing).

If they included a bit where you could use a vehicle to drive over Alyx, perma-killing her and giving you a choice of less irritating companions in the episodes, I think I'd be actively liking the vehicle sections.

I never had any problems with Alyx in the Episodes. I can't immediately think of games with better companion AI and scripting.

lol what the fuck, nice list, did you manually type all those and did you climax once done?

 

[UserNamer]

http://vglens.com/2013/01/steambox-is-linux-based-and-launching-this-year/

Ben Krasnow,Mechanical and Electrical Engineer at Valve attended a conference last Saturday on the 29th of December where he talked about their upcoming “Steambox” and new exciting hardware projects, that Valve will present in 2013.

German site Golem.de was at the conference and picked the most interesting stuff in this article.
Valve’s engineer talked about their labs and that they want to change the “frustrating lack of innovation in the area of computer hardware”. He also mentioned a console launch in 2013 and that it will specifically use Linux and not Windows. Furthermore he said that Valve’s labs will reveal yet another new hardware in 2013, most likely rumored controllers and VR equipment but we can expect some new exciting stuff.

So it’s going to be exciting, we can expect a concrete announcement on the GDC 2013 from March 25th till March 29th 2013 in San Francisco, or at E3 2013, which is going to take place in Los Angeles from June 11th till June 13th 2013.

Valve sees the writing on the wall - Microshit has decided to slowly start dominating software distribution for Windows and they will leave a lot of corpses in their wake. But Valve won't take it lying down. They're going to make their own fucking console!

Much as I dislike Steam DRM and Valve's games, I can respect that. It takes big balls to fight Microsoft. Even companies like IBM wouldn't dare to try.

Good luck Gabe. You're going to need it

fighting microsoft is a pointless endeavour, I think they lost their mind at valve. The hat money got to their heads. I would enjoy seeing them failing miserably in this completely useless war against ms.

I really dislike valve because they brag about having the best minds or whatever, and that their employers can basically work on whatever they want- and all they do is release stupid hats for tf2 or mod rehashes.

Having said that I would probably be hyped if they decided to announce hl3- but of course I think betting on linux, milking the e-hat market, and pointlessly going against microsoft are all more important things and wise investments of time and resources

 

[Morgoth]

They are not fighting Microsoft as a whole, only it's comparably tiny Game Studios division. And Valve will win, because they're cool.

 

[Kirtai]

They don't have to win, they just have to beat back Microsoft from totally dominating the Windows games sales channel. Easier said than done of course.

 

[UserNamer]

They are not fighting Microsoft as a whole, only it's comparably tiny Game Studios division. And Valve will win, because they're cool.

cool? I'm sorry, they are not cool to me anymore- not since they sold their souls to my little pony fans and got corrupted by hat-greed.

In all seriousness I wish they did more games of interest and wasted less time on hats, mods rehashes, and pointless wars against invincible giants

 

[Morgoth]

UserName, if it wasn't for Valve and it's Steam service, gaming already would be 100% under the Microsoft console umbrella, aka DEAD.

 

[Metro]

They are not fighting Microsoft as a whole, only it's comparably tiny Game Studios division. And Valve will win, because they're cool.

cool? I'm sorry, they are not cool to me anymore- not since they sold their souls to my little pony fans and got corrupted by hat-greed.

In all seriousness I wish they did more games of interest and wasted less time on hats, mods rehashes, and pointless wars against invincible giants

On the whole Valve makes pretty mediocre games. So, honestly, I prefer it if they spend their time on making a 'Steam Box' and/or fine tuning some Linux version that can realistically compete with Windows.

 

[Morgoth]

Valve showing Steam Box tonight: http://kotaku.com/5973986/here-we-go-valve supported-computer-hardware-will-be-shown-off-tonight

Edit: Screw that. Not 100% sure this is actually the SteamBox.

 

[Metro]

Wonder how the pricing will be compared to building your own.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Tonight's the night?

 

[Morgoth]

 

[Kirtai]

A backplane with modular cards design? Everything old is new again.

 

[Metro]

$500 for the entry level? Not sure how they'll keep the 7a 'competitively priced.' For $800-900 I'd just as soon as build my own.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

I didn't see a single Gaben in that video.

 

[Morgoth]

It's not the Steam Box.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Where's my Gaben?

 

[Spectacle]

Where's my Gaben?

here:

 

[Lord Haw Haw]

Where's my Gaben?

here:

I want that.

 

[Creamy Muffin]

Piston? sounds more like pissed on.

 

[racofer]

This thing will fail hard. Buncha idiots.

 

[Ulminati]

This thing will fail hard. Buncha idiots.

If they had marketed it as an upgradable xbox, they would make billions.

 

[Infinitron]

Kotaku comment:

with the amount of heat that thing will have to produce to play modern games in HD, if you place some water near it it might really become a steam box.