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After all the rumours and denials, Valve’s just posted a very interesting job listing, which basically confirms that it’s getting into the gaming PC business. In fact, the listing actually says Valve’s “frustrated by the lack of innovation in the computer hardware space” so it’s “jumping in” itself — you can’t get much more of a confirmation that a “Steam Box” than that.
We don’t know what kind of take Valve will have on the gaming PC, but I suspect it’ll be along the lines of the Alienware X51 — a console-like gaming PC that’ll fit under your goggle box. Of course, with Steam presumably powering the system, it doesn’t have to be a Windows box at all, but it’s likely Valve will use a Windows base layer at the very least, just to maintain game compatibility.
Hopefully Valve can breathe new life into the less-than-mainstreaming PC gaming sector and allow me to get my hard-core or RTS gaming fix while playing from the comfort of my couch. [Valve via CVG]
Valve Has Plenty of Boxes, But No Steam Box
The Valve Steam Box Is Real and It's Currently At CES
Read about this on Kotaku. It’s more related to a PC gaming peripheral rather than a PC. Note how in other parts of the listing they speak about how the mouse and keyboard has hardly changed in the past decade or so.
eh?
surely this is just a medium level gaming PC in a small case to sit under your tv?
@LiamT what makes you say that?
All Valve have said is that they are “frustrated by the lack of innovation in the computer hardware space.”
Nothing about that screams mid-range gaming PC. It would hardly be innovative.
Why are Valve wasting time on what is probably going to be a wiimote/kinect/Move peripheral when they have Episode 3 to be working on!?
you can get PC gaming on your couch. wireless mouse and keyboard does that
fair play to them though. this might make sony and M$ shit their pants a little.
a unified gaming PC system could be decent.
You can, but none of it is specifically designed for that purpose. It would be pretty cool to get a gaming PC setup that was ergonomically designed to be used whilst lounging on a sofa.
Yay *another* box to want and never buy!
I’m thinking mid-spec PC internals, running a custom build of Linux with a custom UI designed for HDTVs, and with Steam tightly integrated of course.
Running Linux would bring the cost down, and I think Valve might want to promote their Linux offerings, bringing more developers into the fold and broadening the Linux ecosystem.
In fact, this whole move into hardware might have been brought about by Valve’s lack of confidence in Microsoft’s chosen direction.
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/07/steams-newell-windows-8-catastrophe-driving-valve-to-embrace-linux/
still. most of their games are windows games. they would be mental to limit to linux right now. they could use wine or some other windows emulator on linux. im guessing more a cutdown version of windows like windows starter etc.
win8 licenses are much cheaper than they have been for many years
Yeah, but perhaps Valve are trying to push growth away from Win 8 on purpose. Sounds nuts, right? Less like David v Goliath, more like Goliath versus a fluffy kitten?
Gabe Newell seems to believe that Microsoft’s download model is too restrictive and will cut into the developers’ profits. Then, maybe the developers will look around for an alternative, and Gabe will be there with his Linux box and his open download platform.
If he can sell this box cheap enough (perhaps at cost, or even below cost), people will buy it, and if enough people buy it, developers might start porting their games to it.
It’s a herculean challenge for sure, but reading the stuff that comes out of this guy’s mouth, I wouldn’t be surprised if his plans really are that grand.
You think Valve has lack of confidence in Microsofts chosen direction?
Valve has pleny of confidence, they are full of confidence in Windows 8.. That is why they made the statement.
Windows 8 ships with a windows store which will make steam obsolete… Valve’s big cash cow which takes over 40% apparently from sales is being undercut by MS who will only take between 20-30%, that is why Valve wants to slag off windows 8 and Microsoft… not because it doesn’t believe in the product….
Obsolete? Steam is currently the PC game download front runner, and by some margin. If they wanted to match Microsoft’s pricing model in order to compete, they could do that, and they’d still be miles ahead of the competition.
Microsoft are starting with a clean slate, and a relatively small established customer base. Yes, Games for Windows Marketplace and Xbox Live have been running for some time, but they’re small fry in the PC space compared with Steam.
To quote Newell ‘I think margins are going to be destroyed for a bunch of people. If that’s true, it’s going to be a good idea to have alternatives to hedge against that eventuality.’
I’m saying maybe this is Valve’s alternative. I’m not saying that I think he’s right, I’m just saying that perhaps this is where Valve’s heading, for better or worse.
Steam WILL lose to MS…. there is no doubt about it, you can rack all the figures you want… but at the end of the day, every single person who uses Windows 8 is going to access steam… so 300 million people at least over the next 2-3 years will be on the MS marketplace.. How many will be on steam? 5 million? at a push 10..
Maybe you like steam, i don’t know…. but be realistic, MS could take 0% and wipe Steam out then start charging once steam is dead and buried, do you think Valve can value MS money wise? If so you need your head checking.
MS started a clean slate with Xbox, and that was a clean slate, and 6 years later Xbox kills PS3 in USA and Europe… the only places PS3 outsells xbox is in Japan and some other countries. Xbox accounts for 50% almost of entire console expenditure in USA.
Now back to MS store and steam… MS are not starting with a clean slate, how can you even suggest that? All that matters to Devs is userbase… and MS IS the userbase. no ifs or buts about it, its reality, argue all you want but that is what is happening.
You can say “Microsoft are starting with a clean slate, and a relatively small established customer base. Yes”
That means nothing, you look at games published for Windows.. that is MS “customer base”….
Steam will lose.. thats why its trying to jump ship and take as many people as it possibly can to Linux.
Sorry, your tone is insulting and I don’t feel like putting the effort into a response. If you want to reformat your argument, I’d be happy to respond.
pass.
Except there’s no way even 5% of Steam’s current library of games will ever be ported to Linux.
Whatever it turns out like, this abomination will either run Windows, in which case there’s no point to it, or will run some kind of Linux variant and end up being some bastardised PC-console hybrid with something like XBox Live Arcade Lite bolted on to it – and there will still be no point to it.
Everything that’s good about PC gaming is basically negated by turning it into a fixed-hardware platform. It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.
well, it does, IMO. people will know how well games will perform on this platform (no more ‘i have an expensive GFX card but it doesnt work well with this game’). plus, if they buy the parts they will get bulk discount. so you should be able to get more performance per £ than if you build yourself. they might even be able to do everything on the mobo and it be integrated to reduce costs – like consoles. at the end of the say the xbox is just a windows PC with restrictions on.
its basically to compete with ps4 and xbox and steam games are often much cheaper as there isnt the console tax that sony and ms get. plus, patches are much quicker as they dont need 2 months of testing by sony and MS
even a medium gaming PC pisses all over consoles for performance and amount of games available. and then there is proper mouse & keyboard support for RTS and FPS which is a big seller. not to mention games like BF have many more players available than on consoles due to the hardware.
they might even do 2 devices. a basic one and a more high end one. there is also nothing to stop them allowing people to add in more RAM/ better GPU etc.
lots of people want a PC platform (especially if it has web browser and office (say openoffice on)) buy are afraid of the annoyances such as driver issues and incompatabilities. its 10000x easier to design for a fixed-hardware platform too.
i agree no way steam will get the old games to be ported to linux which would mean a massive reduction in their library. new games might come on both flavours though.
That’s not really what I originally meant. What I’m saying is that PC gaming’s greatest strength is twofold :
(i) with a modern Windows7 PC, you can plug in pretty much any peripheral you want – PS3 & 360 controllers, keyboards, mice, trackballs, racing wheels, joysticks, massive flatscreen TVs and it will eat it up.
(ii) As the 360 & PS3 start showing their age, PCs get faster and more capable all the time. The huge growth of consoles has actually been a very bad thing for gaming in general – innovation has been badly stunted. I’m not saying I’d honestly like a return to e.g. 2003 where upgrading your video card every 13 months or so was reasonably necessary, but consider that in 03/04, the Source engine, Doom3 engine, and Far Cry engines all came out within months of each other, leading up to Crysis, which has still never really been equalled in graphical terms.
Turning PC hardware into a fixed platform console-type device doesn’t do gaming, or PCs in general, any favours. For this reason, I want it to bomb, and bomb badly. If it takes Steam with it so be it; they’ve always been the single most expensive way to buy new titles there is in my bit of Europe, and I frankly wouldn’t miss them.
i agree on that.
i find steam for new titles is expensive but then again they go for peanuts when they age a little.
i agree that consoles have held back gaming considerably. unfortunately. its mainly lazy devs though. dice had their pc and console version of bf3 quite different but even then they gimped the PC version to make it appeal to the skill-less gamer.
oh well, with a 1 year old son i dont get time to play games any more so im more looking to the next 5 years when i might get some time back again
@CGB1
Those two strengths are what could make a ‘Steam Box’ so much better than a console.
There is nothing to say Valve couldn’t make a windows running console that is still upgradeable and fairly open like a standard PC. They could reduce the cost of top-spec hardware by gaining exclusive control of game distribution. (cutting out Origin, Ubisoft, retail etc.)
I’d like to see a shuttle/steam box with both cpu and gfx card options. That way at least the graphics could be upgraded in the future. I totally agree with the previous comments about closed systems stunting the growth of gaming in general. however we had a 2 tier system before consoles became more of a dominant factor. You either plowed loads of cash on a “gaming pc” and kept up with the times every 8+ months or you owned a console that couldn’t come close to even the same platform games in an arcade. The consoles were just as expensive as modern consoles but the amount of games and there standard of class was way way down. By enabling the consoles to be more dominant it’s brought the gaming masses together really i guess resulting in a bigger with for the major titles. I was (and still am) pc gamer since the age of 8/9 (20yrs back) and completely miss the era of pc gaming dominance. But i was one of the lucky ones who could afford to keep up. My current gaming rig cost me just over £1500 (not including the £1100 on the monitor) and i built it myself to save a few £100′s.
If valve could offer 1 box @ around £199 and another around £350 – £399 and like i said give you some expandability and i hadn’t already got a modern gaming rig i know i’d be very tempted. If it was on the linux platform but offered users to enter their own win 7 key, or just have a simple win7 payment scheme and call it gold or something. win7 could load up in like vmware to give those extra titles (which they could just port 1 or 2 a month across for “silver” users) it’d be a homebrew’ers dream and rule in the living room with all the streaming offerings nowadays from netflix, spotify, hulu, lovefilm, pandora, amazon etc etc. they could add simple code to stop the installing of onlive.
I’ve been rather impressed with valves summer sale this year and i’ve also been given a few games from ign prime on valve which was also nice
I wouldn’t just jump to the conclusion that they’re going to be releasing a steam box it could just be peripherals.