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Valve is bringing Steam to your TV Today
- Splines 14y agoAfter using Windows 8 for awhile, I wished there was a way to interact with it through a controller - I think it would work quite well.
- barranger 14y agoThis has to be one of the biggest mistakes MS has made with Windows 8. They've added the store to (theoretically) make it simple to purchase and play games (and apps), but left out support that many people would prefer when playing these games.
- roc 14y agoAfter having used the XBox 360 Metro-style dashboard redesign for some time now, I think you're mistaken.
- jlebrech 14y agothey could release steam for xbox and ps3 which would stream steam from the pc to that console.
- wbobeirne 14y agoGood luck trying to get Sony or MS to allow a third party app store on their closed platforms.
- mladenkovacevic 14y agoTime to see how well this will work on my tiny diy Llano-based HTPC. I can play Portal smoothly via Steam on my 5-year old Opteron desktop running Ubuntu so I hope I will have no problems with the A6.
- nicholassmith 14y agoThis looks like it might twist the arms (myself included) of the console generation back to the PC.
- shinratdr 14y agoWhy? From what I can tell it's just a 10-foot interface shoehorned into the existing version of Steam. I don't think anyone was waiting for this. Why would they be? It doesn't solve the principal issues, like why would I game at a crappier second PC that I have to separately maintain just to have the benefit of the couch? Why would I put my good desktop in the living room just so I can use a controller in a more traditional environment? I can use a KB/mouse and a controller at my desk or in bed. Steam isn't going to magically be able to bring the graphical quality and versatility of the PC (which are it's primary benefits) to the living room without being forced to sacrifice most of it. The dev time spent on this would have been much better used as an investment towards a home streaming technology. The Steam box should be an OnLive mircoconsole that uses your desktop PC running Steam as the server. It's perfectly possible, Apple does that exact thing via AirPlay except it uses your iPhone as the server. Try Real Racing 2 on a 1080p AppleTV, your doubts about the technology should vanish. As it stands, this isn't notable news for anyone unless you're the type to be willing to build and maintain two gaming PCs just so you can play in two different rooms. If you are that type, something tells me lack of a 10-foot interface wasn't the obstacle in your way. Either that, or be willing to compromise on graphical quality and versatility pretty heavily to get a cut down PC with standardized specs that you can put in the living room for cheaper... ...Wait, isn't that just a console?
- MikeKusold 14y agoFor me, this is exciting because it is the excuse I've been waiting for to move my desktop into my living room. I already have a laptop for my day to day. The only reason I really own a desktop anymore is for server type operations (which can be ran through SSH or VNC), media streaming, and gaming. I will be buying a wireless Xbox 360 USB receiver and giving this a whirl.
- cbs 14y ago
- Lockyy 14y agoSounds interesting, I just wish I had an adapter for my 360 controller so I could test it out on my TV. I'll play with it on my PC for now. I'd definitely be interested in building a PC that's small enough to fit under my TV, but powerful enough to run any of my steam games. I wonder if there might be a market in producing those for people. I assume that's what the steam-box is going to be, but apart from this I don't see any hints of that coming out soon.
- talmand 14y agoSmall computer under your TV depends on the games you play. If like to play Valve's games then it's a tough call because most likely that little box will have fan noise you may not care for. You can make such a box that can play most of the games on Steam just fine without requiring a robust cooling system. You just may not be playing the latest and greatest high-end 3D games; based solely on how much fan noise you are willing to accept. If you look around there's already a somewhat healthy market of pre-built computers for that purpose. Most of them are HTPC types but some of them can be upgraded enough that will play games nicely.
- chaostheory 14y ago> If like to play Valve's games then it's a tough call because most likely that little box will have fan noise you may not care for. I think a lot of gamers including myself can tolerate the fan noise, especially if you have a good sound system. The earlier generations of Xbox 360 were really horrible for fan noise, and most people needed an extra 3rd party fan to keep it from becoming defective; which adds another level of noise (it took me four years before I had a red ring problem). I don't think this was even fixed until the latest gen in 2010.
- talmand 14y agoOh, it's quite true we can tolerate it when more than likely your setup involves your speakers being closer to your ear than the fans in your box. I'd have to imagine most PC gamer's setups are like this. But for a PC hooked up to a TV is not the same unless you are using a surround sound system of some type. Plus, depending on the games, many PC gamers use headphones. But that's PC gamers though, I see your point about your 360. Your example is basically what I'm saying, I don't think many people would care for that very much. When it comes to electronics connected to the TV the most common experience is that they produce no noise. Most HTPCs are built to perform their duty with little to no fan noise but putting in a proper discrete video card can ruin that. You can get accustomed to it over time but you have to get over that initial unfamiliar white noise coming from the general direction of your TV. The reason I feel that this is important is that if Steam were to start being used on a typical TV environment it will expand beyond games. They've already tested the waters with one movie, granted it was very relevant to their market. Steam is already well suited to be an iTunes and/or Netflix type service.
- weego 14y agoThe most interesting part of that article for me is the "lotus" approach to using a controller to map to a full keyboard. Event at first glance is looks incredibly elegant and indicates that they have some serious thinking talent in there which bodes well for the bigger picture (if I can use such a pun).
- fuzzix 14y agoI am trying hard (and failing) to recall a game which had a mechanism like this for entering names etc. I think it was Killzone on PS2, but can't be certain.
- CrazedGeek 14y agoI can't find a reference, but there was a PSP homebrew app that had a keyboard very similar to this. In addition, I saw a similar keyboard at a CS fair at my university last year. It's not new, just not particularly widely used.
- lucian1900 14y agoBeyond Good and Evil also innovated in this respect [1], but in a different way. 1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euquOpUmUyk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euquOpUmUyk
- sjmulder 14y agoKillzone had this indeed, but it looked a tad different.
- Keyframe 14y agoOrbitouch keyboard for handicapped is similar to this. I've seen somewhere approach like this too, but can't remember.
- klausa 14y agoelinks (or whatever that port was called) on first xbox had something similar - and while it very well might be faster than qwerty - learning curve is HUGE and it was extremely frustrating experience. To be honest, letters on that keyboard were on the border of screen, putting all of them together may help this, but I'm not sure. (I would link to screenshots of said browser, but I can't find any.) edit: Found it! It was named linksboks, here's screenshot: http://www.tdubel.com/artikkelit/kuvat/linksboks/linksboks.jpg http://www.tdubel.com/artikkelit/kuvat/linksboks/linksboks.j...
- typicalrunt 14y agoI love this idea, and it is definitely the right way to go. Unlocking the TV-playing audience is something that made Microsoft and Sony a lot of money over the years. It will put Valve miles ahead of any other competitor out there (though, the competitors will just copy the idea -- which is fine). The next hurdle for Valve is how to get their Big Picture service to the customer on their TV. One way to do that is a game streaming service, but OnLive is floundering and Ouya is too far away for that. If Valve goes the other way and ships a set-top computer, that might help but now they're in the same race that MS and Sony are in with their console lifecycle.
- corin_ 14y agoA small note about Ouya: it isn't a game streaming service. You will be able to run OnLive on it - no different to how you can run OnLive on a PC right now (maybe slightly different if OnLive is installed by default, but still..) - other than that, Ouya has nothing to do with game streaming. Would you mind sharing why you think of Ouya as related to streaming? It's not an uncommon thought, I know plenty of people who work in the games industry who have the same misconception about it, so I presume something sometime caused this?
- typicalrunt 14y agoSure thing. And thanks for calling me on that, because I was completely wrong about the Ouya for some reason. I think of Ouya as a game streaming device because: (a) this seems to be the direction a lot of companies are headed in; (b) the device itself is so small[1] that it seems like it can't run a powerful game, so I just mentally jumped to the conclusion that it is a streaming device; and (c) the pictures I keep seeing on news websites and such are of the game controller, not the device itself, so I assumed that it was similar to the OnLive service (I recall their ads only showing the game controller as well). [1] It has the same footprint of an Apple TV or Roku box.
- corin_ 14y agoThanks - I wonder if this was cleverly misleading marketing or accidental, whether many people thought the same as you or just a small minority, and if many whether that will help / has helped or hinder/ed Ouya sales... Food for thought, anyway.
- sandGorgon 14y agoMobile. This is just screaming for mobile. Please let me dock my 2013 mobile phone with 4 GB RAM and 4 Kepler-PhysX cores with my HDTV and let me play Crysis on it. You dont even need to port Crysis to be a "mobile" game (touchscreen, etc.). You just need to make it run on the hardware using Android/ios. I'll bring the Dualshock.
- heretohelp 14y ago>let me dock my 2013 mobile phone with 4 GB RAM and 4 Kepler-PhysX cores with my HDTV and let me play Crysis on it. Hahahaha, no. (I love the non-gamers on HN. So optimistic. Go look at the current state of emulation and hardware power, it's a bleak situation.) Current desktop graphics technology is still only sorta able to run the Cryengine at full speed, and they're pumping out on the order of 1000(mid-grade)-2500(high-end) GFLOPS. An iPhone is somewhere between 5 and 15 GFLOPS. So unless we're going to have a 100x leap in graphics bandwidth, I wouldn't expect to be able to play desktop quality PC games off of a mobile phone anytime soon. Even my CPU (2500k) has higher throughput than the iPhone GPU, at 50-100 depending on the benchmark. Should be able to run a poker game or Farmville though.
- ANH 14y agoI think your definition of "gamer" is different from mine. We don't all play the AAA titles. I write 3D code for mobile devices, and I'm continually astonished by what these things are capable of, i.e. your comment about poker and Farmville is a bit too much snark. Besides, it seems you're equating game quality with poly count. There are a lot of visually stunning, intelligent games that run great on phones that would be perfect on a larger screen.
- TazeTSchnitzel 14y agoHonestly, if they can just get TF2 running on an Android phone with HDMI output at over 30FPS, I'd be happy.
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- thirdsun 14y agoThis looks good. So, what's the status quo on capable living room PCs? I have been using Macs and a PS3 for years now, but if there was a small and good looking box that could handle modern games this might be an option for me. Any recommendations?
- MartinCron 14y agoI recently built a few living-room/gaming PCs which was pretty cheap, and a great learning experience for my 10-year-old son, who is delighted to talk about building his own computer. Most gaming graphics cards these days have HDMI out, which is all you really need. The folks at Dell/Alienware have made a small box to fit exactly the need you're thinking about, I decided not to go with it because it wasn't available with an SSD, but it's an impressive little bundle. http://www.dell.com/us/p/alienware-x51/pd.aspx http://www.dell.com/us/p/alienware-x51/pd.aspx
- thirdsun 14y agoThanks - I would probably put something together with individual parts, as I already did back when we needed to connect PCs to our not so flat TVs via VGA, Component or SCART Adapters. However that box you linked to has a nice form factor and price tag. Not a fan of the Sci-Fi design though, but I just looked for some cases and there's some good stuff available - seems like a performant and A/V-receiver-seized PC is easy to pull off.
- w1ntermute 14y agoCheck this guide out: http://lifehacker.com/5936546/how-i-built-the-media-center-of-my-dreams-for-under-500 http://lifehacker.com/5936546/how-i-built-the-media-center-o...
- MartinCron 14y agoI used this case for my buildout. It's small, but supports full-size graphics cards and multiple internal hard drive bays. It's more or-less invisible on my bookshelf next to other components. It also doesn't have any drive bays, which looks very sleek and I just download everything from Steam (or similar) these days anyway. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811112339&Tpk=PC-Q25B http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811112...
- vibrunazo 14y ago> No, this new "Steam TV" isn't going to make our video game consoles go away. It's not going to turn your Xbox into a doorstop or obviate your PS3 Not by itself, but summed with mobile it will: http://www.slideshare.net/bcousins/when-the-consoles-die-what-comes-next http://www.slideshare.net/bcousins/when-the-consoles-die-wha...
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- ChuckMcM 14y agoThis is something that Zynga should be concerned about. It could be very disruptive to their model. When I saw Gregoire's 'HDMI Dongle' [1] I thought, hmm, here is a way to add value to a TV in a way that doesn't require getting permission from TV makers first. All you need is a decent UI and a social network and all sorts of things are possible. No idea how Valve is implementing their vision but the idea of having casual games be available like this on a subscription service can be really nice if done well. [1] http://www.alwaysinnovating.com/products/hdmidongle.htm http://www.alwaysinnovating.com/products/hdmidongle.htm
- borlak 14y agoSo I connect my PC to the TV to use a Steam UI, thereby limiting what I can do with the PC...okay Basically it's just a UI for using a controller while lounging.
- ctdonath 14y agoBig Picture + Raspberry Pi?
- kayoone 14y agotoo underpowered for Steam games
- jamesgeck0 14y agoNah, there's plenty of low end games on Steam. A larger issue is that neither Steam nor any of the games sold through it will run on an ARM processor.
- DigitalJack 14y agoI'm always confused about Steam news from Valve. In this case it seems to actually be what I expect when I read something about Steam: the clientside application of their game distribution tech. So many times people talk about Steam when it seems they are really talking about the Source Engine. It's almost a shock to see an article about Steam that really is about the client app.
- ChrisNorstrom 14y agoI personally envisioned this to come with hardware (wireless HDMI) [http://www.chrisnorstrom.com/2011/02/creation-the-steam-console-no-its-not-another-set-top-box/ http://www.chrisnorstrom.com/2011/02/creation-the-steam-cons...] so that you wouldn't have to have another box next to the TV but instead could keep your PC in your room and just transmit it's audio/video/controller input over to your living room. From what I've heard wireless HDMI is not at that level of stability and reliability yet.
- watty 14y agoMany people already have HTPC's with Steam to run games on their TV. The only thing this enables (or simplifies) is the use of a gamepad. It still requires an HTPC physically connected to your TV .
- nvmc 14y agohttp://pastebin.com/73QHDqm4 http://pastebin.com/73QHDqm4 For those of us who don't want to give Kotaku pageviews.
- brandoncapecci 14y agoIs there any word on when the Mac beta will roll out?
- wtetzner 14y agoWhat I'd like to see now is an integrated XPadder-style system to allow for playing games. XPadder works OK, but it's kind of a pain to use. It would be nice if you could set up a configuration for a game once, and Steam would remember it every time you played the game. It would also be nice if people could share their configurations, and maybe when you buy a new game, it would default to the highest rated game-pad configuration.