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So they are going the Chromebook route, hardware from every other company? The reason current gen consoles lasted as long as they did is certainly not because t

So they are going the Chromebook route, hardware from every other company? The reason current gen consoles lasted as long as they did is certainly not because they had lots of fragmented platforms with vastly different performance characteristics. That model seems to appeal to nobody but tech people.

abraham 13y ago
Four of the top 10 best selling laptops on Amazon are Chromebooks. Not sure how that translates to only appealing to tech people. http://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Computers-Accessories-Laptop/zgbs/pc/565108 http://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Computers-Accessories-Lap...
- GravityWell 13y ago
  The fact that #1 and #2 are Chromebooks is worth mentioning. I found that surprising.
  - yeukhon 13y ago
    It really does. I always think Chromebook is pretty bad in this decade given how terrible Internet speed is outside your super fast office connection.
    - jlgreco 13y ago
      Really? I have a lot of complaints about ChromeOS (I have a chromebook, and nuked ChromeOS off of it), but that isn't one of them. Gigabit connections may be rare in the US, but some form of broadband is typically ubiquitous. You have to get pretty far out into the country before you find people who can only get dialup. Just a few Mbps is perfectly fine for ChromeOS purposes.
      - yeukhon 13y ago
        I guess I am saying reliable and extremely consistent speed. I mean using that at school is a challenge for a lot of people. I can't get fios yet and I am stuck with this inconsistent, horrible connection that works excellent only after midnight at home. In general, that's very true for a lot of places in the US. While I can find a lot of free wifi in NYC these days, they are slow and some of them aren't secured either. So while chromeOS might be secure as OS, I still don't quite trust the connection.
  - epsylon 13y ago
    It's not that surprising. These are the cheapest option if you want a decent computer.
  - Pxtl 13y ago
    You don't get to Windows until #4. The world has changed.
notatoad 13y ago
I think valve would probably say they're trying to go the PC gaming route. that's traditionally been valve's market. Steamboxes don't exist to kill playstation and xbox, they exist to take over the PC gaming market from windows and the threat of the microsoft store on windows 8, which is clearly aimed as a competitor to steam.
- sliverstorm 13y ago
  To me it reads like a slightly different model- they make plenty of money in their primary business on Windows, and had no quarrel with Microsoft for many years. Now as they feel threatened by Microsoft, they are attempting to grow into a new market space- somewhat of a "blue ocean" strategy- namely, people who already like consoles but have always found PCs too intimidating or too much work. I doubt they want to cannibalize Windows; growing into a new market provides them additional revenue and security in the event Microsoft starts to take over some of Valve's old market share. It's not quite "red ocean" and not quite "blue ocean" because they are targeting the gap between the two markets, and many customers will probably own both a console and a Steambox, or a PC and a Steambox, but of course some may forgo all but the Steambox.
zanny 13y ago
It would be painfully easy for Steam to integrate some hardware polling with a database ranking the parts to give a rough estimate of how well you can run any given Steam game. I'd argue it surely beats sitting on decade old hardware an entire console cycle. That was probably one of the primary motivators for SteamOS as a consolesque platform - Sony and Microsofts inertia circa 2012 was presenting a gaping hole in the market, and Nintendo's Wii U was (and still is) underwhelming. If Valve could get an open platform with vendor competition and constant product iteration in the living room, it would cement them there as much as it did on Windows digital distribution. That plan might not have come to complete fruition the way they were hoping, though - both of their chief competitors will have months and a holiday season ahead of them, and SteamOS hasn't announced any launch titles or exclusives to attract early adopters (of the whole living room platform and haptic controller, at least).
- ZeroGravitas 13y ago
  They already do the hardware polling, and if they're already supporting this variety of GPUs on Windows, I can't see the Linux situation being that much worse: http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey
  - puller 13y ago
    It really is that much worse. Hardware companies work far harder on their Windows drivers. On Linux we are mostly dependent on third party volunteers to write or fix drivers which support our hardware, because the vendors don't care. Then Linux takes the blame for worse driver support, impairing adoption. It's a vicious circle.
cma 13y ago
AMD/ATI is in all new major consoles, and with what they are trying to do with "Mantle", things may radically change, and more PC's could start getting memory unified between CPU/GPU, like in consoles.
- sliverstorm 13y ago
  Only on machines with SoC's though ("APU"). Discrete graphics, the most common gaming configuration, will always require bussing data across PCI. The real ray of sunlight is that huma (heterogeneous unified memory access?) might close some of the gap.
  - cma 13y ago
    Consoles already have discrete chips and have unified memory...
    - sliverstorm 13y ago
      Sure, the new generation will have unified memory access, but my parent was talking about PC's. What happens in console usually has little bearing on what happens in PC.
      - cma 13y ago
        Not something introduced in the new generation; the last generation had it as well. And the generation before that. And before that.
sliverstorm 13y ago
They are not trying to introduce a console, IMO. It's a play for the gap between consoles and PCs. Some of the console "plug-n-play", some of the PC "performance-price-spectrum".
zokier 13y ago
If we are comparing Valve to Google, then Steam-machines/SteamOS is more akin to Android than Chromebook imho. Valve provides platform/appstore, 3rd party devs provide apps.

abraham 13y ago

Four of the top 10 best selling laptops on Amazon are Chromebooks. Not sure how that translates to only appealing to tech people. http://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Computers-Accessories-Laptop/zgbs/pc/565108 http://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Computers-Accessories-Lap...

GravityWell 13y ago
The fact that #1 and #2 are Chromebooks is worth mentioning. I found that surprising.
- yeukhon 13y ago
  It really does. I always think Chromebook is pretty bad in this decade given how terrible Internet speed is outside your super fast office connection.
  - jlgreco 13y ago
    Really? I have a lot of complaints about ChromeOS (I have a chromebook, and nuked ChromeOS off of it), but that isn't one of them. Gigabit connections may be rare in the US, but some form of broadband is typically ubiquitous. You have to get pretty far out into the country before you find people who can only get dialup. Just a few Mbps is perfectly fine for ChromeOS purposes.
    - yeukhon 13y ago
      I guess I am saying reliable and extremely consistent speed. I mean using that at school is a challenge for a lot of people. I can't get fios yet and I am stuck with this inconsistent, horrible connection that works excellent only after midnight at home. In general, that's very true for a lot of places in the US. While I can find a lot of free wifi in NYC these days, they are slow and some of them aren't secured either. So while chromeOS might be secure as OS, I still don't quite trust the connection.
- epsylon 13y ago
  It's not that surprising. These are the cheapest option if you want a decent computer.
- Pxtl 13y ago
  You don't get to Windows until #4. The world has changed.

notatoad 13y ago

I think valve would probably say they're trying to go the PC gaming route. that's traditionally been valve's market. Steamboxes don't exist to kill playstation and xbox, they exist to take over the PC gaming market from windows and the threat of the microsoft store on windows 8, which is clearly aimed as a competitor to steam.

sliverstorm 13y ago
To me it reads like a slightly different model- they make plenty of money in their primary business on Windows, and had no quarrel with Microsoft for many years. Now as they feel threatened by Microsoft, they are attempting to grow into a new market space- somewhat of a "blue ocean" strategy- namely, people who already like consoles but have always found PCs too intimidating or too much work. I doubt they want to cannibalize Windows; growing into a new market provides them additional revenue and security in the event Microsoft starts to take over some of Valve's old market share. It's not quite "red ocean" and not quite "blue ocean" because they are targeting the gap between the two markets, and many customers will probably own both a console and a Steambox, or a PC and a Steambox, but of course some may forgo all but the Steambox.

zanny 13y ago

It would be painfully easy for Steam to integrate some hardware polling with a database ranking the parts to give a rough estimate of how well you can run any given Steam game. I'd argue it surely beats sitting on decade old hardware an entire console cycle. That was probably one of the primary motivators for SteamOS as a consolesque platform - Sony and Microsofts inertia circa 2012 was presenting a gaping hole in the market, and Nintendo's Wii U was (and still is) underwhelming. If Valve could get an open platform with vendor competition and constant product iteration in the living room, it would cement them there as much as it did on Windows digital distribution. That plan might not have come to complete fruition the way they were hoping, though - both of their chief competitors will have months and a holiday season ahead of them, and SteamOS hasn't announced any launch titles or exclusives to attract early adopters (of the whole living room platform and haptic controller, at least).

ZeroGravitas 13y ago
They already do the hardware polling, and if they're already supporting this variety of GPUs on Windows, I can't see the Linux situation being that much worse: http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey
- puller 13y ago
  It really is that much worse. Hardware companies work far harder on their Windows drivers. On Linux we are mostly dependent on third party volunteers to write or fix drivers which support our hardware, because the vendors don't care. Then Linux takes the blame for worse driver support, impairing adoption. It's a vicious circle.

cma 13y ago

AMD/ATI is in all new major consoles, and with what they are trying to do with "Mantle", things may radically change, and more PC's could start getting memory unified between CPU/GPU, like in consoles.

sliverstorm 13y ago
Only on machines with SoC's though ("APU"). Discrete graphics, the most common gaming configuration, will always require bussing data across PCI. The real ray of sunlight is that huma (heterogeneous unified memory access?) might close some of the gap.
- cma 13y ago
  Consoles already have discrete chips and have unified memory...
  - sliverstorm 13y ago
    Sure, the new generation will have unified memory access, but my parent was talking about PC's. What happens in console usually has little bearing on what happens in PC.
    - cma 13y ago
      Not something introduced in the new generation; the last generation had it as well. And the generation before that. And before that.

sliverstorm 13y ago

They are not trying to introduce a console, IMO. It's a play for the gap between consoles and PCs. Some of the console "plug-n-play", some of the PC "performance-price-spectrum".

zokier 13y ago

If we are comparing Valve to Google, then Steam-machines/SteamOS is more akin to Android than Chromebook imho. Valve provides platform/appstore, 3rd party devs provide apps.