6 ms·

Steam Machines don't compete with Windows, they're complementary to existing Windows machines (game streaming); they directly compete with Xbox/PS4. Most Steam

by jcastro 11y ago

Steam Machines don't compete with Windows, they're complementary to existing Windows machines (game streaming); they directly compete with Xbox/PS4. Most Steam Machines are Nvidia based, which makes sense, they have the best drivers, and they're generally 1:1 as performant as their windows drivers. I have a GTX970 in my Ubuntu machine and it rocks, supports my gsync monitor and everything; trumping console performance is pretty much a no-brainer with modern nvidia maxwell stuff...

ekianjo 11y ago
> Steam Machines don't compete with Windows, they're complementary to existing Windows machines (game streaming); they directly compete with Xbox/PS4. I hope you are joking, because branding-wise the Steam Machines are a clear mess and completely confusing for people who don't know how to read PC specs. Hell, you have Steam Machines planned with only Intel HD graphics and also called "Steam Machines" just like the Alienware Alpha and the Syber ones, while power-wise they fall in totally different categories. That's the best way to kill your brand, at least 3DO never did that kind of mistake. > they're generally 1:1 as performant as their windows drivers. No, this is clearly false. I don't know where you get this impression, check almost every benchmark out therefore for Borderlands 2, CS:GO, Witcher 2, Bioshock Infinite and almost every other AAA game out there, you will see that the Linux performance is clearly behind. I'm a Linux gamer as well but at least I don't pretend we are at the same level as Windows, because that's a clear lie at this point. > trumping console performance is pretty much a no-brainer with modern nvidia maxwell stuff... It should be, but many ports on Linux are far from being optimized (some rely on OpenGL 3.x to maintain compatibility with AMD while it's clearly less efficient than OpenGL 4.x calls) while console ports are much more likely to be tested thoroughly on a single hardware based and optimized for it.
- jcastro 11y ago
  > I hope you are joking, because branding-wise the Steam Machines are a clear mess and completely confusing for people who don't know how to read PC specs. The entire point of Steam Machines is not to deal with this, just buy the cheapest Alienware, done. If you care about that sort of thing, you buy a different one. > check almost every benchmark out therefore for Borderlands 2, CS:GO, Witcher 2, Bioshock Infinite and almost every other AAA game out there. Doesn't matter. I have an Alienware Alpha and I can get 60 fps on every one of these games in SteamOS, as least as good as the modern consoles, Windows performance it depends; some are better, some are not; all TVs and projectors are 60hz, so unless someone is coming out with 144hz gsync TVs, then it's more than fine. Sure, we get boned by games like Dying Light, but that's just software, totally fixable. > t should be, but many ports on Linux are far from being optimized You could make that argument about any crossplatform game.
  - ekianjo 11y ago
    > The entire point of Steam Machines is not to deal with this, just buy the cheapest Alienware, done. If you care about that sort of thing, you buy a different one. Yeah, and then complain that the newest games in 2016 don't run well on your hardware, while you thought it was just like a console! What a surprise! > I can get 60 fps on every one of these games in SteamOS Put in ultra details, with anti aliasing maxed up, and I'll be very surprised if you still get steady 60 fps, in all honesty. And oh, it's been benchmarked that anti-aliasing makes the performance go down significantly, I'll get numbers for you if you don't believe me. > Sure, we get boned by games like Dying Light, but that's just software, totally fixable. Yeah, except that it has taken them 3 months to fix to an acceptable level. Please explain that to consumers buying it on Day 1. Oh, and remember, they are "console gamers" since you said so, so I hope you enjoy the fun communication with people who don't care about specs or optimization or drivers. > You could make that argument about any crossplatform game. Yes, except that the requirements for Linux ports are usually higher than for Windows. Source: Steam requirements. Again, please go explain that to console gamers.
    - abroncs 11y ago
      Custom built high end PCs have problems getting 60fps at ultra with maxxed AA in some games. Literally nobody is expecting such performance from these machines.
    - reacweb 11y ago
      I do not know for steam os, but I am using ubuntu since many years and I do not tweak much my system. Each time I encounter a crash, a couple of days latter, there is a fix that is automatically installed (apt-get update, upgrade). I imagine that steamOS can update drivers transparently to have always best configuration for gaming. The support team will only need to answer clients when a fix will arrive automatically.
  - dagw 11y ago
    The entire point of Steam Machines is not to deal with this, just buy the cheapest Alienware, done. Except that obviously won't work. In the console world I really don't have to deal with this. I buy a PS4 at launch and I can play every PS4 game that comes out from now until they stop making PS4 games. That is obviously not with Steam Machines. Will the cheapest Steam Machine play every SteamOS game that comes out in 2 years time without problem? If the answer is 'no' then it is something that I have to be aware of and deal with. The other option is that Valve steps in and says that if you want your game to be SteamOS certified it must be optimized to run well on the slowest Steam Machine we've ever released, but I wonder if they're willing to that. Can you imagine telling game developers in 2017 that they must make their games work fine on 2015 era Intel graphics cards?
- ismot 11y ago
  >check almost every benchmark out therefore for Borderlands 2, CS:GO, Witcher 2, Bioshock Infinite and almost every other AAA game out there That's not really a good benchmark, if drivers is the thing you want to compare.
- efuquen 11y ago
  > Hell, you have Steam Machines planned with only Intel HD graphics and also called "Steam Machines" just like the Alienware Alpha and the Syber ones, while power-wise they fall in totally different categories. That's the best way to kill your brand, at least 3DO never did that kind of mistake. Replace "Steam Machines" with "Andriod" and you could make the exact same arguments. And the thing is people have, and they have been to an extent completely correct. But, I don't think you would say Android hasn't been a very successful bet for Google, despite the fragmentation and huge range of quality for different mobile devices, and the problems with branding they have. What I'm seeing is Valve trying to make the exact same play in the console world, where Microsoft and Sony have it locked down very much the same way Apple did (or was on the way to doing) with the smartphones. They want to break people out of those walled gardens and bring them into their ecosystem, and they're going to provide an open platform for any hardware maker to do it, just like Android did. Of course mobile phones and consoles are two different industries, it might play out in a similar way or it might play out completely differently. But I think it's a bit premature to write it off as ridiculous or even a bad idea from the start when there is precedent for this sort of strategy working in other industries. It certainly has a chance of playing out well for Valve, branding and fragmentation be damned, as long as it opens up a much larger audience to Steam.
  - ekianjo 11y ago
    I get the Android comparison, but I don't think it is very much relevant. People don't always get Android phones by choice, and they get a phone ANYWAY because they need a phone. For consoles, the choice is already very clear out there and the well known brands are Xbox, Nintendo and Sony, period. You can see how nVidia is struggling to establish their Shield brand in the market by the way, as a good indication of how hard it is to enter the market. There is nobody who "needs" Steam Machines out there right now, because they already either have a console, a PC or both if they actually care. And additionally, Valve is too risk-averse to actually build and sell hardware by themselves (or even take a NEXUS approach like Google), which makes me think they don't even believe in the Steam Machines themselves. We will see.
    - monk_e_boy 11y ago
- 4ydx 11y ago
  You might want to vet your list. Witcher 2 is not a native linux game. I cannot comment on the other games.
  - ekianjo 11y ago
    Does not matter, people who buy "consoles" don't care what is native or not. They just care if their game runs well. And additionally, Witcher 2 is not really using a wrapper, at least not in the WINE sense of the word. Witcher 2 uses eON which basically does conversion of DirectX calls to OpenGL calls at compile time, not execution time. So it's arguably pretty close to native.
- SolarNet 11y ago
  NVIDIA is really pushing though, they are moving up in the Linux developer commit charts [0]. In a few months they might be close enough to parity on the SteamOS (which likely could involve some proprietary code) for it not to matter. [0] https://lwn.net/Articles/631509/ https://lwn.net/Articles/631509/
  - 0xFFC 11y ago
    Yes , Exactly , They have big plans for android and gaming(Shield line).They need excellent linux support for that .
higherpurpose 11y ago
Once the Vulkan drivers are in (and the games written for it) I'd expect Linux to have even better performance than Windows in gaming.
squeaky-clean 11y ago
> I have a GTX970 in my Ubuntu machine and it rocks, supports my gsync monitor and everything; trumping console performance is pretty much a no-brainer with modern nvidia maxwell stuff Yeah, when your graphics cards costs mores than the entire console (Groupon has a deal right now for a $304 Xbox One without Kinect, and the cheapest GTX970 on PCPartpicker is a Zotac at $310.95), that tends to happen. > Steam Machines don't compete with Windows, they're complementary to existing Windows machines (game streaming) Sure they do. If anything, they compete against Windows much more than they do against consoles. There are reasons to own both a console and gaming PC. There's no reason to have a Windows gaming PC and a Steam Machine. Windows is a superset of a Steam Machine's gaming capabilities. The main reason for people owning a gaming console along with a gaming PC are the exclusive games, people will buy an entire Xbone for Halo or Destiny. There are no Steam Machine or Linux exclusive games.

by jcastro 11y ago

ekianjo 11y ago

> Steam Machines don't compete with Windows, they're complementary to existing Windows machines (game streaming); they directly compete with Xbox/PS4. I hope you are joking, because branding-wise the Steam Machines are a clear mess and completely confusing for people who don't know how to read PC specs. Hell, you have Steam Machines planned with only Intel HD graphics and also called "Steam Machines" just like the Alienware Alpha and the Syber ones, while power-wise they fall in totally different categories. That's the best way to kill your brand, at least 3DO never did that kind of mistake. > they're generally 1:1 as performant as their windows drivers. No, this is clearly false. I don't know where you get this impression, check almost every benchmark out therefore for Borderlands 2, CS:GO, Witcher 2, Bioshock Infinite and almost every other AAA game out there, you will see that the Linux performance is clearly behind. I'm a Linux gamer as well but at least I don't pretend we are at the same level as Windows, because that's a clear lie at this point. > trumping console performance is pretty much a no-brainer with modern nvidia maxwell stuff... It should be, but many ports on Linux are far from being optimized (some rely on OpenGL 3.x to maintain compatibility with AMD while it's clearly less efficient than OpenGL 4.x calls) while console ports are much more likely to be tested thoroughly on a single hardware based and optimized for it.

jcastro 11y ago
> I hope you are joking, because branding-wise the Steam Machines are a clear mess and completely confusing for people who don't know how to read PC specs. The entire point of Steam Machines is not to deal with this, just buy the cheapest Alienware, done. If you care about that sort of thing, you buy a different one. > check almost every benchmark out therefore for Borderlands 2, CS:GO, Witcher 2, Bioshock Infinite and almost every other AAA game out there. Doesn't matter. I have an Alienware Alpha and I can get 60 fps on every one of these games in SteamOS, as least as good as the modern consoles, Windows performance it depends; some are better, some are not; all TVs and projectors are 60hz, so unless someone is coming out with 144hz gsync TVs, then it's more than fine. Sure, we get boned by games like Dying Light, but that's just software, totally fixable. > t should be, but many ports on Linux are far from being optimized You could make that argument about any crossplatform game.
- ekianjo 11y ago
  > The entire point of Steam Machines is not to deal with this, just buy the cheapest Alienware, done. If you care about that sort of thing, you buy a different one. Yeah, and then complain that the newest games in 2016 don't run well on your hardware, while you thought it was just like a console! What a surprise! > I can get 60 fps on every one of these games in SteamOS Put in ultra details, with anti aliasing maxed up, and I'll be very surprised if you still get steady 60 fps, in all honesty. And oh, it's been benchmarked that anti-aliasing makes the performance go down significantly, I'll get numbers for you if you don't believe me. > Sure, we get boned by games like Dying Light, but that's just software, totally fixable. Yeah, except that it has taken them 3 months to fix to an acceptable level. Please explain that to consumers buying it on Day 1. Oh, and remember, they are "console gamers" since you said so, so I hope you enjoy the fun communication with people who don't care about specs or optimization or drivers. > You could make that argument about any crossplatform game. Yes, except that the requirements for Linux ports are usually higher than for Windows. Source: Steam requirements. Again, please go explain that to console gamers.
  - abroncs 11y ago
    Custom built high end PCs have problems getting 60fps at ultra with maxxed AA in some games. Literally nobody is expecting such performance from these machines.
  - reacweb 11y ago
    I do not know for steam os, but I am using ubuntu since many years and I do not tweak much my system. Each time I encounter a crash, a couple of days latter, there is a fix that is automatically installed (apt-get update, upgrade). I imagine that steamOS can update drivers transparently to have always best configuration for gaming. The support team will only need to answer clients when a fix will arrive automatically.
- dagw 11y ago
  The entire point of Steam Machines is not to deal with this, just buy the cheapest Alienware, done. Except that obviously won't work. In the console world I really don't have to deal with this. I buy a PS4 at launch and I can play every PS4 game that comes out from now until they stop making PS4 games. That is obviously not with Steam Machines. Will the cheapest Steam Machine play every SteamOS game that comes out in 2 years time without problem? If the answer is 'no' then it is something that I have to be aware of and deal with. The other option is that Valve steps in and says that if you want your game to be SteamOS certified it must be optimized to run well on the slowest Steam Machine we've ever released, but I wonder if they're willing to that. Can you imagine telling game developers in 2017 that they must make their games work fine on 2015 era Intel graphics cards?
ismot 11y ago
>check almost every benchmark out therefore for Borderlands 2, CS:GO, Witcher 2, Bioshock Infinite and almost every other AAA game out there That's not really a good benchmark, if drivers is the thing you want to compare.
efuquen 11y ago
> Hell, you have Steam Machines planned with only Intel HD graphics and also called "Steam Machines" just like the Alienware Alpha and the Syber ones, while power-wise they fall in totally different categories. That's the best way to kill your brand, at least 3DO never did that kind of mistake. Replace "Steam Machines" with "Andriod" and you could make the exact same arguments. And the thing is people have, and they have been to an extent completely correct. But, I don't think you would say Android hasn't been a very successful bet for Google, despite the fragmentation and huge range of quality for different mobile devices, and the problems with branding they have. What I'm seeing is Valve trying to make the exact same play in the console world, where Microsoft and Sony have it locked down very much the same way Apple did (or was on the way to doing) with the smartphones. They want to break people out of those walled gardens and bring them into their ecosystem, and they're going to provide an open platform for any hardware maker to do it, just like Android did. Of course mobile phones and consoles are two different industries, it might play out in a similar way or it might play out completely differently. But I think it's a bit premature to write it off as ridiculous or even a bad idea from the start when there is precedent for this sort of strategy working in other industries. It certainly has a chance of playing out well for Valve, branding and fragmentation be damned, as long as it opens up a much larger audience to Steam.
- ekianjo 11y ago
  I get the Android comparison, but I don't think it is very much relevant. People don't always get Android phones by choice, and they get a phone ANYWAY because they need a phone. For consoles, the choice is already very clear out there and the well known brands are Xbox, Nintendo and Sony, period. You can see how nVidia is struggling to establish their Shield brand in the market by the way, as a good indication of how hard it is to enter the market. There is nobody who "needs" Steam Machines out there right now, because they already either have a console, a PC or both if they actually care. And additionally, Valve is too risk-averse to actually build and sell hardware by themselves (or even take a NEXUS approach like Google), which makes me think they don't even believe in the Steam Machines themselves. We will see.
  - monk_e_boy 11y ago
4ydx 11y ago
You might want to vet your list. Witcher 2 is not a native linux game. I cannot comment on the other games.
- ekianjo 11y ago
  Does not matter, people who buy "consoles" don't care what is native or not. They just care if their game runs well. And additionally, Witcher 2 is not really using a wrapper, at least not in the WINE sense of the word. Witcher 2 uses eON which basically does conversion of DirectX calls to OpenGL calls at compile time, not execution time. So it's arguably pretty close to native.
SolarNet 11y ago
NVIDIA is really pushing though, they are moving up in the Linux developer commit charts [0]. In a few months they might be close enough to parity on the SteamOS (which likely could involve some proprietary code) for it not to matter. [0] https://lwn.net/Articles/631509/ https://lwn.net/Articles/631509/
- 0xFFC 11y ago
  Yes , Exactly , They have big plans for android and gaming(Shield line).They need excellent linux support for that .

higherpurpose 11y ago

Once the Vulkan drivers are in (and the games written for it) I'd expect Linux to have even better performance than Windows in gaming.

squeaky-clean 11y ago

> I have a GTX970 in my Ubuntu machine and it rocks, supports my gsync monitor and everything; trumping console performance is pretty much a no-brainer with modern nvidia maxwell stuff Yeah, when your graphics cards costs mores than the entire console (Groupon has a deal right now for a $304 Xbox One without Kinect, and the cheapest GTX970 on PCPartpicker is a Zotac at $310.95), that tends to happen. > Steam Machines don't compete with Windows, they're complementary to existing Windows machines (game streaming) Sure they do. If anything, they compete against Windows much more than they do against consoles. There are reasons to own both a console and gaming PC. There's no reason to have a Windows gaming PC and a Steam Machine. Windows is a superset of a Steam Machine's gaming capabilities. The main reason for people owning a gaming console along with a gaming PC are the exclusive games, people will buy an entire Xbone for Halo or Destiny. There are no Steam Machine or Linux exclusive games.