Because the number of Linus games on Steam is very small. A SteamBox without streaming wouldn’t be able to run even half the games that a 3-year old laptop could.
Well, he points out that a Steam box is a PC, so you could absolutely put in windows if you wanted to.
I think the problem there though is that it’s probably not going to be the seamless experience Valve wants so it’s not something they are touting.
With streaming, your gaming library on another PC in your home is available and playable right on the Steambox, as though the game was natively installed on that machine.
With a dual boot solution you’d have to switch over to windows to play the game there. Probably not as elegant. Would be great if Steam OS could detect a windows installation somehow, and the games available there and would boot up windows + the game when selected in the library.
But I don’t know if that kind of data is available to access from outside windows or even if an OS could boot up a secondary one. Could it?
A linux distro might be able to be programmed to auto-boot into windows but you certainly would never get it to go the other way around. I highly doubt it though. Bootloaders are a very low level thing and are usually outside the purview of the OS (for good reason, if a virus could mess with your bootloader it would be bad news).
Right, and I think a lot of these SteamBoxes will use a Linux/Windows dual install. But that’s going to cut into the affordability that Valve is trying to push.
It’ll be interesting, that’s for sure.
I’m guessing they’ll price out the machine with Steam OS, and then, in fine print:
“We’ll install windows for you too! Just add $99.99!”
But at the end of the day, installing Windows on the box sortof defeats the point of trying to make an entry into the “living room space”; People who want to have a windows box in their living room generally already do. There’s an extremely limited market there. If this thing wants to compete in some capacity as a living room device, it needs to be more like an appliance, and Windows is still a LONG way from that.
True enough. I think Steam box as an appliance that resides under your TV will will live and die by the amount of game support Valve gets it. They’ve said they’ve got the main publishers on board, but they need Exclusives (PC exclusives should suffice but they have to be big budget and well marketed). We’ll have to wait and see how that turns out.
I think the Steam box as an extension of your existing gaming PC though, will do just fine, even if it’s “niche” as in penetrating to high end PC levels. I’m definitely interested in this aspect, myself.
Valve has said that even the games they plan to publish in 2014 and beyond won’t be exclusive to SteamOS, so I think banking on a SteamOS exclusive from a third-party is going to be a non-starter.
I saw that too, and it makes perfect sense. Why on earth would they make a Steam OS exclusive game and piss off 99.9% of their current base?
But make it a STEAM exclusive with Steam OS support, and STEAM and Steam machines benefit.
The only reaons I have origin on my PC is because of BF4 and Sim City and Dragon Age 2. The only reason I will pick up a PS4 in 2015 or so will be because of “X” game it will have nothing to do with the hardware. Maybe the reason to get a Steam Machine for Joe Gamer will be that it’s affordable, simple to use, small form factor AND it’s the only place to play HAlf-Life 3 or whatever “X” game becomes a Steam exclusive and is marketed along the lines of AAA games on consoles.
I’m not understanding this. Valve games are already Steamworks, naturally, and require Steam. Unless you mean just don’t release it on consoles (Xbox One, PS4).
That’s precisely what I mean.
Though I’m not sure what Valve sees as the end game for Steam machines.
If they really are just looking to extend PC gaming into the living room, catering only to existing PC gamers… well, it might do ok, specially the streaming boxes, but it’s not really expanding their current customer base, right?
Making PC gaming easier to get into might be it’s own reward in terms of getting more people to jump in. But Giving it exclusive games will likely improve adoption. PC has plenty fo exclusives, but only a handful are marketed to the level of a TLOU or a Halo,a nd sad but true, it’s marketing that matters.
I find that unlikely. Valve sells a lot of games to the console crowd.
Yeah, but think about it, how many units would a Half Life 3 sell on consoles? Specially a next Gen Half-life 3. Let’s say it doesn’t come out until end of 2015, to give the next gen consoles some time to build up an install base. We’re still talking 15-20 million install base by then per console so potentially 30-40 million or so install base. I doubt it would move more than 6 million copies.
If just 25% of those people end up picking up a PC be it Steam machine or whatever, to play games, well, that’s potentially millions of people who might buy not just half-life 3 but other games on Steam. It then becomes about retention, right? Make Steam a worthwhile service, make Steam Machines, easy to use, and I think the rest follows. Superior hardware (specially by 2015), possibly Oculus Rift, Gsync monitors (a game changer, IMHO), cheap games, etc, etc
This is no different than Microsoft or Sony buying exclusives. Pretty Sure Microsoft doesn’t see much of a return on every Halo, given the huge marketing budget of those games… Nor did Sony make much money out of TLOU. But who cares? Those Halo gamers will pick up Madden and COD, etc, etc.
It’s about getting future customers. Not about making money from games. Valve doesn’t need to make money from games, evidenced by their lack of games.
Valve, selling HL3 on steam for $60, basically makes $60. Maybe $59.40 after costs. Paying the $10 royalty to MS/sony, paying for the right to patch their game, paying for the quality control submissions and all that, then selling it to a publisher (valve doesn’t have retail supply chain distribution, they’ve partnered with EA in the past), who then sells it to retailers - Valve ends up getting probably somewhere around $8-12 of every sale instead of $59. So even if you only made up 1/6th of those sales on PC, you’d break even. If you got more people to come to steam, you’re talking about serious money.
That’s an aspect of this I rarely see covered. Yes, PC versions of games typically sell less, but the costs are far lower, and a far greater percentage of the take goes back to the publisher and developer. A PC sale is worth several times more than a console retail sale.
Apples to oranges sir. Yes, for VALVE it’s a big “Well duh, let’s keep all the money” but otherwise? First, you can’t compare retail to digital, end of argument. Especially now that most if not all new console games are also available digitally. Second, on digital stuff, yeah, fine, Valve might take a smaller cut than Sony/MS, but at the end of the day, you’re probably looking at 30% vs 40% or something. It’s not exactly the massive difference you make it out to be for third party developers.
I assume that the new consoles are still stuck with a single source for digitally buying games, right? You can’t take your PS4 to Steampowered.com and download HL3 even if it were available as such?
Of course even Valve distributing through the Sony/Microsoft digital stores is cheaper than paying EA to press a bunch of discs for them and load them on trucks.
SO if I get a Steam machine for $400 will it run everything available on Steam?
How long before it’s out of date and I need a new Steam machine? Every few years like a console?
The bottom line is, the PC market place is, on average, 70-80% digital, excluding many digital only titles. The ratio on the consoles is MUCH lower than that. Just look at the hullabaloo (did I really spell that word right on the first try?!) that Microsoft stirred up with their digital first announcements. The console market is still attached to retail via umbilical cord, and the lack of competition int he digital space means it’ll likely remain so for the foreseeable future.
The profit for a digital sale on PC vs a traditional retail sale on console for a third party, as calculated by many, and as reported by SEVERAL developers/publishers, is something a little better than 2 to 1. For a first party like Blizzard or Valve it’s a little better than 3 to 1. There are sunk in costs that are part of the retail chain (manufacturing, shipping, retail cut, different licensing and legal issues, etc, etc) and all of those affect the bottom line.
Diablo 3 might have sold 14 million copies on PC, but in terms of profit that would be like Halo selling close to 35 million copies on 360. Something the entire series took like 7 years to accomplish.
Now, sure, Diablo 3 is not typical, and really outside of popular MMO’s and other online games, those numbers are even rarer than on consoles (where only maybe 3 franchises across all consoles can claim such numbers for a single release. But because of digital’s importance on the PC, releasing a game there can be profittable even if it only sells 1/2 as much as consoles or less, and even when discounted.
The only evidence you need of that being true is that every single publisher out there worth a damn and that isn’t first party or being payed NOT to release a game on PC, DOES release games on PC.
There is gold in that dem hills.
Yes and no. A Steam machine is a PC. So you could install windows on it in addition to Steam OS and you would have access to all games on Steam.
On the other hand, if you don’t want to do that, then you’d be limited to games that run on OpenGL. That’s still a good number of games, but by no means all.
Now, Valve has promised support from games in the future, and EA, Ubisoft, Sega, and a couple of others have said they’ll support Steam OS, but it’s critical Blizzard joins in the bandwagon, and it’s critical others do as well. Basically, from the moment Steam Machines hit the market, Valve needs to make sure the majority of games coming out support SteamOS, and they need to work to get developers of popular older titles to support SteamOS as well.
I know a lot of super popular titles on Steam have already said they’d support it: Civ V, Total War, obviously Dota 2 and all Valve games, but Valve needs to make that as close to 100% of new games if it’s going to entice anyone to pick up a Steam box.
As for upgrading… well, the only prototype we’ve seen so far is more powerful than a PS4 and it’s priced at $499. So, I think you’re set for a long while assuming that’s your price point.
Most of the time, PC gamers don’t upgrade because they have to, but because they want to.
Maybe you pick up a 4K TV cheap at Walmart in 2017. Have fun playing horribly stretched out console games on it… or you can pick up a new GPU for $250 and play games at a native 4K. Or maybe the Oculus Rift is something you dig and you want to enjoy that technology at the best possible settings. Or Star Citizen comes out and you simply must play it across three screens 'cause that’s how you want to roll.
Or not. And the level of performance you get out of the gate satisfies you, all of those scenarios are possible and viable.
Except that every publisher that thinks they CAN sell their games on consoles DOES that too. (Yeah, great, the guys who make Crusader Kings 2 and the like aren’t planning a console release. See what I said about ‘can sell’).
There’s gold in ALL the hills. That’s the POINT.
No one is arguing you can’t make money selling digital games on the PC, that would be idiotic. All I’m saying is that it’s not some crazy case of “If you sell digitally on the PC, you keep 97% of your profit, but you sell on a console, Microsoft gives you 10%!” The numbers are much closer together than Beef is arguing. And digital distribution continues to grow on consoles.
And yeah, you’ll want to upgrade your Steam Box about as often as you will a console. It’s all well and good to say “Oh, you can pick when you upgrade!” but at the end of the day, eventually you’ll be tired of your games running like crap even after you turn all the graphics settings off.