Valve Teases Steam Box, Other News

Half-Life 3 is coming out on the Steam box with Oculus Rift support (which Valve has purchased)

I have a sneaking suspicion that this has far less to do with games and more about getting a piece of the movie and music business. Streaming tech never works that well for gaming even if you have wired connections and lets face it there is a reason why in most homes your router is at your gaming PC. Most homes are virtually all wireless now. However, streaming works fine for non gaming media and makes companies a boat load of money.

They need a way to get their user base off the computer desk so they can leverage it for other markets. Answer: Create a lot of hype over a problem very few actually have to convince everybody they need another TV box solution. On the positive side I feel they may be able to provide the added pressure to the content producers that Netflix and Hulu alone are having trouble with.

WOO HOO!!! SteamOS!!!!!!!

"Watch for announcements in the coming weeks about all the AAA titles coming natively to SteamOS in 2014. Access the full Steam catalog of over nearly 3000 games and desktop software titles via in-home streaming." This is huge guys! Now if this can run on raspberry pi, dayummmm.

Called it! ;)

http://store.steampowered.com/livingroom/SteamOS/

The console is shaped like a Fedora. The controllers are shaped like knives. Thus ends my two stupid jokes.

I'm sorry.

Blasphemy! Shenmue is legendary!

It is now easier than ever to use Linux side-by-side with Windows where in fact the issues are now often Windows idiosyncratic. You can live boot Linux off of USB. Linux can use NTFS so repartitioning is not a requirement for side-by-side.

I have watched and played Dota 2 off the Linux version and it definitely works. At least it works as well as the Mac version. If Valve can make Source 2 platform neutral like what Unity does then that should spur a lot more games on Linux.

@believer258: Yep, same here. I've got a dual-boot on this machine, and I can't even remember the last time I booted into Linux.

@aoi: I see your points. However without steam and software like it piracy would turn the PC into a system that is too costly to develop for. At least steam are keeping the piracy fearing publishers at bay and keeping games coming to the PC.

@herbiebug: I Think you mean Valverie Teaserz Steamy Bawkz

Valverie teases steamy box.

Sorry. >.<

I have dual-booted OS's before, and invariably I've used only one of them. And it's always Windows. I really like using Ubuntu, but its functionality simply doesn't match that of Windows. And don't tell me it does. It really doesn't.

@believer258: or you could just run a virtual machine of it or have 2 os's installed it actually wouldn't be much of a hassle at all i've done it you could install Linux play half life 3 and be done with it, while still keeping windows on your drive , I doubt they would do it pure exclusive anyway. they would loose money. they could do a timed Linux exclusive, say for 6 months you can only get it for Linux then after 6 months they launch it on windows mac and consoles

If Valve makes it easy, and I do mean very easy, for me to have a thing in my living room that plays Steam games, they shall have my moneys.

And by very easy I mean a thing that I can buy in a store, bring home in car, plug in to tv and internet, turn on, Steam appears and all games offered therein supported and playable. Valve does that and maybe I think about not buying a console from Sony this generation.

All the hype....gabe should say nothing about HL3 then have it announced in a random press release an hour later.

I'm still not sure what a Steam box is. Is it like a mini PC? Well hopefully that'll be more clear next week.

Well, then I would just not buy it. Simple as that.

So this is why Brad went on vacation.

If it's 3 announcements, they'll do 2 announcements, then make us wait years for the third.

Thing is, I played the Orange box on this tv using a prior Pc also. But you are right, Half life 3 may just well strike me blind and wipe my memory clean. Hate to be so easy but...

1. Steambox

2. PS4 Integration

3. Half Life Decay HD!

How about Steam Box powered by Source 2 with The Orange Box 2 and one of the games is Half Life 3?.

Half Life 3 in your living room.

Excited yet?

Remake of Dota 2? ...

@jagehtso: Yes, unfortunately too far fetched. Microsoft and Sony would NEVER and I mean NEVER allow a competing store on their closed consoles. Those stores are what they are seeing as their primary way to make money on this generation of consoles, and no way are they sharing that sweet sweet cash with Gabe.

Pure speculation based on wearing a tin foil hat whilst staring at the 3 symbol picture: The circle represents a Steam OS. The brackets represent a console. So, middle pic is Steam OS inside a console. Last pic is Steam OS outside of the console paired with another Steam OS, so maybe a cloud service.

sorry but I don't really care. I have steam and a gaming PC and I play PC games occasionally. I can run an HDMI cable to my TV and play PC games with a wireless 360 controller on my TV. What's the point of this box again? Next gen consoles are coming out this year so the idea of stuffing another box next to those boxes is not appealing. Valve needs to bring something new to the table for this to be interesting at all.

This is what I have been hearing. I do not use big picture at the moment, because I am used to the old format. The few times I did, there seemed to be some kind of dis-function. I am interested in all this, but a bit leery also.

Steam I'm sure feels it needs to grow, and we will see how.

I'm excited regardless of what they announce. I have a feeling at least one of the announcements will be something that nobody has predicted yet.

I bet they're going to announce remakes of Half-life 2, Portal 2 and DOTA 2.

@phantom_3d: I don't know what the fuck you just said baby boy, but you're special. Remember that. Don't let 'em take your shine.

Half-Life 3 Linux exclusive confirmed

three separate half life games...

@sammo21: Do you mean whats stopping me from getting into PC gaming?

is this not just pc you cant upgrade in Linux think already been one of these its called mac.and fact Linux has only 200 games from which only few work at best from my last attempt to get any of them to work. i stick with normal pc then a half console pc that i cant upgrade.

It's meme-cats 3!

The Steambox already exists, its called the Alienware X51.

@mrangryface Damn, you beat me to it!

Yo Valve, Big Picture is still sort of a mess.

Figure your shit out before bringing more stuff.

Peace.

@euandewar: This is something I am always curious about. What is the barrier that keeps you from getting into console gaming?

With a high end gaming PC, a gaming laptop, all the current consoles, and a paid for PS4 on the way I couldn't care less about a steam box. If I want to play PC games on my PC I can just buy an...HDMI cable. If anything they need to work on a competent device that allows you to stream your PC library to TVs or something similar.

Also, a large majority of past, current, and even future releases are on Linux so a Steambox would be small potatoes for a long time.

As a guy who had his gaming PC hooked up exclusively to their TV for years (until last month), why doesn't Valve make Big Picture Mode a worthwhile feature before they move on to other "living room" initiatives? BPM was a cool add-on that I tried a couple of times before just using the regular Steam client again.

Damn it Valve, "3" announcements? Seriously? Half-Life 3 exclusive to the Ouya 3 which is Linux based.

I would be really interested to know why people are excited about a potential steam box. Personally I just can't envision it being all that cool, even if it ends up being a fully fledged console and not just some streaming solution.