Giant Bomb Presents: One Month With a Steam Machine

I wish I had a Steam Machine.

Yay podcast!

Really want to give that controller a go.

I wish I lived in the future.

Hmm. Definite bummer to hear that the feedback falls short of making a pad function as four buttons. If they could get that figured out, I'm sure its usefulness would increase exponentially. Although, seeing that the ergonomics of the thing leads you to use the tips of your thumbs rather than the pads, it probably wouldn't work like that anyway, as many games have you sort of pushing two buttons at a time with your thumb, or toggling like a run and jump button without having to actually move.

Still, something this unique is super exciting. And I think a lot of the optimal configuration confusion will disappear once the gizmos are released and people are able to share what's worked best for them.

Also, this is even more of a niche desire than even the Steam Machines, but a dedicated pinball controller that feels great is pretty enticing.

Thanks for the interview!

Just a quick response to the idea of someone playing with a steam controller in professional gaming. There is someone in League of Legends who plays with a trackball in one of Europe's best teams. It definitely could be a possibility.

WHOA, WAIT.

They sent boxes to three hundred people?

Half-Life 3 confirmed.

Point and clicks should work nicely on that controller. never felt right moving a cursor with a stick.

Wonder how it works with touch games. Cut the rope, or angry birds aren't ideal with a mouse imho.

Still a shame they limited the group to US only.

WHAT'S IN THE BOX?

The podcast is titled one month with the steam machine, and @patrickklepek didn't ask anything about the Steam machine or Steam OS. He only asked questions about the controller.

How big is the box? Does it look big? Did it look weird in your living room? Is it bigger than a 360 or PS3 or PS4 or Xbox One? Does it make a lot of noise? Did it get hot? Is there a separate power brick or was the power supply in the box? Did you open the box? Was it easy to remove the parts? Did you meet any weird screws?

Did SteamOS give any technical problems at any point? Did you see any weird PC-ish things like a BIOS screen? How long does it take to boot? Did any linux-y things rear their head at any point, like a terminal screen? What percentage of your personal library already had linux versions? How were the linux ports of games? Did any of them crash? Did you ever have to leave big picture at any point and drop to GNOME? How did updates work? Did big picture ever crash? Did the machine ever freeze, kernel panic or blue screen? How was the performance on the box? How do you manage storage on the box?

Also there are windows and Mac questions I was curious about to. How as the controller support on Windows or Mac? Did you try plugging it into a Mac? What does it show up as in the OS control panel/preferences on Windows and Mac? Can you use it as a mouse on windows and mac?

Hire this guy

@tinygrasshopper:

Some good questions there, but how much does the Valve hardware really matter? There are already a dozen PC builders signed up to produce Steam Machines with a variety of specs. Basically, they're just PCs with mostly off-the-shelf components. The unique bit is the controller.

@tn04: Dem thenar muscles.

@tinygrasshopper: There are already pictures of the thing out there, and you can go get SteamOS yourself already if you care that much.

I'd say the OS is unique also. They're trying to make a Linux distribution that is as easy as a game console. There are so many questions about that. Look at Ubuntu, they've been trying to make Linux easy for a decade and have only convinced about 12 million people.

@gyrfal: There might be differences in running SteamOS on partner/official hardware compared to running it on a regular PC especially considering how alpha the installer is.

Joe Consumer isn't meant to interact with underlying Linux at all. He fires up his Steam Machine and it boots to Steam. Not quite the same problem as a desktop OS for everyday computing use.

Of course, realistically speaking, anyone buying a Steam Machine now would be best served by wiping it and installing Windows. Which gets to the heart of the real problem with Steam OS - lack of games.

Hey, I'm the guy in the interview. My hands are in a ton of pain even a few weeks after finals, so I decided to respond with answers to all your questions so far with a video. I hope that's alright. The questions asked here were a good, representative selection of a lot of the questions I've been asked, so I'm glad I had the opportunity to make a question answering these common concerns. Thanks for essentially compiling the list for me!

@ckinniburgh: Thanks for this, you were great in the dump truck too.

@hammondoftexas: No worries. Glad I could provide some insight. And thanks. I still haven't listened. :|

@ckinniburgh: Your trial by game videos have been the most informative and useful thing out of all the beta users. They shoulda just given the box to you and been done.

Amen. Got to try the new controller though.

Maybe my expectations are too high but I find it frustrating that we still require large boxes to play video games. Look at the iPad Air, that thing is really powerful and similar size of a small magazine. Kind of wish Apple did make a console.

@ckinniburgh: Thanks for sharing this with us. It was nice to hear what someone who used the controller thought about it.

I'll admit I'm too jealous to listen to this. 300 people basically got a free kick-ass PC right before Christmas bundled with a prototype controller and I wasn't one of them.

Did I read right that we have to wait until the end of this year for the Steam Controller to be finalized and released?

nice interview

horrible interview

Great interview, the only thing that excites me about this at the moment is the Controller.

With Apple's ethos, their 'console' platform IS the iPad or their iPhones. To ask for a console from Apple is kind of the antithesis to the very thing you ask for.

Also, don't forget that the kinds of capabilities from 'large boxes' that are available right now simply come down to computational horsepower. Yes, Steam is plentiful for small, lightweight games that stem from indie developers and what not - but it's also meant to encompass the large scale AAA experience (your Call of Duty's, Battlefields, Assassin Creeds, etc.) which is something you can't run on a super-light platform without stripping down the experience.

This isn't even looking at control schemes, which is a whole different beast altogether.

Hi Chris,

Great job at the Steam Dev Day talk! Way to take advantage of an awesome opportunity you were given by Valve to get more involved with their creation process. What was being their for the conference like? Get to meet some cool people?

Best.

One month, I think that's about how long the Steam machine was actually on sale. Hey-yo!