http://kotaku.com/5966860 http://www.afterdawn.com/news/article.cfm/2012/12/09/valve_will_release_pc_console_next_year http://www.techspot.com/news/51043-valve-readies-living-room-pcs-to-rival-next-gen-game-consoles.html More than likely it will be a miniature gaming PC that will probably have the areas that worry would-be PC gamers fear (building a rig, finding drivers, ect.) It's going to of course operate through Steam, which is kind of exciting for me because I have friends who are interested in PC gaming but aren't comfortable with the quirks of PC gaming (for example, trying to get a Rockstar port to even run). I think Valve could really have an edge on the competition if they allow their Steambox to be upgradable some way, at least the GPU. By mid-cycle, the Steambox would leave the competition in the dust technically if one could upgrade to a new video card. One question I have is what the hell are they talking about regarding "PCs designed to work with your TV right out of the gate"? Plug an HDMI cable into your PC and TV. It already works right out of the gate. It's not like someone needs to take a soldering gun and install two fists full of wiring to get a PC to operate on a television. It seems like using a PC on a TV/ home theater is one of the great undiscovered mysteries for most gamers along with using a wireless kb/m on a TV tray from the couch (How does AKS do it?!? It's impossible!).
It will be interesting to see what they really end up doing with this concept, but I'm not sure what the advantage is really supposed to be vs. what currently exists for both console and PC gaming. As AKS says, connecting your laptop/desktop to your TV wired or wirelessly isn't exactly a bleeding edge idea, and consoles already offer a simplified alternative to maintaining a gaming PC.
Replacement components means there could be a used component market which is an interesting idea for a console.
anybody ever wonder if bfun is actually an organic human being? sometimes his posts come in the strangest format.
Steam might be boasting about their Big Picture feature with that little statement. You have media center for windows to get a TV format UI to access your media easily. Nothing really hits it for the games part.. except now with Steam's Big Picture.
I really don't see the point of this. Console gaming dudebros will have no idea it even exists, and PC gamers generally already know how to hook their PCs up to a TV. Could this be Valve's first flop?
It might be for those same people who bought the standalone counter-strike mod back in the day when Valve was selling it in retail stores.
If the price structure remains the same, new releases on steam are about 16% cheaper than current consoles and older games can easily get to be 50% cheaper.
I think they would be targeting consumers who might have gotten into PC gaming (and thus would be buying a bunch of games off of Valve's Steam service) but are intimidated by assembling hardware or finding drivers. I would expect this to be a simplified, affordable gaming PC. I don't expect Valve to go broke on the design of this thing. They aren't going to try to create something like the CELL CPU or anything unusually pricey. I would expect them to make a machine consisting of decent but affordable PC parts and let you upgrade the GPU eventually. I think it will be a cheap gaming PC using Steam more than a traditional console. I'm assuming you can play Steam games with other PC gamers.
I just saw Red Faction Armageddon for 19.99 at the store where at humblebundle.com it's practically free.
it's got a thread allready though, being in the thq bundle. I was just emphasizing the point. Console game prices are just patheticaly expensive once they get like 3 months old.
I think this has more to do with interface hurdles of plugging your PC into a HDTV as well as form factor constraints. Windows 7 looks pretty stupid at 1080p on a large TV from the lounge, with big picture and some other assumed customisations, there would be a nice improvement. Also, having a standard controller that you can use to navigate as well as game is also important. The other thing is drivers and driver related settings related to HDTV's. Lots of PC's have issues with correct scaling for HDTV's and often the calibration just looks horrible by default. If these are sold with a HDTV in mind as the primary display output, settings and the like can be set to work out of the box. The thing fitting under your TV and being setup for a standard wireless controller would also be a pretty big deal to a lot of people. I also hope that this box will act as a minimum standard for PC developers going forward. Something like iPad. Say in 2015 they could target 1080p 30fps on gen 1 2013 steam box, 1080p 60fps on Gen 2 2014 and 2160p 30fps on Gen 3 2015. There could also be default profiles, say the online version of a shooter could default to favoring frame rate over image quality, etc. Or users could simply have a slider with image quality/graphics complexity on one side and high performance on the other. This could effect all their games or each individually.
Per CES, Valve is teaming with Xi3 to make these (codenamed 'Piston'). Prototype below...no specs yet.