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Steambox, would you buy one? HL8 Confirmed.

Rogan

By Rogan
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Rogan

Rogan

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So, Valve have announced "Things to come" and released a new mystical website with symbols. This has basically sent reddit in to meltdown and I love it! Even though everyone in the world is fairly confident that its something to do with Valves 'Steambox' idea they can't help but put 6 and 7 together and divide it by 3 and confirm HL3 at every opportunity!

 

Personally, I made a steambox and I have replaced windows 8 shell with steam big picture and it works fantastic, it did however cost me just shy of 700quid.

Spec for those interested

i5 3570k

ASUS Direct cu II 7870 (200sheets of GPU love at the time)

8gb Vengeance Ram with the pointless heatsink

P8 mobo (I bought a MSI z77 Micro ATX sized mobo but it was dead on arrival so next dayed a cheap mobo and got my money back on the z77, not bought a new 1 yet >_< wasting my 3570k)

H40 closed loop water cooler (was worried about it all been in a mATX behind my tele so made sure its cooled enough)

Fractal core design 1000 case.

Modular 430w Corsair PSU (Bargain! Esp for a Bronze rated PSU)

CD drive 1tb 7200 WD HDD Green (The Eco friendly one because as you can clearly tell, I'm a Hippy!)

Other bits and bobs such as paste and extra fans.

 

My question to you lot is, would any of you consider a steambox over a self built rig? I was a console player for years and got sick of MS's daily dose of [swear word here] you. I was already confident I'd be spending about 500quid at the end of this year on a new console anyway so thought why not add few more quid because lets face it, I deserve it and build a PC and play everything at 60fps in 1080p goodness!

 

As a side note the conspiracy theories for HL3 are amazing. The most recent one I'm following is the background on one of the logos on the new site has been added in Photoshop and colour rectified revealing what looks to be a graph that shows the particle decay of half life... LOL!

Rogan

Rogan

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I'd consider buying a steam box. To support the move to Linux for one!
Yeah, I'd go to Linux if major game releases went there. In a heart beat, Valve is already working on a debugger and because they rolled games on Linux like L4D2 there’s no excuse not to put the likes of CoD on it etc as Valve fixed the problems in the debugger and the engines are very similar (Source is like CoD engine - Modded quake3 engines). The overall feeling is that Steambox will be a Linux distro probably from ubuntu/unix-like heritage and hopefully they'll release it outside the steambox. I'll then use my win8 cd to prop up a wonky table in the workies club.

 

My fave distro is elementary OS its boootiful.

Trapper

Trapper

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I've just switched back to Linux (Mint with MATE) as the only PC games I play now are Eve (which runs well under Wine) and Kerbal which has a native Linux client.

 

Steam for Linux is limited to just the Valve games, but they do run well. If that's where Gabe is planning to go in the future, then I'm with him.

synaesthesia

synaesthesia

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I wouldn't, as I already have an effective steambox (my PC) and it will probably be safe to assume there will be no exclusives to the SB not available on the PC. But, with no PC, I would certainly be interested. PC Gaming Master Race, and all that. It's frightfully difficult to play a game on a PC then try and play the same thing on any console.
Rogan

Rogan

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I've just switched back to Linux (Mint with MATE) as the only PC games I play now are Eve (which runs well under Wine) and Kerbal which has a native Linux client.

 

Steam for Linux is limited to just the Valve games, but they do run well. If that's where Gabe is planning to go in the future, then I'm with him.

If it wasn't for BF4 coming out I'd switch to linux as all I play is dota. But tbvh big picture is a nice alternative and replacing windows shell was strangley quite easy, simple reg edit. (Here it is if anyones interested:
)

 

I wouldn't, as I already have an effective steambox (my PC) and it will probably be safe to assume there will be no exclusives to the SB not available on the PC. But, with no PC, I would certainly be interested. PC Gaming Master Race, and all that. It's frightfully difficult to play a game on a PC then try and play the same thing on any console.

I don't know, the same logic could be applied to Nintendo and they've done it for years.

Rogan

Rogan

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sorry, can you clarify? what logic?

 

Apologies, I did write a bit before hand and I must have deleted it!

 

That a developer who also makes hardware wouldnt hold back one of the games as an exclusive is hard to bealive. I imagine they would at least give it a few days head start on said console. Look at how advantegous this is to Activision and the Xbox and The Last of Us on the PS3 for example.

 

Nintendo have been doing it for tyears with the IP's

CyberNerd

CyberNerd

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Steam for Linux is limited to just the Valve games, but they do run well. If that's where Gabe is planning to go in the future, then I'm with him.

 

It's not just the Valve games on Steam for Linux. I've been playing Brutal Legend (EA) and the Wargame series (Eugen) over the weekend that were installed from steam.

It's still only 10% of the total PC games available, but it is growing and is much better than just a few yrs ago.

Arthur

Arthur

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Not sure how many hardware manufacturers will pick it up though.

I wonder how much nVidia is going to charge for their GTX 800 Series graphics cards with the game streaming feature early next year? You'll need a very fast card to play eight games at once!

 

The Steam Box will also be a server. Any PC can serve multiple monitors, so over time, the next-generation (post-Kepler) you can have one GPU that's serving up eight simultaneous game calls. So you could have one PC and eight televisions and eight controllers and everybody getting great performance out of it. We’re used to having one monitor, or two monitors — now we're saying let's expand that a little bit. (Source)
Rawns

Rawns

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Nice idea. The in house streaming is a clever feature.

 

Not sure how many hardware manufacturers will pick it up though.

 

If that works well, it will be AWESOME! It will give people with lower spec machines who cant afford a Steambox/media PC upgrade a good chance of enjoying all things Steam in the front room! :)

 

Roll on 48 hours for the next announcement! :D

Edited by Rawns
Rogan

Rogan

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Praise Jeebus!

 

This is 100% what I've been after. A OS made by gamers, for gamers. As said I already use big picture as my shell and sit in front of my TV to use it so it just gets better for me really. I know they hired a lot of the WineHQ team a while back and apparently they already have AAA titles supporting it natively.

 

Well played Gabe, well played.

localzuk

localzuk

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I think last I checked, there were 300 linux games on Steam. Ok, the vast majority are indie games and not AAA but that can and will change, as Valve will be putting money behind getting third party AAA games on there.

 

I look forward to their next announcement!

Rawns

Rawns

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Even if it takes a while for the bit AAA titles to appear, if the streaming feature works as well as I imagine it working, then it won't cause too much of a problem. :)
Rogan

Rogan

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Few rumours are that they might give % cuts if people develop with their new engine or release to SteamOS. Plus developers can now put SteamOS on the back of a box. Looking forward ot the next announcment.
Rawns

Rawns

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So, who's signed up for the beta then? :D

 

Almost every single user of Steam I'd say!

 

I read through the T's & C's and it does not restrict Beta testers to the US only! Fingers crossed!!! :D

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