OMFG. OMFG. Valve to announce Steambox - steam console

[sheath]

[parallaxscroll]

I hope this new box is more powerful than Xbox3/PS4, otherwise, what's the point right?

[Tanegashima]

Someone, please, help me finding something right about this statement.

Well, obviously you can't so we shall rely on someone else to chime in on your behalf.

But I know I'm right, I've been here longer than you, I post more and I have more rep so by default I win.

[old man]

That removable control stick and button thing has been done before by mad catz.

[Zoltor]

That removable control stick and button thing has been done before by mad catz.

Oh they make a controller as well, how good is it?

I have the R.A.T 7 mouse, and love it.

[MrMatthews]

Everything you post is wrong by default but that post is an award-winning.

**waits for sentence to be completed...

Oh, that was it? Bummer.

Look, I know you have me on ignore and won't see this, but I'm hoping you could elaborate more on Tanegashima's oversights (you'll have to excuse him, he's Asian).

[The Coop]

No, no one said that about the Gizmondo, N-gage, the virtual boy, nor the Neo-Geo. And the 3DO doesn't have a fraction of the market segment Steam has.

Are you seriously so ignorant to the world of difference between valve, one of the biggest forces in gaming today, creating a steambox spec, and gizmondo - a startup with no history in gaming - making an overpriced handheld that you'd dare make the comparison?

Ignorant? Not in the slightest. I'm just putting all this in perspective and seeing that the same marketing hype/ploy machine that's been going on for decades, is being played out with this. "We're going to do this, this and those," quotes from people, and little semi-cryptic comments, don't make my nipples hard. I'll always be skeptical when it comes to gaming, because the proof is in the finished pudding, not talking points that lead up to it being done. When the system/setup is a physical reality that can be tested, shown, examined, and has game companies actually backing it (not just giving "we're going to make games for it" promises like companies did back in the day), then I'll see if there's a reason to be in awe. Until then, it's just the same masturbatory press buildup that Sega, Nintendo, SNK, 3DO, Sony, Microsoft and others did years ago, and no awe is warranted.

And yes, the 3DO and Neo-Geo were hyped quite a bit back in the day. Magazine's touted how much more advanced they'd be, ran articles on the systems, and their respective companies pushed their systems big time. Even the people behind the disasters of the N-Gage, Gizmondo, Virtual Boy and others pimped their systems every chance they got... even as the systems were doing badly. Such pimping is the nature of the beast that is the hardware business, and Valve is throwing its hat into the proverbial ring to do the same thing.

Maybe the system will indeed be awesome. Maybe it'll be so far from being awesome, it'll take the light from "awesome" 1,000 years to reach it. Who knows. But right now, it's all vaporware and talk, and if history has shown anything, it's that those two things usually wind up being quite different from the finished product. So perhaps my stance is cynical, or "ignorant" as you belittlingly called it, but I'll stand firmly by it until Valve gives me a real reason as to why I should be excited about this in any way.

[gamevet]

I hope this new box is more powerful than Xbox3/PS4, otherwise, what's the point right?

According to the entry level specs, it probably isn't.

Alienware released the $700 X51, that includes the underwhelming Nvidia 545, a Sandy Bridge i3 processor, a 240 watt power supply, 4GB of DDR3 and a 1 TB 7200 rpm HDD.

http://www.tested.com/news/news/arti...lf-as-console/


You could probably build a system with simular specs for under $600, but why would you? I've built a computer with older technology, that would smoke that setup. I'd spent @ $1,080 on a build (January 2011) that includes an LGA 775 board (XFX 750i sli extreme) for $75, 8 gigs of PC2-8500 ram for $120, a 750 Watt Thermaltake power supply for $85, a CPU cooler for $40, a Q9650 quad-core cpu (3 GHZ) for $300, a mid-tower case for $50, 2 x GTX 460s (1024 MB) at around $280 and a couple of 500 gig 7200 rpm HDDs for $120. My system will run just about every game with the highest settings, while the top of the line X51 ($1100 +) would still not perform as well with games, even if I pulled one of my graphics cards.


Sony and MS can sell their next consoles at a loss, while PC manufactures have to sell their product with a profit. It's pretty much a 3DO model for success, since the manufacturers of that console didn't get royalties from software either.

FWIW.....

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012...dware-we-will/

“It’s not a question of whether or not this is going to be useful for customers, whether or not it’s going to be useful for content developers, you know, it’s figuring out the best way we can get these into people’s hands.”


“Well, if we have to sell hardware we will. We have no reason to believe we’re any good at it, it’s more we think that we need to continue to have innovation and if the only way to get these kind of projects started is by us going and developing and selling the hardware directly then that’s what we’ll do. It’s definitely not the first thought that crosses our mind; we’d rather hardware people that are good at manufacturing and distributing hardware do that. We think it’s important enough that if that’s what we end up having to do then that’s what we end up having to do.”

[sheath]

My 2006 Dual Core machine has consistently played games better than my 360 because of the Radeon HD 4850 I bought a couple of years ago, and the 6B of RAM. If this box was going to play games that are already compatible with Steam, I cannot imagine it not being better than the 360 and PS3 because of the memory speeds and GPU shaders alone.

[gamevet]

My 2006 Dual Core machine has consistently played games better than my 360 because of the Radeon HD 4850 I bought a couple of years ago, and the 6B of RAM. If this box was going to play games that are already compatible with Steam, I cannot imagine it not being better than the 360 and PS3 because of the memory speeds and GPU shaders alone.

Yeah, my HP computer (2009) with a Pentium E6300 @ 2.83 GHZ and the GTS 250 I threw into the box, would outperform the 360 and PS3. But, when you consider that the steambox will be in direct competition with the next Playstation and Xbox console, those system specs really aren't up to par, and wouldn't even run a game like Metro 2033 beyond 30 fps. The Nvidia 545's specs are somewhere between that of your HD 4850 and the GTS 250 I have in my other PC.; it's pretty much bottom of the barrel by 2012 standards.

[Barone]

Well, obviously you can't so we shall rely on someone else to chime in on your behalf.

But I know I'm right, I've been here longer than you, I post more and I have more rep so by default I win.

Sure... Keep winning, Tanegashima.

[16-bit]

Not too sure what to think of this to be honest. I already have a really nice PC so I wouldn't personally want to get one of these things, would there be a point to owning one of these things if there weren't exclusive games for it like the 360?
With that being said, if the rumors that the PS4 and next Xbox consoles won't accept discs I can see Steam's wide variety of available indie games that can run on pretty much anything being a definite incentive to consumers looking for games on a budget.

If this were like the On Live, but for steam games I think it'd be really cool, but from what I've seen posted here it looks more like a console.

[Hidden_Darkness]

That removable control stick and button thing has been done before by mad catz.

what is that interesting looking controller called? I might want to get one because of the obscurity factor.

[parallaxscroll]

Sorry if already posted (I didn't search):

Valve researcher: wearable computing project is 'R&D,' isn't a product yet 'if ever'
by JC Fletcher on Apr 14th 2012 12:00PM


"To be clear, this is R&D – it doesn't in any way involve a product at this point, and won't for a long while, if ever – so please, no rumors about Steam glasses being announced at E3." A blog post by Valve researcher Michael Abrash clears up just what CEO Gabe Newell was talking about in regards to wearable computing a couple months back – and the kind of hardware "experiences" Valve is hiring for.

In short, it's not a product announcement. When Abrash was hired at Valve, he was encouraged to find his own interesting project to work on. Seeing the rise of wearable computing as an "inflection point" similar to Quake (which pushed things like networking and 3D graphics into ubiquity), he decided that was something he, and Valve, should be ahead on.

"By 'wearable computing,'" Abrash explains, "I mean mobile computing where both computer-generated graphics and the real world are seamlessly overlaid in your view; there is no separate display that you hold in your hands (think Terminator vision)." Google is working on something similar, of course.

In other words, Valve hired a guy to do whatever at its game development company, and he decided to research a type of computing that doesn't exist yet. If nothing else, this is an indication of just how much money Valve has.

http://www.joystiq.com/2012/04/14/va...andd-isnt-a-p/

[old man]

Oh they make a controller as well, how good is it?

I have the R.A.T 7 mouse, and love it.

Dude you can't be serious? Mad Catz has been the defacto third party controller manufacturer since the PS1 era.

@ Hidden_Darkness That controller is the Mad Catz MLG pro circuit controller. I hear it's kind of expensive, but it's supposed to be the shit when it comes to game controllers. It's available for XBOX360, PS3, and PC.

http://www.amazon.com/Offically-Lice.../dp/B0063BCQ1Q