Did Valve take a backseat with its steam machine?

So where is Valve steam machine instead of the third parties its been showing off? You would think they would have more announcements for its own made steam machine. For odd reasons there not at the forefront of this as much anymore. Do they have a set date to show off their machine yet?

Strange they aren't spearheading this with the steam machine they said they will be manufacturing alongside the others.

Been wondering that myself

I guess you didn't pay attention to any of this from square one, Valve was never going to make one.

This is the prototype they were making and since disappeared from the public

@bloodytides said:

@nyadc said:

I guess you didn't pay attention to any of this from square one, Valve was never going to make one.

This is the prototype they were making and since disappeared from the public

lol, like I said you didn't pay attention, the prototype was the only thing Valve was ever going to do personally and they needed a device to showcase and have consumers test, that was it, it was never a market they were ever going to enter themselves.

I think they just want others to stick a blade under they're necks with the hardware , and they just throw they're OS in it.

That was pretty much the plan from the get go, it puts them at absolutely no financial risk but benefits them. Valve is one of the smartest companies in the industry when it comes to creating ways to generate revenue with little work done on their end, look at their marketplace for crying out loud, the skins and items, it's incredible. I really despise Valve now as they've become nothing but money grubbers with little to no interest in appeasing their game fan base, but I have to credit them all the same.

It's what I've been saying all along, PC gamers are brainwashed by Valve's PR department and were suckered to believe that their DRM makes no harm to the industry. Why does Valve have piss poor customer support? Because they let their own employees do whatever they want and give no fucks about their fanbase or consumers unless it's a way to sucker them for more cash!

Meanwhile, CD Projekt Red and GOG.com are the true saviors of PC gaming.

@FireEmblem_Man: They dont have Steam Refund though. Gaben is King. Also, tell CD Project Red to hurry up with the Witcher 3 Enhanced Edition, im tired of waiting on them to fix that mess, i know their small, but hot damn.

How many times do I have to tell you? Valve and Gaben are not PC gods! They're heathens, only wanting money! The only reason why they made Steam Refunds is to protect their images towards gamers as if they're good guys and remain "saviors of PC gaming!"

all hail almighty gaben

Valve in general has taken a backseat.

I don't believe Valve was ever going to dump huge investments into the hardware market.

They effectively sold the "SteamMachine" name to a bunch of third-party manufacturers. Royalty tastes good.

they have been quiet.

i think they are doing a lot of stuff behind the scenes. a lot of work is going into getting development tools up to speed on the linux side and making it as easy as possible to get games designed on windows up and running on a linux based OS.

i think they have also been doing a lot to get more developers to release a linux version (basically a version for steam OS). so far thats actually going pretty well. i mean linux has better 3rd party support than the wiiu and valve havent been at this whole "develop your own platform" thing for that long. there are a few total war games on it or on the way (rome 2 is coming as is warhammer). witcher 3 is coming. shadows of mordor was released and is a pretty darn good port from what i hear. arkham knight is also on the way i think. the notable missing companies are EA, ubisoft and activision. Bethesda is also not there. EA have pretty much flat out said "No" and i havent heard anything from the others. very little of this would happen without valves backing.

the hardware side they have left up to OEMs which makes sense. in terms of size and expertise valve are not MS, sony or nintendo. they dont design CPUs or anything. the stream controller, though a very interesting proposition, is also a testament to that. they are not a hardware company.

the problem is that OEMs are making a bit of a mess of it. every steam machine (or toted steam machine) i have seen so far is lacking in something thats going to really hurt its gaming chops. its either too expensive for PS4 levels of performance, its too big and not living room friendly and/or its too small and they cant possibly fit decent gaming hardware into it.

OEMs. listen. a PS3 fat sized PC is ok...its nothing to be ashamed of. yes its very nice that you managed to squeez an R9 nano and an i7 into something the size of a postage stamp but charging 2k for it and having it throttle due to heat issues doesnt really inspire confidence. also follow the golden rules. minimum of 8GB of main ram, 4GB on the GPU, 4 cores on the CPU (seriously, an i3 has no business being in a steambox) and a GPU as powerful a 750Ti..ish. dont take the piss with the price and we are good to go.

Doing what every rational person thought... nothing, because the idea was doomed to fail.

well one thing.

Steam Machines themselves have always been outsourced to Manufacturers since Day 1.

But Valve's Own thing I believe is actually Steam OS, Steam Link, and The Steam Controller because let's be honest wtf is A Steam Machine? A God Damn PC that's what it is.

If you are hardcore into PC gaming you more than likely have a Steam Account and using Some Decent Hardware to play the best games or at least play one of the Popular games.

Why the hell would you need to buy a Steam Machine if you already have a powerful Windows Machine that can do so much more?

They aren't consoles made by Valve like so many people like to think they are. The Closest you're going to get to that is Steam Link and Steam Controller, but you'll still need a "Powerful" (term used loosely) PC to work it the way it's intended.

... Except they release free updates on a constant basis all the time.. Counter Strike Go Just got a major patch..

.. Except Steam Machines, like the Alienware Alpha, has been selling extremely well..

@nyadc: So we're going to pretend Dota 2 and CSGO isn't a thing?

I'm pretty sure they killed consoles. I was told that was going to happen on System Wars, so it must have happened.

Let the Steam OS and Steam Machine die already. PC is already an open platform. It just seems like it was built out of some grudge that Gabe has towards Microsoft. He uses to work there before founding Valve. It is like he wants to outdo them or something, but it does nothing good for gamers.

I feel this whole thing was a staged power play by Valve to usurp MS/Windows, all starting with trying to create a hysteria over Windows 8 being a close system that threatened Valve's Steam service, and gamers in general. They knew damn well it wasn't true but tried to push that narrative so they could pretend to be the heroes that saved gaming by creating a custom Linux based OS and push Linux gaming in hopes all the serious gamers would go flocking to it. And, you can tell, as MS was rolling out Windows 10, they specifically made mention about focusing on making sure the Steam experience rolled out smoothly and was a chief consideration when coming up with Windows 10. At first glance that really doesn't mean anything to anybody not conscious of everything mentioned above, but it was MS giving the finger to Gabe Newell, Valve, the Steam OS and Steambox.

Source?

Pretty much. If Valve were serious about Linux gaming taking off, they'd be paying bribes.

I still think they should bribe Bandai Namco into localizing Gundam Extreme VS.

On a scatological reading of the title, yes, they did.

Couldn't agree more with the first half of that sentiment. Why is Gabe trying so hard to kidnap all my beautiful games?

Maybe it wasn't an entirely altruistic act, but it takes some twisted kind of logic to make listening to your market wrong. Steam refunds are the best thing Valve has done with its DRM/store so far.

I disagree, Steam Refunds was the only way to ease tension from pissed off PC gamers yelling at Valve, especially the paid mods debacle. It worked and now Valve are heroes once again, it makes me sick to my stomach.

Oh, completely. We're fighting the same windmill, bud. Nevertheless, Valve did listen to their market because, well... it's better than losing it. Isn't that how a free market is supposed to operate?

Sure Steam fucked up with trying the paid mods, but it still pales in comparison to the Sony hack when they lost millions of customer's information. Also not as bad as Microsoft's crappy Xbox One release E3 press conference which killed that console for many potential future gamers,

Steam have had some problems; Sony and Microsoft have had many more.

@osan0:EA said they won't support Linux any time soon because of the charts on Steam hardware survey showing Linux is barely 1%. The Blizzard COO on the other hand have said they're looking into support SteamOS.

And L4D3 is already said to be in the works, we got a pretty massive CSGO update the other day.

Steam machine preorders have been sold out for quite some time on steam.. Honestly I think the Alienware Alpha is brilliant.. Its like twice the size of a router with a I3 and 750 TI, the thing never gets loud and weighs like 8 lbs.. I got mine for $410 on sale at Amazon.. It is a solid counterpart/lan system in which games like MGS5 I have played on it at 1080p with high and extra high settings getting a solid 60 fps the majority of the time, except for some settlements in which I see it go down to 45 fps.. Not sure what that is about because I have bumped it down to 900p for instance and I get the exact same fps.. And the CPU isn't taxed seeing as temps only get into the high 50's, under full load it gets to around 75 degrees for other games, not so for MGS..

So for $410 your getting a system that is not only smaller than any machine you can currently build, but houses a full copy of windows on top of respectable entry level performance that will be able to play basically every game out on the market on medium/high settings or higher..

Why? Are people this dense to realize that competition and choice are good things?? You seriously want to get pigeonholed into being forced to use Windows if you plan to play on the pc? I sure as hell don't.. Especially after the numerous privacy concerns Windows 10 has with many folks out there.. Especially when the steam OS is FREE, and a completely open platform..

What's the point in support Linux, and why wait for L4D3? Where's Half-Life 3? Valve is still a joke

Why fracture the community? Why further complicate development of games? I have no problem with Windows and have been using it since the days where you still had to run games on DOS because they would not run on Windows. Things were a lot more complicated and worse back then. Windows is a good platform now and has been for a while.

I definitely agree! I don't think a lot of people truly know the history of PC gaming and why Windows was the De Facto standard for PC gaming.

@FireEmblem_Man: How do feel about Valve releasing free updates for their games, and even releasing one of their games as free DLC (L4D), not to mention their most recent and most popular game being free. How do you spin that?

No they haven't. Valve was never going to make or sell the SteamMachine PC.

They are too busy working on;

1. the Debian-based SteamOS. It still has quite a few major bugs to square way before it is ready. They are also still making it more streamlined for the casual PC gamer to use effectively.
2. Adjusting the Steam Controller and its proper support on a ton of games.
3. And here is something most of you ignore, A TON of their Engineers are working on finishing up the Vulkan API. Also, future Valve games will be developed on Vulkan (Windows and Linux/SteamOS) via Source 2, not DirectX 12.

lucky you but it that price REALLY representative? Its £500 for the cheapest model in the UK ($778) .... I could build a quite-big but portable modular system for that much... and what I want with it.... coming with windows is one thing, but again.... what the hell is the point in Steam OS then?

SteamOS is just a customized Linux. Linux has been around for years and never taken off. It does not have Direct X support and that is why it sucks as a gaming platform. Most games are made with DX and until that changes, it is not a viable option. I don't care if SteamOS or Linux is free. So is Win 10. I did not have to pay anything to upgrade. Even when buying a new rig, the cost of the OS is minimal. What benefit does SteamOS have for the user other than being free? Unless there are huge performance gains vs. DX12 and Vulcan running on Windows, there is no good reason to switch. People will stick with the familiar and what they are comfortable with until you show them a clearly superior option.

Easy, they only support their old games no one cares about, I mean, who cares for L4D 1 when people prefer L4D 2? Don't make me laugh, L4D will soon be Free 2 Play with incoming micro-transactions and free hats with every purchase of valve games or on any steam sale. It's just how they ruined Team Fortress 2.

... They fully ported over the entire L4D1 campaigns and characters over to L4D2 years ago as a free update..

I have seen the I3 consistently on sale for any where between as little as $388 to $450 on a consistent basis on Amazon in the states.. And I have a hard time spit balling system at that price.. a I3 + 750 Ti already costs $250.. Add in a case, motherboard, ram, hard drive, psu, and a windows copy..

@FireEmblem_Man: Really? Cause not long ago Dota 2 and CSGO just had massive updates. So far they've released 3 of their games for free.

I don't care for those games, in fact, I don't care for those heavily modded games Valve only purchased and slapped their names on.