Rage Against the (Steam) Machine

[bradly1101]

http://www.maximumpc.com/how_steam_machines_are_running_out_steam_2014

"According to numerous Steam Machine hardware vendors, official Steam Machines wouldn’t be sanctioned by Valve unless the PCs are shipped with the Steam controller. When you do the math, this essentially means the Steam Machines themselves are delayed from their projected Q4 2014 release until some unspecified time in 2015."...

..."But it gets even hairier. One Steam Machine OEM who asked not to be identified described the whole ordeal as “a huge mess,” adding, “It’s a joke of a situation.” When outlining the reasons for the complaints, the vendor listed ordering and sitting on inventory (GPUs, CPUs, etc.) as a main factor, and when you couple this with the fact that these computer components quickly depreciate in value over time, it turns out to be a major loss of investment that OEMs have to absorb. For instance, imagine forking over $500 for a GeForce GTX 680, but by the time the Machine launches, the graphics card is worth $350 street. Our contact reminded us that unlike Valve, OEMs make no revenue off of Steam game sales."

 

[Fanatical Meat]

What! A Company that has no employee titles or job descriptions, staffed by Gen Y and Millennials that allows employees to work on any projects they feel inspired to work on without regard to staffing is difficult to deal with and make plans with? INCONCEIVABLE!

p.s. I'm jealous of all Valve employee's

 

[reallyscrued]

What? A company that has no employee titles or job descriptions, staffed by Gen Y and Millennials, and allows people to work on projects they feel inspired to work on is difficult to deal with and make plans with? IMPOSSIBLE!

P.S. : I'm jealous of all Valve employees

Almost none of what you said made sense to me the first read. Fixed...to the best of how well I understand English grammar.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

Ha lazy smart phone typing. Thanks.

 

[werepossum]

What! A Company that has no employee titles or job descriptions, staffed by Gen Y and Millennials that allows employees to work on any projects they feel inspired to work on without regard to staffing is difficult to deal with and make plans with? INCONCEIVABLE!

p.s. I'm jealous of all Valve employee's

This, exactly, but with Reallyscrued's editing. 😀

 

[postmortemIA]

so...sell them now without controller and add controller harder... is it that hard?

 

[SlitheryDee]

Boo. All I give a damn about is the controller, and I'm glad they're trying so hard to make it perfect, but Valve is going to end up torpedoing the whole initiative with their characteristic heel dragging. I'd hate for that to be the reason the steam boxes fail.

 

[Raduque]

I've no interest in any of it. I'm staying far away from Steamboxes and steamoses.

 

[Lonyo]

so...sell them now without controller and add controller harder... is it that hard?

It does seem rather odd.
If you have everything ready, why not put Windows on it and just sell it as a gaming PC, because that's all it is...

Why sit on inventory for something that won't launch for 6 months when you could release a product, without the Steam branding, and get your products out the door...

All a "Steam box" is, is a regular PC running a customised Linux distro with a custom Valve controller.
Take away the controller, change OS, release your hardware now. It's not hard. Then tell Valve to FO if the time comes when they want to launch "Steam boxes".

 

[AyashiKaibutsu]

Why in the world would Valve lock OEMs into hardware before they had an absolutely solid date on the rest of it?

 

[SlitheryDee]

It does seem rather odd.
If you have everything ready, why not put Windows on it and just sell it as a gaming PC, because that's all it is...

Why sit on inventory for something that won't launch for 6 months when you could release a product, without the Steam branding, and get your products out the door...

All a "Steam box" is, is a regular PC running a customised Linux distro with a custom Valve controller.
Take away the controller, change OS, release your hardware now. It's not hard. Then tell Valve to FO if the time comes when they want to launch "Steam boxes".

Didn't a lot of them have custom cases with a steam logo on them or something? At the very least they'd have to sit on those until the steam controller comes out. I don't see why they couldn't just put the more standardized parts like the processors, gpus, and memory in their inventory for use in their regular pc business. I assume some of the motherboards and PSUs are custom or at least relatively uncommon form factors made to fit in the console-sized cases they were going to use though.

 

[Lonyo]

Didn't a lot of them have custom cases with a steam logo on them or something? At the very least they'd have to sit on those until the steam controller comes out. I don't see why they couldn't just put the more standardized parts like the processors, gpus, and memory in their inventory for use in their regular pc business. I assume some of the motherboards and PSUs are custom or at least relatively uncommon form factors made to fit in the console-sized cases they were going to use though.

PSUs and cases don't really lose value though, the only potential issue would be any custom motherboards.
Or the OEMs are just insane and expected a significant increase in sales due to "Steam boxes" and over-ordered inventory in anticipation, in which case they are fools anyway.

 

[PrincessFrosty]

This is a huge waste of time.

It never had an audience and it still doesn't have an audience. Those who want to stream their games from their PC in their house have been able to do this ever since the advent of the cable (HDMI, VGA, DVI, whatever)

It doesn't appeal to console owners because consoles do all the stuff steam machine really does but better and they also absorb a lot of the hardware costs etc.

Plus it's based on linux and so supports barely any games native, most of the really attractive titles are games like CoD which are console and windows only.

The absolutely best thing to come from this is the valve controller which looks like it might do at least a half assed job of making FPS games on consoles actually playable, although nothing even close to keyboard/mouse.

It's just a huge waste of time and given their track record of release schedules and planning ahead, it doesn't bode well for anyone who wants to do business with them.

 

[TeknoBug]

At first Steamboxes were appealing, then I saw the projected price for them... no thanks, most games are Windows based and Steam OS being Linux based there will be a limited amount of titles.

I do like the idea of having a dedicated gaming rig and streaming to a bookshelf HTPC type PC hooked up to a big screen via Steam in-home stream, that's a much cheaper option.

 

[ImpulsE69]

I don't think it is entirely. As has been brought up in the Steam Streaming thread, there could be a market that just isn't known yet. Hell, we all know where Windows is going, this may actually turn out to be a good thing in the future (at least from an OS perspective). Options are always nice. The question is what will this lead to.

I do find it odd that these guys are just sitting on hardware, and that valve would expect them to. Valve of all people should know that PC gear doesn't age gracefully when it comes to gaming. Their OS isn't going to solve that. I also wonder if anyone really cares about their controller? My understanding is it just wasn't THAT good.

 

[blastingcap]

Sorry if this is off topic but does anyone know of a device or setup where you can use mouse and keyboard on couch comfortably?

Link to it?

I don't really want a steam controller, I want kb+mouse.

 

[SMOGZINN]

Sorry if this is off topic but does anyone know of a device or setup where you can use mouse and keyboard on couch comfortably?

Link to it?

I don't really want a steam controller, I want kb+mouse.

Maybe you want something like a Lap Desk

 

[TeknoBug]

Sorry if this is off topic but does anyone know of a device or setup where you can use mouse and keyboard on couch comfortably?

Link to it?

I don't really want a steam controller, I want kb+mouse.

I have one of those plastic outdoor tables where you can change the elevation with the legs and you can fold it to tuck it away under the couch or against the wall.

 

[Lonyo]

At first Steamboxes were appealing, then I saw the projected price for them... no thanks, most games are Windows based and Steam OS being Linux based there will be a limited amount of titles.

I do like the idea of having a dedicated gaming rig and streaming to a bookshelf HTPC type PC hooked up to a big screen via Steam in-home stream, that's a much cheaper option.

It's a cheaper option you can do today.

Plus part of the Steam box was to compete potentially with consoles. Consoles will have had an 18 month lead by the time they come out, and might even have already had a price cut, plus additional features vs launch (aka all the promised features pre-launch) might be available.

All the "advantages" a Steam box might have had over consoles at least will have been lost by 18 months of headstart and development on consoles, so it's a nonexistent battle with consoles.
And for PC, well it offers nothing to PC users that they can't get without some stupid branding, other than maybe a controller if it's not available elsewhere.

 

[bradly1101]

And for PC, well it offers nothing to PC users that they can't get without some stupid branding, other than maybe a controller if it's not available elsewhere.

I wonder if they'll only sell the controller with the machine, because you're right; that seems to be the only thing going for it.

 

[smackababy]

It's a cheaper option you can do today.

Plus part of the Steam box was to compete potentially with consoles. Consoles will have had an 18 month lead by the time they come out, and might even have already had a price cut, plus additional features vs launch (aka all the promised features pre-launch) might be available.

All the "advantages" a Steam box might have had over consoles at least will have been lost by 18 months of headstart and development on consoles, so it's a nonexistent battle with consoles.
And for PC, well it offers nothing to PC users that they can't get without some stupid branding, other than maybe a controller if it's not available elsewhere.

I've been saying that since the Steam box was just a rumor. They offer no advantages to the current ecosystem. This box can't play the overwhelming majority of PC games; it can't play console games; it can't compete price wise; and it has no one but Valve behind it developing (and we've all seen just how fast they stopped working on games once they realized Steam made them far more money).

 

[Artorias]

Unless SteamOS is revolutionary(which can be used on a PC too) I don't see these machines adding anything new to the marketplace.

Also Valve isn't making friends in the hardware industry by delaying, this isn't the software industry where an unfinished product retains full value until release day.

My prediction is SteamOS gets launched with mild praise, controller will be mediocre to good, the Steam Machine flops and they eventually back out of that market.

Honestly, who is the target audience? Anyone have input on that?

 

[Stuka87]

How on earth can it possibly take them another YEAR to develop a game pad? We have developed space craft in half the time. And I have quite a bit of experience in the engineering and manufacturing industry. I do not understand what their issue is.

As for the OEM's, I feel for them. They were told "Build things now so you can ship them soon!!" and after buying and building the machines, they are told "oh.. yeah.. sorry, but can you just sit on that hardware for another year?" Meanwhile the value of those machines drops out and the OEM's have to eat that cost. Valve may just find itself on the bad side of a suit over this.

And even looking past the controller, the software as it sits now is pretty meh.

 

[HeXen]

I just want the gamepad as I have no desire to go back to sitting at a desk nor be stuck with the limited full 360 pad supported titles. Can't hardly play anything without having to set a kb/mouse on my lap, screw that.

I noticed if you use Windows and shut down all the extra services and change explorer shell to use Steam as the shell instead, that the PC boots up exactly like SteamOS and just as fast without ever seeing a desktop. I don't think Linux games are going to take off.

 

[Subyman]

From what devs have said in the past, Valve isn't known for being a well tuned enterprise. A dude would email devs with a pdf that would give them instructions on how to submit their game with most of the information being submitted through email back and forth. I believe they just upgraded to make the process more automated with online forms. If they've just started to get their software backend worked out then I'm sure their new hardware venture is in tatters.