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[ThaiGrocer]

Their new thing is the windows 8 store. They're trying to get more people on it to shove the store in front of them.

 

[Htown]

But Valve doesn't care whether you use Steam on a custom-built PC or a Steambox. People continuing to build their own PCs and run whatever OS supporting Steam they want on them is not an issue for Valve.

Yeah, it seems like people have this weird idea that Valve is going to use their games and Steam to push people towards the Steambox, when actually they are making the Steambox as a way to get more people on Steam.

 

[10k]

Shit. If I knew they would be selling GTX 780 with i7-4770k and 16GB of RAM I wouldn't have upgraded my computer in May. Fuck me haha. Well, 12GB of RAM and 3770k OC'd to 4.2GHz and GTX 780 is close enough.

 

[Atomski]

Yeah, it seems like people have this weird idea that Valve is going to use their games and Steam to push people towards the Steambox, when actually they are making the Steambox as a way to get more people on Steam.

Yeah I feel like these same questions get asked over and over.

Its this weird console mentality I think. They think there will be money hat exclusives and a reason to be forced to buy a Steambox over their PC.

When there is none of this..

If you have a PC you pretty much already have a Steambox.. you can just choose to continue using windows or dual boot Steam OS. If you dont own a PC then this is a PC.. its still going to be more expensive than a console but dont forget it will also have all the perks of an open platform unlike a console.

 

[velociraptor]

This can't be cheaper than buying all the parts separately and building your own PC, right?

 

[starwarsfan541]

This can't be cheaper than buying all the parts separately and building your own PC, right?

I have a feeling Nvidia is steams partner in this whole thing, maybe they got a large discount, they seemed pretty upset no one used their GPUs in the new consoles.

 

[Nethaniah]

I have a feeling Nvidia is steams partner in this whole thing, maybe they got a large discount, they seemed pretty upset no one used their GPUs in the new consoles.

No they didn't.

 

[starwarsfan541]

No they didn't.

Then what was with all of Nvidia's anti console statements?

 

[Nethaniah]

Then what was with all of Nvidia's anti console statements?

Hyping up the platform they are a part of?

 

[Naminator]

GPU: some units with NVidia Titan, some GTX780, some GTX760, and some GTX660
CPU: some boxes with Intel : i7-4770, some i5-4570, and some i3

Nvidia? TITAN?
Intel?

Well it figures, there's no way that Lord Gaben would settle for anything other than the best!

 

[Moral Panic]

I hope I can buy the case separately. I really want a small, gaming designed case. I don't need cases with 10 Hard drive slots and a massive ATX motherboard. 1 Graphics card, 1 CPU, 1 Hard drive, 1 SSD. Any case which is designed for this is what I want.

 

[Sentenza]

This can't be cheaper than buying all the parts separately and building your own PC, right?

Hardly.
But as I already pointed previously in this very same thread if they can make it "as cheap as buying all the parts separately" they may already have a potential winner.
A "Steambox" (or Steam Machine or whatever) at that point could simply become a standard gaming PC that you can confidently suggest to the Average Joe who's tentatively interested in PC gaming/Steam but isn't willing to catch up with the whole "do it yourself" part.

Also, to put it in other words:

Valve makes money by selling people games on Steam.

Steam is getting more and more popular, but PCs are getting squeezed more and more by other markets and by strategic incoherence on the part of Windows.

Valve's goal is to make sure Steam is able to keep getting more popular even as PCs (in a vacuum) decline.

One way to do this is to make Steam compatible with other computer OSes that already exist; that's why Valve created Steamplay and released Mac/Linux clients.

Another way to do this is to create their own gaming-oriented OS and encourage more and more ports to it; that's why Valve created SteamOS and is pushing for Linux ports from major developers.

Another way to do this is to make it easier to play games on the couch/TV so people don't feel compelled to sit at their desk when they play PC games; that's why Valve created the Steam Controller and Big Picture mode.

Yet another way to do this is to make it easier to buy PC gaming hardware at a reasonable price without having to know much about computers; that's why Valve created Steam Machines and is working with manufacturers to make them efficient and effective.

The common denominator of all these efforts is that they answer the questions of people who don't already use Steam. If someone says "well I'd get into PC gaming but it's too expensive/obnoxious to build a box," you tell them to buy a Steam Machine. If someone says "lol comfy couch," you hand them a Steam Controller. If someone wants to play indie games on a miniature HTPC streaming box, you point them to SteamOS. And so on.

 

[FloatingDivider]

fuck me I need to register as a potential beta applicant, I need to do the challenges though am I too late ?

 

[Captain Tuttle]

A "Steambox" (or Steam Machine or whatever) at that point could simply become a standard gaming PC that you can confidently suggest to the Average Joe who's tentatively interested in PC gaming/Steam but isn't willing to catch up with the whole "do it yourself" part.

It's like you wrote this with me in mind.

 

[HolyBaikal]

Goodmyness, why are they so high end? That seems too high end.

I don't understand how those could be made affordable to anyone looking into PC gaming but want console prices.

 

[Naminator]

This can't be cheaper than buying all the parts separately and building your own PC, right?

Why not lol?

They can easily make a deal with Nvidia and Intel and who ever else to give them 10-15% discount on the items.
Not to mention the fact that Valve being as big as they are could just simply sell these without making a profit, by taking out their own cut of the pie that retailers get.

I don't know the spread of the pie when it comes to retailers, but imagine a GTX TITAN that sells for 1000, how much does a place like Newegg gets from it? 200$? Don't know, but lets say it is 200$, thats the 200$ that Valve can deduct from their price to make "Steam Machines" more affordable and more mainstream.

I believe they do this all the time with their Steam Sales.

But as I said, this is all speculation, but the point is that cheaper Steam Machines are not an impossibility.

 

[Momentary]

Why are people question why there aren't any AMD cards in these where you have this

Steam Rolling Into Your Living Room

It doesn't seem like Nvidia even cares to use Mantle.

 

[wildfire]

Perhaps I'm mistaken in their goal with the Steambox then. I thought going against the "ethos of what it means to be a PC gamer" was exactly what they were trying to do. I was operating under the assumption they were attempting to appeal to a new segment that simply wants to pay $500 or whatever for a no nonsense game/media box for the living room. Obviously that does not preclude you from dropping in a Titan if you want, and I was assuming annual iterations and branded upgrade kits were a given. Countless companies have been doing branded PC gaming machines for eons, none of them have had any kind of impact for the same reasons. I think you have to have a singular, highly visible, relatively low cost box you can point to as a defacto standard. What we're basically getting is a Valve Alienware line.

Well Valve is picking and choosing to take out the the aspects of PC gaming that are detrimental instead of the stuff that has benefits.

If you can't see choosing your own hardware as a benefit just chalk it up as a tradeoff because there are plenty of even console gamers who like the flexibility of doing whatever mods they want to their machines to get additional benefits their hardware could provide if you know what you are doing.

Even those who don't pay for people to mod their consoles to varying degrees.

The stability and compatibility issues I mentioned are something Valve will try to address. The way they have marketed steam boxes as a collection of hardware not beholden to a specific spec clearly says they continue to see value in allowing people to pay as little or as much as they want for hardware.

Their goal should be trying to beat custom-built PC prices right now, not console prices. People are always saying "build it yourself, you'll save money", if Valve can break that mantra it should be considered a success.

Regardless, the main thing is that in 2-3 years PC hardware will have advanced so much, to the point where even a 500 machine could be 3 times more powerful than next gen consoles, nevermind the high-end stuff. If Valve leverages that it could be a nice long-term benefit.

Name me one company building PC's that sells them for less than the parts would cost to build yourself?

Outside of a couple Dell Outlet with Slickdeals coupon + discounts, etc.. they don't really exist.

The idea that Valve could buy the parts cheaper than you could by shopping around and would build them and sell them to you as a whole cheaper than you could build it is outright ridiculous.

This isn't Sony or MS selling the 360/PS3 at a loss. It's not gonna happen.

That i3+ 660 box would be at around $700 when all said and done.

Well I don't agree with the last sentence but NervousXtian said what I would have. PC part prices are at the point where I can see a $400 steam box that will still cost more than the equivalent do it yourself $300 pc.

 

[aeolist]

Then what was with all of Nvidia's anti console statements?

accurate answers to questions posed to them by various media outlets

i don't recall a single time that nvidia just sent out a press release unprompted making a statement along the lines of "haha ur babby console sux"

and in any case the console business isn't interesting to nvidia because the margins are so small. the reason amd was able to get contracts on both of the microsoft and sony platforms is because they're in dire financial straights and were willing to undercut their competitors to get whatever kind of revenue stream they could. that's not a game nvidia wanted to play, they'd rather concentrate on increasing the spread of higher-powered PCs where they are already dominant and stand to make much better margins.

 

[Moral Panic]

It doesn't seem like Nvidia even cares to use Mantle.

Mantle won't work on nVidia cards. Mantle is a low level API for GCN architecture which is different to nVidia's cards. Mantle won't even work on all AMD cards, pre-GCN cards won't be able to use it.

 

[Nzyme32]

Why not lol?

They can easily make a deal with Nvidia and Intel and who ever else to give them 10-15% discount on the items.
Not to mention the fact that Valve being as big as they are could just simply sell these without making a profit, by taking out their own cut of the pie that retailers get.

I don't know the spread of the pie when it comes to retailers, but imagine a GTX TITAN that sells for 1000, how much does a place like Newegg gets from it? 200$? Don't know, but lets say it is 200$, thats the 200$ that Valve can deduct from their price to make "Steam Machines" more affordable and more mainstream.

I believe they do this all the time with their Steam Sales.

But as I said, this is all speculation, but the point is that cheaper Steam Machines are not an impossibility.

Hate to burst your bubble but unfortunately this is unlikely.

It is already confirmed that other manufacturers will be making their own steam machines. If valve were to subsidise their own machine, the other companies will not be able to compete or make a profit on their machines and would simply not take part in the initiative at all.

Essentially what Valve are doing with the steam box is similar to android phones. Although at the moment, we have no idea what the rules are for these other companies to licence SteamOS. As the OS is made to increase graphics and processing gains, I doubt manufacturers could do insane customisation to the OS like we see in android as they may reduce performance. We will have to wait and see what Valve have in mind and how it will shape the ecosystem going forward.

 

[aeolist]

Goodmyness, why are they so high end? That seems too high end.

I don't understand how those could be made affordable to anyone looking into PC gaming but want console prices.

these aren't necessarily the boxes that valve will be selling directly, if they even do end up doing that. any OEM can take basically any PC design and stick steam OS on it if they want to sell a steam machine. there will be streaming models that start super cheap and tri-titan overclocked watercooled monsters that run $4000, and everything in between.

and anyone who's really looking into pc gaming would realize that games are far, far cheaper than on consoles so even if you spend an extra $100-200 to get a box that's equivalent or better than a console you'll save more than that in a year.

 

[ashecitism]

fuck me I need to register as a potential beta applicant, I need to do the challenges though am I too late ?

Deadline is the 25th.

I hope I can buy the case separately. I really want a small, gaming designed case. I don't need cases with 10 Hard drive slots and a massive ATX motherboard. 1 Graphics card, 1 CPU, 1 Hard drive, 1 SSD. Any case which is designed for this is what I want.

well, they said they'll release the CAD files.

 

[wildfire]

It's a legitimate question, tho: if MS by some chance counters this w/ a Windows designed exclusively for gaming (seeing as how mainly gamers will be core PC purchasers in the future, besides corporations), SteamOS and Steambox's roles become severely marginalized. Most of the people it sounds like Steambox is geared at know how to build their own systems already, and Valve won't be getting big enough discounts on bulk to keep the machine in PS4/XBO price territory.

MS could very well do it and kill any momentum Valve has with this thing by releasing a Windows w/ gaming-optimized features and ripping out all the non-gaming features. There'd be no purpose for SteamOS or Steambox by then either; PC gamers will stick with Windows b/c of the games they can play on it already and the fact a gaming-oriented Windows OS could basically rob Valve of playing the hero. I'm surprised they haven't done it already tbh.

Valve needs to count on MS not being interested enough in PC gaming (or the PC market in general) to do that, and needs to get this thing going big very soon. Even as it stands, can any PC gamer somewhat decent at making builds truly say they'd buy a Steambox right now instead of designing a custom PC? Lots of answers in this thread are saying the latter.

And this is from a console gamer interested in SteamOS/Steambox btw.

Ha!

*snorts*


While I like to be careful about making predictions in the case of Microsoft after the past 2 decades of what they have done I can emphatically say this is fantasy.


Microsoft will not make an OS that is free.

If Microsoft had the smallest clue what virtualization could do to bring an easy to do LAN environment for the family they would restructure their pricing model to offer moderately less expensive yearly licenses like Windows Server 2012.

Microsoft will bleed you further for cloud support.

Microsoft will indirectly raise the cost of using 3rd party programs.

Microsoft will fail hard at marketing correctly their gaming OS.

Microsoft will fail even harder getting 3rd party support in the PC space.

Microsoft follows trends slowly. They will miss the boat on offering a great solution at the right time when they had all the time and power to do it.

The only thing positive they would do is not break compatibility with older OS's as severely if the compatibility tool was for games and games only. What happened with Windows 8 regarding this last point was an expensive anomaly.

Hate to burst your bubble but unfortunately this is unlikely.

It is already confirmed that other manufacturers will be making their own steam machines. If valve were to subsidise their own machine, the other companies will not be able to compete or make a profit on their machines and would simply not take part in the initiative at all.

Essentially what Valve are doing with the steam box is similar to android phones. Although at the moment, we have no idea what the rules are for these other companies to licence SteamOS. As the OS is made to increase graphics and processing gains, I doubt manufacturers could do insane customisation to the OS like we see in android as they may reduce performance. We will have to wait and see what Valve have in mind and how it will shape the ecosystem going forward.

Exactly.

Valve = Google

SteamOS = Android

Valve's steambox = Nexus


What I want to know is who will be the Samsung Galaxy equivalent. They'll be interesting.

 

[Durante]

Yeah, it seems like people have this weird idea that Valve is going to use their games and Steam to push people towards the Steambox, when actually they are making the Steambox as a way to get more people on Steam.

Exactly.

Then what was with all of Nvidia's anti console statements?

They said that their hardware is faster than their competitor's hardware. What else are they supposed to say when asked about console hardware compared to their products?

 

[killatopak]

Will be expensive as hell.

I hope these steamboxes are compatible with 360/DS4/One controllers.

What differentiates a steam box from a normal PC?

 

[ShootingB1anks]

If the Titan model is $999 I will buy it day one. Let's be real, it will be $1,599. Then again how long will the Titan remain a $1,000 video card? This time next year it will be $6-700. And the Titan version will drop in price to around $1,200.

 

[ElFly]

Those specs look surprisingly high. I expected the low end machine to be able to just stream and cost no more than $200. While an i3 is low end, is certainly not the lowest, practical end, and not that cheap, and a gtx660 is no slouch either.

 

[Momentary]

Mantle won't work on nVidia cards. Mantle is a low level API for GCN architecture which is different to nVidia's cards. Mantle won't even work on all AMD cards, pre-GCN cards won't be able to use it.

I thought that it was said even though it was proprietary now that it would be made available for others later. I guess I misread information something somewhere.

 

[ashecitism]

Those specs look surprisingly high. I expected the low end machine to be able to just stream and cost no more than $200. While an i3 is low end, is certainly not the lowest, practical end, and not that cheap, and a gtx660 is no slouch either.

They'll talk about that later

So high-powered SteamOS living room machines are nice, and fun to play with, and will make many Steam customers happy. But there are a lot of other Steam customers who already have perfectly great gaming hardware at home in the form of a powerful PC. The prototype we're talking about here is not meant to replace that. Many of those users would like to have a way to bridge the gap into the living room without giving up their existing hardware and without spending lots of money. We think that's a great goal, and we're working on ways to use our in-home streaming technology to accomplish it - we'll talk more about that in the future.

 

[Htown]

Those specs look surprisingly high. I expected the low end machine to be able to just stream and cost no more than $200. While an i3 is low end, is certainly not the lowest, practical end, and not that cheap, and a gtx660 is no slouch either.

These are just the machines for the beta test.

 

[ElFly]

Why the flying hell aren't AMD GPUs in it?!? You'd think with Mantle completely obliterating the need for DirectX... AND with the AMD GPUs in all the next gen consoles, that AMD would be the perfect fit for SteamOS and SteamBox.

Valve clearly have not thought this through very well.

You realize that old games still need DirectX even with Mantle around?

Honestly I expected a low end A8 to just stream games and maybe play a couple of low end games too, but Mantle didn't enter in my head. Guess the AMD linux drivers are just that bad.

If I had been asked to consider an intel/nvidia machine I'd have said celeron/dual core + passively cooled gt610, maaaybe gt630/640. You can prolly get all that for less than $200, maybe less. Doubt they were gonna go cheap on the hybrid harddrive, tho.

These are just the machines for the beta test.

Here's hoping for a streaming stick or something.

 

[Easy_D]

What's funny about Microsoft is how they are still promising "a renewed focus on PC gaming" every five-six months and systematically nothing ever follows.

Eh. Shutting down GFWL is probably the best thing they've done for PC gaming in a long while.

 

[Naminator]

They said that their hardware is faster than their competitor's hardware. What else are they supposed to say when asked about console hardware compared to their products?

Well OBVIOUSLY they are supposed to say that they are super jealous of AMD and that they wish they could trade places.

 

[Demon Ice]

So they're going to have different GPUs (Titan, 780, 770, 660), but they're all going to have the same 3 GB of VRAM?

 

[Dragon1893]

450w psu?

 

[Piers]

and anyone who's really looking into pc gaming would realize that games are far, far cheaper than on consoles so even if you spend an extra $100-200 to get a box that's equivalent or better than a console you'll save more than that in a year.

Pre-owned section. Just have to look carefully sometimes.

 

[Zombie James]

450w psu?

It's pushing it, but this Anandtech test was run on a system with an i7-3960X. The CPU's Valve listed would consume less power.

 

[Sentenza]

Pre-owned section. Just have to look carefully sometimes.

They are cheaper even taking pre-owned market into consideration.
They become *embarrassingly* cheaper if you don't.

 

[Maninthemirror]

No amd no steam box for me

 

[Sentenza]

No amd no steam box for me

What's up with these people on GAF loving AMD more for no apparent reason?
Is it some sort of "cheer for the underdog" thing?

 

[Durante]

What's up with these people on GAF loving AMD more for no apparent reason?
Is it some sort of "cheer for the underdog" thing?

I think it's more part of the prevailing "consoles vs. PC" narrative. At least, I've noticed it far more ever since it became clear that AMD is supplying all the consoles.

 

[charlequin]

MS could very well do it and kill any momentum Valve has with this thing by releasing a Windows w/ gaming-optimized features and ripping out all the non-gaming features.

You made a good post here and explicated yourself well, but... this idea is just so unimaginably absurd to anyone who's been following Microsoft's behavior in the personal OS space (and in gaming in particular.) It's hard not just to laugh at the idea.

It's been ten years or more since Microsoft took anything more than quarter-assed steps in the gaming space. They're working overtime just trying to salvage something out of their problematic Windows 8 strategy. They don't have the time, resources, or inclination to actually build something targeting Valve in particular to shore up their position as the gaming OS -- if they had wanted to, the time would've been ten years ago when the opportunity existed to seriously tackle the OS-level issues with PC gaming.

This can't be cheaper than buying all the parts separately and building your own PC, right?

The goal isn't to make it cheaper. Right now the benefit of building your own PC over buying a prebuilt is that (if you know what you're doing) you can use better parts, lay out the internals wisely, and watch for deals on components. Most prebuilt systems will run you something ridiculous like a 50% margin, use crappy components, and not actually bring any engineering benefit to the table in terms of size/cooling/power usage. (Note how the only prebuilt PCs with a good reputation are actually Macs, because with Apple you actually do get that engineering benefit for your price premium.) The downside is that you do have to know what you're doing and you have to spend time (sometimes kind of a lot of time) actually putting things together, and handling any testing or RMAs or anything yourself.

If there were prebuilt systems that were actually designed for gaming, that used good components, and applied some intelligence to handle cooling gracefully in a small case, I (and I suspect a lot of my friends who enjoy PC games but always feel a mixture of excitement and dread at each system rebuild) would be willing to pay a small premium over the raw cost of the components.

 

[mrklaw]

This: Dimensions: approx. 12 x 12.4 x 2.9 in high
Combined with an i7 and Titan amazes me, frankly.

I don't see it as possible frankly. Maybe it's a typo. A micro atX motherboard would take up 10" x 10" which is basically the entire floor of the case filled. Titan is 10.5" long and 4,5" high, and about an inch(?) thick. Even assuming it is lying flat you'd need to flip it 90 degrees, which would fill half the case and probably block ram or CPU sockets. Then you have nowhere to put the PSU which would need a quarter if the case to itself.

Might they try with a mini-ITX motherboard? Some kind of custom PSU?

 

[brain_stew]

Those specs look surprisingly high. I expected the low end machine to be able to just stream and cost no more than $200. While an i3 is low end, is certainly not the lowest, practical end, and not that cheap, and a gtx660 is no slouch either.

You could always buy the $139 Bay Trail based NUC and pop in any spare 2.5" drive you have lying around. It should be a good solution for a streaming box.

 

[wildfire]

There are thin form factor PSUs. The most common one is flex. They are all OEM or sold to people who run enterprise class servers.

 

[Xilium]

What's up with these people on GAF loving AMD more for no apparent reason?
Is it some sort of "cheer for the underdog" thing?

I think it's more part of the prevailing "consoles vs. PC" narrative. At least, I've noticed it far more ever since it became clear that AMD is supplying all the consoles.

I would imagine it has more to do with the price of the hardware, at least that is the reason I'll be going back to AMD this gen (I went with Nvidia last gen just to try them out).

Anyway, after going through reading through a lot of this thread, I'm still just not seeing a very large audience for this. I'm trying to be open-minded about this but these things are literally just custom built gaming pcs (likely from the companies you can already buy gaming pcs from) with a smaller form factor. Excluding a possible stream-only device, these things are still gonna run you $600+ (probably a bit higher considering its size and likely use of proprietary parts to accommodate it) and assuming you would actually want to play most games on it, you would also have to buy another copy of windows for it. To me, it seems like would be best served just buying a pre-built gaming pc and the stream-only box (assuming its <=$100), that way you'll have a computer capable of doing things other than just gaming for the same price.

I guess the form factor is the only real difference I see between these Steam machines and the current pre-built gaming pc market (also Linux, but that's not a selling point to the masses) and I just don't see that driving sales in any major way. In the end though, since Valve isn't making the boxes, I guess they don't have too much to lose.

The goal isn't to make it cheaper. Right now the benefit of building your own PC over buying a prebuilt is that (if you know what you're doing) you can use better parts, lay out the internals wisely, and watch for deals on components. Most prebuilt systems will run you something ridiculous like a 50% margin, use crappy components, and not actually bring any engineering benefit to the table in terms of size/cooling/power usage. (Note how the only prebuilt PCs with a good reputation are actually Macs, because with Apple you actually do get that engineering benefit for your price premium.) The downside is that you do have to know what you're doing and you have to spend time (sometimes kind of a lot of time) actually putting things together, and handling any testing or RMAs or anything yourself.

If there were prebuilt systems that were actually designed for gaming, that used good components, and applied some intelligence to handle cooling gracefully in a small case, I (and I suspect a lot of my friends who enjoy PC games but always feel a mixture of excitement and dread at each system rebuild) would be willing to pay a small premium over the raw cost of the components.

Why should we assume that the markup on Steam machines will be any different than any other pre-built machine, especially considering that they won't be made by Valve? Apple makes up for the smaller margins by having a closed ecosystem with a multitude of other ways of getting money out of people. The manufactures of these Steam machines are only going to have one opportunity to get money out of you so it's not unreasonable to think that there is going to be a relatively high margin of profit on every box they sell.

 

[michaelius]

What's up with these people on GAF loving AMD more for no apparent reason?
Is it some sort of "cheer for the underdog" thing?

Either underdog mentality or bad gaps in memory.

I don't know why it exists but AMD has reputation of being consumer friendly brand and offering better performance for price.

 

[Vulcano's assistant]

I think it's more part of the prevailing "consoles vs. PC" narrative. At least, I've noticed it far more ever since it became clear that AMD is supplying all the consoles.

I swear there is a lot of people now who seem to care a lot about what AMD and nVidia do, and they didn't care at all before.

 

[Htown]

What's up with these people on GAF loving AMD more for no apparent reason?
Is it some sort of "cheer for the underdog" thing?

Console warriors.

See, AMD has stuff in the consoles and nvidia doesn't.

see also: HURR HURR NVIDIA SO SALTY every time an nvidia thread shows up