Valve Steam Machine

easy

Valve didn't make them

the idea was for a first party, semi-console for PC games

Valve cheaped out though and just whored it to other companies

Fucking everything lol

>>388259881
it was a console without the few redeeming qualities consoles have
being marketed towards pc users

It's a generic name for small form factor PCs running linux. What went wrong is Valve didn't care that nobody wants to use linux.

http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey
0.74% linux. The people playing games on steam primarily are going to power users who know they don't want linux because they have no ethical or privacy qualms about using Windows and poorfags who play on machines not built specifically for games and don't know shit about computers.

Console with all the negative qualities of PC and none of the minuscule positives.

>>388259881
valve themselves should have been the ones producing the product

Nothing
Steam Machines literally paved the way for consoles to become the staggered upgrade shit we have today.

>>388259881
Variety.
They wanted to appeal to consolefags but failed miserably.
The fact that you have to choose between an i5 steam machine or pay more for an i7 is a huge mistake
Plus the fact that you also have to choose which company gets your shekels instead of one single company making em. Normalfags don't like having too much options to choose
At this point you're better buying a prebuilt pc rather than getting meme'd

turns out that everyone who wanted a cheap linux machine already had one

>>388260228
>ethical or privacy qualms about using Windows
*tips freedoms*

>>388262671
I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you're referring to as freedoms,
is in fact, GNU/freedums, or as I've recently taken to calling it, GNU plus freedums.

>>388259881
I literally have no idea what this is. Every time I tried to look up information on what it is and the best I could figure out is it is a console that you can use your steam library on.

>>388259987
This is actually not all that unusual for the early dev hardware for a new platform.
When Microsoft was making the 360 they literally just went out and bought a bunch of old PPC970 Macs as dev kits.
Nintendo just bought a bunch of Nvidia dev boards.

The problem was the media reported on them like they were the final consumer product even though they were initially without their graphics API, drivers, or much in the way of games.
Since then Valve has invested significant amounts of time and money beefing the platform up for gaming, Vulkan came out, drivers are now on par or better than Windows (especially the open source AMD ones), and the game library continues to grow steadily.

>>388260228
The weird thing about that number is that Valve only counts people who only use Linux native Steam as Linux users. If you dual boot to play games on Windows, or have Windows Steam in a VM, or run it through Wine you're counted as a Windows user.
You can kind of get an idea of the number of Wine users by looking at some of the odd entries under the 'Windows' category in the survey results.

Also, SteamOS never presents the survey, so its not included in the Linux results at all. Probably because Valve still doesn't really consider it as at the consumer level yet.

>>388264556
Its like Lakka, or RetroPie except you can only run it on AMD64 hardware and it plays a bunch of PC games.

File: unigine_heaven-amd-windows_official-vs-linux_mesa-apples_to_apples.png (30KB, 600x394px) Image search: [Google]

30KB, 600x394px

>>388262169
Valve has been investing really heavily in an unofficial driver for AMD hardware that's faster than the official drivers for Windows.

The rumor is that they're going to launch a single spec steam machine based on AMD's next-gen SOC hardware that will combine 4 Ryzen cores (a single CCX) with a 2048/128/32 Vega GPU

A lot of little things, i mean, the concept is still valid. The Alienware Alpha was probably the best one of the lot, and still is a nice little gaming box. Problem is a lot of third parties basically built a full ATX tower PC and called it a 'steam box'.

Other than that, the software wasn't particularly mature at the time, drivers were a little worse than they are now. I use my PC with the TV from time to time and while i like big picture's idea it can do with a lot of refinements and quality of life improvements, and honestly i think they need to re-do the interface.

File: mad_max-vega-amd-vs-mesa.png (25KB, 600x329px) Image search: [Google]

25KB, 600x329px

>>388266369
We know they're currently redoing the interface of desktop Steam, not sure how much that will affect Big Picture but I'd expect a bit of a visual overhaul.

>drivers were a little worse than they are now.
That's really understating it, Steam Machines launched using the official AMD Proprietary driver.
Now they're using the unofficial Mesa driver.

>>388265383
You're counted as a windows user if you did the survey on your windows partition, linux if on your linux partition. Simple as that.

>>388267506
Steam presents the survey on whatever platform you use the most.
Every month there's Linux users complaining that they got the survey 'that one time' they started Steam in Wine or fired up a Windows partition.
Its probably not huge, but Linux does ironically get undercounted compared to MacOS because the users are more tech savvy and playing more games.

Valve really should make the survey count multiple OS users somehow.
One of the big reasons to use Steam compared to some of the other stores is that it actually is available everywhere.

it turned out to be pretty much unnecesarry. pc gamers will follow to linux if the games are there, they don't need special marketing deals for encouragement. and console gamers are beyond help.

>>388259881
>"console" that uses OS can be edited all the way down to the kernel level
>OS also has no DRM
gee i wonder

>>388259881
People who were serious about gaming on PC already had custom made PCs.
Console players weren't interested for the same reason they're no interested in PCs.
There was no audience for the Steam Machine.

>>388259881
Who the fuck was this made for?

>Hey Chad, want to buy a Steam Machine?
>The fuck is that?
>Well its a video game-
>Oh like a console?
>No its more like a PC
>I already have a PC
>Yeah but this one you can plug into the TV
>Why would I want to do that?
>I don't know, but you're missing the point, its running linux.
>The fuck is a linux?
>Its an open source operating system
>Yeah I don't care about that, windows is fine. What games does it have?
>Well like I said its a PC, it has your entire steam collection
>Okay but I already got that on PC
>But now you can play them on the TV
>I already said I don't want too. I don't have a good place for a mouse and keyboard near by TV anyway
>Well thats fine, you can use the steam controller! It has trackpads
>Like a laptop? That sounds terrible
>But these have haptic feedback
>Fuck off already.

>>388261186
>Steam Machines literally paved the way for consoles to become the staggered upgrade shit we have today.
Lol no it didn't

>>388270065
You know all the people buying Raspberry Pis to play retro games?
Project that into the future a bit, cheap mass produced multiple purpose single board hardware is the future.
Especially with limited production dedicated hardware having its prices driven up.

SteamOS is made for a world that doesn't really exist yet. Just buy your single board PC hardware, pop in a SteamOS image, pair a controller and you've got a 'console' that's really a pretty nice enthusiast platform capable of doing a lot of things.

>>388259881

1. Nobody cares about Linux any more. Windows is good enough and cheap enough that there aren't any compelling reasons to use Linux.

2. Steam isn't the only games app on the market. There is no Battle.net, no Uplay, no Origin for Linux so your Steambox is very limited in terms of AAA games that are available. You don't lose anything by just using the Steam App and Windows.

>>388270873
>1. Nobody cares about Linux any more. Windows is good enough and cheap enough that there aren't any compelling reasons to use Linux.
If Windows wasn't closed source and controlled by a console company set on bringing the PC down to the level of the Xbox that would be true.
Thankfully a lot of people in the industry do still care about GNU/Linux, which is increasingly important now that 10 S has moved from the stuff of Gaben's prophetic visions into the realm of reality.

None of those other third party stores will work on 10 S, all those companies are unprepared for what is to come.

They just don't look nice. I want a Steambox with the Valve logo, not some alien head.

Also, there aren't a lot of great couch play PC games.