JEMC said:
freebs2 said:
JEMC said:
freebs2 said:
I imagine the Steambox to be a gaming console in all respects, but with a PC hardware architecture (x86) and a proprietary OS based on linux. Steam will be used to buy both games and apps to add functionalities to your system.
Using a PC architecture, it could be easily supported by all current PC/Steam developers, with the option to optimize the game a little bit if they want to.
As their main goal, they should deliver a good price/hardware compromise, this way those who are interested into a low to mid level gaming PC could opt to buy their console, while hi-end PC enthusiats (a minority) could still use standard Steam on their PCs.
Imo, if they don't screw up something, if they manage get a couple of good exclusives it could coexist with other consoles and even steal some marketshares. |
Devs would still need to port their games over from Windows to Linux (ie: changing the tools from Direct X to Open GL) to make them work.
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Ok, but don't they do it already when porting games on Ps3? Except for indie games most Steam games are also avaliable on Ps3.
I admit, I'm not an expert, but I guess porting a game on console is a much more complicated job than (just) changing tools form Direct X to OpenGL. Yes, a port on "Steambox" wouldn't be a totally painless job, but still it sounds less taxing than a console port. Am I right?
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Don't worry, I'm no expert either, and I don't know how hard is to make a port from a console to another or to PC. After all, Sony, Msoft and Nintendo sell their own dev kits to facilitate development, and engines like UE, CryEngine, etc support many platforms, yet there are many cases of bad ports.
Indie games aren't a good example as they hardly take the hardware of consoles to their limit, so the ports don't need to be that much optimized as retail games are. Besides an indie game can be developed using either OpenGl or DirectX, making the port more or less hard.
But there are many indie games have been launched for Linux with the Humble Bundles, and here is a list of the Linux games available on Steam (not many).
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