|
Pemalite said: Great thing about the Steam Box *is* going to be the OS and it should support Mantle, that means console-like API overhead with a lighter Operating System than either of the NextGen Twins. |
Indeed Mantle should work fine, although not really any better than Windows. It needs to be remembered that Valve is NOT standardizing on AMD here, in fact the first Steam Machines were announced with NVIDIA collaboration... Both AMD and NVIDIA GPUs will be going in Steam Boxes, so no SteamOS games can be written solely for one GPU vendor, they will need to be compatable with both, cutting into optimization budgets. NVIDIA's G-Sync certainly looks to offer nice benefits, and so I see both vendors having a continued presence in this 'platform'. SteamOS certainly will have lower overhead than Windows, although I'm not sure why it really would compared to at least PS4's OS, if things like Vent are to be available, as well as on-line manuals, browser-based match making forums and leaderboards, etc, SteamOS will need roughly the same heft as PS4 with PS4 in fact able to shed more extraneous OS cruft since SteamOS will otherwise be standards compatable Linux with OpenGL etc.
"Enthusiastic" PC gamers are exactly what will make Steam Machine/OS work, and that's why I really see it as a development of PC gaming, more so than a new console per se. Valve seems to be of the same opinion, given their controller design seems to be built around appealing to mouse+keyboard gamers in terms of accuracy, etc. I don't see any impediment to running SteamOS games on SteamOS/otherLinux on other PCs (not Steam Machines) via dualboot/whatever, and I might guess that many PC gamers might like the idea of buying a low-mid end Steam Machine as gaming box rather than deal with upgrading their rig and all that. But all it's doing really is cutting Microsoft Windows out of the picture, the hardware profile is still basically just as varied as Windows PCs. Lower Linux overhead in performance (as well as licence cost) with good drivers and dual AMD Mantle/NVIDIA OpenGL graphics paths can yield better performane than the status quo in Windows but will just not have the optimization of the closed consoles. Of course, in a year's time the $500 Steam Machine will be given more CPU/GPU grunt and that can counter the optimization advantage to a large extent... Although PS4/XBone are supposed to be able to quickly drop their prices to boot, so the 'same price point as consoles' will be a moving target as well, and optimization should certainly give a good advantage there in the end for exclusive titles, espeially on the stronger console platform (ahem). At a certain point hardware advancements will overwhelm optimization even with price reductions on the closed consoles, but with simpler development costs and better profit margin (rather than losing money out of the gate) for PS4/XBone, I expect them to do a console refresh more quickly than last time, plausibly in a way that is 'backwards compatable' with the PS4/XBone generation.
| thismeintiel said: My guess is the rest of the system won't be quite up to par with the PS4/One, especially since the manufacturer, the retailer, AND Valve will be getting a cut of the sales. As far as retailers go, don't expect them to take the miniscule profit they do on console HW, since they won't be seeing any sales/profit after the initial purchase. |
Your point re: retailer interest is pretty spot on, as far as Valve's cut it probably will be zero: they are getting every Steam Machine owner to buy all their games thru Steam after all, with zero used game market. They aren't making the units other than the controllers for which a reasonable margin is fine as that is supporting the entire platform. Valve is also happy if people dual-boot regular PCs with Linux to play these games, no real difference to them, only the Steam Machine OEM partners.
