What is SteamOS?
SteamOS is the console OS from Valve to turn PCs into consoles, but with PC things you love such as the ability to mod and use PC software. But it puts them in an easy to use package with a controller on the TV and removes some hassle that operating systems like Windows, Mac, Ubuntu (or other Linux distributions with a desktop GUI) and FreeBSD includes.
SteamOS grabs the drivers and updates the OS from within SteamOS Big Picture Mode. With Windows you have to download the newest drivers from websites and from Ubuntu you have to go to choose the drivers, then update them in the system updater, and then open steam. These all work and aren't particularly difficult but add a bit more hassle into a gaming experience.
SteamOS has little bumps in the road that prevent it from being a good console alternative for people who aren't used to the PC market.
Playable Games
SteamOS still has a way off having all games or games by default coming to both SteamOS and Windows, thus they need a better way of handling content not available for SteamOS coming into consumers eyes that they can't use. Currently if you open the store and go to Featured, you have a high chance of seeing some Windows only deal on the right hand side. For any Windows user it's like seeing Halo or Uncharted on the front page of Steam just to be told that you can't play it on Windows but need to go grab a PS4 instead. This is something that used to be a much bigger problem for Big Picture Mode as it used to just show whatever people running Windows would see, but to say it's not a problem currently is an issue.
People also realize there's a PC and phone client and a web app, which is great, but the problem with that is that Windows only games are shown there, possibly making SteamOS users feel upset about games they can't get. A solution could be to only show games that are available for all platforms by default, then choose the platforms you game on, and thus the front page would always only show you games you can play regardless of device.
Another difficulty people may have is that they're probably using a Steam Machine in a front room with no keyboard and mouse. They only have the Steam controller, which is great, and works with many more games than ordinary Dualshock 4s and Xbox 360 controllers, but there are still games that require a keyboard and/or mouse. Pony Island is one, you need a keyboard there to type. Sure you could use the onscreen keyboard option but that is a pain, is not practical in some games and is a lot less enjoyable than a keyboard. My solution to this would be, if you're in big picture mode with only a Steam controller connected, by default the only games that should show up are games that have full controller support or games that you can beat from beginning to end with a Steam controller—even if they originally needed a keyboard and mouse. This should include games that need keyboard and mouse if the system detects one, or one is selected in the store's settings screen.
Oneof the worst issues with Steam Machines is the confusion. What hardware we should buy is a problem we're going to have to deal with, but if a game works or not on your system with the current drivers shouldn't be a problem any more with SteamOS. SteamOS detects your hardware and Steam version, and knows the minimum system requirements for a game, so why not hide games with minimum system requirements that aren't met? This means gamers won't be disappointed that they can't play their game they just bought and that it's extremely laggy.
Please note that any game that I'm saying should be hid by default, should have an option not to hide. People who have the capabilities or are willing to deal with certain difficulties should be able to, just customers who perhaps don't have as much knowledge as hardcore gamers shouldn't have to risk these issues.
Separation of Media’s
Steam currently has several issues with displaying medias in Big Picture Mode. When you go to the store page the games and movies have an icon or a banner in which it shows a bit of the media the same way a bit of box art would. The issue is that they aren't separated at all, there's never anything to say which media it belongs to. The only thing below the icon is a price tag, possibly with a discount sticker with it. The only way you find out if the media is a game or movie is if you click on it, which isn't exactly a chore but makes the system seem less cohesive.
Steam does address this in some tabs a little further down if you wish to segregate medias inside a tab named “Browse”. This offers you to browse Games or Videos, so perhaps this isn't that big of an issue, but it should be talked about.
Now while we're talking about medias and videos, how can I miss out, Youtube and Netflix? There’s no app for SteamOS, simple enough. You can easily access these providers and many more via the internet browser but the UI isn't good, it's not fun, and is awful for a consumer. There's also no picture viewer or USB media playback. This means you can't browse photos on a USB stick or watch movies downloaded legally on your TV with the Steam Machine unless you pull yourself out of Big Picture Mode and into the desktop mode.
Perhaps a small amount of people like to view images on their TV via their console, but I'm sure many people use their consoles to play other media like music and videos. Whether that be via a USB stick, or YouTube, or Netflix, there are already tabs for music and videos. Why not let people import their own, and add a tab for apps and try to get big internet players on board?
Boot like a console
Currently SteamOS—at least on the Cyber, this is less true with the Alienware Steam Machine—is you turn it on, you get a BIOS screen, then a Steam Machine logo. Then sometimes it'll go to a SteamOS logo with a bar underneath it, go black for several seconds and then show the Big Picture splash screen.
With Alienware the BIOS screen doesn't show up—this as a console is a good thing. The BIOS screen makes it feel like a desktop when it should feel like a console. Just have a SteamOS boot screen in which you can go into the BIOS by holding down a button on the Steam controller or keyboard but don't make it look like a BIOS screen. Make it a SteamOS logo screen, then after a second or so of waiting the splash screen should awaken and let the players play.
The Steam Machine also boots games pretty slowly, perhaps this is a hardware issue, but for a console that costs double or more than a Playstation 4, the PS4 shouldn't boot games faster than the Steam Machine...
Adverts
Now that most uncertainties of SteamOS have a solution the next is selling devices and getting games. The first step is to let people know it exists, get some advert time on TV, get advert space and advertise like crazy, get bigger slots in game retailers for hardware, make Steam stores. Just get out there, and give the world SteamOS and Steam on Linux.
Exclusives
Now Valve has said there wont be any SteamOS exclusives from them:
Valve’s Greg Comer[Y]ou won’t see an exclusive killer app for SteamOS from us. We’re not going to be doing that kind of thing.
Source
I think this is negative for SteamOS; without exclusives there's little reason for anyone to try and use SteamOS or Linux. If they created Half life 3 and it was only available for SteamOS/Linux then you know a lot of people would install Ubuntu or SteamOS and may start to use it as their main gaming OS. If every new game comes to both systems and the exclusives are the difference between HL3, Portal 3, Team Fortress 3 on Linux and Halo Reach on Windows.
What do you think? What do you think would make SteamOS better and more successful in the mainstream?
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When you decide to do something, you are conditioning yourself to do something, as I learned BASIC I conditioned myself to learn BASIC language and there is nothing wrong with that. If devs decide to use steamos they need to follow some rules and without them we will be on a state of anarchy (as, somehow, we do now), the strict development is made by the publishers, but the tools aren't, in our linux world we already have plenty of tools and new one was born, Vulkan. The success of Windows was because there was no other reasonable choice since the beginning for beginners. I started to use linux around 95's along Windows 95 and I remember how difficult was to put xorg to work(Also I remember how difficult to use a mouse, I'm from CLI era computers, a dinosaur :D). All FOSS follow a standard, steamos just need to put the tools together and give the manuals to devs... and principally give us a better customer service because when we ask support, some game publisher just ignore us and there is no customer courtesy as we have when we go to market or somewhere else.
I just wondering now, if steam gave upon linux platform, I will receive all my ~100 paid games money back? Or they will justify "You can still use your account on Windows platform"(Which I'll never go back :D )?, well, no courtesy and no guarantee at all, totally unreasonable isn't it?.
ps. I hope GOG raises too.
Last edited by eddie-foss on 22 February 2016 at 4:39 pm UTC
Redundant . . . now. You missed the time element. Games are not open source packages. They will not get updated forever. Distro packagers will not carefully make sure the version of Victor Vran they ship works with the libraries they also ship. It is wise to include some of their own dependencies in their own folder; in five years, the game will be the same and want the same dependencies, but the OS will have moved forward and the libraries will be a few versions ahead. Depend entirely on the OS' versions and you will get breakage over time. Depend on versions the game has with it and it will keep running fine quite a bit longer. Takes up space, but disk space is ludicrous cheap, especially on most gaming machines, and the kind of libraries that go in dependencies are small.
Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 22 February 2016 at 5:33 pm UTC
Well, you and ChrisQ do have a point. To be honest, I've started to feel like Valve have almost treated the Steam Machine launch as a really extended beta--like, they didn't feel like they were really quite ready to give it the hard push it needed to go places, because it still had too many rough edges and maybe not as many games as they wanted and drivers weren't where they wanted them and stuff, but at the same time they couldn't do "Valve Time" any further, having already delayed the launch one year and pissed off their hardware collaborators--and at least they had the controller pretty much where they wanted it. So they did a soft, semi-beta launch to test the market, give them time to work out the rough edges, get feedback etc., and maybe next fall they'll do a bigger push with newer machines running a newer version of SteamOS and more available games.
Oh well, I know, but you didn't read what I wrote after that, the steam management is the problem, steam now is a distro an they must take their responsibilities more seriously, if you don't care as a customer you will have a crappy system after some time, as a customer we must warn them before is too late.
About versions, this is why we have "library.version.so", is a standard for all linux devs;
About patches, if some bug or flaw is found in a program, fix is the best option, not doing that is an insult to a customer.
About the duplicated files, I was talking mostly about libraries that is opensource and steam libs clones, but if the person/company is organized probably will have a project shared folder with their project shared resource files inside, this was the way that CS did a long time ago.
"...but disk space is ludicrous cheap, ...", not for all people, in Brazil is "ludicrous" expensive, even Brazil being the richest country of South America. Also PS4 and X1 has same problem mostly you can only download about 10 games and the space is over :D, more quality textures, more space is required, probably 8k everywhere is not far and steam must be aware.
I hope the day that everybody plays together instead being a terrorist or doing war.
What I predict is: Unpatched versions can be a breach for attackers, they can use the game to stole your account or any personal information (and if you have kids probably you will pay more attention to that).
There is also stuff that can considered time exclusives like Kingdom Come: Deliverance, the game is launching on PC first and will also be on Linux, Valve can market that as a timed exclusive and basically not pay a dime to actually make it timed exclusive. Valve could also be a good guy and market PC exclusives that are also being made for Linux like Mount and Blade 2: Bannerlord. So Valve should just partner with PC devs in making Linux ports of their PC games. System Shock 3 as a PC exclusive could a huge seller for Steam machines almost like a Half Life exclusive. So yeah tons of good looking and big PC games are coming out in recent years.
Infact being able to share "exclusives" with the PS4 and XB1 would be great for example Steam machines and the PS4 can play Street Fighter V the Xbox One however can not. They should market this feature so Sony can't go around throwing the PS4-Console Exclusive label. It might even intimidate them to pay the developers make it completely exclusive. They should look at what other PS4/PC games are coming out like Shenmue 3 and get them available for Linux/SteamOS. Xbox One not so much since their games are basically Windows 10 exclusive aside from some indies they moneyhatted.
Steam machines could also technically have their own platform exclusives with games like Dying Light that has mods only for PC.
They should be more involved with who makes Steam machines and their pricings. As far as I know Zotac, Cyberpower, and Alienware make good Steam machines with competitive prices for their performance. I'm glad some manufacturers like Northwest Falcon and Origin dropped out because their lineups were pointless, they were overpriced anyone with that type of money would most likely build it or buy from a better brand. I saw earlier some Steam machines had horrible specs like Gigabrix pro, what good is a Solid State Drive if the GPU is an intel IGP and it cost more/almost as much as competitors that have much better overall performance. I'm not sure about Scan SXS and Material.net since I am not from those countries if they're overpriced or not.
Maingear needs to get kicked out their system is too overpriced and expensive, $1,020 for a machine with a core i3 and GTX 950 2GB is way too overpriced. For the rest of the steam machines not available Valve should be talking with on how the specs and pricing, if they can't make their machines competitive with consoles in specs and price they need to get the boot.
I was disappointed with how Valve handled their deal with gamestop to have a Steam section, they should have a Steam machine in a kiosk with a controller out with some demo games to play or at least an advertisement video running explaining what a Steam machine is and what separates it from consoles. Alienware did a better job marketing their Alpha in gamestop and Walmart they actually had kiosk and video ads running.
Valve and Steam machine manufacturers could make partner with game devs and make themed consoles and controllers. Like Valve could release some TF2, Portal, Half Life, CSGO, and L4D themed Steam controllers. They could also make themes for other Big PC games especially ones that support SteamOS like XCOM2 or Total War: Warhammer. Manufacturers can put some designs on their Steam machines like Alienware could make a limited edition XCOM 2 Steam Machine which has XCOM2 designs on it and XCOM 2 themed controller. They could make Valve game themed ones. And overall they should just offer Steam machines and controllers in different colors.
Last edited by TechnoNecro on 23 February 2016 at 9:46 pm UTC
Feh.
Last edited by oldrocker99 on 1 March 2016 at 5:01 pm UTC