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Can't wait to see what games will be on sale.

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The Mir stack is well tested on mobile, which is where Canonical is focused, which is good for them as that's where they have passion. I find it somewhat silly that they thought everyone would rush to support Mir in the PC space, as Wayland is the rewrite of X that was needed going on 10 years.

Expecting that AMD is focused at all on Linux driver support is somewhat silly given how many software developers that they let go. AMD doesn't seen consumers as even a marginal bet to make, unlike Intel and NVidia where they worry about the mobile space. I have been surprised how long it has taken NVidia to notice that their closed drivers for all of their hardware is really slowing development on the fastest growing part of their business (mobile).

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Your register page brings up a 404 error page ;(

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Well you are also all forgetting that a "Windows-Steam-Machine" will also require an anti-virus running in the background.

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ps: ofc talking euros... in dollars 50% higher.

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Quoting: oldrocker99The CIV V port took, according to the devs, a LOOOONG time and a lot of work.

Really? I did read something about two devs for 3 month with help of the osx team. That is not a lot but pretty cheap for a port (and usually a sign the engine was created for multiple platforms in mind). Consider the costs, it is half a year of dwvelopment, so overall costs between 70.000 to 100.000 euros. 1% of steam is a customer base of roundabout 800.000-1 million. Easily financed if only a small percentage buys for 10 euros.

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Never gave any attention to visual novels until:

QuoteFrom the author of Spice and Wolf

:O

I think this will be my first attempt at a visual novel. Spice and Wolf is one of my favorite anime of all time and was ended prematurely, so hopefully this will fill that Spice and Wolf shaped hole left in me, given the similar themes.

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Mu humble opinion about the delay of the Steam Machines :P

You cant ship the Steam Machines without a football game!!!
So they need Fifa or PRO Evolution to be on SteamOS otherwise forget it.

You can't imagine how many people buy Fifa or Pro every year for consoles , I mean they may never buy any other single game but FIFA or PRO is a must for every console.

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Quoting: HamishAnd that would change what exactly anymore? :S

Right. Hoping it's a bundle with DRM-free versions. My hope for games going DRM-free is the HB, it's been more successful at that than others.

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Quoting: xilwhat the hell is SteamOS to a user ?

- PC1: windows 8.x, autostarts Steam in big picture mode, full collection available
- PC2: steamos, autostarts Steam in big picture mode, partial collection available, $100 less expensive
...

Fixed that for you ;)

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All it takes is a few AAA titles only on SteamBox and bang the old guard is toast

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Quoting: paupavWhen Wayland becomes default display protocol we will see who will be laughing. AMD is already working on Wayland support while nVidia stated that they won't support it because then their Linux drivers will look completely different from their Windows drivers.

Will it? The platform specific code of the NVidia driver is ~20 %. Since they feature their own OGL implementation which interfaces with the kernel, that part won't be hit, so it's just about interfacing the wayland protocol. I think a company as NVidia will be able to do that in a decent timeline. Even though, for driver vendors it's coming faster, since distributions think about running Wayland and XWayland on top for the desktop already (Fedora in example).

More questionable will be: What about Mir? Looks like not even one driver vendor is looking into that. The current Mir runs with Intel drivers, and custom patches by Canonical. Does not sound very promising to me (and I hope Mir won't get adopted any time soon - it's so stack breaking besides all the technology discussion).

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Yay for giveaway!
I was going to buy the CE but then I realised it was regionally priced a lot higher than in the US (like 30%) and it wouldn't allow me to checkout with an Australian payment method. Boo for regionally priced =(

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Quoting: gemini

Quoting: E911I might pay 5$ for this on sale, but these tracks seem really narrow.

Running any NFS or Burnout Paradise on Wine has tragically failed leaving me carless in terms of "gaming on linux". There's a real market for good Linux Racers imo. Hopefully the Arcade 90s Racer will be done soon :(

I agree that there aren´t any good racing games on Linux at the moment. I think there is a market how ever, or will be. But hold on until Project Cars will come, it sure looks nice.

Super Tux Kart is getting a graphical overhaul and being put on Steam (I assume as early access). Other than that, there isn't much out there (That Road Rash clone and Project Cars). Racing games have been traditionally a console-dominated space. I hope Steam Machines will change this though.

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I bought this game and found it to be the worst game I have bought for a long time, regretted my decision after only 15 minutes. I would give my reasons, but just thinking about playing this game makes me far too angry.

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Tempest in a teapot, really. Alienware are sort of high profile, but they're not a high volume outfit; as I understand it they sell small numbers of high spec, high margin boxes with a cool look. No matter what they do, I'm not convinced it's going to have a big impact on how Steamboxes in general go. Currently less heralded outfits selling more down-to-earth high volume machines will determine how the whole thing goes; it seems like other firms planning Steamboxes, even firms with more marketing muscle than Alienware, are so far keeping their powder dry, a wise move given that the OS and controller are, thus far, still basically vapor from a vendor's point of view.

As to the massive lead time needed to make these things, given modern manufacturing I'm not sure I buy it. These things are using off the shelf parts. Once you've decided on the case, the logo, and the basic layout of the guts given the constraints of your case, seems to me it should be possible to practically make them on the fly. Sure, in practical terms for really high volume that's an exaggeration, but still . . .

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Unrealistic, yes. But I think the common guy wouldn't care if it was a xbox, pc, wii or pc under their tv as long as the games come out for the platform. And as I see it, in a few years we can be there.

The problem will be that it will be very hard for hardware manufacturers to build attractive machines compared to ps/xbox since they cross-finance the hardware with services. And I'm not really sure Valve is willing to give a piece of the pie to hardware manufacturers.

Another problem will be that there will be many steam machines. I think the regular customer is happy only having one PS, and the choice PS/XBox is usually hard enough for them. There we're back again to "which SteamMachine should I buy" which we know of regular PCs and laptops very well.

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"Add new solution, TextureArrayMultiDrawBuffer, to work around possible bug in AMD linux drivers with glMultiDrawIndirect"

this is not something tampered to nvidia. multi_draw_indirect is basic requirement for zero-overhead. i'd say this is workaround so amd doesn't look as bad. in perfect world one shouldn't need it

but, as far as saying it is bad... no, it isn't. Rich simply has some beef with GL as it seems and takes every chance to take a potshot asap. i stopped taking him seriously when it was obvious that his whining is personal nature way more that technical. he did some really good things, but lately it seems like all he is doing is refreshing search "opengl bad"

you don't approach problem with whining that world will collapse like he is doing, you approach it by exposing and then fixing it. and benchmark is doing exactly that

one has to realize that apitest didn't exist not so long ago and as far as i get it, it covers needs for implementing zero-overhead which was not present until not so long ago. right now, these are actually first real benchmarks for those features useful not only to nvidia, but to others as well

it is a call for amd to get their sh1t together and fix it properly. and i kinda don't doubt they will do that very soon, they simply can't afford bad publicity like that or sales will drop in favour of nvidia. just imagine how it looks like when you read it "mantle is 25% faster than others, nvidia is 10 times faster than amd in latest gl features". what does this say about mantle?

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Quoting: AnonymousAt least back up a proof that nVidia actually said that idiot...

nVidia claim that they are working on Wayland

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTY0Njc

You can get your point across without without having to use the word "idiot". We are trying to be a friendly community here.

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Quoting: liamdaweStill don't think anyone should be able to call something a Steam Machine unless it has SteamOS on it.

Agreed! A Steam machine without SteamOS is nothing more then an ordinary PC.

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There's no reason for alienware to stick windows on their machines £80 or more to the pricetag. Makes much more sense to stick a lightweight distro like Xubuntu on it with Steam, proprietary drivers, etc pre installed.

Its nice to see the support Linux gaming is getting though.

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Quoting: liamdaweIt won't be the same UI that's the point. Alienware are doing a completely custom UI for their Windows Steam Machine. Still don't think anyone should be able to call something a Steam Machine unless it has SteamOS on it.

I think you're misunderstanding. It's Windows getting the custom UI, not Steam. They're probably making Windows look more like Steam OS so people won't be confused. As far as Steam itself goes, when they ship a Linux version it will be the same Big Picture mode they've been using under Windows.

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what the hell is SteamOS to a user ?

- PC1: windows 8.x, autostarts Steam in big picture mode, full collection available
- PC2: steamos, autostarts Steam in big picture mode, partial collection available

the general user looks at the last part, can I see all my steam games, for the rest why should he care if its windows or linux under the hood, we do, the general user does not.

as for alienware, 100% good on them to at least sell the machines with a running/working OS while the hardware still has value instead of sitting on it and throwing it away.

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[/quote]These "partners" should have KNEW this was a possibility because of exactly this.

There's no REAL excuse for shipping Windows in a "Steam Machine."
[/quote]And what? You won`t buy their Steam Machine, you will hate them all your life or you will create petition, don`t you? :D
Really, what do you expect? This is company, not gamers. Ordinary gamers can wait for Steam OS, but company will not do this. They need money. And money. And more money. And only then they think about gamers.

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A Steam Machine isn't a Steam Machine without the REAL SteamOS...period

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Awesome, I'm glad to see this return. I'm really glad they've decided to remake the original.

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Quoting: Anonymous

Quoting: AnonymousThis was bound to happen with the first generation of Steam Machines given Valve's track record on punctuality.

These "partners" should have KNEW this was a possibility because of exactly this.

There's no REAL excuse for shipping Windows in a "Steam Machine."

Unfortunately with hardware you have to start manufacturing well ahead of actually selling the first batch, so you can meet the initial demand in units worldwide. Also don't forget all of the R&D that went into the product, they'd have to scrap all of it if they wanted to wait on valve and use newer hardware appropriate for the new launch time frame.

Hardware manufacturing fully depends on accurate launch time frames, if they're off they have to think of something else. The alternative would be waiting until SteamOS and the Controller is ready and then wait at least another half a year to a full year for the first proper Steam Machine that isn't just a rebranded miniITX computer.

In the end we're talking about business here, you can't expect hardware manufacturers to take the fall for Valve's tardiness, they're making what they consider to be the best out of a bad situation.

The only thing that would bother me personally, is them selling it as an official "Steam Machine" but I highly doubt they have permission to slap on that branding if they don't use SteamOS or the Controller.

In the end it's Valve's responsibility that the launch of Steam Machines is a smooth one and not one of the hardware manufacturers, if you want to blame anyone look no further, it is 100% on Valve. It'd be a different story if Valve had everything ready and the manufacturers decided that there wasn't enough appeal to SteamOS to support it after all but that's not what they did, instead they still publicly support the project even after they'd have every reason to be unhappy with Valve's performance.

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people seems to be p1ssed off at alienware for some reason. but, seriously they don't have a choice.

- ship with beta as default and you're bound to be scr3wed in QA
- sit on hw for final and you lose millions on hw price drops, not to mention all R&D went to waste, since PC hw changes fast

they did promise that steamos will be supported under warranty and the only reason why i won't buy it is because they don't ship without OS. there is absolutely no chance in hell i'm paying for another windows license in my life. never used them, but i could equip small company with the licenses i bought with computer

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Quoting: normWould be nice if World of Tanks got a port as well, but I think the proverbial pig will fly before that happens.

World of Tanks is Wargaming, War Thunder is Gaijin (same as Star Conflict). Wargaming have been much more resistive to non Windows platforms.

Quoting: AnonymousYou mean the linux client in the video?

I didn't see a specific platform that was being used -- as far as I am aware the PC's in the centre console were Windows machines. They demoed Linux as was said in the video, but I don't think it was a hands on demo.

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Bad for everyone? Hardly. If AMD's proprietary driver is so poor that it forces people to use AMD's increasingly better open source driver, that's good for everyone. AMD is likely to throw even more developers at its open source driver as well then.

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