Items tagged with Steam-Machines
Warner Bros. is bringing back “Gauntlet”, and the classic title will be arriving on Steam for PC this summer with full support for SteamOS and Steam Machines. Developer Arrowhead Game Studios Studios is collaborating on the project that will be a modern overhaul of the 1980s game. “With ‘Gauntlet’ we combined the arcade style of the original game with an entirely new look and feature set that includes emergent, local and online four-player gameplay,” said David Haddad, Senior Vice President, Digital Games, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment in a press release. You can choose between the Warrior, Wizard, Valkyrie, or Elf and hack your way through dungeons...
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Valve’s SteamOS was always designed to be open so others could tinker with it, and a couple of chaps have made some modifications that, with the collaboration of Valve, bring some choice new features to the operating system. Valve posted a link to a new SteamOS ISO along with a note about what it does. The premiere features are dual-boot capabilities and custom partitioning. This means that you can install SteamOS and Windows side-by-side on one machine (which some of the manufacturers that announced Steam Machines at CES have done) using the “Expert Install” option. The new ISO also allows users to install SteamOS on systems on non-UEFI systems. Valve incorporated several changes...
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We’ve mentioned the Steam Controller a lot this month, primarily because it will be shipping with all the many Steam Machines that various companies are developing, but it’s time the device got some coverage of its own, because Valve has redesigned it and unveiled a photo of the new look at Steam Dev days. Credit: @TheIneQuation via @SteamDB (Twitter) For a little comparison, here’s the old controller design: Original Steam Controller As you can see, there are big differences with the new controller, including the absence of the touchscreen and the four buttons around it, as well as the three keys below that. The circular D-pads are still there, but now there are are two separate...
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There are loads of new gaming systems rolling out during CES, including a host of Steam Machines (some of which are more ready for action than others), and CyberPowerPC has some more, including one that will make any gamer smile in spite of him- or herself. CyberPowerPC’s Fang Battle Box is a mobile--and we’re using that term loosely here--gaming system that features a full-powered system in a box. As in, a suitcase-looking container that you can take around to LAN parties more easily than you would any normal full-featured system. It can accommodate full-size graphics cards and liquid cooling, and it’s the killer rig that you’ve been wanting to bring to a LAN party your...
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As Steam Machine announcements rumble in from all the usual suspects, each seems to have a slightly different take. For Maingear’s part, the company is touting its Maingear Spark Steambox PC with AMD components. The Spark Steambox PC is unbelievably tiny at just 4.5 x 4.23 x 2.34 inches (WxDxH) with a chassis that weighs less than a pound. The idea with the extremely SFF machine is that you can more easily incorporate it into any multimedia environment or take it with you to a LAN party--which is a nice change of pace for those who have ever schlepped a 20-pound beast of a gaming rig. The Spark Steambox rocks a four-thread AMD A8-5575M (2.1-3.1GHz) processor with a discrete AMD Radeon R9...
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We’ve been eagerly anticipating the launch of Steam Machines ever since last year’s CES when we were limited to show floor scuttlebutt and a distant peek into Valve’s booth, where the company was holding partner meetings and (sort of) displaying Steam Machine prototypes. (Pictured: A total bummer) We’re thankfully done waiting to see what boutique gaming PC builders would come up with to run Valve’s SteamOS. We already got a whiff of Digital Storm’s cooking, and here are several more. CyberPowerPC Steam Machine CyberPowerPC has Steam Machines built on both AMD and Intel platforms, with “several configurations” for each that will be fully customizable....
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Yesterday, Valve’s Steam gaming service hit a milestone by logging more than 7 million concurrent users. The exact number is 7,190,629, and the peak moment occurred somewhere between 10 and 10:30am on Sunday morning (Pacific Time, it seems). It’s probably no coincidence that Valve commenced its Autumn 2013 sale just days ago, offering deep discounts on games. Steam currently has about 65 million registered accounts, so that 7 million-plus number shows that more than 10% of all Steam users were gaming at the same time yesterday. In 2011, the high was around 5 million concurrent users with 40 million accounts, and last year it was about 6 million on 50 million accounts. Those numbers...
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Part of Valve’s Steam Machines gaming strategy is to employ third-party builders, and the first of those has been revealed. Boutique gaming PC builder iBuypower showed off its first two Steam Machine prototypes, dubbed Gordon and Freeman, that will enter the market to compete with gaming consoles mainstays Xbox One and PS4. The two models are the same, but one has a clear light band around the middle while the other remains black when it’s not lit (according to Engadget), and they’re currently running an almost-finished version of Steam OS. Of course, they’ll ship with at least one Steam Controller, too. iBuypower Steam Machine prototype (Credit: The Verge) There’s...
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In the run up to the highly anticipated releases of Steam Machines in 2014, Valve announced a beta program called In-Home Streaming that will allow users to stream Steam games (say that five times fast) from one computer to another within the same house. Any system with Steam installed on it can run games from the cloud, but this in-home streaming feature would ostensibly allow users to keep one burly gaming rig going downstairs or in a gaming room and still be able to play all those titles on, say, a less powerful HTPC in the living room. It’s all part of Valve’s forthcoming SteamOS release, which will also bring options such as Family Sharing, Family Options for more control over...
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First, Valve announced SteamOS; then they announced the Steam Machines beta project, which in due time will bring a Valve-made gaming device as well as a host of others; and the third and final announcement of the week is the Steam Controller, which Valve bills as a “different kind of gamepad”. As part of Valve’s major play for the living room, the company wanted to seriously revisit the concept of input. Mouse-and-keyboard is simply too cumbersome for the living room, and Valve felt that current game controllers left too much to be desired, as well. The wireless Steam Controller is designed to offer a “vastly superior control scheme” compared to other offerings,...
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Earlier this week when we covered Valve’s huge SteamOS announcement, it seemed that the company was being coy by calling the hardware “Steam machines”, but as it turns out, that’s exactly what Valve is calling any hardware that will run SteamOS. There will be multiple Steam Machines available starting in 2014 from a variety of manufacturers, but Valve is first producing its own prototype. Hungry for details on exactly what Valve’s homegrown Steam Machine will look like? Or maybe just some basic hardware specs? Us, too. Unfortunately, there is basically zero information on that front. All Valve is saying at this point is that it has a prototype that is completely...
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