Items tagged with SteamOS
In a blog post, Valve vowed to continue developing and supporting its Linux-based SteamOS even though "Steam Machines aren't exactly flying off the shelves." Valve delivered the message in the wake of news spreading that it removed the Steam Machines link from the Hardware pull-down menu in Steam, and is no longer selling systems through its storefront, instead now linking to external websites. Valve chalked the removal of Steam Machines as part of a "routine cleanup." While there remains a section of a Steam Store that still shows Steam Machines, Valve made the decision to de-list the heading from its Hardware pull-down menu based on user traffic, or lack thereof. "We're still working hard on...
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The PAX East show in Boston, MA raged on this weekend with a massive crowd as large as we've every seen it overrunning the venue. From crazy Cosplay types to hardcore, no mercy gamers, there's an absolute heat of humanity pushing the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center to what must be close to max capacity. PAX East appears to have outgrown their venue.That said, though there was lots of people watching to do, frankly, with a few notable exceptions, there wasn't a whole lot of new technology on display at PAX. Between MWC 2015 and GDC, most manufacturers have already pulled the curtain back on their latest and greatest PC and mobile gear. And with NVIDIA's GTC is happening next week as well,...
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When it comes to gaming, the next step after launching a great console is launching a handheld variant of it. Although Steam Machines have not yet taken hold--and might not until next year--there’s already a handheld device that presumably runs SteamOS called SteamBoy. The announcement comes via teaser video only, but a company called Steamboy Machine Team, which is not affiliated with Valve, has developed (or is developing?) the device, which looks to emulate the new Steam controller (whatever that will look like whenever Valve is done with it). The hardware specs haven’t been made official, but the Steamboy Machine Team told The Escapist that it will have a quad-core processor,...
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ASUS’ Republic of Gamers (ROG) motherboards have been around for a while, and ASUS has rolled out some solid pieces of ROG-branded hardware to go along with them, but the company has taken things to a whole new level by launching an entire lineup of ROG-branded gaming machines that includes a desktop, a console, a gaming notebook, a graphics card, and a monitor. G20 The ROG G20 gaming desktop is a SFF rig with no visible exhaust vents--it relies on a hidden airflow tunnel and natural convection for cooling--and ASUS claims it offers near-silent performance. Under the hood it rocks a quad-core Intel Core i7 processor and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 GPU, and it’s designed in part to run...
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We’ve had more than one look at Unreal Engine 4 demos, and they look amazing; with the upcoming Unreal Engine 4.1 update, though, Epic is adding support for more platforms. “We have good news for you! The 4.1 source code has initial support for running and packaging games for Linux and SteamOS. We love Linux!”, wrote Epic’s Mike Fricker in a blog post. That’s good news for the gaming ecosystem at large. Epic will also henceforth be rolling out regular Unreal Engine 4 updates, including hotfixes, new content, general improvements, and more. Regular engine preview builds and live source code access are in the offing, as well. Finally, Epic also announced that it’s...
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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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CyberPowerPC is one of the boutique gaming PC builders that brought many interesting offerings to CES this year, and we got an up-close-and-in-person look at the bounty in the company’s hotel suite earlier this week. CyberPower's compact Zeus Mini gaming rigs aren’t perhaps as aesthetically sizzling at first glance as some other systems they showed, with a simple black rectangular box, some lights and colorful grills that pop a little bit, but CyberPowerPC looks to have done a good job laying out the guts of the machines--which is no small task with small form factor chassis. L: Zeus Mini; R: Steam Machine You can see the radiator for the liquid cooler in there, nestled with the ODD,...
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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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The long-awaited Steam Machine consoles are rolling out, and Digital Storm fittingly placed the “Bolt” name on its version. The first Bolt, which we reviewed, was all the things we expect now from Steam Machines--compact size, excellent specs, and a cool design. The Digital Storm Bolt II is a SFF and hybrid Steam Machine, which is to say that it offers both Steam OS and Windows, thus giving gamers the option to run either OS. That perhaps runs slightly counter to what Valve had in mind with Steam OS, but it’s a terrific idea nonetheless. “We (Digital Storm) are not looking to compete with console pricing,”? said Rajeev Kuruppu, Digital Storm?s Director of Product...
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At long last, Valve's SteamOS is now available to download, albeit in beta form. This is a major step in what Valve hopes will be an evolutionary step in PC gaming, as it tries to displace (or at least co-exist) with traditional consoles in the living room. The other major goal with SteamOS is to break the dependency on Windows, which Valve fears will one day take a wall-garden approach to apps like Steam. "SteamOS beta is an early, first-look public release of our Linux-based operating system. The base system draws from Debian 7, code named Debian Wheezy," Valve explains. "Our work builds on top of the solid Debian core and optimizes it for a living room experience. Most of all, it is an open...
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Valve will take its first step towards living room domination later this week when it begins shipping out Steam Machines and Steam Controllers to 300 selected beta participants. The hardware is scheduled to leave the factory on Friday, December 13, which means the lucky participants selected to trial run the gaming initiative based on SteamOS will start receiving their goods next week. You'll be to identify the beta participants by a special badge on their Steam Community profile. In addition to the badge (and hardware), those selected will also have a bunch of games added to their library that run natively on SteamOS. Not without hiccups, regulatory red tape prompted Valve to limit the beta...
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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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Valve is doing that thing it does where it trickles out a series of big announcements over the course of a week, and these announcements promise to be very big indeed. The first of a trio from Valve is that the company is producing SteamOS, a free, Linux-based, standalone operating system that will run on “living room machines”. The OS is built around Steam itself, so it’s geared toward gaming, and in particular, gaming on the big screen in your living room. Valve calls it a “many-to-many entertainment platform” where content makers can directly connect with customers and users have the freedom to alter the software and hardware as they see fit. There are four key...
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