There’s a new Lenovo Legion Go on the way, and while it’s ditching the signature detachable controllers, it’s still got something unusual to stick on its CV. The Lenovo Legion Go S is a smaller, cheaper take on Lenovo’s portable gaming PC, and it’s on track to become the first officially licensed SteamOS handheld outside of Valve’s own Steam Deck range.
]]>Steam Deck, Mac, and other Linux-based enjoyers of superhero shooter hit Marvel Rivals can once again play without fear of being pulped under an unlawfully swung banhammer. Developers NetEase had recently doled out bans of up to 100 years to players they suspected of cheating, but in their eagerness, failed to distinguish between legitimate compatibility layers – the software that non-Windows operating systems, like the Steam Deck’s SteamOS, use to run native Windows games – and actual hacks. Per IGN, NetEase have now apologised to the affected players, and lifted the bans.
]]>The Steam Deck is something of a talisman for gaming on Linux, its popularity and penguin-powered SteamOS having almost singlehandedly dragged it past MacOS as the second-most-used operating system among Steam users. Sadly, this also means the Valve handheld is the primary casualty when developers decide to stop bothering with Linux support, as Respawn Entertainment have decided to do for Apex Legends.
]]>Valve have made no secret of their plans to make SteamOS – the Linux-based operating system that powers the Steam Deck – available to other games-playing devices, including rival handhelds. After a recent beta update mentioned adding support for the Asus ROG Ally’s inputs, The Verge confirmed with Valve that SteamOS support for non-Steam Deck portables is still very much in the works. The Deck’s long-promised dual booting capability, on the other hand, sounds further down the to-do list.
]]>Installing Decky Loader on your Steam Deck is one of the biggest free upgrades you can make to it. With a few clicks (or touchscreen taps), you can open up a library of feature-adding plugins that are as versatile as they are easy to use. Want better management of your Steam Deck screenshots, or a simple way of recording your screen, or more information about battery usage, or interface tweaks to SteamOS itself? All in one place, with one-tap downloads, and accessible from the Steam Deck’s existing quick access menu? Install Decky Loader.
]]>Once you know how to enable Desktop Mode on the Steam Deck, you basically get the keys to its handheld gaming kingdom. From playing Game Pass games on your Steam Deck to installing Lutris and other non-Steam launchers, many of the device’s best hidden functions are enabled through Desktop Mode – not to mention its entire usability as a proper desktop PC.
]]>Welcome to Steam Deck Academy, where we take the microfibre cloth of understanding and wipe away the smudgy touchscreen fingerprints of handheld gaming ignorance. Here, eager students – that’s you, I’m assuming – can feast their minds on all the Steam Deck guides, explainers, and investigations that we’ve produced, as well as further instructive pieces to come.
]]>To install Lutris on your Steam Deck is to swing open the doors that SteamOS, being a Linux-based device in the Windows-dominated world of PC games, normally keeps shut. See, for all the thousands upon thousands of Steam Deck-ready games on Steam itself, there are many more hiding within their publishers’ preferred launchers – launchers that SteamOS can’t install without help. Lutris is a convenient tool that not only forces these apps to work on the Steam Deck, but handles their individual installations, all while acting as a handy all-in-one launcher of launchers.
It supports all the biggest Steam alternatives like GOG, Battle.net, the Epic Games Launcher, the EA App, and Ubisoft Connect, and can gather and install all the Linux compatibility gubbins they need with minimal input from you. It’s a fabulous addition for Deck owners whose game collection is spread across multiple services, and once you have a launcher up and running, it operates with the same functions and UI that you’re already familiar with from desktop use.
]]>The latest Steam Deck beta client update is out, and it’s made a pretty neat addition to the quick-access performance menu. A tap of the Y button now brings up a brief explainer for whichever individual setting is currently highlighted, a handy lil’ reference for anyone who wants to customise how their Deck (or Steam Deck OLED) runs without knowing exactly how things like TDP limits and half-rate shading affect performance. Clearly it’s also a brutal attack on the livelihoods of honest hardware editors who write guides to this sort of thing, but whatever, Valve.
]]>I like to think my Steam Deck OLED review was a sufficiently broad piece of opinioning, but in the spirit of plurality – and because we already did it with that Steam Deck Second Opinion video – I wanted our head honcho Katharine to give her take. She’s also been getting to grips with the Steam Deck OLED behind the scenes, and happens to be an expert on portable gaming devices with organic light-emitting diode screens. An expert on yearning for them, anyway.
]]>To quickly recap my Steam Deck OLED review, Valve’s refreshed handheld is brilliant, serving up major improvements to screen quality and battery life while making loads of little quality-of-life tweaks. Its reveal was a surprise, mind – haven’t Valve repeatedly said that there wouldn’t be another new Steam Deck for ages?
Not quite. That warning was always qualified in that a more powerful Deck was still a ways off, and the Steam Deck OLED’s performance improvements are both tiny and a likely incidental result of its efficiency savings. This very point was repeated to me in an interview with Valve designer Jay Shaw and software engineer Jeremy Selan, which also covered the Steam Deck family’s future, its current struggles with intensive big-budget games, and why they want "more, more, more" rivals like the Asus ROG Ally and Lenovo Legion Go.
]]>While the Steam Deck OLED is awash with upgrades over the original handheld PC, it’s not a full replacement, and Valve still reckon that anyone wanting a proper Steam Deck 2 will be waiting a while.
I was told as much on the Steam Deck’s first anniversary earlier this year, and according to Valve designer Jay Shaw and software engineer Jeremy Selan, that stance won't change once the Steam Deck OLED releases on November 16th. In an RPS interview, the full version of which is coming soon, the two developers explained why the real next generation of Steam Deck will take a few years – and why they decided against making the Steam Deck OLED’s new processor more powerful as well.
]]>Valve love their surprise hardware announcements, and there’s just been a doozy in the Steam Deck OLED. It’s a "definitive" refresh of the existing Steam Deck handheld PC that swaps the underwhelming IPS display for a brighter, more vibrant OLED panel, while making numerous battery life improvements – up to and including a new, more efficient AMD APU – that promise significantly more time away from the mains. It’s not far off either: the Steam Deck OLED’s release date is November 16th, just one week away.
]]>As well as it runs on your average desktop PC, it wasn’t until I began playing Diablo IV on the Steam Deck that its demon-thwacking really clicked for me. Largely because this was my first experience of it with gamepad controls, and using thumbsticks and face buttons to move and toss out spells just feels more... I don't know, direct? Like I’m actually controlling my Necromancer and her boney bodyguards, not just clicking a unit and watching their animations.
It helps that Diablo IV’s Steam Deck performance is surprisingly spry, with fast 45-60fps framerates within reach even when leaving the majority of graphics settings on Ultra quality. Unlike all of the other best Steam Deck games, there’s no native support for its Battle.net launcher, but with some resourcefulness, that needs only be a temporary barrier.
]]>Installing Battle.net on a Steam Deck is no longer the only path towards handheld Diablo IV, now that it has a Valve-Verified Steam version. Nonetheless, if you’re sticking to the original release, it’s still perfectly possible to get Blizzard’s demonic RPG – plus the likes of World of Warcraft and Hearthstone – playable on your Deck, despite the launcher’s lack of native support. You even have a couple of options on how to get there, so this guide will cover both how to install Battle.net directly to a Steam Deck’s SSD and an alternative method that uses the Lutris all-in-one launcher.
]]>Mere spec sheets? Old news, friend. This Steam Deck vs Asus ROG Ally comparison is new and improved with actual testing results, both hard data (I may even borrow some benchmark graphs from the ROG Ally review) and those of the observational/anecdotal/downright take-y variety. Hopefully, by the end of it, these will give you a far better idea of which handheld gaming PC will suit your travelling needs, performance preferences, or even specific games to play on the go.
]]>Valve and CodeWeavers have released the latest version of Proton, their compatibility software that allows Windows games to run on Linux-based operating systems – like that of the Steam Deck. Proton 8.0 is a biggun, smoothing out compatibility issues for over a dozen games (including the Dead Space remake and Forspoken) while making Steam Deck-specific fixes to many more.
]]>The latest Steam Deck client update has added Valve’s local network game transfers feature – previously only available in beta form – to the Stable branch, marking a full launch for one of the most useful Steam Deck feature upgrades in months.
]]>Happy birthday, anniversary, launchiversary, or whatever you want to call it to the Steam Deck. Valve’s handheld SteamOS games machine has successfully evaded hardware flop status, currently sitting fourth in Steam’s own top sellers list a full year after it began shipping. That’s well deserved, too: the Steam Deck was a fun little alternative way to play PC games when it released, and through a combination of added features, ongoing improvements to game compatibility, and simply a wider choice of great games, it’s a better device now than it’s ever been.
I was originally going to look back on the Steam Deck’s first 12 months with my eyes only, but what fun is a party of one? Thus I invited Valve designer Lawrence Yang and engineer Pierre-Loup Griffais for their takes on the Deck’s past, present, and future.
]]>Last night was a restless one for the Steam Deck. In addition to a huge client update for the handheld PC, Valve pushed out a Proton Experimental update to fix a crashing problem with games that use the Ubisoft Connect launcher on Steam.
Ubi’s launcher had received an update of its own, sadly one that interfered with the ability of Proton – the layer of software that helps made-for-Windows games run on the Linux-based SteamOS – to keep it compatible with the Deck. Indeed, just like the 2K Launcher last year, with the added irony that the affected games (which include The Division 2, Watch Dogs Legion and Ghost Recon Breakpoint) only arrived on Steam in the past few weeks.
]]>For what is now the fifth time in a row, Valve have announced that waiting Steam Deck reservation holders will get their SteamOS handheld earlier than anticipated. That’s thanks to yet another uptick in production speed, according to a Steam Community post, so everyone whose delivery estimate was in Q3 2022 should now have received their confirmation email. Fulfilment of the final remaining Q4 batch is now fully underway, after a smaller handful of lucky Q4-ers were bumped forward into Q3.
]]>The latest Steam Deck software update, comprised of both a client update and SteamOS 3.3, is out now. It’s a fat stack of improvements and fixes, too, including a handful of brand new features.
You can read the full patch notes on Steam, but I’ll give you the highlights, which include a new warning that pops up when the Steam Deck’s temperature “goes outside the safe operating range”. When it starts throttling, in other words, a threshold that many Deck owners have been discovering during recent heatwaves. I have an overheating notification feature myself, only it’s just me typing “too hot” in the RPS Slack.
]]>Valve have wheeled out another major Steam Deck software update, featuring some tasty changes that have been available to try on the SteamOS beta branch for a few weeks. Namely, SteamOS 3.2 tweaks the Deck’s fan curve to make it quieter (especially under light load), and adds the option to set the screen’s refresh rate anywhere between 40Hz and 60Hz – potentially saving battery life in exchange for a lower frames-per-second ceiling.
]]>The Steam Deck only had a few weeks of getting to know Final Fantasy XIV before the latter’s 6.08 update wrenched them apart. In less undeservedly romantic terms, it was the MMO’s newly added launcher that – unlike the rest of the game – didn’t work well at all with the Deck’s Proton compatibility software. Two months later, however, Valve have released an update on Proton’s experimental branch that fixes the launcher, making FFXIV playable on the handheld PC once again.
]]>It’s coming up to three years since I thought "Huh, we should probably have a list of the best Steam Deck games", and I’ve been thinking about how its purpose has quietly changed. At first it was a guide for freshly minted Deck owners to get some purchase on its thousands-strong launch catalogue of compatible games; these days, though, there probably aren’t that many 'new' owners around, unless they were holding out for a white version. I’ve also realised that my updates have almost always been prompted by newer releases, giving the whole thing something of a recency bias.
Not to say that’s undermining it, largely because it’s only ever been, like, my opinion, maaaaan. But now and in the future, it probably will continue to act as a filter for recent (and semi-recent) games that happen to be particularly well-suited to being played on a lil’ handheld – rather than presenting itself as an attempt to pick just 30 top games from a decades-old mega-library. We’re all cool with that? Cool.
]]>Steam Deck software updates continue to refine Valve’s handheld PC. This time, the big new feature is the ability to create per-game performance profiles, which let you pick and choose from the Deck’s toy chest of power and battery-saving settings and apply your tailored configuration to a specific game at a time. You can then switch between games without having to manually re-adjust those settings every time you play something different.
]]>Not that the added security isn’t appreciated, but Valve never actually explained how to set the Steam Deck lock screen in their Lock Screen Update patch notes. Good thing, then, that adding PIN protection to your handheld PC is quick and easy, as this step-by-step guide will show.
]]>The latest Steam Deck software update is a biggun, with Valve adding an arguably overdue lock screen to their handheld PC. This new PIN protection leads a bevy of other features including localised keyboards, a redesigned achievements page, and support for games and apps with multiple windows, which you can now flick between via the Steam button menu.
Without the update, it’s possible to just sign into your Steam account once and never need to punch in credentials again, even after a full restart. This is convenient, especially if your Steam Deck isn’t at risk of chicanery from young siblings or vengeful housemates, but giving it the Deck a lock screen goes a long way in guarding it from prying hands. It’s definitely worth the longer-than-usual update installation, at any rate.
]]>Provided the Steam Deck isn’t your one and only games PC, you can make it an even more flexible handheld by using Steam Remote Play. Once you learn how to set it up – with the aid of this guide, I’d hope – you can have Remote Play stream any game from your Steam library straight to your Steam Deck. Yes, you’ll need a fast internet connection for the highest picture quality and lowest amount of input lag, but Remote Play can both sidestep Steam Deck compatibility issues and run your games with potentially much higher performance than what the Deck’s own hardware can manage.
]]>It gets easier every day to find out which games will simply run on a Steam Deck; the list of Steam Verified-rated games is regularly extending, and SteamDB are keeping track of Playable and Unsupported games as well. Still, while these may be old favourites that you’ve already sunk hours into on a desktop, you might still be wondering how these games play when transplanted to the smaller screen and gamepad-ish controls of a handheld.
Liam was wondering it, anyway. Thus, he picked ten difference game genres from the most-played on Steam, asked me to play at least one game that would broadly represent each, and report back on which are the most (and least) suited to life on the Steam Deck.
]]>Proton, the compatibility software Valve uses to help Windows games work on the Linux-based Steam Deck, is quite the achievement. There are thousands of games originally built without Linux/Steam Deck functionality in mind, but can work more or less flawlessly after passing through the Proton layer. The bad news is that, as some Deck owners are now discovering, not every game makes the jump without technical problems. The good news is that knowing how to install Proton GE on the Steam Deck can, potentially, fix them.
]]>The Steam Deck is all about transplanting the pleasures of PC gaming to a handheld. But, if you’re exclusively accustomed to mouse and keyboard controls, even simple actions like taking a screenshot can require learning a new language of button combinations. Luckily, in this specific case, snapping a screenshot on the Steam Deck is as easy as a couple of presses – or to be more specific, a hold and a press.
]]>The Steam Deck’s battery life depends largely on what games you’re playing on it, and if you own one of the original models instead of the newer, longer-lasting Steam Deck OLED, you’d be forgiven for looking at the latter with a covetous eye. Some games, after all, can drain a 100% charge on an original Deck battery in less than a couple of hours.
Fortunately, there are more than a few tricks you can employ to extend your Steam Deck’s battery life. Some have been nestled in its settings menus since launch, others have been added as part of SteamOS updates, but pretty much all of them are worth trying if you’re unhappy with how quickly your handheld PC is conking out. This guide will explain how and, to sate the curiosity of prospective Steam Deck buyers, list the actual battery test results I’ve recorded with various games.
]]>I’ve spent the past three days trying to get Ghostwire: Tokyo running on the Steam Deck, and have been thwarted every time by an impassable black screen that appears immediately after the opening cutscene: a failure of the next cutscene to roll correctly. Despite a possible fix being available, this has yet to work for me either, and now that the game has fully released it seems I’m not alone in my suffering.
]]>It’s been a little over a month since I got my WASD-calloused fingers on the Steam Deck, Valve’s ambitious and mostly successful attempt at a portable gaming PC. In that time I’ve taken it on day trips, chatted to Gabe Newell and the Valve dev team about it, and been laughed at in a pub for inverting the Y axis on it. And all the while, the Steam Deck itself has been getting better - considerably so.
]]>Valve have gathered up some crucial Windows drivers for the Steam Deck, improving performance for those who want to ditch the default SteamOS and replace it with Windows 10. GPU, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth drivers are all available from Steam Support, so early Deck adopters looking for a change can get the requisite downloads all in one place.
These drivers come with caveats, mind. Audio drivers are still a work in progress, so only USB-C, 3.5mm, or Bluetooth headphones can output sound on Windows, and Valve’s post explains that dual-booting support still isn’t ready yet. Installing Windows, then, is an all-or-nothing switch that involves wiping SteamOS entirely.
]]>Half the point of the Steam Deck is that it’s portable, but the other half is that it’s a PC. With the right tools, then, you can plug into a monitor, add a mouse and keyboard, and get playing as if it were a (somewhat) conventional gaming rig. But how well does the Steam Deck work as a desktop PC, really? Valve’s use of the Linux-based SteamOS alone makes it less of a 1:1 equivalent to a Windows system, and its AMD APU was designed to handle the onboard display’s 1280x800 resolution – not 1080p and above.
]]>Fortnite might not make it to the Steam Deck, but anyone planning to pick up Valve’s portable PC won’t be short on compatible games. The Steam Deck compatibility review programme, in which Valve intend to test every Steam game for playability and usability on the Deck, appears to be upping gears ahead of the launch on February 25th. According to the unofficial tracking list on SteamDB, 294 games have entered the highest possible ‘Verified’ category, nearly tripling the count of Verified games that were listed a week ago.
]]>Epic Games might have committed to making their Easy Anti-Cheat (EAC) system more compatible with the Steam Deck, but don’t expect to see their biggest game on the Valve handheld. Battle royale money machine Fortnite will not be updated to work on the Steam Deck – and according to Epic CEO Tim Sweeney, that’s down to a lack of “confidence that we’d be able to combat cheating” on Linux platforms.
]]>If you’re opted into Valve’s Steam client beta, you may have noticed a couple of small but potentially very helpful UI updates that rolled out in the past few hours. Changes that are available on desktop but could be even more helpful, methinks, on the upcoming Steam Deck.
The first appears on the Library page of games you own, but haven’t installed yet: a new “Space required” string that lists how much hard drive or SSD space it will need. As it stands on the main Steam client, you can’t normally see this info without clicking the Install button, so that’s a click saved whenever you’re trying to find out if a new game (or nostalgic re-install) will fit onto stuffed storage.
]]>Whelp, that didn’t take long. Steam Deck dev kits were only sent out to game developers this week, and it looks like Valve’s handheld PC is already getting picked apart. That’s according to SteamDB creator Pavel Djundik, who tweeted screenshots of the Steam Deck UI before claiming the entire SteamOS 3 operating system has been leaked.
]]>One of the many surprises of the Steam Deck announcement concerned SteamOS. The underlying software of SteamOS 2.0 was Debian (back when Steam Machines were a thing) but that’s been dropped for Arch Linux for version 3.0. Valve says the switch will let them use Arch’s rolling updates to keep their gaming slate up-to-date.
]]>Steam Machines went nowhere, Valve have basically said (I'm paraphrasing a touch), but nah, don't sweat it, they are still committed to improving gaming on Linux. After shuffling Steam Machines deeper into the labyrinth of Steam's website menus, and the ensuing cybersquawking over Valve having done a thing, they've reflected a little on their PC branding partnership and the Linux-based SteamOS beneath it.
"Given that this change has sparked a lot of interest, we thought it'd make sense to address some of the points we've seen people take away from it," Valve's Pierre-Loup Griffais said. Internet, eh?
]]>Is... Is this E3 news? On day three, I can't tell anymore. Did Sid Meier swing on a trapeze across the E3 concourse to announce that Civilization 5 was now available on SteamOS and Linux? Did Aspyr gather the world's press in an art deco theatre to reveal that this was their first Linux port, after years of porting popular games to Mac? Or is it the case that there was a simple post on Civ V's Steam forum to declare that users of Ubuntu could now begin conquering 4X strategy worlds?
Probably that last one.
]]>I find it interesting how Valve both is and isn't investing a lot of time and precious, precious GabeNcoins into its Steam Machine initiative. On one hand, this is the PC juggernaut's plan to bull-rush through the living room's console-lined walls and play jump rope with the entrails of enemies within, but on the other Valve is hedging its bets as cautiously as possible. It's letting countless hardware manufacturers take the risk on building and distributing these things, and it's hoping audiences will give them some clue as to what they should do after that. It's not a terrible strategy by any means. It's just a very Valve-centric one. Hardware manufacturers like Alienware, then, are worried, even as they place utmost faith in Valve's time-proven ability to prime penniless pumps until money cascades out like a Biblical flood.
]]>Steam Machines might be Valve's answer to consoles, but that doesn't mean they play by the same rules as Sony and Microsoft's increasingly indistinguishable boxes. Linux is an open platform and Steam is constantly evolving. I do not think it's unreasonable, then, to expect elements of PC gaming to creep into Steam Machine hardware as well. Just, uh, maybe don't get your hopes up for Alienware to kick off that trend. The intergalactic planetary PC supplier has decided that upgrading its Steam Machines won't be a modular process. If you want shiny new CPUs, graphics cards, or even memory, you'll have to pick up a whole new box. While SteamOS can change conveniently and for free, hardware, as ever, comes at a price. And that's a problem - one that hardware manufacturers should consider remedying if they want us to be at all interested in their first round of Steam Machines.
]]>Valve is a strange company. The mega-dev has always paddled against the inundating current of conventional wisdom, but it gets especially odd when it defies its own internal logic. Oh yeah, also infuriating. As we've observed on multiple occasions, the house that Newell built is often extremely open, responsive, and communicative... except when it's really, really not. Half-Life 3, a recent bout of (still-unexplained) layoffs, Diretide, etc. These lapses don't make Valve a Bad Guy or anything, but they do strain the developer's relationship with its 65-million-strong audience. It's an odd dichotomy that's more relevant than ever with the evolution of Steam Machines and SteamOS apparently in the community's hands. So I decided to ask Valve a simple question: What gives?
]]>Yes, that's right: You. That is who this article is for. Absolutely, positively nobody else. And by that, I of course mean Yousef Johnson, the world's most average PC gaming enthusiast. He spends much of his leisure time playing on his own custom-built PC, largely by way of Steam. According to Valve, You (and perhaps by extension, also you) are who the initial line of Steam Machines is aimed at. And yet, so far it's difficult to find many reasons to care. There's the living room appeal, sure, but what's to stop You from simply installing SteamOS on his own machine, buying a Steam controller, and doing a bit of quick (not to mention free) legwork? I asked Valve to justify its massive yet arguably over-cautious endeavor both now and in the long run. Here's how the PC juggernaut replied.
]]>Valve's robot owl Steam controller has been the talk of the town since the town learned to talk, but talk is cheap. While attending Valve's recent CES Steam Machine event, I realized I had light and a camera, so it was time for action. Go below to watch me comment on (and gripe about) a beta Steam controller's many, er, eccentric ins and outs while playing games like Metro: Last Light and Starbound. Valve's onto something, I think, but there's still a worrisome amount of work to be done before primetime.
]]>The Consumer Electronics Show is happening in Las Vegas right now, which is a lot like E3 but full of televisions and Michael Bay instead of videogames. There is at least one thing there of interest to us, though: Valve have been revealing the first concrete details of their Steam Machine partners, including the 14 manufacturers currently making them and the specs and prices of some of those boxes.
Nathan is at the event and we'll have interviews and impressions to share with you soon, but let's round-up the news so far.
]]>Last week, Valve sent out the first 300 prototypes of their Steam Machines. That's exciting, but unless you were one of the few randomly chosen, you can't get involved. They also released the first version of their SteamOS for everyone to download, which is exciting but you should not get involved. Even Valve don't think so.
]]>You there! Yes, you, with the hair, the shirt, and the microscopically minuscule pimple behind your left nostril that nobody - not even you - knows about. You could well be mere days away from receiving your very own Steam Machine. If you live in the US and signed up for Valve's first round of testing, I would advise that you check your inbox now, lest you miss the opportunity to excitedly huddle around your fireplace, waiting for ol' Saint Newell to slide down the chimney and pull your precious bounty from the safety of his beard of impossible wonders.
]]>Valve's already shown off a prototype of its mythical Steam Box, but what about all these third-party machines we keep hearing about? The hope is that they'll offer price and versatility options where Valve can't cut it on its own, so they could end up just as key in the FutureWar For The Living Room as GabeN's boxy baby. Valve claims that numerous manufacturers are backing it up, but for now only iBuyPower has un-holstered its gleaming dust magnet of a secret weapon. Meet Gordon (or Freeman, depending on your preference for systems that look like glow-in-the-dark sandwiches). He will apparently be able to run all of your games in 1080p at 60 FPS.
]]>Owning a gaming machine with horsepower for days can come with some pretty severe drawbacks - for instance, that it's comparable to an actual horse in weight and portability. (And I can't even ride it! What did I make this damn thing for, anyway?) The prospect of following Valve's rhythmically clomping war party into the living room, then, isn't the most attractive. Not when I have to pit my spine against weight that would bow a flagpole for multiple action-packed flights of stairs. But soon, all will be well. Valve's officially announced its in-home streaming program for Steam, and it sounds like just what my doctor would've ordered after diagnosing me with folded-up-like-a-human-accordion syndrome.
]]>Lookit! A box! Isn't that just the most exciting thing? The Internet is, of course, in a tizzy over Valve's big reveal of a Steam Machine prototype, and - yep - it sure looks like one of them newfangled VCRs that can play those dang dern gametapes we never stop talking about. The bigger news, however, is that you need not worry about being required to own one - or even running SteamOS, for that matter. Nope, not even for Half-Life 3. Valve, happily, is philosophically opposed to the idea of platform exclusives.
]]>Valve have posted up a range of specs for the Steam Box prototype - or prototypes, as they have varied CPU and gfx cards - three hundred of which are going to be sent out to early sign ups. They explain: "The prototype machine is a high-end, high-performance box, built out of off-the-shelf PC parts. It is also fully upgradable, allowing any user to swap out the GPU, hard drive, CPU, even the motherboard if you really want to. Apart from the custom enclosure, anyone can go and build exactly the same machine by shopping for components and assembling it themselves. And we expect that at least a few people will do just that. (We'll also share the source CAD files for our enclosure, in case people want to replicate it as well.)"
]]>Valve? Making its own OS for living rooms? Madness. Pure, coldly calculated and entirely premeditated madness. But SteamOS' success is far from guaranteed, and it's got some serious hurdles to overcome before it can establish a New World Order. Last time around, I gathered developers of games like Project Eternity, Gone Home, Mark of the Ninja, The Banner Saga, and Race The Sun to discuss who SteamOS/Steam Boxes are even for and the relative "openness" of Valve's platform in light of, er, Greenlight. Today, we dig even deeper, into the strange, nebulous guts of Linux and what sorts of challenges and opportunities Valve's crazy, newfangled controller presents. There are even some hands-on impressions from Dejobaan and Paradox. Read on for THE FUTURE.
]]>Could it be true? That here in my mortal hand I do hold a nugget of purest gaming? Not exactly. It's the latest and tiniest NUC, Intel's so-called 'Next Unit of Computing'. It's a full-function PC with Intel's best graphics ever. And it's claimed to sport pukka gaming chops. Meanwhile, Valve has been punting SteamOS, the whole Steam Box thang is still on – as far as I know - and Xi3's Piston has been priced up at a preposterous $1,000. Chuck all that into the mix and you might wonder whether the NUC looks a lot like a entry-level Steam Box, on the hardware side at least. And if so, does the small-form-factor gaming thing add up?
]]>You probably haven't heard, but Valve's officially going forward with its plan to launch its own Steam-centric OS, living room hardware, and a crazy, touch-pad-based controller to back it all up. I know, right? It's weird that no one has been talking about it incessantly. But while Valve preaches openness and hackability, it's downplayed an ugly reality of the situation: smaller developers still face a multitude of struggles in the treacherous green jungles of its ecosystem. SteamOS and various Steam Boxes, however, stand to bring brilliantly inventive indie games to an audience that doesn't even have a clue that they exist, so I got in touch with developers behind Gone Home, Race The Sun, Eldritch, Mark of the Ninja, Incredipede, Project Eternity, and more for their thoughts on SteamOS, who it's even for, Valve's rocky relationship with indies, and what it'll take for Steam to actually be an "open" platform.
]]>And so the announcements are complete. And with no last-minute surprises, Valve have announced their peripheral for the Steam Machine that will carry SteamOS, in an attempt to bring PC gaming into the living room. It is, they say, a new kind of controller, one designed to be able to trick older games into thinking they're being played with a keyboard and mouse. It looks pretty damned smart, at first glance.
]]>Nvidia's history of Linux support has been - to put it very, very lightly - rocky at best, but apparently that's all about to change. The hardware manufacturer is now throwing its considerable weight behind both SteamOS and Linux as a whole, even going so far as to promise it'll release documentation on its GPUs to the Linux community so as to help ease compatibility issues. Meanwhile, the meaner, greener side of the graphicsability wars boasts of engineers "embedded at Valve" to hammer SteamOS into rip-roaring, console-busting shape. Which, I suppose, makes sense, given that AMD is supplying innards for both Microsoft and Sony.
]]>Following the SteamOS announcement on Monday, time has been ticking away, as it has a tendency to do, and we now find ourselves on the farside of Valve's second announcement. It's a Steam-powered Box! A group of them, to be more precise. And, boy, am I glad it is, because I wrote this pre-jump section of the post an hour ago, having spent the day polishing my crystal ball. If, like Brad Pitt, you want to know what's in the frickin' box, join me below for a brief tour.
]]>As the internet held its breath and the countdown reached zero, speculation in the RPS chatroom reached fever pitch. And after the announcement was made, John bellowed, "I PREDICTED THAT!". He did, you know. Valve are releasing an operating system, SteamOS and this is what we know.
As we’ve been working on bringing Steam to the living room, we’ve come to the conclusion that the environment best suited to delivering value to customers is an operating system built around Steam itself. SteamOS combines the rock-solid architecture of Linux with a gaming experience built for the big screen. It will be available soon as a free stand-alone operating system for living room machines.
More below.
]]>Things are moving apace at Valve. With the announcement of their first internal non-gaming project coming tonight (although it might be a documentary film), and the news that Steam will soon start selling software alongside games, you get the impression that they're attempting a significant repositioning. So, based entirely in speculation, here's what I'm wondering: Could this eventually lead to the release of SteamOS?
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