Valve Announces Steambox, Sort Of

wbr1 writes "A new page has appeared over at Steam with this slightly cryptic text, a countdown, and an image of a console controller. 'Last year, we shipped a software feature called Big Picture, a user-interface tailored for televisions and gamepads. This year we've been working on even more ways to connect the dots for customers who want Steam in the living-room. Soon, we'll be adding you to our design process, so that you can help us shape the future of Steam.' It appears Gabe Newell wants to throw his hat in the console ring now with the Xbox One and PS4 about to be released. The countdown to the announcement is targeted at Monday."

They've got a good shot at it

[msobkow]

I think Valve has a very good shot at taking on the console market.

They have a recognizable and respected name.

Their online delivery system is tested and reliable.

Their software quality is generally good.

What I know of their test betas has been solid.

They have a huge catalogue of games for the platform before it's even released.

Re:They've got a good shot at it

[Torp]

Actually they don't have a huge catalogue, since it will supposedly run Linux.
Unless they'll provide a lot of games prepackaged with a version of Wine customized to run like lightning on their hardware... hmm...

Re:Not gonna happen

[Anonymous Coward]

Then you, my friend may not be their target audience.
If Valve make titles available to play on both PC & Steambox with just the one license then I would likely purchase one.

Re:They've got a good shot at it

[ubersoldat2k7]

Apart of the 200 already existing titles already mentioned, SteamBox + HalfLife3 would be a killer move from Valve and place them, at least, at a very good starting position. I can dream, can't I?

What worries me is that, some big shots like GTAV are not in those 200 titles.

Re:They've got a good shot at it

[aliquis]

Bundle it with all their own titles (Half-life, HL2, CS, TF2, Portal 1 & 2) would be a start for people who haven't played it, maybe not that exciting for people who play games though.

Streaming and Accounts

[Xian97]

Valve is pushing Linux for gaming, and I assume that the Steambox will be a Linux OS. There is only a very small subset of the Steam catalog that has native Linux games, so I am wondering if they are planning on supporting streaming from a PC running Steam to the TV via Steambox? There might still be some latency, but on a local network it is not going to be nearly what it would be streaming over the Internet, such as On Live or Sony's Gaikai.

My biggest question would be how are they going to handle the shared Steam account? What if the wife or kids wants to play a game on the Steambox and I want to play on my PC at the same time? The only way you can do that with the current system on multiple devices is to have one of them in offline mode, which means only one can play an online game at once. What about multiple profiles so that that each user can have their own friends lists and own achievements such as the PS3/360 do on their consoles? Currently there are not any separate profiles on a single account, you need separate Steam accounts, and separate game purchases on each account to do so.