Steeeeaaaaam.....Machiiiiiiiiineee...

Practically required listening for this post

Last week was a rather fun one with all sorts of Valve announcements rocking the internet and driving all sorts of hype through ceilings.  It was, in fact, a week-long event with three announcements scheduled for Monday, Wednesday and Friday to allow for proper amounts of speculation and wonder in between conferences.  Speculation that all revolved around Half-Life 3, of course, due in no small part to the whole three announcements thing, and I'm sure that Valve is acutely aware of that fact.  Those rascals.  As someone who doesn't do the whole PC Gaming thing, all of this was a mere curiosity to me even if I do plan on getting into the scene at some point in the future when I have money to throw into a fairly decent rig (or even a -super- decent one) if only to check out a few odd exclusives here like Recettear and such that have no chance of jumping ship anywhere else.  Still, I can't help but take a look at the announcements and work through them as an outsider, but I'm going to tackle them in a way that...makes a little more sense than the order they picked.

Wednesday's announcement was that The Steam Box is now the Steam Machine and it is real.  Not only that, but they will come in all sorts of shapes and sizes because there are several different hardware manufacturer's that will make their own box, basically, even if they all have the exact same innards to start.  Or...maybe they will.  It's all very vague, if you haven't noticed.  I was originally thinking that there was going to be two different 'builds' or 'tiers' of it - one that acted mostly as a stream-between Box to get your games in Big Picture (and probably optimized a little better) versus a box that just -plays your Steam games-, but it seems like it's more or less going to be an amalgamation of the two.  It's hard to really pin down, however.  The only thing that's confirmed is the former bit about the streaming, but I can't imagine that Valve is going through all this trouble to release a dinky little bridge for people who want to use Big Picture, but can't be assed to...set it up properly through their PC.

How will it do this, you ask?  By using what was announced on Monday - SteamOS.  That's right, a Linux-based Operating System specifically for Steam to help you get all your digital content attached to your Steam account (and things on your normal PC) to your fingertips in one way or another.  Obviously, Steam Machines will run SteamOS natively, but you'll also be able to download it elsewhere if you feel like it; hell, you can probably just make your -own- Steam Machine based off of how open this thing seems to be.  What it's going to do, however, is try its best to optimize the parts for Game performance where a PC generally cannot do that, even a specialized one, because of the overhead from other programs and such.  Being Linux-based, it'll be able to natively run games that support Linux, but as we know that's not -every- game.  Or a good majority of them.  For the games that won't run natively, you can hook it up to your PC and stream the game through your house, but just how much of it all runs on one thing and the other is something that I just can't fathom.  It would be nice if it could just use the Machine's components and Windows' process so that I could actually play the scant few games in my library (assuming they're not Linux-compatible), but that sounds too wonderful to be true.

Finally, there's the question of -how- you will play all of this, which is where Friday's announcement of a Steam Controller comes into play.  This baby (viewable at the top of the page) is built specifically for PC gaming and will be compatible with pretty much every game in the Steam catalog, even (hopefully) games that don't have controller support cooked into them.  Of course, even knowing and seeing the controller, the issue remains of -how- you're going to play it....because the controller looks very, very unwieldy to me.  The trackpads stand out first thing, of course, but there are apparently people who've played with them already and said they work quite well, much to my disbelief.  What bothers me, however, is the placement of the face buttons, because they just seem so...weird.  Even the beta models of the controller have them taking up the touch-screen area as large keys, and that seems just as bad.  Hopefully it plays a little more intuitively than it looks, however.

The long and short of it, however, is that with those three announcements, Valve has more or less officially thrown their hat into the ring.  It's not a complete thing, as their investment is basically just as much at it's been aside from getting hardware makers to make hardware for them and if they have to discontinue them then, well, it's no big loss since a PC basically -is- a Steam Machine already with SteamOS being a thing and the controller being compatible with whatever.  Big Picture mode still exists, so what the Steam Machine/OS seems to be is an attempt to create something cohesive to mold it all together in one package which is a smart move, but you have to wonder if it'll be able to go off as seamlessly as it's arranged to do.  Depending on how many games end up running Linux natively (since I don't plan on hooking one up to this junk heap one way or another) I might just find myself owning one of these things to get my PC gaming fix....which I haven't even really dipped into yet.  But the Zeboyd catalog, Recettear and a few other things are all very tempting and ensure that I'll get into PC stuff, one way or another.

Update!:  So, now we have specs for Steam Machine prototypes.

The 300 prototype units will ship with the following components:
GPU: some units with NVidia Titan, some GTX780, some GTX760, and some GTX660
CPU: some boxes with Intel : i7-4770, some i5-4570, and some i3
RAM: 16GB DDR3-1600 (CPU), 3GB DDR5 (GPU)
Storage: 1TB/8GB Hybrid SSHD
Power Supply: Internal 450w 80Plus Gold
Dimensions: approx. 12 x 12.4 x 2.9 in high

As we all know, that is a bunch of gibberish to me, but consensus from conversations about it that others have had seems to suggest that this....this is all very bad.  By virtue of being disgustingly good.  Because it will cost a lot of money, you see.  Like a lot.

really though, who -isn't- going to get the clip of the lyric and make their machine boot with that

Xi3 Piston is a Steambox, Also Ridiculous

The 'Steambox' has been a thing that we've heard about time and time again, but always in sort of vague terms and ideas, never really anything concrete.  Despite -a- Steambox (not 'the', which is an important distinction) being more or less firmly announced and priced and such, that....has not changed much surprisingly.  It's kind of astounding, really, the nebulous nature with which this whole idea has been approached, and it sort of makes sense on the Valve side of things, since they always kind of play things close to the vest, but for anyone else?  They really just don't have the clout or the weight behind them to just toss out a few things, slap a pricetag on it and expect the masses to roll in.  To do so is, honestly, kind of arrogant and foolish.

I say all that because, of course, it is pretty much what Xi3 has more or less done here.  The "Piston" modular computer that has been leveraged as a Steambox through a partnership with Valve has been sort of semi-announced for a little while now, but was put up for pre-order yesterday...for $999.  I would do the whole "US DOLLARS" thing, but let's face it, you already did that in your head when you read it and this is just making you do it again.  Possibly a third time since the first two times were just you making sure you read correctly.  You did.  For $1,000, you can have a tiny little computer meant specifically to interface with Steam and Big Picture Mode so you can run your Steam library through your TV in a way that is, presumably, comfortable.  It should look glorious too.  Well....maybe.

The thing I was saying before, about not really having many details to work off of, well, this is where that comes in.  We know how much the thing -costs-, but we don't know what's inside of it which is kind of the important thing, especially with a computer.  Especially if you're looking to pre-order a computer for some reason.  (The reason right now would be to knock $100 off the still-ridiculous price)  Yet, all that we readily know is that the standard model comes with a 128 Gig Solid State Drive (versus a traditional Hard Drive), 8 Gigs of RAM (that I assume is standard RAM, and not the flashy, awesome kind in the PS4) and a 3.2 Ghz Quad Core processor which -sounds- impressive if nothing else (since it probably isn't).  I don't really know what those things -mean-, per se, but I am told that it's not very impressive.  Combine that with the complete lack of Video Card disclosure, which I know -is- important for gaming, and the fact that if you want more storage space, 256 Gig and 512 Gig models are available for $1,339 and $1,749 respectively, and 'wary' is an understatement for what we should be feeling here.

Those are really all the specs we know about, or at least, the specs -I- could find.  The partnership link above had a little blurb about the specs, but it's a little suspect.

As we envision our new X7A Modular Computer, we see it powered by a new Quad-Core 64-bit, x86-based processor running at up to 3.2GHz, integrated with up to 384 graphics shader cores, and 8GB of DDR3 RAM, and able to handle graphics-rich computer games like Crysis 2 with ease. The X7A Modular Computer will also run 3 high-definition monitors simultaneously, has four USB 3.0/2.0 ports, four eSATAp ports, four USB 2.0 ports, a 10/100/1000 Ethernet port, and up to 1TB of super fast solid-state storage inside the chassis, making it perfect for gamers and power users alike. And yet the X7A Modular Computer will be housed in a chassis about the size of a softball (4.27x3.65x3.65-inches) and run on a mere 40Watts of electricity or less. We expect the X7A Modular Computer to begin shipping in early 2013 with a price starting at under $1,000. All within a chassis you can hold in the palm of your hand!

For one, that blurb is for the X7A Computer which is, apparently, a separate product.  I think.  The official Xi3 website is just a mess of rhetoric that doesn't really go into a whole lot of details about anything.  But the products area still lists an X7A where the pre-order page is for, specifically, the Piston PISTON Console.  As we have established, actually no model that they're selling offers 'up to' 1TB of SSD space (Not even like a super-premium $2,499 model) and the rest of that is things that they don't bother to tell anyone anywhere else.  I mean, perhaps I'm just calling dirty pool because of that, but without a spec-sheet anywhere I can't help -but- to do that.  Besides, as I said, my 'people who know computers' don't seem very impressed with what -is- definite, so I'm not quite sure what else could be inside of the PISTON to make it a 'powerhouse' that warrants that $999 pricetag.

The unfortunate thing about all this is that, as stated, this is -a- Steambox which I'm sure is already being depicted as the Steambox in some media outlets out there.  That's surely going to cause quite a bit of confusion since the official Valve Steambox is not even in a "public prototype" phase.  A lot of the draw of the concept is that it's something that will be easy to get into and be an alternative for folks that don't necessarily have computer know-how (like myself), but if there's going to be this kind of premium associated with it, then I (and others) will just continue to steer clear.  It puts Valve on an even more precarious position now since this $999 figure is out there for a device -like- the one they're making and even if Valve comes out with something that's decidedly more reasonable, cost-wise, this will still exist and thus be compared to it.  "Why is this so much more expensive if it does the same thing?" and the like.  From the proliferation of Apple products compared to cheaper, more sensible things that do the same thing, people don't really understand the whole concept of "cost versus value".

At the same time, it's hard to tell when the 'official' Steambox will even be out, and who knows what the market and climate will look like then.  It won't accommodate another $999 Steambox, assuredly, but I would think that something from Valve wouldn't come at that much of a premium.  But in terms of confidence and attitude, what with Xi3's efforts already out there, it could be a rough sell for those who don't voraciously serve the Newell.  I hope to have -something- in the form of a laptop that will play games by the time this will come out, at any rate, so either Steambox probably won't appeal to me, but it's always something to take a look out for, certainly.