Grave Gamer News & Views — hardware

Valve Dreams Up Steam Machines

Following Monday’s reveal of SteamOS, a Linux based operating system built for big screen gaming in the living room, Valve today brought us the announcement of Steam Machines.

I’ve little technical savvy to me, sadly, but far as I can gather, Steam Machines are gaming devices that perform mechanical work using steam as a working fluid. Wait, shit, that’s a steam engine. Wiki screwed me again.

Second attempt: a Steam Machine is living-room hardware that, naturally, runs the newly conceived SteamOS. In 2014, Valve will allow a multitude of different manufacturers to market their own Steam Machines, the logic being that consumers will have a litany of choices at hand to suit their needs – be it size, performance, or price.

Valve is still creating their own line of prototype boxes, however, in order to tune, tighten, and harness user feedback into designing a meaner, leaner Steam Machine. “At Valve we always rely on real-world testing as part of our design process,” said the company. “The specific machine we’re testing is designed for users who want the most control possible over their hardware.”

“Most control possible” is a canyon beneath under-exaggeration. Valve says you’ll be able to hack the box, change the hardware, install your own software to it, or even utilize an altogether different OS. Eventually, you’ll be able to download SteamOS, even its source code (“If you’re into that,” says Valve).

Valve’s own version of the Steam Bo – Er, Steam Machine will be undergoing a very limited beta that could land you, potential participant, with a free machine at your doorstep. How limited of a beta, you ask? Only 300 devices are being made available. Entry rules hereabouts. Go. Run. Now.

Is Console Gaming On Its Way Out?

“I’ll go on the record and say that the next generation of hardware will be the last consoles. And they should be.

"I’m going to go out on a limb, because why the fuck not? I don’t care if I’m wrong, I’m not a business guy. I think next-gen consoles are going to do 40 percent of [the sales volume] of the current gen hardware. The asteroid has hit the Earth, the dust cloud is covering the sun and the dinosaurs are on the way out - but not the games! We’ll always have great games and bleeding edge graphics… it’s just going to be a new delivery mechanism.”

David Jaffe in an interview with Games Industry.

It’d be an interesting evolution – a change one shouldn’t expect without kicking and screaming. Whichever usurping medium of gaming is introduced, it’ll have to conquer an untold barrier of accessibility before being openly adopted. That and its games have to have the potential of complicity. Smartphone gaming, a financial influx turning industry heads, won’t be enough to kill the console until the scope and nature of its games can rival experiences found on those machines.

Whatever’s next will probably harness the strengths of both, but that won’t be enough on its own. See, gamers have a tendency to simply go where the games are, and so long as this next evolution can meet that demand, the battle is half over. But would you be willing to see consoles made obsolete?