Week in Review

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I haven't updated anything this week and I did that on purpose. Valve had my attention this whole week and I was waiting for the all of their 3 part announcement before I put in my 2 cents. Now that all 3 announcements have been made I feel comfortable in talking about everything. So my first 3 points will talk about each individual announcement then I will throw in some other big stories and end with a wrap up paragraph or two.

SteamOS

The first of the 3. "Available soon as a free operating system designed for the TV and the living room." Looks like a standalone OS designed to be installed as an alternative to Windows.
The OS will have "significant performance increases in graphics processing", and Valve is working on "audio performance and reductions in input latency at the operating system level". It sounds as if they plan to release this as open source software, allowing other users to change it - they state "Users can alter or replace any part of the software or hardware they want." This implies that SteamOS will be built on Linux, supported more by the recent push into Linux that Valve has been doing. Great great news for PC gamers and I know I will be jumping on board once this hits. I have been waiting for years for an alternative to Windows and now I can finally make the change.

Steam Machines

As opposed to the popular "Steambox" name given by users on the forums. Valve is working with multiple hardware partners to put out Steam Machines that will come in a variety of options, all of which will be running SteamOS. Valve is taking an interesting approach to this by using multiple manufacturers. Not a whole lot more info was given other than a few FAQs and a guide as how to enter in the random BETA testing giveaway (Valve said they will be shipping out 300 units to BETA testers later this year)

Steam Controller

And finally as announced today, the Steam controller was unveiled. Speculation has been circling the idea of input peripherals for a while and Valve was known to be working on a gamepad that would mimic keyboard and mouse inputs in games. Designed to work with all Steam games (past and present), the controller will be able to emulate keyboard/mouse input allowing any game on Steam to be played. The controller was built with high precision and low latency in mind. Anything that bridges the gap between PC and console gamers is good for the community and this controller will attempt just that. It is well known that no matter who you are, a keyboard and mouse game player will always out play a gamer using a gamepad, that's just the nature of things. It will be nice for me to be able to stream my PC gameplay to my television and be able to sit on the couch and play a game with the controller while still having (speculatively) the same amount of precision I would have if I were sitting at my desk with a mouse and keyboard.

Nvidia pledges help on open source drivers

Possibly a reaction to the Valve announcements and the SteamOS being open source, Nvidia has said they will support open source drivers. Great news for everyone as we need these companies all to be on the same page to advance the industry further.

AMD announces Mantle

Keeping with the open source theme, AMD at their new GPU line reveal, also reveal Mantle which is a new low-level, multiplatform API developed by AMD and DICE. It was then announced that it will be used in Battlefield 4 instead of the traditional DirectX. It was an interesting announcement to say the least and I will be on the lookout for how it performs once released.

GTA V online microtransactions revealed

Really Rockstar? You really need MORE money after surpassing a billion dollars in sales of GTA V in 3 days!? Microtransactions in online gaming is really getting out of hand. Sure I can see them being implemented for free to play games or even games that cost $5 to $10 to buy, but not a $60 blockbuster! As much praise as Rockstar has been getting lately, I feel like this is a black spot (albeit a small one) on them. I would like to know how the community feels about this and if people really are on board with all these microtransactions in games.


That's it for this week. Valve's announcements are really looking to push gaming to the next level in terms of accessibility and gameplay. I think we can all say we are a little bit disappointing that one of these announcements was not the legendary Half-Life 3 or even just the announcement of the Source 2 engine but I feel we will get them not too much farther down the line. I am looking at from a perspective of, Valve just announced all these great things but what really is my incentive to go turn to SteamOS or get myself a Steam machine (even though SteamOS for me is a no brainer it might not be for others)? Valve needs something to sell to get people over to the new OS and what better IP to sell than their Half-Life series showcasing the new Source 2 engine with Left 4 Dead 3 and Portal 3 on its heels. Such an exciting week and I cannot wait for more information about the OS and the steam machines (ok the controller does look awesome too).


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