steammachines
Latest
This is Valve's Steam Machine prototype and SteamOS (hands-on)
Take a good hard look at Valve's Steam Machine, because it's the last time you'll see it. Er, something like that. Only 300 of the metal beast above will ship to beta testers, and then Valve says it's cutting off its own supply of Steam Machines. "We're really building this as a test platform, and there are many machines that are gonna be made by third-parties. They're the ones that will be available commercially in 2014," Valve designer Greg Coomer told Engadget. Those machines will be revealed at next January's CES, as well as partners and more information (fingers crossed for pricing!). Coomer expects a "good array of options, optimized for different features" in the Steam Machines lineup -- everything from a low-end, inexpensive streaming box to an Intel i7/GeForce Titan GPU-powered supercomputer. The machine above was somewhere in between, with an Intel i7 CPU and a GTX 780 GPU housed in its snug chassis. All the parts in the prototype were swappable, and the only standard it's missing internally is an optical drive (presumably unnecessary if you're running SteamOS and downloading all your games digitally, right?). Valve's Steam Machine prototype is a reference design, essentially. "We think it's the right test platform for us," Coomer said. Of course, putting all that work into a reference design and not creating the box seems mighty wasteful.
Steam now 65 million users strong as Valve makes a push for the living room
Valve's Steam service for PC distribution and sales has over 65 million users playing its over 3,000 games, the company announced this afternoon. That's a 30 percent increase (15 million accounts) over the last 12 months -- not too shabby! -- putting the service's userbase well above that of Microsoft's Xbox Live (which has 48 million, according to MS). Not quite the 110 million that belong to Sony's PlayStation Network, but not too shabby. The new Steam number comes ahead of Valve's planned hardware beta, which intends to test the three main components of the company's big living room push: SteamOS, Steam Controller, and Steam Machines. The first of those components, SteamOS, is a Linux-based navigation solution for gaming PCs in the living room. While in can be installed on any PC (and it's free), it'll come installed on the physical Steam Machines that Valve ships to 300 beta participants (alongside the aforementioned Steam Controller). That said, at 65 million users, you have 0.0005 percent chance of being chosen for the beta. Best of luck with that!
This week on gdgt: Kindle Fire HDX, Momentum On-Ear, and Android gaming consoles
Each week, our friends at gdgt go through the latest gadgets and score them to help you decide which ones to buy. Here are some of their most recent picks. Want more? Visit gdgt anytime to catch up on the latest, and subscribe to gdgt's newsletter to get a weekly roundup in your inbox.
See the Steam Controller in action right here (video)
You've already seen the prototype Steam Controller in stills, but today we've got a video of Valve's new Steam Controller gamepad in action. The Valve employee in the video, ex-Sixense engineer and current Valve hardware engineer Jeff Bellinghausen, takes viewers on a tour through the studio's own Portal 2 first. He employs the dual touchpads as thumbsticks, which seems a bit cumbersome in this instance: his right thumb can be seen repeatedly scrolling as it runs out of touchpad space. Not exactly an issue in something like Portal 2, but certainly an issue in a more twitch-based game. The second game shown is the normally mouse-and-keyboard-dependent Civilization 5 -- again, workable in this instance as Civ doesn't require twitch-based response. The facsimile of mouse control on the touchpad is clearly workable, though it looks like it'll require some getting used to (just like the devs who used it told us). Up next, Bellinghausen tries out Counter-Strike: Global Offensive's training map in an effort to demonstrate precision with the touchpads. Though it certainly works, we'd like to get a better idea of using the controller in a more rigorous match -- few multiplayer first-person shooters allow time for extra mouse movement. The final game shown is indie darling Papers, Please, yet another mouse-driven game that seemingly works well with Valve's controller. The first prototypes for the Steam Controller arrive in 300 lucky households later this year. Head below the break to take a look at what they'll be getting!
Valve hosting first Steam Dev Days game developer conference in January 2014
Following Valve's trio of announcements last month, from SteamOS to Steam Machines and a brand new, bizarre controller, the gaming company revealed that its hosting a Steam development conference next January. The conference, titled "Steam Dev Days," runs for two days in Seattle's Washington State Convention Center, and promises panels, instruction, and hands-on with the aforementioned Steam products. There's also talk of VR discussion, something Valve continues to explore in interesting ways. Unlike the pricey San Francisco-based Game Developers Conference, Steam Dev Days costs just $95 to attend. All events on-site are off the record, though sessions are to be recorded and available after the show. Should you wish to present a panel, Valve's asking for submissions right here -- news on sessions and speakers already confirmed are coming "soon."
Daily Roundup: Honda and Toyota's human transporters, Valve's Steam Machine specs, Siri's voice actress and more!
You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours -- all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
Valve's Steam Machine prototype is tiny, potentially powerful
When Valve ships its own prototype version of a Steam Machine later this year to 300 beta users, those folks are getting relatively tiny and powerful gaming consoles. At very least, it'll have an NVIDIA GTX 660 (all the way through Titan), and anywhere from an Intel i3 CPU to an i7-4770. All prototypes come with 3GB of DDR5 RAM and a 1TB/8GB Hybrid SSHD for storage. A 450w battery powers the 12 x 12.4 x 2.9in. boxes, which is internal (no external power supply! alright!). Valve says it isn't ready to show off the box just yet, but offers more details than the prototype's initial announcement: the prototype is built entirely from "off-the-shelf PC parts," and is "fully upgradeable." In fact, aside from the prototype's custom housing, Valve says, "anyone can go and build exactly the same machine." The company even plans on sharing the CAD files for the housing, should you wish to directly replicate Valve's efforts. The forum post also says we'll see the box soon, before the beta units head out to 300 lucky folks. Head below for the full range of specs. Of course, the worry here is pricing. We still don't know how much any of this will cost, and it certainly smells like it won't be cheap. For example, Xi3's modestly powerful Piston gaming PC carries a $1,000 price tag. On the low end, just Valve's prototype's NVIDIA GPU costs around $200 (with the high-end Titan coming in around $1,000), which is to say nothing of the custom work required to fit said NVIDIA GPUs and Intel CPUs and everything inside a custom 12 x 12.4 x 2.9in. enclosure. If nothing else, beta users are getting a relatively pricey piece of tech for free -- an endeavor that no doubt engenders a lot of love from Valve's loyal community. What we'll see available for sale some time next year, however, may look a lot different than what we're seeing in this prototype.
Xi3's Piston modular PC launching November 29th for $1,000
As if shelling out $900 this holiday to snag the two next-gen game consoles wasn't enough, Xi3's Piston modular gaming PC is arriving on November 29th for $1,000. Should money be no object to you, the adorable little box is available for pre-order right this minute, and that'll lock in an earlier arrival by two weeks. Included in today's news of the Piston's launch date is word that internal storage capacity was upped by another SSD connector; Xi3 says up to 1TB of SSD storage is now supported. In a hilarious nod to Valve's Steam Machines news last week, Xi3 notes, "By adding a second SSD to their Pistons, users will be able to load a second operating system onto their machines, including the newly announced SteamOS." As previously reported, Xi3 is (at least in part) financially-backed by Valve, and the Piston is a bit of a "Steambox" (the previous name for Valve's Steam Machines effort) itself. SteamOS is said to be coming "soon," ahead of Steam Machines' official launch in 2014, and you'll see no surprise on our faces should SteamOS arrive ahead of Piston's November 15th pre-order availability. On Xi3's homepage, the Piston is positioned with a wireless, Piston-branded gamepad (seen above). It's unclear if it ships with the system later this year, so we've reached out to Xi3 for more info.
Weekly Roundup: Surface Pro 2 hands-on, Xperia Z1 review, Valve's SteamOS efforts and more!
You might say the week is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workweek, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Weekly Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past seven days -- all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
This week on gdgt: Apple's new iPhones, Loewe's Speaker 2go and Steam Machines
Each week, our friends at gdgt go through the latest gadgets and score them to help you decide which ones to buy. Here are some of their most recent picks. Want more? Visit gdgt anytime to catch up on the latest, and subscribe to gdgt's newsletter to get a weekly roundup in your inbox.
Daily Roundup: Sony's Cyber-shot QX100, Kindle Fire HDX 7 hands-on, Valve's Steam Machines, and more!
You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours -- all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
Valve unveils Steam Machines, a hardware beta for its living room game console
Valve announced Steam Machines today, a living room game console that launches at some point in 2014. The company also announced a hardware beta for its own version of the console; the beta starts this year. Today's news is the second of three planned announcements this week meant to expand the company's digital game distribution service, Steam. The company's issuing just 300 hardware prototypes in 2013 -- "free of charge, for testing" -- and you can enter to become one of those lucky 300 through your existing Steam account (an "eligibility quest" was added to Steam's quest page that will guide you through the process). Valve says that a variety of "Steam Machines" -- the new name for the company's "Steambox," a living room gaming console for playing PC games -- will become available next year "made by different manufacturers," including Valve itself. The hardware beta, which we first told you about many moons ago, only includes Valve's version of the Steam Machine. All the machines will run SteamOS, the operating system that'll power Valve's big living room push (it was announced earlier this week). There aren't any specs given for the various devices. Valve says that, since there will be a few different options, there'll be "an array of specifications, price, and performance" when we learn more "soon." It sounds like the 300 beta testers can share their experience with the rest of us, though, as Valve's asking for loud, public feedback. Apparently the beta will include "the nearly 3,000 games" that are available on Steam including the "hundreds already running natively on SteamOS." Everything else is streamable, says Valve. In terms of using a mouse-and-keyboard setup in your living room, Valve says that's an option, but "we have some more to say very soon on the topic of input."
