Steam Box's aims are quite simple and ambitious: make PC gaming as hassle-free as console's and bring it to the living room. It is natural to see it as a threat to consoles, but it seems that Microsoft isn't as worried about that as one would expect.
Microsoft's Xbox Chief Product Officer Marc Whitten believes that Steam Machines will co-exist along with consoles without competing with them. "I think there's space for both," he said. "I'm not sweating it."
Whitten admitted that he hasn't formalized an opinion about Steam Machines and their target audience or Valve's plans for them. "I continue to think that PC gaming – the sort of uber configuration and I can change everything and I can mod – that's an important thing and there's a lot of people that wanna do that." But is the number of those people large enough to make a dent in console sales? Whitten believe that this is quite unlikely.
NOTES - Requires update 1.8 to make this crack work. The 1.8 version will include the DLC. This is crack only, which does not include it. WARNING : The following cracked content may detect as threat which is harmless to Operating Systems. No one force you to download these. You have been warned!
Install Info -
Install full game!
Apply the cracked content to game Installation and replace originals!
Play game!
The Steam Box is Valve's big hardware shake up this year. Sure it has some possible VR goggles in the works too and there's always that wearable computing it hinted at last year, but ultimately, the Steam Box is the big get. We'll be seeing a load of different versions over the next few days at CES, with different hardware, cases, styles and certainly price tags, but they're all offering the same basic thing: the functionality of a PC, with the convenience of a home console.
However what is pretty different about the Steam Box is its controller. It's not a mouse, it's not a keyboard, or a touch screen, or even a (traditional) controller: it's a mix of them all, which means – theoretically at least – it should be good at playing just about any game possible.
In the past consoles have always excelled at things like racers, beat 'em ups and third person RPGs, but have struggled with the likes of RTS titles and anything else that has you controlling the action with precision from a distance.
I'd argue here that FPS games aren't that suited to consoles either, because a keyboard and mouse will trounce a controller any day, but the success of games like CoD on the Xbox and PlayStation seems to prove me wrong.
So can the Steam Box and its shiny, touchpad-thumbstick controller play just about anything? That's what we're going to look at today as we scour the reports of others who have had some time with the controller, to see what games and perhaps more importantly genres, you'll be able to play on your new Steam Box, should you decide to buy one.
Surprisingly, RTS games seem to work pretty well – in some senses comparably to a standard mouse and keyboard. While normally you might need to move to the edge of the map to move the screen, here you can have one trackpad for moving the mouse and the other for moving the screen/camera. This makes it fast and intuitive, though it does apparently get a bit weird using your left hand to left click.
That said, you aren't going to be internationally competitive with this system. There's no Starcraft pro that is going to ditch his mouse and keyboard for a Steam Box controller because it gives him better micro-management – at least for now – there just aren't enough buttons for all the necessary hotkeys.
Sensitivity is certainly comparable to a relaxed gamer's mouse control though, so there's some potential for future tweaking. The bottom line too, is that it's playable, which is a step up from every RTS on every other console I've played in the last decade.
What about something a little less grand? How about a MOBA like DotA 2?
Again, it plays well enough, but as this Youtube reviewer says it's clunky enough to lose a lot of the fun. There's also no way you're killing other players that are using a mouse/keyboard set up. Without enough quick touch hotkeys, there's just no way to play properly or even remotely be competitive. There's also not quite enough accuracy to last hit minions, or deny.
You can remap controls, which is something that everyone who has tried this has found necessary to make it at all playable, but even with some big changes, it just doesn't seem nuanced enough.
This is obviously a big shame since DotA 2 is a Valve product, but it might just be that the genre isn't suited to a controller set up, no matter how sensitive or touch pad enabled. While ironically the mouse has always been the thing that you missed when trying to play games with a controller in the past, here it's the keyboard, with its many, many simple inputs within reach that you find yourself pining for.
With that in mind, it's no surprise that Typing of the Dead, isn't a game that works well on the Steam Controller at all. It's playable funnily enough, because the game seems to pause every time the player pulls up the typing wheel, but without that, there would be no way to survive more than a second or too.
So far then, the Steam Controller seems far from revolutionary. Its functionality isn't that much improved over a traditional controller and it's still not quite up to scratch when compared to a keyboard and mouse
But what about something that consoles have been fine (depending on your point of view) at, like FPS games?
This guy takes a look at Metro Last Light and he finds it works pretty well. It probably won't replace a mouse and keyboard any time soon, but it's a lot more sensitive and accurate than a traditional controller, which means you can drop the auto-aim that comes pre-packaged with a lot of console shooters.
If anyone has tried early release hardware before, you'll understand when I say that most Steam Controller enabled games require some sort of configuration. Usually that's as simple as a remapping of the keys, but sensitivity tweaks might also be required.
So the Steam Controller as it stands, isn't ideal and it isn't going to suddenly give you an edge in console shooters, but it is making it possible to play games that previously were a complete chore on a console – now you can at least enjoy them.
The big thing as well which everyone is noting, is that there's a learning curve with the Steam Controller. It's very different from controllers you've used in the past, so even if it turned out to be the best method of input for a certain genre of game, it's going to take a while before we see someone using it to its full potential.
What games would you guys like to try the Steam controller work with?
It was early last year that we first started hearing rumblings of a Steam Box, a console/PC hybrid that lets you play PC games on any display, with a controller that should allow most titles to be played on them. It's trying to meld the convenience of a home console with the function of a PC - no mean feat.
However it seems like enough companies are involved now that at least one of them will be what we're after. There's now 12 of them and Engadget has broken down the list for us.
Of course there's Valve, which is making its own Steam Box, with multiple versions of different sizes, performance levels and price tags, but there's a lot more than that. iBuyPower has a version in the works, so does Digital Storm, Alienware, Falcon Northwest, CyberPowerPC, Origin PC, Gigabyte, Materiel.net, Webhallen, Alternate, Next, Zotac and Scan Computers.
There's an interesting mix there, as we have traditional gaming PC makers like Alienware and Falcon Northwest joining the mix, right alongside component retailers like Scan Computers and hardware manufacturers like Gigabyte and Zotac.
We'll get a look at all of the systems being put together by all companies at this year's CES, which begins tomorrow.
If you were going to buy a Steam Box based purely on the company's name, which one would you pick?
Three of the largest online game platforms have fallen victim to distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks this week.
DDoS attacks involve a large number of computers connecting simultaneously to a specific system and consuming its resources such as RAM, CPU and bandwidth thus making it unavailable to legit customers.
At least EA's Origin, Valve's Steam and Blizzard's Battle.net have been confirmed as DDoS victims. A group called "DERP" claimed responsibility for the attack that prevented Origin users from logging into the service. Two different groups claimed responsibility for similar attacks against Steam and Battle.net.
None of the three companies admitted to falling victim to denial of service attacks, however EA did acknowledge that it is "working to resolve connectivity/login issues affecting various platforms/games."
Somedays back Fallout Triology (that's Fallout, Fallout 2 and Fallout: Tactics) was been removed from Good Old Games because of a change in rights ownership. As 2013 came to a close, Interplay was forced to hand over all rights to Bethesda, so without a licensing deal, GoG had to drop the games.
At the time we reported that Steam still had the games listed, suggesting Valve had worked out a deal with Bethesda, however that's not the case. While the games can still be found on Steam, they aren't buyable in any capacity and you can't download them - though presumably you can if you've already bought them in the past, as is the case with GoG.
Unsurprisingly, since it's losing money by not having them there, Bethesda has announced that it is working on striking a new deal with Valve to get the games back on Steam as soon as possible.
Announced via the company's official Twitter account, it said: "We’re working to return classic @Fallout games (1, 2, Tactics) to Steam and will provide an update when they’re ready to go."
No such announcement has been made for GoG though and it doesn't seem likely to happen either, since Bethesda has never struck a deal with the DRM-free distributor, despite its extensive back catalogue of older games.
It seems likely then that Bethesda will continue to deal with Steam alone, which seems like a move that can only harm it in the long run, even if it does put a (very) minor speedbump in the way of crackers and NO/CD patchers.