Valve finally announced the long prophesied “Steam box” however they also had a couple of surprises up their sleeve. One of them is “Steam OS” a linix based operating system that runs steam, obviously, and is built specifically for gaming. However, there is a problem with that since it is linix based only games ported to linix will run on it. Steam has around 400 games that can run on linix as of right now although doubtless more are soon to come. Oh and by the way, Steam OS is free this means when Windows 9 is released you can save your self a hundred bucks and use Steam OS. This could be the killing blow to Microsoft’s gaming superiority something that I am all for.
The Steam Box itself is slightly more confusing. Valve wants to bring Steam into the living room and they want to try to eliminate all of the hassle of pc gaming. There is already one big problem, unlike a console there are going to be multiple steam boxes each with their different specs the cheapest one being simply a streaming device. That has always been one of the most annoying parts of pc gaming you are never quite sure if the game you want to get will run on your pc. Another problem is the different boxes will be built by different manufacturers, not Valve, meaning the quality of some steam boxes could be worse than others. It seems Valve is trying to find a middle ground between consoles and pc’s by having the convenience of the console but still maintaining the openness of pc gaming. My fear is that they will achieve neither and instead make a box that no one wants to buy. However, much of this is speculation Valve has released very few details on the Steam Box and no one even knows what one looks like. Despite all of my concerns this is Valve we are talking about possibly one of the smartest gaming companies ever the masterminds behind Half-Life, Teamfortress and Portal. They are a company that seems to have never made a mistake, however, there is a first time for everything.
Leave a Reply