Valve to ship Steam Machines, Steam Controllers and SteamOS this Friday

[Shawn Knight]

Valve has announced plans to ship official Steam Machines and Steam Controllers starting this Friday. Unfortunately, not just anyone can go out and pick up a system. That’s because the first batch of prototypes are being sent to just 300 people that were lucky enough to make it into the beta.

In a press release on the matter, Valve said they had already notified the lucky recipients. In addition to the beta hardware, testers will receive a special badge on their Steam Community profile that lets others know they are part of the hardware beta. Furthermore, multiple games that run natively on SteamOS are being added to each user’s library.

It certainly sounds like Christmas will be arriving early this year for at least 300 people.

Valve pointed out they had to make the difficult decision to limit the beta to the US only due to a number of regulatory hurdles – circumstances that weren’t part of the original plan. Either way, Valve said it was the right decision because the alternative would have been to delay the whole thing beyond the point of being able to incorporate any feedback into products released next year.

Fortunately, the commercial versions of Steam Machines that will be up for sale in 2014 won't be affected by these regulatory issues.

Valve promises more information on Steam Machines will be announced at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on January 6.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/54988-valve-to-ship-steam-machines-steam-controllers-and-steamos-this-friday.html

 

[Rasta211]

Is this suppose to operate independent of my PC or with my PC?
Will I be able to play my Steam games on both my PC and console or are there "Steam console only" games.

Anyone know if their controller will work with the PC?

 

[cliffordcooley]

I'm not really interested in the Steam Machine. I am interested in Steam OS. I'm wanting to test drive the Steam OS so badly, I've halted my interest in all other Linux distro's until I've tried Steam OS. I figure if I'm going to start with Linux, I might as well start with distro designed for gaming.

 

[WangDangDoodle]

I've been wanting to get away from Windows for years now, and for so many reasons. Unfortunately Linux was never an option for a gamer (which is what we're all hoping is about to change now), so I never really bothered getting into it.

I've read that SteamOS doesn't come with a proper installer quite yet, and that you'll need to have some knowledge of how Linux works in order to install it. That's a bit disappointing, but I'm sure there will be guides online pretty soon. Valve will add a proper installer eventually, but presumably not until sometime next year along with the official launch of their Steam Machine.

 

[Divvet]

Is this suppose to operate independent of my PC or with my PC?
Will I be able to play my Steam games on both my PC and console or are there "Steam console only" games.

Anyone know if their controller will work with the PC?

This is supposed to be a "living room" box. So it is independent to your pc. Whilst having a PC is not required, if you want to play the games that are only Windows compatible on the Steam box, you will a PC with Windows to do so.

 

[pheonixnexus]

The steambox is more of a computer that can be hooked into your tv, valve has said steambox come with steam OS. I think they said you can load and maybe dual boot windows.

Steam os is a mod of linux and in theory support linux games and games that are omtimized for the os itself. if you had windows installed I guess you could switch and load steam on your windows OS.

and yes the controller will work with windows and I think it has be demoed.

I could be wrong though this is just what I remember.

 

[oldikes]

Steam OS is not a "mod" of linux in the traditional method, its more a "version" of it.
But yea. pheonix pretty much said it right. Its a PC with steam OS preinstalled on it instead of windows. The controller will work with windows as far as I remember.

 

[Fbarnett]

Has the NSA approved this?

 

[St1ckM4n]

Okay, cool, units are shipping. But how are they usable when we can't log into multiple locations with the same Steam account??

 

[Skidmarksdeluxe]

With so many set top boxes available to the consumer all promising to do the same thing I'll just let all the manufacturers duke it out until the winners emerge before I take any interest.

 

[Guest]

It could possibly use features similar to the family share that has been in beta allowing you to share your game library with other user accounts, you wouldn't be able to play the same game on each account simultaneously, but that hardly matters. Of course this is all just a guess, but it makes the most sense to me and is overly practical, something steam seems to shoot for.

 

[LNCPapa]

I'm pretty sure that's what the library sharing option is all about. This is exactly what I was planning to do with the new sharing feature - share it with my TV room account. It's not like I can be playing it in two locations at the same time.

 

[St1ckM4n]

I'm pretty sure that's what the library sharing option is all about. This is exactly what I was planning to do with the new sharing feature - share it with my TV room account. It's not like I can be playing it in two locations at the same time.

But that's two accounts. How can streaming from main rig work if they are separate accounts? That's why I'm surprised that the multiple-sign-in hasn't been implemented yet, because it's pretty much required.

 

[cliffordcooley]

But that's two accounts. How can streaming from main rig work if they are separate accounts? That's why I'm surprised that the multiple-sign-in hasn't been implemented yet, because it's pretty much required.

I don't understand why streaming would require different or multiply accounts. In my mind streaming would link both together using the same login. I mean what would be the point of streaming, if you had to login on the receiving machine?

 

[St1ckM4n]

That's exactly my point, CC. Currently, you can't log in to the same account from two locations.