Gaming Company Valve Distances Itself From The Piston Gaming Box

Steam boxes are irrelevant. They are consoles for people who like PC gaming but are too stupid to fathom a DVI to HDMI cable or simply using a regular HDMI on a video card's HDMI port. You have no control over the hardware like a custom built PC and are subject to their markup due to labor in construction. If your steambox becomes outdated for the current crop of games, too bad. It's a console without a definitive life cycle.

PCs connected to HDTVs are nothing new, nor is it taboo to do so. They work marvelously at all tasks. I haven't used an actual PC monitor in years.

Scythlord, I agree that they are for people who can't work a pc well enough to hook one up to their tv, but i wouldn't dismiss a market being there. Think about how many people there are who play games and would probably want pc level gameplay but don't know where to begin when it comes to building their own pc or hooking one up to a tv. There are plenty of people who need help with their pc already. Given the population that could add up to several thousand easily. At $1000 a box, there is probably a profit margin in there that could potentially be a few million for the designers if they can keep their costs low. Will it replace pc or console gaming? Of course not. Will it make some cash for it's designers? Most likely.

I agree with both stand points. I made my own PC so this idea seems silly to me but out of the context of ignorant people buying it, I get it. I mean, people have blinders on when it comes to learning anything about the PC. There are truly hard to learn things in technology, building and/or understanding general PC knowledge is not one of them.

Also I wanted to ask, why Linux? Really... most games are in Windows... so why make it hard on themselves. I know there are so called win/lin projects to allow crossover of Windows games to be played on Linux. I just don't get the fascination with making it hard on yourself. Especially creating a system that does it makes no sense to me.

you guys are aware that the steam box has just as much customization as a traditional PC right? valve even announced that there is going to be vary little difference.
its not for people who don't understand how to use PCs its for people who want to play steam from the comfort of there own living room while lying back on the couch. its to try and take the spot light away from the consoles that are based on 4 year old tech and still call themselves cutting edge.

as for the reason for Linux, it is because Linux is the lesser used but the most compatible, it is the best for coding and the like.

that being said the piston isn't even the Steam box that valve has been working on it is a third party piece of hardware that is trying to do something similar to valve.

-Power Corrupts-

@brian12102 "as for the reason for Linux, it is because Linux is the lesser used but the most compatible, it is the best for coding and the like." Ah no. I write software for a living. It doesn't support .net framework without a 3rd party add on. I will take on anyone thinking they can challenge the power, maintainability, and code life cycle speed of C#.

PS. I write in C++ and quite a few other languages as well, and am a senior software engineer.

So the questions till stands... why?

It seems a little ridiculous to use Linux as the platform for a steam box, since steam is notoriously difficult to use in Linux, and valve Linux support is basically non-existent. The makers are trying to avoid Microsoft licensing costs, but are going to create a disaster for themselves. As aaronomics101 said, it doesn't support .net without a lot of work (trust me, I spent weeks trying to get Linux to work consistently with video games, then went and bought a Microsoft license). Also, a steam box is good in theory, but it can limit your choices for gaming. A lot of popular games and MMO's are not available in steam, and again, many MMO's, such as LOTRO, are nearly impossible to run in Linux.

The reason for using Linux versus windows is for two reasons. One, valve dislikes the direction that Microsoft is going with Win8, especially with the windows store. And on a base level Valve can produce and distribute there own copy of Linux a little to no cost. Also I think it might be hard for Valve to get a License(s) for windows from Microsoft due to Steams competion with the Microsoft store.

"... a Valve-built prototype Steam Box will be given a test run in the next three or four months. If it works well, that'd be good news for gamers, even if it puts the Piston in an even tighter spot."

The Piston has Linux and all that other junk, but the Steam Box will be a completely different platform, it does not mention any spec or platform(at least in this article) other than it being able to run Steam on, so it may be as customizable as a PC is.