Did Valve already get what they wanted from SteamOS? i.e. Win kernel + BigPicture DE

[johnc]

It's hard to know the mind of Valve because they're notoriously bad at communicating, not to mention slow at producing anything. So you get conflicting signals. On the one hand they'll release a SteamOS update and you think, "Yeah, they're serious about this thing...", and then on the other you notice that they're not even reading GitHub bug reports anymore and then think, "Okay, they've given up."

But I do think there is something to these vendors realizing that they can just make their own "Steam Machine" based on Windows rather than SteamOS. I think MS would implicitly allow it just to subvert the chances of SteamOS becoming and entrenched competitor. And then the only question that remains is whether or not Valve will allow their trademark on such a non-SteamOS console. And, if not, whether that even matters to the consumer.

[curaga]

OK, a second vendor is more convincing. For the title question, no, one part of the battle was the Win Store - the possibility of hijacking the main area of Steam. That question is still open, and as long as it is, I expect they will keep SteamOS running just to have a backup option.

[dungeon]

Now this has happened, exactly how much do Valve care about SteamOS?

How much care is *exactly* enough?

Numbers of new games for SteamOS still goes up approx +2 games per day, current number is 846 games - that is around 20+% what people have for Windows, it is lower number and it will be in many years to come but of course what matters today is - that is much better situation then last year

[Xaero_Vincent]

There is a big discussion about this on the Steam Universe forums.

Many people seem to agree now that Windows is shipping on "Steam Machine"-style PC consoles and integrates BPM or similar UI interface, it hurts the chances of SteamOS being a success on official Steam Machines. The Windows benefit is that all 4,250+ games on Steam work on Windows, whereas only about 850 games on Steam support Linux currently. While 850 games and counting for Linux on Steam is a tremendous improvement to gaming on Linux, that means little to those who use Windows and already have the best gaming experience on PCs.

That said, some of the Steam games that are Windows or Windows and Mac only do in-fact support Linux but don't have the Linux ports integrated in Steam store (virtually all ID titles for instance). Furthermore, several hundreds if not thousands more games can work on SteamOS if the user is advanced enough to install PlayOnLinux or Crossover and the remaining DirectX 10 and 11 games, which don't yet work in Wine solutions, can be streamed via Steam In-Home Streaming or other streaming programs like Teamviewer (yes this can be used--see my video below) and Splashtop.

Streaming games with Teamviewer on Linux (before there was public access to Steam In-Home Streaming)

[Xaero_Vincent]

OK, a second vendor is more convincing. For the title question, no, one part of the battle was the Win Store - the possibility of hijacking the main area of Steam. That question is still open, and as long as it is, I expect they will keep SteamOS running just to have a backup option.

I agree with this. To me, Valve's publically stated vision of bringing PC gaming to the livingroom, yet use Linux as platform for gaming doesn't make a lot of sense, since Windows is in a much better position for PC gaming. I think SteamOS is really a product of Gabe's dissatifaction with Windows 8 and the App Store model.

Should Microsoft ever decide in the distant future to require all future Windows apps and games to be hosted on the official Windows App store (as Microsoft and Apple do today with Windows RT and iOS), it would put Valve in a difficult position to maintain both profits as well as control over Steam. Microsoft and Apple have huge leverage and control over apps that reside in their app stores and if there is something that they don't like about them, they will remove them with almost no notice. Furthermore, apps like Steam, would entail In-App sale royalty payments to Microsoft and the going rate I believe is 30% per sale.

Should this happen, which it could in the distant future, Valve will have it's backup OS that it can put it's weight behind and offer lucrative benefits to get game developers on board. Now how is this different from Microsoft controlling everything? Well Valve has publically stated that they would never lock you down to the Steam platform on SteamOS, leaving open Debian FOSS repositories and even other competitors, such as GOG, Orgin and UPlay (should Ubisoft and EA decide to support Linux).

[Jedibeeftrix]

@ curuga & xaero

I hadn't considered the Win-Store part of the picture and how that may effect Steam, particularly if they do what other mobile platforms have done and disallow apps from acting as portals to third party paying content.

I guess i'd discounted because i'd presumed that with Win8x being a complete failure, that the enormous majority of windows users still follow the normal paradigm of sourcing their own applications and content.

If microsoft were to take that ability away it would fundamentally break what windows [is] to that enormous majority of users, in which case; what use would i have for it? none.

I guess we'll have to wait and see what Win10 does, but i get the impression that Valve are playing a longer game than even that...

[johnc]

So far Valve has failed to demonstrate why gaming on Linux / SteamOS is preferable to Windows. And in fact experience currently bears out that it is actually substandard in terms of performance and the overall experience. So PC vendors would have a large preference to ship Windows-based Steam Machines.

If Linux provided some kind of performance advantage or whatever, I could see the appeal. But heck... Valve's own games are just a complete mess on Linux... and they're not doing anything to fix them. So their own actions prove that they're not serious about this.

[Xaero_Vincent]

@ curuga & xaero

I hadn't considered the Win-Store part of the picture and how that may effect Steam, particularly if they do what other mobile platforms have done and disallow apps from acting as portals to third party paying content.

I guess i'd discounted because i'd presumed that with Win8x being a complete failure, that the enormous majority of windows users still follow the normal paradigm of sourcing their own applications and content.

If microsoft were to take that ability away it would fundamentally break what windows [is] to that enormous majority of users, in which case; what use would i have for it? none.

I guess we'll have to wait and see what Win10 does, but i get the impression that Valve are playing a longer game than even that...

Well Microsoft knows this and is why it's highly unlikely that they would make a move like this in the near or even forseeable future. However, Microsoft's long term vision for Windows could prove otherwise, especially seeing what they did with Windows RT (not letting people host RT apps outside of the Windows store). If Microsoft ever becomes successful at driving a healthy app ecosystem within Windows Store, that may eventually give them enough reason to lock people in; So far, however, Windows Store is more or less of a joke and hosts mainly subpar Metro/Modern-style apps.

[mmstick]

So far Valve has failed to demonstrate why gaming on Linux / SteamOS is preferable to Windows. And in fact experience currently bears out that it is actually substandard in terms of performance and the overall experience. So PC vendors would have a large preference to ship Windows-based Steam Machines.

If Linux provided some kind of performance advantage or whatever, I could see the appeal. But heck... Valve's own games are just a complete mess on Linux... and they're not doing anything to fix them. So their own actions prove that they're not serious about this.

Yeah, and that recent CSGO update that lowered memory usage on Linux didn't happen. Valve's games run okay with open source Gallium3D drivers on my desktop. One step at a time people -- it wasn't but a few years ago that Linux was a non-existent platform for gaming. Now we have companies like Feral Interactive making awesome ports of Windows games to Linux and Mac. That recent Empire Total War release runs even better than the Windows version, even with Catalyst and the open source Gallium3D drivers on hardware as old as a Radeon HD 4290 onboard chip.

[Xaero_Vincent]

So far Valve has failed to demonstrate why gaming on Linux / SteamOS is preferable to Windows. And in fact experience currently bears out that it is actually substandard in terms of performance and the overall experience. So PC vendors would have a large preference to ship Windows-based Steam Machines.

If Linux provided some kind of performance advantage or whatever, I could see the appeal. But heck... Valve's own games are just a complete mess on Linux... and they're not doing anything to fix them. So their own actions prove that they're not serious about this.

The fact that Valve made the effort to port nearly all their games to Linux is substantial to begin with.

I wouldn't say Valve's games are a complete mess on Linux but there may be a small performance overhead compared to the Windows version by using a Direct3D 9 to OpenGL 2 translation layer called ToGL for their game ports. This goes for some other games, such as the Witcher 2, which use the Wine-like eON wrapper. Furthermore, the video drivers on Linux trail Windows in performance but this is improving.

Overhead won't matter much going forward because newer hardware and improved drivers, even when accounting for the extra overhead, will enable these Direct3D wrapped Linux games to play at 60+ FPS even at high graphics settings, which is good enough for most people.

I think we'll see more and more native Linux games begin using OpenGL 4 based engines directly because no Direct3D to OpenGL wrappers can currently support DirectX 11 APIs, which new games are targetting--not Wined3d, eON, nor ToGL at this time. The only choice is to support OpenGL 4.x with pure native binaries like we see with the new Metro Redux games. At the same time, we'll see driver performance improve--Catalyst performance is improving on AMD's high end graphics cards and MESA Intel and Radeon drivers are improving in performance too. Nvidia already has a proprietary driver that performs as well on Linux as it does on Windows for the most part.