Steam Machines Beta Update!

Genghiz Cohen

The 300 beta participants are getting picked today and are only being picked from the US.

The time has come! We are ready to begin shipping Steam Machines and Steam Controllers to the 300 selected beta participants. The machines are due to leave the factory on Friday!

Here are some photos from the production line.



The 300 selected beta testers are being notified today (at about 2:00 p.m. Pacific Time) that they’ll soon receive Steam hardware and SteamOS for testing. Each selected user is also being awarded a special badge on their Steam Community profile, indicating that they’re a beta participant. In addition, a number of games that run natively on SteamOS are being added to each selected user’s library.

We’ve had to make the difficult decision to limit our beta to the U.S. only, because of regulatory hurdles. This was not our original plan, and it means we can’t collect beta feedback from Steam customers world-wide, which is pretty unfortunate. All things considered, we’re sure it was the right decision, because the alternative was to delay the whole beta beyond the point when we’d be able to incorporate any feedback into the 2014 products. This decision only affects Valve’s 300 prototype units; the commercial versions of Steam Machines that are for sale in 2014 won’t be affected by this. More information on those will be announced at CES on January 6.

SteamOS will be made available when the prototype hardware ships. It will be downloadable by individual users and commercial OEMs. (But unless you’re an intrepid Linux hacker already, we’re going to recommend that you wait until later in 2014 to try it out.) We’ll post info soon about that. Oh, and stay tuned for the in-home streaming beta to begin soon, too!

Happy holidays. And happy unboxing to our beta testers. See you on Steam.

Kiith

I'm assuming the testers will be heavily under an NDA? Definitely want to hear some first hand accounts of how the system runs.

Kiith

Kiith wrote: »

I'm assuming the testers will be heavily under an NDA? Definitely want to hear some first hand accounts of how the system runs.

No, I don't think so. I remember reading that Valve wanted them to share their experience.

SteamOS will be available to download on Friday, so you could try it out yourself.

Genghiz Cohen

Deleted User wrote: »

No, I don't think so. I remember reading that Valve wanted them to share their experience.

SteamOS will be available to download on Friday, so you could try it out yourself.

Deffo have to do that.

nesf

Kiith wrote: »

I'm assuming the testers will be heavily under an NDA? Definitely want to hear some first hand accounts of how the system runs.

Nope, last I saw they were told "go to Twitch, Youtube, wherever, say what you think."

Free advertising + look like good guys because of "openness and no NDA" (as if the product hasn't already been heavily beta tested).

readyletsgo

So I'm kinda interested in this steam machine but I am a console gamer, I see one company is doing one for five hundred dollars, so besides the super cheap games what are the benefits of investing in one of these ? Thanks lads! EDIT also when do they plan to release it to the masses ?

nesf

readyletsgo wrote: »

So I'm kinda interested in this steam machine but I am a console gamer, I see one company is doing one for five hundred dollars, so besides the super cheap games what are the benefits of investing in one of these ? Thanks lads! EDIT also when do they plan to release it to the masses ?

SteamOS will be available from tomorrow. Wait for reviews, opinions and to see how the market pans out before sinking 500 quid into one of these.

Genghiz Cohen

Or buy it and put your copy of Windows on there.

Gummy Panda

nesf wrote: »

Nope, last I saw they were told "go to Twitch, Youtube, wherever, say what you think."

Free advertising + look like good guys because of "openness and no NDA" (as if the product hasn't already been heavily beta tested).

if someone has videos review them, post them up. youtube is usually full of idiots who parrot the same info with "funny" accents or visuals

CianS

Might make a cheap build after christmas and try out Steam OS on it,
Anyone know some of the games that run on it?

Monotype

CianS wrote: »

Might make a cheap build after christmas and try out Steam OS on it,
Anyone know some of the games that run on it?

The ones that are compatible with linux.
http://store.steampowered.com/browse/linux/

PyeContinental

Monotype wrote: »

The [games] that are compatible with linux.
http://store.steampowered.com/browse/linux/

I really like the idea of gaming on a Linux OS, as it would really shake up the dominance of Microsoft OS which means competition that hopefully drives innovation.

A Linux-based console type machine is even better, especially as it seems to have appealing physical design and branding.

However, having looked at the limited range of games available, they all seem to be a bit "amateurish" and graphically unimpressive. What do other people think? I hope there is a much larger library of more impressive games that will appeal to the mainstream, otherwise I don't see this having much competition to offer Windows or XBOX gaming, unfortunately.

Monotype

There's a lot of rubbish indie games alright, but there's also many very good ones and graphically polished - e.g., Trine 2 is a fantastic looking game.

There's also all the valve games - e.g., left 4 dead 2 and portal 2 which would hopefully encourage more big titles to follow.

nesf

I know Eugin System are releasing across all three platforms and Wargame: Airland Battle (ok, a fairly technical RTS and definitely not everyone's cup of tea) is out for Linux: http://store.steampowered.com/app/222750/

And to be fair it looks superb for an RTS.