Valve unveiled its trifecta master plan to take over the living room starting with the SteamOS on September 23, 2013, following with the Steam Machines on September 25, 2013, and the Steam Controller on the 27th. As the PC gaming community beheld their leader prophesize of the glorious future to come, Half-Life 3 eluded them yet again. The announcement was prominent but not altogether surprising. The precursor to SteamOS has been living among PC gamers for nearly a year, infiltrating their hopes with the promise of economical gaming in the luxurious of the living room, and on September 23rd, that dream took a real step to fruition. The details are still hazy, and the final product is likely to undergo a profound metamorphosis, but, in the meantime, we are at liberty to examine Valve’s big picture. What is the true aim of such a comprehensive campaign? Why would a software distribution company jump into the cutthroat consumer hardware market? While most people see this as Valve’s initiative to participate in the console wars, the strategy behind SteamOS is more complicated than its controller. Building a Steam Machine is not a declaration of war on the consoles. What it does forebode, though, is a civil war, and the consoles are caught in the crossfire.
The consensus of the message boards is unilaterally vehement in favor: SteamOS is seen as a worthy contender in both the PC and the console spaces. People see the OS as a viable alternative to Windows. It won’t bog down the hardware; in fact, it will optimize it for gaming, and Valve’s tiered approach will accommodate an entire gamut of consumers. Starting from the cheaply-built, ~$100 price range, streaming boxes to fully-fledged i7 hardware, SteamOS can potentially deliver the user’s entire Steam library to every screen in the household. Streaming is facilitated via WiFi. The games flow from the main computer to the SteamOS device. With looser budgets comes the freedom to custom build machines capable of running the games natively. The latter option will find most favor with the competitive gamer who is sensitive to minute fluctuations in latency and performance. The OS is free and can run on, virtually, any machine. PC building experience is not necessary to partake in this venture because Valve plans to build its own hardware as well as license the rights to some of its partners. Basically, you can build a Steam Machine. Buy a Steam Machine. Just make sure to get the games from Steam.
Now, the idea of SteamOS as a console killer is, sort of, the by-product of the PC vs. console zeitgeist. It’s partly derived from the implications of the Big Picture and partly a natural deduction from the streaming-centric nature of the OS coupled with a dedicated controller. Nowhere was it explicitly stated that Valve is pursuing competition with consoles. The Internet saw it as such, however, and for a moment, I did too. Stepping back from the fiasco, it becomes more and more apparent that Valve’s intentions lie not with the console gamers, but with all gamers. Valve is looking to usurp the entire PC market for itself and, with it, redefine console gaming. Valve wants Steam to mean PC gaming — if not all gaming. The idea isn’t farfetched. Consider this: is Steam the only PC game vendor on the Internet? Absolutely not. There is Blizzard Entertainment. EA has Origin. Neither of these two giants sells its content on Steam because they don’t need to share the profits. They make plenty on their own. They have exclusive titles, and people know where to get them. Moreover, all PC games, right now, run on Windows — some on Mac. If Valve has their way, PC games will also need to be written for Linux, because that’s what SteamOS is based on. The developers will need to port their games to the new platform and code new games for it as well. This will accrue unnecessary development costs, which will delay releases and hamper Indie titles. My bet is PC developers will always code for Windows. There is no question about this — not in the foreseeable future. The bigger guys will have the financial freedom to develop for all operating systems, like Blizzard does, but the Indies will be left in a limbo. Unless Valve will implement some sort of an emulator, the only to run all of your Steam titles will be to stream them— and me already implied the drawbacks of that method:
“You can play all your Windows and Mac games on your SteamOS machine, too. Just turn on your existing computer and run Steam as you always have — then your SteamOS machine can stream those games over your home network straight to your TV!”
This quote is from the official SteamOS website. I scoured both the SteamOS and the Steam Machines pages, and nowhere does it say that any PC game will run natively on the device. The OS is exclusively for Steam titles. To plug Blizzard and EA back into the equation, there is no way to play their games on a Steam Machine or via SteamOS stream because their titles are not a part of the Steam library. This is a clear message to Valve’s true competitors, the non-conformist PC gaming giants: join us, or die! Valve wants to equate Steam with PC gaming. Valve equals PC gaming. When you will think of gaming, you will think Xbox, PlayStation, and Steam. Who knows, five years down the road Steam may be the gaming platform. Sounds a little farfetched, but the goal is to make it, virtually, impossible for any PC game developer to bypass Steam as the distribution service. Valve can and will tolerate Xbox one and PS4, but they won’t tolerate rebel PC franchises. Valve was upfront about this. They explicitly stated they are in the software business. They make money on content. Valve does not stand to profit much from the Steam Machines, certainly not from SteamOS. Valve sells games, and not the plastic ones either. They sell digital copies: ones you cannot easily lend to your friends or trade in at the local GameStop. Valve want to convert our PCs into dedicated game dispensers. In 2013, Valve decided that the unbridled progress in computing power is stifled by the “catastrophe” that is Windows 8, to quote Gabe Newell. Right, Windows 8 that is more efficient, consumes less resources, boots up faster, and is more secure than all of its predecessors is a “disaster” for PC gamers. It’s totally unrelated to the fact that Windows has a store, now, and if we learned anything from Apple’s app store, the hottest bit of software is games. Windows Store already offers plenty of inexpensive and low-powered ones; it’s only a matter of time until the triple A titles will be available directly through the Store, as well.
But I digress. It’s just that the thought of building, or buying, a high end machine (decked out with the latest generation Intel processors, blazing fast RAM and SSDs, GTX Titan, highly overclockable, etc.) only to handicap it with a barebones SteamOS got me all worked up. It sounds utterly asinine to invest in any respectable calibre setup only to flush all the high performance value down the WiFi stream. The free operating system isn’t enough compensation. The only scenario where SteamOS make sense, right now, is in the cheapest possible streamer that delivers the best possible performance for the dollar. The most cost effective solution cannot cost more than $200, but at that price point, Steam Machine is no console killer, let alone a worthy competitor. SteamOS can offer nothing over the consoles that you don’t already own — or can own on any PC. Both the Xbox One and PS4 have Social Media, streaming solutions, multitasking, and powerful new graphics. Most importantly, they have their exclusive titles that Steam will never have. As streaming devices, Steam Machines have little going for them, aside from the controller, that the console market is interested in; they lack in functionality, like plug-n-play and instant on, while the dedicated machines will be gutted duplicates of PCs. Either way, you will be stuck with an overpriced extension of your Steam library. For what? To play the games lying down on a couch? Save the money on a Steam Machine, and buy another couch, or a bigger monitor. The modern console gamer does not want to make sacrifices, and if the Xbox One announcement taught us anything, it’s that console gamers love their discs. As a strictly digital distribution, SteamOS will suffer from even more severe restrictions Microsoft failed to implement. Oh, and if you are a PC gamer looking to build a Steam Machine, you, probably, won’t be playing any of your Blizzard or EA titles because they, just like the console exclusives, will never come to SteamOS.
So give Windows some credit. Without it, you are looking at ~5% of the entire Steam library at the launch SteamOS, unlikely to grow much in the near future. Steam is simply too big to magically hop over to Linux. The first wave of developers is likely compensated well for its troubles, while the less successful, Indie titles are unlikely to be ported for native runtime. So what does all this add up to? Sure, an enthusiast gamer with some spare cash in his/her pocket can find use for a Steam Machine, but everyone’s circumstances are different. Having one device active to run another defeats the purpose of having the second one, in the first place. It is utterly inefficient. The benefit of such a setup is so marginal that the only justification in owning it is a subsidized price. How many console gamers do you know who stream their games? It’s just not their mentality. Make no mistake, because Valve announced a dedicated controller does not mean they intend to compete with Xbox or PlayStation. They don’t stand to win over too many angry Xbox One fans, but if, in the process, Steam sells a few extra copies of GTA IV then so be it. Valve’s sights are set on something bigger. They plans to steamroll the PC gaming industry entirely. Steam wants to be the only PC gaming solution and a console hybrid. This means minimizing Windows Store presences on potential PCs and transforming the image of PC gaming into a console-shaped machine all in one, broad sweep. Blizzard, EA, and the rest are welcome to join, but Valve is moving forward, with or without them. It’s a cheeky plan that stands to be undone by its greediness. Steam is already the iTunes of gaming. Valve’s ambition is to become Apple.
