Valve has finally announced a release date for Steam Machines, Steam Link, and the Steam Controller: November 10th. Some "early bird" customers will get the hardware on October 16th.
First and foremost, let's start with the Steam Controller. The final version of Valve's controller is pretty much identical to what we saw at GDC 2015, featuring what has become the controller's signature touchpads, along with an analog stick, motion controls, haptics (vibration), and what Valve is calling dual-stage triggers, all communicating with host systems over Bluetooth. Though ultimately lacking the touchscreens of Valve's original design, the final controller retains the touchpads and the same goals Valve had held to since the start: making more traditional mouse-driven PC games playable on the couch with a controller. [...] When not part of a Steam Machine bundle, Valve will be selling the Steam Controller stand-alone for $49.
Meanwhile as far as performance and costs go, the initial wave of Machines run the gauntlet from low-powered, console-like computers to high-end machines that are meant to take a stab at 4K rendering. The cheapest machines start at $449, such as the Alienware in its low-end, Core-i3 powered configuration, and also the iBuyPower SBX. Meanwhile at the middle of the pack are machines like the Zotac SN970 at $999, and finally at the high-end the sky's the limit. [...] As one might expect, all of the Steam Machines are shipping with one Steam Controller, with additional controllers available from Valve for $49. Meanwhile the very first Steam Machines from Alienware and Syber are already available for pre-order from GameStop and Syber respectively, while the rest are slated to be available in November.
Finally, we have the Steam Link, Valve's in-home streaming receiver for Steam. Intended to be used with Steam's existing, built-in streaming technology, the Link is designed to allow playing Steam games in other locations away from the host PC/Machines, be it things like spare bedrooms or locating the host in said spare bedroom and putting the Link in the living room. The Link features a 2x2 802.11ac for wireless connectivity, or a 100Mbit Ethernet port for wired fallback, along with a trio of USB 2.0 ports and of course the necessary HDMI port. Valve will be selling the Link on its own for $49, while a package with the controller will be $99, and somewhat surprisingly for a consumer device these days, Valve's even throwing in HDMI and Ethernet cables. As with the Steam Machines, the Link is available for pre-order through Valve or at GameStop, with a limited number of the devices shipping on October 16th.
Original Submission
Related Stories
If you've been putting off pre-ordering Valve's upcoming Steam Link or Steam Controller hardware since the devices first went on pre-sale earlier this month, we have some bad news. Valve has announced that it has sold out of units for the initial "get it early" offer (with its expected delivery on October 16). Any orders placed from now on will instead be delivered weeks later on November 10.
You may have also missed your chance to get early delivery of the first commercial "Steam Machines" pre-loaded with SteamOS. Any orders for the Alienware Steam Machines placed through GameStop since last Thursday will now be shipped November 10 rather than October 16. Syber now lists a ship date "on or after 10/15/2015" for its first wave of Steam Machines.
Anyone in Soylent-Land got their hands on a pre-release console?
Original Submission
The Steam Link was a little box ahead of its time.
[...] Valve quietly discontinued the Steam Link gear in November 2018, but it didn't give up. These days, a Steam Link app can be found on most platforms, and Valve's sustained effort to move Linux-based (i.e., non-Windows-controlled) gaming forward has paid real dividends.
[...] As detailed in the Raspberry Pi blog, there were previously means of getting Steam Link working on Raspberry Pi devices
[...] Sam Lantinga from Valve worked with the Raspberry Pi team on optimizing for the Raspberry Pi 5 hardware. As of Steam Link 1.3.13 for the little board, Raspberry Pi 5 units could support up to 1080p at 144 frames per second (FPS) on the H.264 protocol and 4k at 60 FPS or 1080p at 240 FPS, presuming your primary gaming computer and network can support that.
[...] I have a documented preference for a Moonlight/Sunshine game streaming setup over Steam Link because I have better luck getting games streaming at their best on it. But it's hard to beat Steam Link for ease of setup
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(Score: 2) by jimshatt on Friday June 05 2015, @06:04PM
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Friday June 05 2015, @06:14PM
As with first month console releases, the goal here is to soak the fans who will pay virtually anthing at maximum price.
$50 is actually quite high for a controller, and after it actually arrives in stores, I'd bet on a totally planned cost reduction. And up-selling tactics like bundling deals.
Just a guess though.
(Score: 4, Informative) by gman003 on Friday June 05 2015, @07:16PM
Are you sure about that?
Xbox One controller - $49.48, on sale from $59.99 [amazon.com]
Dualshock 4 - $58.15, on sale from $59.99 [amazon.com]
Xbox 360 Controller with PC adapter - $42.57, on sale from $59.95 [amazon.com]. Yes, the wired model [amazon.com] is cheaper, at $27.99 (reduced from $39.95), but we're comparing it to a dual-mode controller so wireless is the fairest comparison.
True, you can find cheap USB gamepads [amazon.com], some of which are actually decent, but you're giving up some functionality with them. The Xbox controllers (the 360 gamepad is considered the de facto standard on PC) have rumble, and anything north of $40 is wireless. The Steam Controller has wireless, rumble, dual-stage triggers (like the old Gamecube pads!) and touchpads, and can emulate either a traditional gamepad or a mouse+keyboard setup for compatibility. $50 is actually quite a reasonable price for this level of quality. Had they wanted to "soak the fans", they would have made it exclusive to Steam Machines (at least for initial release), or priced it at $60-$70.
For what it's worth, the reception within the gaming community has been "wow, that's actually cheaper than I expected", with the exception of a few foreign markets getting shafted on exchange rates.
I've ordered one myself. If it has the same build quality as official console controllers, and if the touchpads live up to the hype, I might have to get another one for co-op. Then again, I've dropped $600 (not a typo) on flight-sim controllers, so my perspective may differ from yours.
(Score: 3, Funny) by jimshatt on Friday June 05 2015, @07:38PM
(Score: 2) by Tork on Friday June 05 2015, @08:48PM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 05 2015, @06:23PM
Linux games only?
(Score: 2, Informative) by jummama on Friday June 05 2015, @06:45PM
Yes and no.
The Steam machines come with SteamOS, which is a Debian fork, and will natively only run Linux compatible games. Windows games are playable however, in two ways:
1. In home streaming - Does all the rendering/processing on another machine, which could be a Windows box. Think Onlive, except you're hosting the instance
2. It's commodity hardware. If one were so inclined, you could install Windows on it, and set that to start up in big picture mode. At that point, you get nearly the same experience, but with Windows natively.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Hawkwind on Friday June 05 2015, @07:53PM
I haven't found confirmation that this'll work but there's also Wine and PlayOnLinux. Steam has made money off me with those options so I'm hoping they don't do something stupid ... what corporation would ever do something stupid?
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 05 2015, @08:17PM
Steam (Valve) can't count to three, so you may be bitterly surprised at some point...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 05 2015, @07:18PM
Seems like a lot of expense for such a miniscule market. Still, pretty hardware...
(Score: 5, Funny) by Techwolf on Friday June 05 2015, @06:38PM
But will it run Linux?
(Score: 4, Touché) by ikanreed on Friday June 05 2015, @06:40PM
The Linux-based SteamOS running on top of console-sized Steam Machines for the living room...
I don't know. The article's just so unclear about it.
(Score: 3, Funny) by CoolHand on Friday June 05 2015, @06:45PM
Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job-Douglas Adams
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Friday June 05 2015, @06:47PM
It's not a joke to not be familiar with the news. That's called "not reading the article".
(Score: 3, Insightful) by CoolHand on Friday June 05 2015, @07:02PM
Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job-Douglas Adams
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Friday June 05 2015, @07:19PM
Yeah, but a lot of people don't know that. Which is why I bothered to answer.
But fine. I'm the fool here for answering a meme question sincerely. I can accept that.
(Score: 2) by Marand on Friday June 05 2015, @07:30PM
Yeah, but a lot of people don't know that. Which is why I bothered to answer.
You could always do what I did: mod the guy funny so people don't miss that it's a joke :)
(Score: 2) by CoolHand on Friday June 05 2015, @07:32PM
Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job-Douglas Adams
(Score: 2) by Techwolf on Saturday June 06 2015, @12:40AM
As the OP, thank you mods. Yes, it was a joke on the "but does it run Linux?" meme. But I didn't get the meme quote perfect, but as least the joke wasn't lost on everyone. :-)
(Score: 1) by penguinoid on Friday June 05 2015, @07:16PM
"Not reading the article" is a joke too.
RIP Slashdot. Killed by greedy bastards.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Saturday June 06 2015, @09:17AM
I just wanted to say, that finally it has come to this!
Mandatory XKCD: ahref=https://xkcd.com/1022/ [soylentnews.org]" rel="url2html-12709">https://xkcd.com/1022/> So it has come to this.
In the future, people will not know where to put their onions, and the fathers of the fathers will not be able to remember the names of their sons, for the jaberwockies will have done run off with them so that all the humor of past ages no longer will whoosh. Verily. And Forsooth.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Saturday June 06 2015, @09:22AM
And no longer will links to XKCD [xkcd.com] be rife in the land. Or do I have to a href the bloody thing? Looks like I do. Changing allowable HTML is not as funny as "but does it run on Linux" comments.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by richtopia on Friday June 05 2015, @07:12PM
I've used the Steam Link a few times. For games - it isn't perfect, but impressive. However, it is a pretty snappy VNC client overall. With some games you can trick it into running (Age of Empires II comes to mind) to demo it.
If Steam made the Steam Link less game dependent, it would be huge for me - effectively a TV oriented VNC box.
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Friday June 05 2015, @11:48PM
For exactly the same reasons I predicted, too many systems equals too many variables (removing the "it just works" of consoles which frankly is pretty much their only positive IMHO) and more importantly the only game in the Steam top 10 which will actually run is over a decade old [theverge.com] which if you are only gonna play games that old why not just go to GOG or the dev site and get it without the DRM? Which BTW the article, again just as I did, points out is true for the majority of games on SteamOS.
I'm sorry but unless/until Valve comes up with a perfect DirectX translation layer that won't tank the framerate? SteamOS is really kinda pointless. I mean can you really name me ANY upside other than its built on FOSS? As I've said many times if your only selling point is "Its FOSS" or "Its not Windows" then the race is already over, you have lost because the majority just do not care what platform their games run on, only that THEY RUN which for SteamOS is a negative.
Oh and before somebody starts with the usual "shill, troll, fanboy" bullshit? I've probably got over $500 easy in my Steam library, and I've turned down deals on games I probably would have liked because it would have required me to use another gaming platform like GFWL or UbiPlay so if anybody wants Valve to kick some ass its me. But just as I called out MSFT when they made the "Windows 2.0 for hipsters" that was Windows Mist8ke I'm not gonna give a company a free pass just because I liked their previous work and SteamOS is just a bad idea. I still give it less than 2 years before Valve quietly pulls the plug, its a solution for a problem that the majority doesn't consider a problem at all.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.