Valve press event
Valve had a press event at CES this year. MaximumPCMag filmed the whole thing, you can see it here or read the summary below.
Gabe's speech
- Valve currently has 14 partners that are bringing out Steam Machines
- 65 million total accounts on Steam, with about 6 million simultaneous users on average
- Including holiday sales, Valve had about 62% year over year revenue growth
- Dota 2 is bigger than Monday Night Football
- Valve thinks the PC is succesful because it's an open platform with healthy competition
- A couple of years ago Valve was getting worried proprietary platforms would overtake the PC industry
- Valve thought about 3 things; user interface/platform (SteamOS), form factor (Steam Machines) and interaction (Steam Controller)
- Valve started building machines in 2013 (the prototypes) and are now presenting (with their partners) a set of 13 Steam Machines
Q&A answers
- Do the specs vary from from low-end to high-end machines?
- There's a lot of variation in specs in both the devices you see at the event and the product lines people are going to have.
- One of the strengths of the PC platform is that customers can get the experience they want while software developers can be guaranteed a stable platform for delivering value.
- Is Valve going to be making their own Steam Machines?
- Valve is still thinking about that, they're happy about the results of the hardware development.
- They have "plans to build more machines as our customers demand" but also expect people to be happy with the products being released by their partners
- Is there a release window/date for when consumers can actually get these machines?
- Great question for the hardware manufacturers present at the event, it's up to them to decide that.
- Did you say Valve is going to be making hardware themselves?
- Valve made a tiny step making the 300 machines, but everything has to start somewhere.
- Valve will make what they need to, they really want to keep their "enabling" role so whatever Valve does that's useful for other manufacturers like designing a controller or building specific boxes is what they want to do.
- They're figuring out how to collaberate with the chip makers and system integrators and what the most useful thing for Valve to do is here. Part of the reason they are holding press events such as this is to get feedback on what problem they want us to tackle next.
- Is Valve going to be selling Steam Controllers separately?
- "Yes, we'll be selling them seperately and then other people will be selling their versions of Steam Controllers as well."
No release date or pricing on that as of yet.
- "Yes, we'll be selling them seperately and then other people will be selling their versions of Steam Controllers as well."
- Microsoft just announced 3 million XBOX One units sold at launch. Do you think you'll be hitting that target by the end of the year?
- "It'll take a while for them to catch up since we're at 65 million". Part of why Valve thinks this is the right direction to go is that they can benefit from all the things people have already done. So if you buy a game on Steam for Windows, you also have that game on your Steam Machine. You benefit as a developer and a consumer in having that PC experience extended into the living room.
- What has the feedback of your beta users been so far?
- "Many of them have been super happy, we kind of want them to tell us what's wrong so we're poking at them a little harder. Right now they are saying that this is like the best thing since the beginning of time. We're trying to get them to give us more feedback on how to iterate and what we have to solve next."
- How are you going to encourage developers to develop for SteamOS/Linux?
- Right now there are about "250 titles" running on SteamOS. There are a few things you have to do for developers; you need to help them make money, you need to give them developer tools to help them support Windows, Mac and Linux simulatenously, you need to make sure you've addressed concerns about controller design and that kind of stuff. Similar to the things Valve has done for Windows to make it the success it is currently.
Other Valve stuff at CES
- (Tested.com) Interview with Greg Coomer on the Steam Controller & hands-on
- The Controller design is pretty close to final. Valve is in the final phases before the high volume production run later this year. They're making some changes received through beta feedback. It'll also be wireless and have a touch screen in the final release.
- (The Verge) The Verge sat down with Greg Coomer and Alienware
- (BBC) Valve to release an SDK for easily integrating multiple VR devices into games
- This is most likely OpenVR which is already used by some Valve games to provide an Oculus Rift implementation
- (Engadget) Closer look at the iBuyPower $500 Steam Machine
- (GameRanx) Greg Coomer: "Linux support has priority over streaming in Steam Machines"