Frank Azor explains to PC Gamer why SteamOS seems to have kind of… Faded away:
“Valve ran into some delays with the controller, and while that was occurring, Windows 10 was being released,” Azor said. “I think Microsoft learned a very valuable lesson – a lot of valuable lessons – with Windows 8 and tried to correct those with Windows 10. It’s more gamer focused, I would say. Every subsequent release has focused on gamers. Although their execution isn’t perfect, it’s definitely improved compared to Windows 8.”
He continued: “I think the need right now, for Steam Machines and for SteamOS, isn’t as great as it was two years ago, and that’s contributed to the reason why the momentum has faded. We still offer SteamOS and the Steam Machine platform with the new version of the Alpha – the new Steam Machine R2 – and we still sell hundreds of units, thousands of units every month. But it’s not a major initiative for us like it was two years ago because it’s not necessary right now. We’re in a good place with Windows.”
Microsoft did better with Windows 10, and lest we forget: Valve totally botched everything they could possibly botch with SteamOS.
That’s the problem. And with all the bashing, did Windows 10 really do well?
Of course. Win10 is a good OS. The bashing was pretty much limited to sites like OSAlert where some (legitimate) concerns were blown a bit out of proportion.
Windows 10 is so horrible, from a UI point of view, that even if I got free upgrades for my 5 PCs, I’m back in 7.
I’d agree. While I still prefer linux, windows isn’t a horrible os anymore. If I have to be on windows, I’d prefer win 10 anniversary edition. Still needs a decent terminal, though.
Windows 10 has quite a few decent terminals:
1: Command Prompt (majorly improved with full screen, copy/paste and more tooling)
2: PowerShell, a very modern, object oriented shell that can function as a terminal as well
3: Windows SubSystem for Linux (Ubuntu/Bash, nuff said)
I think that once Vulcan is ready for primetime, SteamOS could have a chance to “get back in the game” !!
Then you just need to wait until 2065, which will be the year in which NVidia, AMD and Intel will release quality drivers for Vulkan without significant bugs which affect both performance and stability and maybe SteamOS could stand a chance.
SteamOS get back in the game? It was never in the game in any significant way to begin with. It was, is, and will be in history just a bulletpoint in a list of OSes that existed.
Valve has pretty much botched everything lately. What do they do right except for the core steam service?
leos,
I’m out of the loop, can someone explain what they are botching?
So just like Alienware has botched everything after being acquired by Dell?
Steamos always has looked more like a proof-of-concept to me, a sort-of plan C (I suspect they have legal action as a plan B), just in case microsoft locks software installs to the windows store.
Edited 2016-11-15 03:56 UTC
.. I’ll get my coat…
I have no idea what Valve has botched. I never noticed. I was too busy playing Steam games…
I am very happy that there are alternatives to Windows gaming like SteamOS. It’s better for everyone. There is no need to push a proprietary OS in this day and age.
There’s actually a lot on Win10 that isn’t all that gamer friendly. They have a huge amount of stuff running in the background by default (there were about 70 different switches I had to flip on my laptop in 5 different place3s to get rid of all of that). Uninstalling the Xbox app actually improves your framerate in many games that don’t depend on it (about 10-20 FPS in League of Legends and pretty similar in the Borderlands games). They’re forcing Skype down everyone’s throat (most truly serious gamers avoid it like the plague and use Mumble, TS3, or Curse Voice because it eats insane amounts of resources). They’re chock full of adware and adding more. You can’t control when updates get downloaded (Oh, you’re about carry your team to victory in that MOBA or FPS you’re playing? Too bad you’re suddenly lagging because Windows decided to download updates).
Overall, while Win10 is better for gaming that 8 or 8.1, it’s still crap.
Don’t forget the random update here or there that says “Hey, we need to reboot your computer. See you in 10.” reboots even when you are in the middle of whatever, and you can get back to that in 10-20 min.
Microsoft is completely anti-computer gaming, they’d much rather you sink your cash into an Xbox and use your computer for stuff that they can data mine.
Well, one would think that if one is a gamer that said individual would be running Windows 10 Pro, not Home, in which case they would not have this situation… yet. Microsoft could always decide to force that on Pro users whenever they wished.
Nope, still happens on Pro if you let things go long enough.
The only way to prevent it is to mark all network connections as metered, which prevents Windows from even downloading updates. The problem is that you don’t get notifications that there are updates until weeks after they become available if you do that, so you either need to check every time manually, or you end up behind in terms of security.
The issue I have is that they don’t throttle downloads for updates, and they don’t even try to guess if you’re actually using the system, which combined with the fact that they wait a seemingly random amount of time (up to an hour in my experience) after boot before even checking for updates, means that anyone who actually needs network performance ends up in a bad situation. So I could be in the middle of a game, and then suddenly I’ve got >1s network latency (because my ISP are idiots and can’t handle multiple flows with different QoS from the same customer).
Pfft. Sorry for interrupting your game to install these critical security updates. I mean its not like they’ll increase your frags, craft your wars, or mines.
In general, as long as you pay attention or keep your system running 24/7, such updates aren’t an issue. In fact, if you keep your computer on 24/7, the only way you’ll directly notice an update is that the system rebooted while you weren’t using it. In my case, it’s never an issue because I reboot regularly anyway (I dual-boot Gentoo, and only use Windows for the small number of games I play that aren’t smart enough to realize that they would have a bigger market share if they ran on Linux), so what hits me more is the inability to choose when I download updates (yes, I could set all networks as metered, but you don’t even get a notification that there are updates in that case), simply because if I’m using Windows, I need low network latency because I”m gaming.
I can kind of understand them wanting to push the Xbox though, they do get a royalty on pretty much every game for it, and it’s actually insanely more secure than a traditional Windows system (they actually run the games in their own isolated VM’s under Hyper-V).
“But it’s not a major initiative for us like it was two years ago because it’s not necessary right now. We’re in a good place with Windows.”
If you go back and read all the rhetoric and propaganda they were pushing, then consider that above, it’s very telling. People who bought into it were told they were being hoodwinked but didn’t want to listen.
Saying Windows 10 had anything to do with SteamOS failing to gain relevance is outright nonsense — as is claiming that Windows 10 is any good for that matter.
Windows 10 continues the trend started by Windows 8 of flipping a giant middle finger at notebook and desktop users. They are so desperate to be relevant in the mobile arena they’re basically willing to tell the market they have near dominance of to sod off!
The stupid playschool coloured start page remains effectively useless with illegible colour contrasts, constantly shifting locations of programs, to the point you pretty much HAVE to install classic shell to make it usable. The scripttard “crapplets” are a fraction the usefulness of previous native programs, the changes in UI scaling tells users with accessibility needs to go *** themselves, and backwards compatibility hasn’t been this low since Vista — something truly bizzaroland given that 8.1 actually had better backwards compatibility than 7 did. You figure in the removal of control over what updates are applied, the random “We’re going to reboot for updates in the middle of your working without even letting you save”, and the outright spyware that has it constantly sucking on your Internet connection…
To be frank, when someone talks about “Microsoft did better with Windows 10” I have absolutely no **** idea what you are talking about.
SteamOS on the other hand was the laziest, sloppiest, most poorly thought out Linux distro I’ve ever seen — and that’s saying something given what absolute GARBAGE (excuse me as I blaspheme) Linux is on the desktop.
I mean, it starts out hobbled with crappy device drivers that drags your video performance back two generations, fails to implement 5.1 properly on more than half the devices out there, has audio latency so high as to be effectively useless for gaming much less professional work, and a font rendering system that kerns characters like a sweetly retarded crack addict…
But you figure in most WM’s whilst LOOKING modern having less actual useful functionality than Windows 3.0 did, the lack of practical desktop applications other than “I cans haz browsies?”, and the lack of responsive feedback that ANYTHING is going on thanks to the dreadful X11 legacy hanging around its neck like a dead albatross…
Well, there’s a reason neither Apple nor Google used X11 in their *nix flavors.
To try and turn that mess into a gaming OS? No… epic fail. Whilst certainly Wayland and Mir are making progress, simply put the concepts common to *nix window systems are not conducive to a good user experience!
Hell, given the number of years X11 has inhaled upon the proverbial equine of short stature I wouldnae be surprised if we see Redox be more useful as a desktop OS before Linux is ACTUALLY up to snuff!
I honestly wonder how in blazes the people who use Linux as a desktop OS put up with it. Pa rti cu lar ly wh en it see ms to lov e ker nin g tex t l ike th is!
Taking a sloppy incomplete desktop “If I might interject” Linux stack and slapping their client atop it does not a gaming system make.
More so when the AAA titles for it can be counted on one finger.
More than anything you want to know why SteamOS failed? HERE’S WHY:
http://store.steampowered.com/search/?sort_by=Released_DESC&os=linu…
We make fun of Ballmer for it, but DEVELOPERS, DEVELOPERS, DEVELOPERS, DEVELOPERS…
MAYBE if Valve had gotten off their asses and produced a few new titles of their own for the platform? Oh wait, that would involve them actually going back into the business of making games instead of selling them, something they clearly have lost all interest in actually doing!
Edited 2016-11-16 17:44 UTC