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The Verge have posted a new interview with Valve CEO Gabe Newell. Mr Newell answers questions about Valve's Steam Box platform, input devises user generated content, reveals the names of Valve's hardware and mobile efforts before badmouthing Windows 8 again.
Valve seem to be taking a similar approach to their Steam Box platform as Google did with Android: They are encouraging various hardware manufacturers to create their own Steam Boxes while developing their own in-house device as a flagship. The Piston which we mistakenly called "the" Steam Box yesterday is just the first of many devices to come.
Here are some highlights of the interview:
On working with parter companies to develop hardware:
What we see is you've got this sort of struggle going on between closed proprietary systems and open systems. [...] We’re not imposing a lot of restrictions on people on how they’re getting involved.
On what we can expect from Steam Boxes:
The way we sort of think of it is sort of "Good, Better," or "Best." So, Good are like these very low-cost streaming solutions that you’re going to see that are using Miracast or Grid. I think we’re talking about in-home solutions where you’ve got low latency. "Better" is to have a dedicated CPU and GPU and that’s the one that’s going to be controlled. Not because our goal is to control it; it’s been surprisingly difficult when we say to people "don’t put an optical media drive in there" and they put an optical media drive in there and you’re like "that makes it hotter, that makes it more expensive, and it makes the box bigger." Go ahead. You can always sell the Best box, and those are just whatever those guys want to manufacture. [Valve's position is]: let's build a thing that’s quiet and focuses on high performance and quiet and appropriate form factors.
Note: Miracast and Grid are services for streaming a PC display wirelessly to another device like a TV, similar to Apple's Airplay.
On the openness of their own Steam Box:
That’ll be a Linux box, [and] if you want to install Windows you can. We’re not going to make it hard. This is not some locked box by any stretch of the imagination.
On input devices:
We’ve struggled for a long time to try to think of ways to use motion input and we really haven’t [found any]. [...] We think that, unlike motion input where we kind of struggled to come up with ideas, [there's potential in] biometrics. We have lots of ideas. [...] Also, gaze tracking. We think gaze tracking is going to turn out to be super important.
On the future of the Steam Store:
Right now there’s one Steam store. We think that the store should actually be more like user generated content. So, anybody should be able to create a store, and it should be about extra entertainment value. Our view has always been that we should build tools for customers and tools for partners.
On the future of Steam Boxes:
The Steam Box will also be a server. Any PC can serve multiple monitors, so over time, the next-generation (post-Kepler) you can have one GPU that’s serving up eight simultaeneous game calls. So you could have one PC and eight televisions and eight controllers and everybody getting great performance out of it.
There were a few other nuggets of information: Gabe revealed the codenames for a couple of their internal projects. Their own Steam Box is called "Bigfoot" and their mobile efforts are codenamed "Littlefoot". He also mentioned that Valve are experimenting with adding a touchpad to their controller but are still "trying to figure out where that’s useful", adding that they don't want to waste people's money with an expensive controller with needless features. Gable took the opportunity to vent his displeasure at Windows 8 again when asked about it by the Verge, calling the OS a "giant sadness".
You can read the entire interview here at the Verge.
Valve seem to be taking a similar approach to their Steam Box platform as Google did with Android: They are encouraging various hardware manufacturers to create their own Steam Boxes while developing their own in-house device as a flagship. The Piston which we mistakenly called "the" Steam Box yesterday is just the first of many devices to come.
Here are some highlights of the interview:
On working with parter companies to develop hardware:
What we see is you've got this sort of struggle going on between closed proprietary systems and open systems. [...] We’re not imposing a lot of restrictions on people on how they’re getting involved.
On what we can expect from Steam Boxes:
The way we sort of think of it is sort of "Good, Better," or "Best." So, Good are like these very low-cost streaming solutions that you’re going to see that are using Miracast or Grid. I think we’re talking about in-home solutions where you’ve got low latency. "Better" is to have a dedicated CPU and GPU and that’s the one that’s going to be controlled. Not because our goal is to control it; it’s been surprisingly difficult when we say to people "don’t put an optical media drive in there" and they put an optical media drive in there and you’re like "that makes it hotter, that makes it more expensive, and it makes the box bigger." Go ahead. You can always sell the Best box, and those are just whatever those guys want to manufacture. [Valve's position is]: let's build a thing that’s quiet and focuses on high performance and quiet and appropriate form factors.
Note: Miracast and Grid are services for streaming a PC display wirelessly to another device like a TV, similar to Apple's Airplay.
On the openness of their own Steam Box:
That’ll be a Linux box, [and] if you want to install Windows you can. We’re not going to make it hard. This is not some locked box by any stretch of the imagination.
On input devices:
We’ve struggled for a long time to try to think of ways to use motion input and we really haven’t [found any]. [...] We think that, unlike motion input where we kind of struggled to come up with ideas, [there's potential in] biometrics. We have lots of ideas. [...] Also, gaze tracking. We think gaze tracking is going to turn out to be super important.
On the future of the Steam Store:
Right now there’s one Steam store. We think that the store should actually be more like user generated content. So, anybody should be able to create a store, and it should be about extra entertainment value. Our view has always been that we should build tools for customers and tools for partners.
On the future of Steam Boxes:
The Steam Box will also be a server. Any PC can serve multiple monitors, so over time, the next-generation (post-Kepler) you can have one GPU that’s serving up eight simultaeneous game calls. So you could have one PC and eight televisions and eight controllers and everybody getting great performance out of it.
There were a few other nuggets of information: Gabe revealed the codenames for a couple of their internal projects. Their own Steam Box is called "Bigfoot" and their mobile efforts are codenamed "Littlefoot". He also mentioned that Valve are experimenting with adding a touchpad to their controller but are still "trying to figure out where that’s useful", adding that they don't want to waste people's money with an expensive controller with needless features. Gable took the opportunity to vent his displeasure at Windows 8 again when asked about it by the Verge, calling the OS a "giant sadness".
You can read the entire interview here at the Verge.
