Steam releases Big Picture mode

http://store.steampowered.com/bigpicture/

by baq • 14 years ago

105 77 14 years ago

store.steampowered.com

baq2• 14 years ago

...eagerly waiting for the steambox announcement.

jfaucett• 14 years ago

Steam is rockin it!

mmanfrin• 14 years ago

Now they just need to let us keep multiple boxes logged in at the same time. I don't like having to relogin on my settop.

w1ntermute5• 14 years ago

Yeah, this has really pissed me off since installing the Linux beta, since I have two machines regularly logging in now.

sliverstorm8• 14 years ago

Yes, it's particularly troublesome with Big Picture- isn't the idea that I'm going to have this connected to my TV, i.e. without a keyboard?

I can live with being unable to run games on two computers at the same time, but I wish I could stay logged in on two computers. Or at least, I don't know, pass a token.

drivebyacct2• 14 years ago

My mind is still being blown from TF2 running better in Linux than I've ever, ever, ever had any Source game run in Windows.

jrockway• 14 years ago

Is that from the private beta, or did I miss an announcement regarding wider distribution?

w1ntermute5• 14 years ago

The Linux client is still in private beta, but you can easily circumvent it by just downloading the .deb and installing/running it on Linux anyway. FWIW, I wasn't invited to the beta right away, but about a week after I started running it anyway, I was invited.

The only issue you might run into is that it'll sometimes say your account is not authorized to use the Linux beta, but there are directions online on how to get around this by adding some flags and launching it from the CLI.

I'm not sure why I bothered though, since my Linux ultrabook can barely run any games anyway.

ekianjo2• 14 years ago

Did you do any FPS comparison ? What graphic card are you using? I would be interested to know more about your experience.

Raphael3• 14 years ago

Valve did find OpenGL outperforming Direct3D with their engine.

http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/linux/faster-zombies/

100982• 14 years ago

Make a console, Valve!

pliu• 14 years ago

This is their console.

bitdiffusion• 14 years ago

This is just a re-imagining of the Steam interface to be optimised for large screens - I think the post above yours is referring to the rumoured "Steambox" that Valve themselves are supposedly working on.

Shish2k• 14 years ago

I'd think it's fairly obvious that that's their step after next :P

(the immediate next step being "make the linux games catalog decently large", so they don't need to bloat their $300 console with an extra $150 of MS licensing)

On a tangent -- does anyone know how developing games for linux compares to developing games for consoles? I've heard windows devs complain about linux ("Braid will never be available on linux because ALSA is shit and fundamentally can't handle it", etc etc), but it seems that the valve console'd be more competing against the PS4 / xbox720 / etc, and I wonder if those devkits are better or worse...

100982• 14 years ago

> Braid will never be available on linux because ALSA is shit and fundamentally can't handle it

I don't buy it, tons of games with sound effects have been successfully ported to linux with no problems. Probably the devs are just being lazy :-)

primitur• 14 years ago

I really wish they'd team up with the Open Pandora guys. The Pandora "Next-Gen" seems like its exactly what Valve needs ..

w1ntermute5• 14 years ago

There's an excellent post on The Verge forums called "Forget the PS4 and the Xbox 720, build your own Steambox on the cheap"[0]. It will be very exciting to see if a significant number of gamers (many of whom are already familiar with building their own PCs) take the initiative to go down this road.

A nice auxiliary advantage of building a Steambox is that you can use it as a full-featured HTPC as well, since it runs a desktop OS.

0: http://www.theverge.com/2012/11/30/3706718/forget-the-ps4-an...

sliverstorm8• 14 years ago

I did literally just this last week, with an ITX motherboard, a 65W APU (Trinity), and a case to match. I'm quite pleased with the results, and with Big Picture mode (given it *was still Beta)

squidsoup• 14 years ago

Would you consider blogging about this? I'd like to do something similar next year.

baq2• 14 years ago

it's not beta anymore.

bbee• 14 years ago

I'd be interested in hearing about that too. I just ordered parts to build my parents a computer, I'm using it as an excuse to try out a Trinity APU. If I like it I'll look into building an ITX size for myself.

mtgx• 14 years ago

Anything that tries to disrupt, or at least compete on the same level with the Xbox and Playstation, is a good thing, and that includes OUYA as well.

rpm43212• 14 years ago

Would it be legal for someone to manufacture and sell 3rd party Steamboxes, if Valve has no immediate plans to do so?

It seems like somebody like Alienware, or even just somebody on Kickstarter, could put together something impressive at a XBox720/PS4 pricepoint.

Florin_Andrei• 14 years ago

I've done this ages ago. The big TV in the living room was always hooked up to a console and a PC. It was always a good combination.

Now the PC part is getting even easier to use. Great.

nullymcnull• 14 years ago

Even better, the update finally includes the ability to install games to drives other than the one steam itself is installed to.

TobiasFunkeMD• 14 years ago

AWESOME! I've been waiting for this! I've got an SSD that I only want to install certain games on because it is not big enough.

skeletonjelly• 14 years ago

This should be the real announcement! Fantastic news for tinkerers.

stock_toaster• 14 years ago

I wonder if steam will eventually add other media (movies, tvshows, etc) to their ecosystem.

missing_cipher• 14 years ago

They have "Indie Game: The Movie": http://store.steampowered.com/app/207080

So they may add more stuff in the future.

james4k• 14 years ago

Even though it's called Big Picture mode, it looks like it could potentially make a great touch interface.

AshleysBrain• 14 years ago

I'm a HTML5 game dev so not really positioned to comment on the main story, but I did try out the Big Picture browser:

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; Valve Steam Tenfoot/2095; ) AppleWebKit/535.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/18.0.989.0 Safari/535.11

So, Chrome 18. What is it with Chrome 18 given Chrome for Android is also stuck on that version? Maybe coincidence and slow release cycles... (Also, Tenfoot? Hmm)

I also tried playing a HTML5 game with it, which could be awesome with gamepad support. It seemed to freeze the browser and kept playing sounds in a loop, even after I had exited Steam... had to reboot to get rid of it. Guess it needs some work.

54mf• 14 years ago

Don't get too hyped by "tenfoot":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10-foot_user_interface

Just a clever reference to the UI paradigm.

xxbondsxx• 14 years ago

Re: Tenfoot, it's apparently a term used to describe TV-sized GUI's:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10-foot_user_interface

Imagine a responsive web design that goes from 10-foot all the way down to mobile; now that would be impressive!

Already__Taken2• 14 years ago

That would be easy the hard part is solving the responsive image problem. How can we know what quality image to send to a device?

The problems are shifting from display/device types to network types. Great you've got a 1080p phone but we can't shove down our retina quality images on 3g. Nor would you want use to use your battery life for that.

mwill• 14 years ago

To add to the ten foot comments, since big picture hit the steam beta, there's been files and directories floating around in the steam install folder called tenfoot, so it is indeed just the internal name for big picture.

kevingadd• 14 years ago

Steam (and by extension, Big Picture) uses LIBCEF to embed Chromium. As of April 26, the newest supported build of Chrome for LIBCEF was 18:

http://code.google.com/p/chromiumembedded/source/detail?r=60...

While they now support newer versions of Chromium (http://code.google.com/p/chromiumembedded/wiki/BranchesAndBu...) it is likely that Valve either didn't have the time to test everything against a new Chromium revision, or didn't want to take the risk. Every Chromium commit historically has a very high risk of breaking embedding use cases (I used to try and track Chromium for my own embedding purposes before finally giving up because it broke constantly).

As far as Chrome on Android goes, I have no idea. In Google's case you would expect they would have the resources to keep up with changes to their own codebases.

tarice• 14 years ago

Watching this, I'm reminded of the OUYA. Isn't this exactly what they were trying to accomplish?

In fact, it seems to me that Valve's Big Picture, combined with the ability to "make your own Steambox", completely trumps the OUYA.

Why would a game developer want to create a new port of their game to a completely new system when they could just optionally add controller support and publish to Steam?

Valve's got the player-base and game library, and now they're in the living room. Is OUYA's niche gone?

jonursenbach• 14 years ago

Why would a game developer want to create a new port of their game to a completely new system when they could just optionally add controller support and publish to Steam?

Because that's exactly the same thing as the OUYA for Android developers. All they need to do is add OUYA support to their existing application and publish it on their store.

wmf• 14 years ago

Ouya is $100, a Steambox is ~$300, and the next gen consoles may be $400+.

Raphael3• 14 years ago

In some ways, this is an advantage for selling games through Steam. If someone can't afford a decent computer, how likely are they to pay for games? And they will probably expect lower prices, especially if the assets are smaller and simpler.

adam-a• 14 years ago

Ouya has a much lower barrier to entry than Steam, which is none. Anyone can publish a game to the Ouya market (at least that's my understanding) but for an indie developer, getting a game on steam can be quite difficult. See the recently launched Greenlight website and how many games are on that, trying to get published on Steam[0]. I think the ease of publishing will attract a lot of developers, in the same way that iOS/Android grabbed smaller developers that couldn't get on the old consoles.

[0] http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/browse/?browsefilter=m...

baby• 14 years ago

I just tried it and it's awesome!

But I can see something more awesome, what if Steam would sell hardware? Like a new steambox every year like Apple does with the iPhone.

They have an incredible catalog of games, a new steam box would just be more powerful but would still be able to play all the old games.

tomkit2• 14 years ago

I haven't tried AppleTV's Airplay, but I think it just mirrors your desktop correct? So theoretically you could just run Steam's Big Picture Mode off of a Mac and use AirPlay to stream it to your TV?

dantiberian• 14 years ago

You could but I suspect the latency might make most games unplayable.

ConstantineXVI2• 14 years ago

I've attempted this; AirPlay does in fact lag too much for this to be useful.

tomkit2• 14 years ago

Seems like Apple hasn't mastered video streaming compression as well as OnLive. OnLive seemed pretty playable to me when I tried it.

rdl• 14 years ago

I'm slightly confused how to use this. I have a gaming PC and a 1080p projector. I was always planning to just run an HDMI cable from the 4th output of my 2 cards into the AVR, and then get a second wireless keyboard or something to use when gaming at the couch, rather than a dedicated HTPC for gaming (I use an old macbook pro for ht, along with ps3/xbox360/appletv/googletv)

lubujackson• 14 years ago

Just curious, how is this any different than using the TV as a projector/second screen? What exactly makes Big Picture, well, anything?

Raphael3• 14 years ago

Bigger buttons and text, navigable with a gamepad and readable from a distance. Also, a text input method for use with a gamepad.

venus2• 14 years ago

I'm looking forward to trying this out with my Mac Mini, which I use as an XBMC machine plugged into the TV. Hopefully the built-in HD4000 integrated graphics will suffice for Portal.

I need a controller. Which is the best one to get?

venus2• 14 years ago

Let me answer my own question: apparently the xbox 360 controller is the only one supported.

Source: http://steamcommunity.com/groups/bigpicture/discussions/1/88...

Bockit• 14 years ago

Not sure about portal, but I've used a PS3 controller with software that emulates xbox 360 controllers. It was fairly difficult to get set up and then running every time but once it was running it was rock solid. Played my way through Lara Croft: Guardians of the light with it.

I think it was this: http://motioninjoy.com/download

Ironlink• 14 years ago

I found that my Logitech RumblePad 2 worked great out of the box, and even better (almost flawless, the 360 controller has one extra button) after going through the button mappings in big picture settings.

sliverstorm8• 14 years ago

Which is fine by me, it's one of the better gamepads I've used in a while and its widespread adoption makes for good prices and speaks well for future use.

mdonahoe• 14 years ago

Anyone have an good suggestions for a controller? I'll probably just get an Xbox one.

Already__Taken2• 14 years ago

Having the 360 controller compatibility is part of any games for windows live certification, plus most games have xbox support anyway it's as close to a de-facto standard controller you can get.

I'm not saying that has anything to do with steam but if I were a game dev and could only be bothered to support 1 controller that's the one I would spend the time supporting.

nickvanhoog• 14 years ago

This made me play games for the first time in ages, it's a great feature that's a delight to turn on.

Tichy• 14 years ago

Could this be the first online movie rental service that runs on Linux? That would be very exciting news.

Steam releases Big Picture mode

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