Valve working on 'Steam Box' gaming console with hardware partners

Re:Valve working on 'Steam Box' gaming console with hardware... by daeken on Saturday March 03, 2012 @01:59AM (#3659610)

Let's say we all move to commodity PC hardware in our consoles. At that point, one of two things will happen: the 'consoles' will have ever-shifting hardware and be complete hell to work for, or developers will code to the hardware and not go beyond, effectively stagnating PC game progress. That feels like a net negative for everyone to me.

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Re:Valve working on 'Steam Box' gaming console with hardware... by Lewisham on Saturday March 03, 2012 @03:17AM (#3659715)

You're assuming that the hardware will be upgradable. It won't be. As noted elsewhere, the Xbox basically was a PC.

This console cycle has been characterized by software and online, and that's how it will be from this point out. 360 has a very good OS and networking stack, PS3 not so much. This is why 360 is outselling the PS3, even though it's the weaker-powered of the two.

I don't see this changing in the next cycle either; PS Vita's software looks awful.

The Steam box will be no different; it's about the software, not the hardware.

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Re:Valve working on 'Steam Box' gaming console with hardware... by sliverstorm on Saturday March 03, 2012 @03:25AM (#3659725)

I think what he is actually doing is taking a loose interpretation of "commodity". That is to say, if consoles are built on "commodity" hardware, that implies different consoles will come from the factory with different hardware that is only partially fungible.

I'm not sure what it is really called, this sort of "fungible but not fungible"- for example, x86 processors are fungible in the functional regard but not in the performance regard.

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