Remember that Steam Box console you heard rumours about?

This isn't it. It costs $1000. It's supposed to be a middle ground between consoles and PCs, which seems entirely pointless. But then again I thought the giant smartphones and mini tablets were pointless, and people still buy them.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-03-11-valve-backed-xi3-piston-console-starts-at-USD1000

Quote :

But the Piston is not Valve's own Steam Box. That device should be ready for testing in the next few months.

I hate you.

Not sure why it costs that much, you can build a pretty good machine for less than that.

Neo wrote:

Not sure why it costs that much, you can build a pretty good machine for less than that.

Prebuilt machines always cost less. Honestly i think this is a travesty considering the price of the PS4.

Superbuu3 wrote:

Prebuilt machines always cost less. Honestly i think this is a travesty considering the price of the PS4.

I assume you mean more, that's true I guess. The second thing is my main concern though, who do they really expect to buy this when there are other, cheaper, options that are arguably just as interesting coming out around the same time?

I suppose the appeal is that you can upgrade this like a PC. It's basically a PC that can only play games.

Neo wrote:

Superbuu3 wrote:

Prebuilt machines always cost less. Honestly i think this is a travesty considering the price of the PS4.

I assume you mean more, that's true I guess. The second thing is my main concern though, who do they really expect to buy this when there are other, cheaper, options that are arguably just as interesting coming out around the same time?

Also don't forget the bells and whistles you get with a PS4. The whole having a tracking camera etc, those kinds of peripherals cost a bomb. As well as capture cards etc. (although this might be able to do that). If they wanted to make this so badly they should've released this at a lower price. Stating the easy upgrades as a selling point.

My biggest issue with this kind of crap is consoles will have exclusives that you don't get on PC, you will never have to worry about feeling a need to upgrade during a whole generation as all games are made with your specific hardware in mind, you will have local splitscreen on a console. We'll be paying for a more expensive PC that does less.

Well Valve publicly distanced themselves from these guys, apparently they had nothing to do with it at all. It's going to bomb even harder now.

I hope it does terrible this product has no right to be on the market. If it was made by valve i'd at least want it to do well, but this seems like a shitty cash in.

Why would it make a difference to your wanting it to do well if Valve made it? Rose by any other name etc.

Buu is a Valve fanboy.

Skip wrote:

Why would it make a difference to your wanting it to do well if Valve made it? Rose by any other name etc.

If valve fucked up stupidly they'd lose lots of money steam would have worse sales and we'd all be playing windows live or whatever that crap MS tried.

EDIT: actually i remember what i was thinking earlier. If it was made by valve it would be like hey lok we made a pc so you can use our product.

in this case its hey look i made a shitter version of a regular PC for more than normal. I also have nothing to do with the companies software taht i solely rely on PLEASE BUY ME, solely on the fact i stole an idea that vale was alerady working on.

The controller looks weird. I'm wary of PC gaming though in terms of becoming the sole way way to play games. Having a console reduces the amount of hacking on servers, hackers just getting into every game i wanted to play casually online and fucking things up is a horrible thing which I hope would never happen, but ultimately is something more likely using the PC architecture.

'Hacking' is only a problem for games with no security or private server options, don't be a fear-monger.

Neo wrote:

'Hacking' is only a problem for games with no security or private server options, don't be a fear-monger.

How can the player dictate if a server has security. In terms of practicality you can't say players should be playing on private servers just to avoid hackers.

Games with no security OR private servers. If a game is secure cheaters will be detected, booted and banned automatically ie: just about everything that people play online that isn't a F2P MMO. If a game has private servers players can be ip banned by whoever owns the server (or anyone with admin rights) at a moments notice.

Yeah, the controller is weird, but I guess it was designed to replicate PC controls well or something.

I think the controller looks dumb, honestly.

When I saw it I thought it was the back of the controller at first, because the grips are curved outwards.

Neo wrote:

I think the controller looks dumb, honestly.

I think it could be amazing, in some ways, the lack of buttons though make me feel the weird interface will make it purely the place for PC games, which wouldn't be a bad thing necessarily.

I think it was a Darth Vader helmet.

Controller actually looks a lot better than I expected in practice, though I don't see much point in it without owning a Steam Box as well.

The first three basically followed the sort of way I thought it would be used. The way they used it in Papers Please impressed me though. That was quite cool.

So now we have to constantly flick our right thumb to turn? No matter how you design it, it won't work like a mouse. It's honestly worse than I expected. The people talking abou it made it sound a lot cooler and something that is comparable to mouse and keyboard.

I'm sure you can max sensitivity, but then wouldn't that make tiny movements more iffy. The thing is you don't need accuracy in portal becuase the game uses a panel system to place portals, so the game isn't the best demo for it either.

Did you watch the whole video? They use it in different games too. Also the guy in the video explained that for portal they had it set up for 1:1 movement. If you wanted it to work like an analog stick you could probably do that but it would come with reduced precision. 1:1 movement is essentially the same as using a mouse, you're just making the movement with your thumb instead of wrist/arm.