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Interesting. I wonder if later versions of this will also one day eventually evolve to replace Windows on PCs for PC-based gaming, judging by how Microsoft is getting everything wrong these days?
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I think that’s exactly what they’re going for. Gabe Newell has been very vocal about his dislike for Windows 8, and with Windows becoming a more locked-down ecosystem how long is it before you can’t install a Steam client at all?
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Like with On-Live, internet infrastructure has a long way to go before services like that become a viable thing for most people. Valve and Sony (with their back-catalogue on PS4, if that's how they intend to do 'backwards compatibility') may get away with it though 'cause that's not the only thing their hardware will be able to do.
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I doubt they are introducing a cloud service since Steam already IS a cloud service. At least it has the functionality built into it.
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I think they’ll have to bring in a game streaming service at some point, and now is the perfect time. At the moment, there’s just under 200 Linux games on Steam, and those are the only games right now that will (probably) run natively on SteamOS.
Steam wants to remove its dependency on Windows. They have a feature to stream games from your Mac or PC, but that doesn’t really cut the cord. They need some way of getting all those Windows games onto SteamOS that doesn’t require a Windows desktop.
That’s where your streaming service comes in, and that’s why I think they’re going to announce it. It also ties up the three announcements into quite nicely:
- Software (SteamOS)
- Hardware (Steam Box)
- Services (Steam Cloud)
It’s exactly the same trio that Windows and Mac are now both built on. If you want to compete, you have to have feature parity, right?
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If the second announcement is a hardware platform that's going to be taking on the Xbox One and the PS4 then the third announcement HAS to be game related. Either announcing the launch titles OR the Source 2 engine. I hope it's game titles. I think it's Source 2.
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That’s another possibility, but my money is on all of these announcements being tied to the Steam platform, rather than game-specific.
EDIT:
If it’s not a cloud streaming service, it probably has something to do with
this:
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"One of the worst characteristics of the current Steam system is that we've become a bottleneck. There's so much content coming at us that we just don't have enough time to turn the crank on the production process of getting something up on Steam. So whether we want to or not, we're creating artificial shelf space scarcity.
"So the right way to do that is to make Steam essentially a network API that anyone can call. Now, this is separate from issues about viruses and malware. But essentially, it's like, anyone can use Steam as a sort of a distribution and replication mechanism.
"It's the consumers who will draw it through. It's not us making a decision about what should or shouldn't be available. It's just, you want to use this distribution facility? It's there. And customers decide which things actually end up being pulled through. So Steam should stop being a curated process and start becoming a networking API."
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