Get in test with technology with text stuff from dot com. Heyl, everyone, and welcome to tex Stuff. I'm Jonathan Strickland and I'm Lauren and Lauren, you pulled an interesting quote that I'm going to read out at the top of this episode before we really get into the topic. This is a quote from a fellow named Greg Komer who said, there's a strong desire from our customers that we've heard for a long time. They love all those game titles, but they also like their families, and whenever they had to go into the living room, they've had to abandon everything they loved about the games in the other room of the house. So here's a problem, right, I mean, if you erode serious video gamer, particularly if you're a serious PC gamer and you love those games, but you also want to you know, not strange yourself from your family. Occasionally you have to move away from the gaming computer. Sometimes you have to stay end up from your from your game chair, leave all of your you know, cans of mellow yellow behind. Yeah, and your your your Frito's and Derrito's and other salty snacks. Okay, we are officially talking down to the statement of the population. This is me actually talking about myself. I don't mean to suggest that there is a stereotype. I'm just saying that if there is, I fit it at any rate. Now, what if you could solve this problem? What if you were able to bring the joy of the video games, of PC games, specifically into the realm of the living room with the rest of your family. That, in fact, is the promise that we hope the steam box will deliver upon, or at least that's what they're hoping. But that is certainly what they're hoping. So we're talking about steam boxes, y'all. Yeah, this is this is Valve's entire crazy idea, or maybe not so crazy idea. We will find out soon because the first ones are debuting this year. Will definitely talk about some of the perceived pros and perceived cons. But before we get into all of that, it probably would help us to give a quick rundown on what Valve is, who they are, why are they a big deal, and why they're trying to produce this living room console for PC gamers. Yeah, so let's let's first of all, obviously this is gonna be another video game episode, so everyone who hates video games stick with it, because This is actually kind of interesting from an industry point of view, right, this is talking about trying to create a new market. So let's talk about Valve. For those of you who are not into computer games, you may not know that much about Valve. You might have played a few of their titles because some of the titles have been ported two consoles, things like Left or Dead and you know, even the Half Life games. Obviously kind of portal, Yeah, a little game called Portals Still Alive. Uh So in nine six, that's when Gabe Newell and uh and and Mike Harrington both had left the company they had worked for for several years, Microsoft. Both of them had made boot Cous of Cash. They were very successful at Microsoft. Yes, yes, uh And so they left Microsoft and they launched a gaming company called Valve l l c. That was right there in Bellevue, Washington, just a few miles away from the headquarters of Microsoft. And their first title they started to develop was Half Life. They collaborated with another former Microsoft employee named Michael Abrash who was working at ID Software, and so he helped Harrington the Newell get a license for a little thing called the Quake Engine to act as the physics engine for Half Life kind of the backbone exactly. So that gave them a big leg up, right, you know, they had this licensing agreement so they didn't have to build their own physics engine from the ground up for this. Half Life would launch two years later, and in fact the publisher was Sierra Online because Valve was not a publisher at this point. They were a developer. And so the game, um, you probably have heard of it, Half Life turned out to be a huge hit. They also in acquired a company called TF Software p t Y, which was a company that had developed a mod for the Quake engine called Team Fortress. This would come in handy later on. Team Fortress also another big title that a lot of gamers are are fond of. I've watched gameplay. That game moves faster than I can think, so I've never actually sat down for it. So another thing that made Valve really important really early on. You know the title. Yeah, so the title resonates with the gamer community. But beyond that, Valve actually opens up a software developer kit for free that people can download, which would allow them to create their own mods of Half Life. So they're they're trying to create a community of players that are not just players but creators. And that was that was really innovative for the time. Not that many video game companies were willing to do that with their code, and especially not big, big titles. Right. You could see it in things like Doom, Like there were Doom mods out there, and there were some mods that were completely unauthorized mods that came out. But this was a company saying, you know, please, we want to see what you're gonna do. Ye make stuff and uh and people did. In fact, you started to see some pretty incredible ones, including one that would become an insanely popular game in its own right, counter Strike. Um So. In two thousand, Harrington left Valve, so Newell was left behind to be kind of the head and ahead of the company and as well as you know, very public facing figure. Right. He's somewhat controversial. Sometimes he likes he likes saying things a lot, and and and frequently they're very energizing, wonderful things, and sometimes they're very inflammatory there. They can be a little brassy, you know, he's not he's not necessarily one of those who speaks in a corporate uh speak. You know, he's very plain spoken. Two thousand two at the Game Developer Conference that's g d cum big big event for video games, Valve unveiled Steam, which obviously is going to be very important in this in this episode to talk about steam boxes. The Steam it was really as an online digital platform. It was meant as a digital distribution platform originally mostly for things like putting out game patches and updates. Right, it wasn't a full store to begin with. These days it's a it's a store. But then it was really just to have a smoother interface for forgetting those important little bits of update to games that people were playing. Right, So if a game goes out and there is something to address either a vulnerability or a glitch, it made it easier for players to get that. Well, hypothetically, it didn't actually work that way for several years where there were there were a lot of problems upon launch um there was a rip server overload most of the time. Yeah, that was that. That meant that the entire service was somewhat unsteady. It could crash at a moment's notice. But and they furthermore were including a bunch of DRM and an online authentication kind of things just coming up the system. Yeah, and and the Valves. Valves history with DRM is one of those things that a lot of players have cited as a negative about the company. Now that's really something in the industry as a whole. It's you know, industry trying to make sure that people are not exploiting the system. But you know, depending upon how you implement that, it can be restrictive, like beyond what it was intended to do. There are ways where this system can restrict a person who has a legitimate copy of the game from playing that game. We'll talk about that a little bit as well. So it also was a system that allowed for multiplayer modes on several games. You know, that was another purpose of the Steam plat right it could It could again hypothetic connect users for for those multiplayer matches in those early days. It was certainly more hypothetical than than realistic. In two thousand three, Valve l l C. Becomes Valve Corporation, which in my notes I wrote, no longer would its liability be limited. Thundercrash. That's a thundercrash noise um or maybe a kitten. I don't know either one. I'm bad. I'm bad at sound effects, y'all. But in two thousand three was also the year that that Steam officially launched, because it was just an unveiled the previous launched right and in two thousand four, Valve made an announcement that was met with some criticism. I think that this is more the thundercrash moment. Actually, yeah, this is when Valves said that all future games from from that company would require Steam to play. So even if it were a single player, offline game that you bought on a disc, you would have to have Steam as an authentication tool to be able to play, which of course means that if Steam is not completely reliable, then you could have a game on your computer that is single player, there's no online element to it at all, need to get online that you cannot play because the service itself is down. And a lot of gamers said that doesn't sound right. So this was one of the things that was kind of a little um controversial. I mean, ultimately, the Steam service got better. Uh. It took some time for it to get up to speed, but once it did, and once it got better, uh and started to add more value to games, And that was when gamers started to kind of come round. Sure, but but that wouldn't happen for another couple of years. Back in these early days at half Life two also launched that year, and um it took players in some instances hours or even days to just get online to authenticate because of the server overload. Yeah now, but half Life two would end up giving us things like Gary's mod, which ind up being huge in Mashinima circles. People were using Gary's mod to create uh little Mashinima movies. Mashinima. For those who do not remember, I text stuff to an episode ages ago about Mashinima. It's essentially a machine animation. It's using uh, computer generated characters that are pre generated by something like a video game as sort of digital puppets, and you use those to tell your stories. And then there are a lot of different examples out there. The one I always cite because it was what introduced me to Mashinima is Red versus Blue from Rooster Teeth. But there are lots of different examples, and in fact, Gary's mod ended up being kind of a you know, kind of a renaissance for that are really a launching point for a lot of people to create these, uh, these creative projects. Two thousand five, Valve ended up making agreements with third party publishers to allow non Valve games in the Steam Store. And this is really where things are starting to pick up for Steam, because it's becoming a viable marketplace, not just not just a thing where you could get patches and fit the systems up, or just a thing that allows you to play your game. Because of the d r M. Now you have a store where you can go and buy games and have and download the game, and you never end up getting a physical copy at all, exactly, you just you just buy it on. In fact, most gamers I think these days, as long as they have a decent Internet connection, this is how they buy games. Now. You know, they're buying them online, downloading them, and usually you have some sort of cloud element. This is certainly true with Steam. But you have a cloud element where you can buy a game, install it on your computer, play it, and then if you ever were to need that space, you could delete it from your hard drive and then maybe later down the road, you think, along with your saves. Yeah, because because it's all cloud based, right, because if it weren't cloud based then you'd really be stuck. But that was another thing that Steam did that again added value to the service and to the game themselves. And I think partially because they started becoming accountable to third party publishers, they really got their act together. I think that that was the tipping point of them going like, oh, I guess that we need to have more servers and uhstability for our services, make it stable. And yeah, they also added in achievements, which for some people is the only reason to play games. Uh. And then also that was a little bit of commentary. Well, I mean, I like, I like achievements. I like the feeling I get when I unlock an achievement, but I don't like feeling. There's some players who treat it so like it's such an important part of the game that it almost feels like they're concentrating on getting the achievements and not experiencing the game. And then I feel like I get talked down to if I don't get all the achievements. Well, don't don't don't hit on their version of gameplay, let live and let live. I don't hate on the fact that they're wrong. I just point out that they're wrong anyway. So they also introduced chat clients, things like that. So there are a lot of different elements to stee besides just the store. Uh, we're gonna jump ahead to So between two thousand five and twenty ten, a lot of stuff developed, But twenty ten was when Steam got a makeover. Uh. The user interface was retooled, so it made it more attractive and easier to use. They also released versions for Mac and Lennox. Yeah, big deal there, because before that it was PC only, Windows based PC only. You know, PC we use as just shorthand for Windows machine, but obviously personal computer could mean anything. Um. The store also began to carry stuff besides games, like user generated content, so again expanding the offering of Steam itself. And in eleven, that's when a bad story happened. Yeah, there was a big hack hack attack, yeah, right on Steam. I mean it was and it was huge. I remember when this happened. I mean I wasn't a Steam user at the time because and we'll get into this when we talk about the Steam boxes themselves. I was one of those gamers who had migrated away from PCs and towards consoles, and we'll talk about kind of the reasoning behind that, which is one of the reasons why Valve is behind the steam box thing in the first place. Anyway, I was aware of this, but I wasn't affected by it directly. So hackers ended up defacing the forums over at Valve. But then beyond that, the Valve employees discovered that the hackers had access some databases, which meant they potentially got their hands on things like credit card information and personal identification. So that raised a big scare, and months after it happened, Newell went public saying, uh, we still haven't found any evidence that they actually took any recent personal information. However, they probably access to database which gave them access to all transactions that took place between two thousand four and two thousand eight. This is in early twelve when he made this announcement, so again these were transactions that were four years old, so you know, for a lot of people, I'm sure the credit card information was no longer accurate. But still when you have that personal identification the trouble there is identity theft. Not just someone's used your credit card, which is minor in the grand scheme of things, but someone has access to your personal identification, which means they can do a lot more harm. So that was definitely a black mark against Steam. So but then in two thousand twelve, UM, that's when we start really getting towards the steam box movement. That's when Valve announced that they were going to have Big Picture Mode in Steam, which means that you would be able to enable this and that would optimize whatever game you were playing, whatever Steam based game you were playing for a television display, not a computer display. So if you were to hook up your computer to a TV and put big Picture mode on, it would actually optimize that to show on your big television. So this was the first step towards the steam box movement, and in fact, some people started calling any sort of PC that you would hook up to your computer and use this a steam box, right, And previously people had found kind of kind of jakie workarounds to making this happen. Yeah, but it wasn't optimized. It wasn't optimized, and and you know, this was still a little bit, a little bit clunky. You know, you still had to have a PC keyboard and mouse rigged up in your living room. You can play some games with a controller, but it's it was a relatively maybe somewhere between fifty games, but that's still left a lot of games out, oh sure. And even if something was controller compatible, you usually have to set them up with the mouse and keep right right. So you know, it wasn't something that your average player who is not a PC player like, like you know, we we think of gamers in different buckets, often like different populations, and to some extent that's true. I mean, there are some gamers who identify themselves as console gamers, and it's not that they looked down on PC gamers some of them. Some of them do. But but it's just that, you know, they're the consoles are more attractive to them than a PC. Either the PC is too intimidating, or they don't like the idea of a system that they need to upgrade fairly regularly in order to keep pace with the games that come out. There are a lot of different reasons. Meanwhile, you have the the PC gamers who kind of they may some of them look down on console gamers because they like to be able to run stuff that is constantly pushing the envelope of what is possible graphically and and sound and all other aspects of gaming. And they might be a little bit more um technologically inclined in terms of being really excited about those specific bits of hardware and building the best machine right. And also, you know, you've got the whole Twitch based argument of the fact that you know, keyboard and mouse gives you precise control compared to a game pad. So there's a lot of different, you know, things between these different populations. But one thing that PC gamers do envy about console gamers is that it's really easy the play console game on a big screen television. Not that it's impossible to play a PC game on a big screen television, it's just not generally speaking, optimized or as easy, you know, because it wasn't it wasn't built with that purpose in mind. And that's where Steam starts going huh yeah, And and that's that's where they you know, it was really exciting that they were getting into this space, and they wanted to let everyone know that they were really excited about it, even even in these relatively early days of they were teasing the concept of steam boxes pretty hard. Yeah, So there was a lot of speculation when Big Picture Mode came out, it is Valve making some hardware. Are they going to get into the console game by building what is essentially a computer but has all the benefits of a console, and that it's simple to set up, you know, even if you are intimidated by building your own computer, this is something. This is a different avenue you can go to that will give you access to all the benefits of the Steam library, but without the the hardship of either planning out or building a gaming PC. But that was before we actually knew any details about steam Box. So we got a lot more to say about steam boxes, you know now that we're actually getting into the topic. But before we do that, let's take a quick break to thank our sponsor. Al Right, back to steam boxes. So we've teased it, but it wasn't until last year, that's spoiler alert now, but the last year and that we finally start to hear more details about a an actual, honest to goodness steam Box, and that was mostly through valves announcement that they were creating a Steam OS. Yeah, so Steam operating system, so that this is beyond the platform that's online where you can you know, shop for games and and uh have your DRM authenticated. This is actually an operating system that sits on top of another operating system, Linux, So Linux is an open source operating system, meaning that people are free to get at that source code and alter it and make their own versions of Linux. These are called distributions or distros um and so SteamOS is sort of a flavor of Linux, or at least it's built on top of an Ubuntu based Linux operating system. Now, this is interesting. It definitely hearkens back to their days of half life and opening up the Software Developer Kit, saying that they like the ability of people if they want to get down and dirty and modify stuff, then this is kind of in line with that. Sure, and they also were making sure that that by using Linux, they could offer SteamOS as a free download. Yes, because you didn't have to worry about paying a licensing fee like you would if you were buying something that was Windows based or mac Os based. Uh. There are some limitations. Will get into those in a little bit, but you know, it was it's an interesting approach. They also announced that that both the Steam MOS and the desktop platform would be gaining some features right streaming, uh family sharing, which which means that it's it's like a digital borrowing system that will let up to ten Steam accounts pull from the same library um, just not simultaneously, Like you can't have more than one account working on the same game at the same time. This is this is a big deal for you know, families or you know, maybe groups of friends or whatever, where you've got you know a bunch of people who are interacting often Like I just think of like your typical family where you might have a couple of you know, a couple of kids you've got maybe maybe the adults like to play too. If you're going with an old system where it's one account per console, then that really can limit, you know, what each person can do, especially if you are interested in things like achievements. Right, So, Lauren, if you and I share an account on Xbox, like if we're sharing a tech Stuff account, which by the way, does not exist, so don't go looking for it, or if it does exist, it's not us um. And if we were sharing that account, and then you went in and played a game, and then later on I'm like, oh, I want to play that game too, And I keep wondering why I'm not good at this game because I haven't unlocked any achievements, And then I go and check and I see, oh, it's because Lauren unlocked all the achievements when she went on that marathon gaming spree three days ago. That's, you know, not a very satisfying experience. So this digital borrowing or sharing program allows multiple people to have that kind of experience on their own. And yet because it doesn't allow simultaneous play, it also doesn't you know, end up making game developers feel like they're they're being taken to advantage. Um. And then in addition to those things also some some parental restriction abilities and more media playback kind of stuff, which is really important these days. I mean, you've got a lot of consoles when when you're doing something in in that living room space, you're expected to have media capacity, especially with the president that's been set. I mean, the fact that you can access all sorts of different streaming options on various souls, I mean, everything has at least a few options. That was really important. So, um, yeah, this is the basis. The steam Os was really what got people talking about the fact that there was gonna be a steam Box. Now, at that time, there still was no official word on whether or not Valve was going to make one sell for if it was going to be a third party thing. Valve did end up making three hundred steam boxes. The prototypes that they were releasing as a or I guess are kind of currently releasing as a beta. Yeah, and those three hundred, as far as we know, that's all there ever will be. Valve has not said that they are ever going to make more. They might, but they have not, at least as the recording of this podcast, they have not said that they're ever going to make anymore. So those three hundred that's it. Yeah, Um, but then they they are of course, Um, I mean, since they're not making their own hardware, that means that they are opening that license up to any number of hardware partners. Yeah, and steam os because it's free to download. Technically, you can build your own you can build your own steam Box. You don't have to go out and buy a branded steam Box computer. So but here's here's kind of the reasoning behind it. So we talked about how console players. One of the things that they benefit from is the fact that it's really easy to set up and play a console. Right the consoles are made with a certain set of specifications. They plug directly into your entertainment center. Yeah, it's it's really simple it's plug and play. You just go out, you buy a box. You you open the box, and it's all the stuff that you need right off the bat. You don't need to fox with wires and worry about you know, oh, is this bit compatible with that bit? And is it the best bit that I can possibly buy? It's just nope, that's it. That's what you get, right. And then if you buy a game for that system, it'll work on that system. Yeah, there are a course exceptions when some manufacturing flaw happens, but you know, generally speaking, you buy a game for a system, it'll work on that system. So that comes in a premium. Yeah, it does well. It also it depends too, because there's another benefit that these companies have in that Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo they all are not just in the hardware business. They're also in the game business, right, So that means that these games, these companies can mark down those consoles so that they can sell them for less money than they can essentially sell them at a loss, but they can make up that loss in game sales because they're also in the business of producing games. Now, this puts them in an advantage over steam box manufacturers, which for the most part, they're just making the hardware. So a steam box manufacturer cannot mark down the steam box without just taking the hit because there's nowhere else for them to make money. So yeah, that that's one of the big challenges for steam box manufacturers as being able to price their products so that they are making a profit. But you know that means that these are in general probably gonna be a little more expensive than or average video game console is because they can't they can't discount it and then make it up in the video games themselves because they're not in the video game business. Right. Sure, although you know, I would argue that steam boxes have a have advantage is a species here because you know, top of the line for hardware changes what like hourly um, and even with with modern consoles, for more updates and storage upgrades and and that undercut of prices that they can that they can accomplish just by being vertical. Um, you know, the big three we and uh, you know, Nintendo, Xbox and PlayStation. I'll have to design something that is going to last for years, for the five plus years, meaning that that even games like five or six years down the road, they're still going to be capped by whatever whatever hardware right you had on the original console, right right, Whereas steam Box, at least in theory, you could have a machine that could be upgradeable. Now some of the manufacturers have built it into or at least we assume that's being built in because they've unveiled them at CS two thousand fourteen. But these are things that are going to become available throughout two thousand fourteen, like and beyond. I mean, I'm sure that you know. And that's kind of my my other concept here, that is, as a species, your steam boxes are going to be able to evolve, whereas the Xbox one is what it is. Yeah, and if it's a box that is allowed that allows the user to upgrade it, that makes perfect sense, right, Well, not not even not even upgrades I'm talking about, but but just you know, the fact that a company can come out with a new steam Box and capture a new segment of the of the audience that it perhaps had not captured before the danger of that, though, I would argue, is that you might confuse the conser like that all depends on who the steam boxes is aimed at. Right. If the steam boxes aimed at at console players who so far have not really gotten into PC games. Then you run the risk of confusing the market because you have so many different choices with different capability. Whereas you know, the old console game one size fits all. I mean, you might have different models that have different hard drive space size, and some people might not be tolerant. I I totally see your point of getting in there and figuring out which box to purchase. And because the discussion we're having right now is actually making me think a lot about smartphones. So for example, an iPhone user and an Android user have different experiences and that iPhones come out once a year usually I assume so far that's going to be the case, because it's not like the iPad where occasionally three of them come out in a year. But iPhones come out once a year. So even if you are upgrading every year and you're paying extra money so that you can do it, um, it's once a year. Whereas Android, if you buy an Android smartphone, the next week, you could have a newer phone come out that blows the one you just bought out of the water. So but you also, I mean, you know, for using the two of us as an example, I have a very I don't care that much about about customizing my smartphone experience, So an iPhone is just fun. Like, I'm fine with keeping one for three or four years because that's that's all I need. I don't really anything fancier, whereas I, you know, you took a much more personalized approach about it and found have found ones that you're excited about from very specific brands, right. I just think that as a gamer, that makes it really tricky because because you're you know, as a gamer, I want to have personally, I want to have a system that's going to run the best games at the best the best settings for as long as I possibly can. And in this approach, that's tricky because even if you are buying a top of the line steam Box for by the way, a huge premium, you could end up building a computer much less expensive than some of the high high end steam Box. I mean, the top of the line is like six thousand dollars. That's a really expensive computer. Um, if you know, you could go out and buy the most expensive one, but you do so knowing that because of this rapid development, it's going to be outdated before too terribly long. So it's tough to justify that kind of investment for a certain population, right. I mean, I'm sure there's some people out there who six thousand dollars. They're like, yeah, I'm gonna be paying another six thousand dollars in six months. But hey, I have a gold Jet, So what do I care that? That's that? I think for the vast population that's not true. It's but see, here's the other thing is that if this is actually aimed at PC gamers, the steam boxes, then then you have other questions, right, like, Okay, uh, I'm a PC gamer. I've got a tower, you know, at home where it's my PC rig. It maybe I don't want to bring that rig into the living room. And that's what's preventing me. Because technically I could just download SteamOS, I could use big picture mode. I could just port that entire machine over into the living room and hook it up and everything be cool. Maybe it wouldn't look so nice because it's an enormous tower. Maybe then I would want a steam Box because I could use that as a secondary gaming device hooked up to the television. It would also address one of the other problems of Steambox that I'll get into in a second. Um, that would, I guess makes sense, except that if I'm if I'm a PC gamer and I've got a long history of either building a gaming rig or knowing exactly what I want, I'm not sure that I would go out and buy a h a Steambox, a branded Steambox, rather than build my own. So in other words, I'm not sure who the steam box is for, is what I'm getting at, Because if it's for the console gamer, it's really confusing to have so many flavors. If it's for the PC gamer, a lot of them already have built their own gaming rigs, so I don't know that they'd be tempted, right, I see what you're saying, And I think that what they're hoping to do here is utilize all the best parts of both console and PC gaming. There therefore, uh, you know, marketing this to everybody, and and what they're hoping and again this might be, this might be a pretty high hope, is that they're going to avoid all of the downfalls of each Also, and I'm not you know, I'm I'm not positive how well that's gonna work out, But you know, they've they've got some good things going for them. They've they've potentially they're potentially connecting a huge list of established gamers. You know, they've got like sixty five million active gamers on Steam circa from from as of November. In fact, they've even poked fun at other companies saying, Oh, it's so nice that you've got ten million. I remember when we hit ten million. Yeah. Yeah, they're they're certainly not above a wee bit of snart snark there, um, but but they're you know, they're potentially connecting this this list of established gamers with a new console market. And as we've all seen with stuff like this, it can be really hard for new hardware to gain adopters unless it has an exciting game library at launch, right right right, simple example, I have yet to buy an Xbox One because I'm still waiting for the game that I really want to play absolutely um. And conversely, it can be really hard to convince developers to create games for new hardware unless they're assured a large player base. Um. Steam already has at least three hundred games available that run on Linux, which is a small portion of their overall game library, which is like three thousands, still a huge library to start for launch. If you think of a typical game company launching a console, you're talking about launch titles that usually you're maybe a couple dozen maybe, so three is pretty impressive. H and their their blockbuster games are basically the Valve games, but they do have a lot of of really popular indies involved in that. Yeah, I think, um, Don't Starve, perhaps as I remember hearing about Don't Starve. I haven't played that one, but uh, I know that. Um. I think Gone Home was on Steam and uh yeah, definitely Gone Home by the way, I just downloaded the other day. I Yet, I won't spoil it for you. I've heard great things about Phenomenal. I think it's more of an interactive story than the game maybe, but it's a great story, which sounds good because I I'm one of those people that genuinely enjoyed, not only missed, but also riven. It's really well done, very highly recommended. Cool. Okay, another good point that I think the Steam steam boxes Steam. But I keep wanting to say boxing. That's what I always I end up saying calling it that too. I'm just gonna call it that's the plural steam boxing. There we go. We are we are making decisions here tex stuff today. Um, you know they can. One of the things about Valve is that they can really undercut the big three consoles game prices. Yes, because Steam is isn't beholden to brick and mortar stores the way that they are. Um, you know, there's an advantage for brick and mortar stores to keep game disc prices above a certain minimum and steams sales. If you guys have never been on Steam sales, they are the best things ever on the entire I mean, you can get incredible games for a dollar, couple dollars. Well, and see, here's the thing is that they count on the fact that people will indulge in impulse buys during those sales. I know people who have bought games that they had never intended to buy, but they were so cheap that it was one of those things that I have to act on it now because it's a sale, So eventually it's gonna the price is gonna go back up, and even though I may never play this game, it's never gonna be this price again, so I'm gonna buy it. It's kind of an incredible play on psychology. Also, it means that people get access to games that they might not ever have played otherwise, and they broughten their gaming horizons. Sure, sure, you know. And so furthermore, I think that Valve is really hoping that with with steam Os, games will be able to get more out of the hardware than your average gaming PC since the system can be more streamlined, um thus help and keep box prices down a little bit. Although certainly everything that you were saying earlier, Jonathan about about the fact that the manufacturers don't have a direct stake in the video games makes it a lot harder to absolute. And plus, you know, here's another thing. You know, I mentioned that I don't know who these steam boxes are for or steam Boxing are for. Uh, that's really not valves problem either. You know, they're they're just making the platform. They're not making the hardware, so they're not running any risk. Really, they're just creating yet another way for their games to become available and playable in the living room space. I mean, so hypothetically, if anybody adopts this, it's time well spent. And even if even if all the manufacturers who are building branded steam boxing, even if those never take off, if if players, if gamers go out and they build their own living room PCs running Steam os. That's still a win for Valve. So in a way, it's a brilliant strategy because there's very little risk and huge reward. Sure. So okay, so what are some of these other problems that we're looking at for wide adoptions? Okay, so Lauren, I'm in my I'm in my living room and I want to play me some games, but I don't want to be doing that w A s D and mouse click scheme for controlling? What do I do? You use a controller? Yeah, but we're talking PC games, you know? Do they make controllers that work with PCs? Actually, Valve makes their own controller that works with this PC. That is the only hardware I think, mostly OTAs um that they are actually producing in house. And there are some excellent galleries of their prototypes up online. Yeah. I know that they changed it recently, recently as of the recording of this podcast, that there was a they kind of it underwent a makeover where I think they even added some more buttons and removed some other stuff. There's so many buttons, um, it's they settled on this two track pad design, using track pads instead of stem six sure, UM, and the track pads include haptic and audio feedback so that you can feel and hear what they're doing. UM, which sounds pretty cool to me. I haven't seen it, but that's but that's the kind of that's the kind of sentence that makes me excited about see and I saw it at CES, but their line to actually use it with so long that I didn't have a chance to play with it, and I really wanted to because I was like, I want to. I understand that it takes a little getting used to the track pad, but once you do, it's natural. It's not like something where after five or six game sessions you're still thinking like this is terrible. Apparently, like within half an hour you're thinking, oh, this is this makes perfect sense. Yeah, and it's different, but it works. I've heard that it is a very design specific experience that that right takes you a little bit of getting used to. But UM also in order to solve some of the problems of pouring a keyboard into a controller, since there are many more buttons on a keyboard than you could possibly ever fit on even an extreme only fancy controller, you know, they do have a bunch of buttons. But they also have a a little a little customizable display screen so that you can program virtual buttons in there. And and players can even create I mean, like like with anything, players can create for any given game button configuration. Right, they can map buttons to specific functions, but then they can share them online and um and and it'll have a little ranking for the most popular one, so that if you don't want to spend that half an hour or forty five minutes at the beginning of your game experience setting up a customer control, you can download a few popular ones and see what works for you. So, gamers, here's my advice for you. First, become the best at any given video games. Second, create a fake controller configuration that you claim is what gives you that amazing ability. Put that online. Anyone who downloads it will be worse than you are because you're using the real configuration that you keep just for your own purposes. Also, having a friends to up vote that crappy thing. Yes, yeah, you may. It may require you to actually make lots of friends, which maybe if you're the kind of person who is doing this sort of underhanded gaming scheme, you're not the kind of person who has a lot of Maybe if you're a host on a popular podcast and you have this plan, your listeners will totally back you up on it and you will dominate in at least one video game. Come on, people, give me this one thing. It's all I'm asking. I've heard you let out peels of megalomaniachel laughter before, and actually that was the most like Bond villain that I've ever heard. You sound a little blow filled occasionally. Oh uh, this is not cat hair on me, it's actually dog hair. But otherwise I'm very very close to my specter friends. Uh So, yeah, that that that's controller was certainly a challenge. How do you make a controller that will work with the computer based games but within the context of a living room. And you know, I have that twitch capacity that people talk about for for preferring the mouse and keyboard decision exactly. So you know, I haven't used it yet, so I don't know personally what it's like, but the reports I've seen have said that it's really you know, once you get the hang of it, once you get over that learning curve, it's it's pretty natural. So, uh, now we're going on to some other some other challenges the the big one that I think is this one's getting a little technical, folks, but uh so, a lot of PC games, a lot of games rather are being made specifically for Windows based PCs because that tends to be the operating system that most gamers are using. So if you're a game developer and you want the largest potential audience, you're obviously going to develop games for that platform, and then if you have the capacity and time, you'll develop it for other platforms as well. Right, but if if you know, if you're looking out there and of your intended audience is using one platform, that's what you developed for. Well, there's this collection of application programming interfaces that are all collected under a label of direct X, which is from Microsoft. So this is lots of different stuff that is involved in video games and other multi media applications, but in particular Direct three D would be a good example. So you're talking about like rendering engines, things like that that video game developers use, and that means that in order for you to play those video games, you have to run an operating system that's that's uh compatible. So here's the thing. It's a Microsoft product. So take a wild guess at what operating system is compatible with it? That would be Windows. So if you are running a game that has UH that relies on direct X and you want to run it on Lenox, you can't. Lennox has its own open source approach called open l which is its own rendering engine. So that would if it's a game that's been developed for Linux, then you're fine. Right. If it's any Linux based game that will run on a steam Box, just fine. But if it's a Windows based direct X game, it won't. So how do you get around that? Because, like you were saying, Lauren, three hundred titles are so on Steam are Linux compatible right now, and the other uh two thousand, seven hundred plus games are not. So how do you how do you get around that problem? Well, the way that they're suggesting that this works, and this is why I think it makes sense that this is what makes me feel like they're marketing it toward a PC gaming population already, is that they you could stream the content from one computer that is Windows based or even Mac based, if you're a max Steam player, and there are max Steam players out there too, But if you're Windows based, you'll be running the game on your Windows based computer and streaming it to the steam box that's in your living room. So it's a a multi step process. You're you're kind of running not really an emulator, but you know, you're putting all the commands through the steam box, but that's sending it to your main computer which is running the actual game. It's not the most elegantive solutions because it requires you to have at least two computers. You have a box in the PC, and that's also going to be a little bit of a bottleneck i'd imagine with with your network system. Yeah, if you're if you are not, you know, if you're running an old version of the wireless uh, the wireless standards will first of all, just go and get a new router because they're not that expensive and it will really help you out. But if there are a lot of demands on that router system, then that could be a problem. If you don't have a good connection, like if either hardwired or wireless in your home, that could be a problem. It can be spotty or go in and out, even even if you've got really good equipment in there. And it's also expensive because it means that you have to have two computers capable of doing this stuff. So you have to have one that's capable of running the game, one that's capable of being hooked up to your your living room. Which is why again that I think that a lot of players are going to take it upon themselves to build their own devices. Now you could if you built your own device, you could in theory dual boot, so you could run Linux operating system and Windows on the same computer because you create essentially a virtual partition. But that also would mean that you wouldn't be necessarily running steam os, but you can maybe run big picture modes, So in other words, there are a lot of different workarounds. It's also why I really feel ultimately that a lot of gamers are going to go would build your own people who don't want to really take that time. Obviously, the steam boxes the easier approach, but you still need that secondary computer if you want to take advantage of all those Windows based games. Sure, I think that what Valve is banking on here is that big developers are going to see potential in steam boxes and um and have the resources to do ports of all of their popular ships that they're going to want to do ports well. And also they're they're creating a new market to this way. So if they create a market that's incredibly attractive to gamers, then the developers are going to follow suit. They're going to start developing games specifically for the Linux platform, not necessarily for Windows. So in the long run, this could be a power play that hurts Microsoft because if they shift the balance over to Linux based systems and game developers say, well, now our audience is here, we don't need to worry about Windows so much, that could in the long term hurt you know, PC manufacturers, Oh definitely. Valve has also talked about being less worried about about Microsoft and Sony as they are about Apple. Um, they've they've talked about, you know, the potential of Apple to come out with a with an Apple TV update that's going to bring the app store to the living room, and you know, citing the fact that the iPad has had such a huge upset on PC sales and that you know, if if Apple chose to, they could absolutely do the same thing in this home entertainment gaming market, right And you know, as tech stuff has predicted for I think five consecutive years that Apple TV is on the way, I think did we actually make that. We didn't do it this year, sorry, which which may mean this is the year to see it. But yeah, this was the first year I think in a while where we have not predicted that Apple will come out with a TV. You know, it's certainly a space that they have to be watching because there's so many different players in that in that area and no one has dominated it yet. I mean, you could argue that the consoles have definitely you know, they disrupted it quite a bit too, because you know, why would you need a smart TV If the console that you're already using is really smart, then makes your dumb TV work just like a smart TV. Anyway, it will be interesting to see how this plays out. I mean, it may be that I'm just too shortsighted and that's the problem. Maybe I just don't see it. But like I said, I think valve strategy ultimately is brilliant because very low risk on themselves, huge central reward. It's the manufacturers that I worry about, although, I mean, like like alien Ware is signed up to to make steave boxing. So yeah, and if if if alien Ware ends up having a couple of models of its computers not do so well. Ultimately, isn't going to sweat that one. I mean, that's going to be an a long has definitely got a name for itself in the gaming space anyway. But but I think that that the you know, such a large company and and forward facing, popular, long running company like that, if if they are willing to throw in with this, then it's it's got an at least some potential. Yeah, So we'll we'll wait and see how it turns out. I mean, I don't know that I'll run out and buy a steam Box immediately, but I might actually start looking into building a living room PC because there are a lot of games that come out for the PC that I have not played I would love to play on my my television. And also, uh, there are games that come out for the consoles, and I am fully aware that the versions that come out for the PCs often have Yeah, they're better, they have better graphics, they have better sometimes better gameplay, sometimes they have additional content. So I mean, I'm fully aware of that. I'm also lazy. So we'll see, maybe that I'm just sticking with console, maybe that I'm sticking with the last generation of consoles. We'll we'll have to wait. But anyway, if you guys have any suggestions for future episodes of tech Stuff, let us know. Send us an email. Our address is tech Stuff at Discovery dot com, or drop us a line on Facebook, Tumbler, or Twitter or handle at all three locations is text stuff H. S. W and Lauren and I will talk to you again really soon for more on this and thousands of other topics. Because it has to work dot com