Valve's Piston Compatability

Essentially what this looks to be is a semi-console. It will run on PC based upgradeable hardware, running Steam games. Valve are making their own console but there will also be Valve backed consoles made by independent companies. Details are a bit hazy, but this could be a potential platform for Final Fantasy XI, so I have some questions.

Firstly, for those PC savvy enough to know (and I realise we do not have enough information on the system(s) to know for sure), theoretically would it be easy for the devs to get the game running on this kind of hardware. i.e. a Standardized PC which would be Linux based.

Secondly, how popular would that idea be with you guys? I would love to play on a console system again. And the piston is not a closed environment like the 360 and does not have fixed ram so future enhancements like the new UI and customizable UI would be possible on the system.

I dunno. This is less me asking the devs to get it done, and more asking what you guys think, and how possible it is.

Happy New Year.

People have had XI running on WINE for awhile now if memory serves.

Well fuck me... you have no idea how much time and effort i had to spend to get my laptop to:

1) run ffxi (GPU driver issues)

2) use a gamepad (device conflicts, i still can't have a nostromo installed so... fuck me if i wanna play dota2 ever again?)

3) display on my T.V. (resolution issues. getting it to display was easy, getting it to not look retarded was hard)

4) use a remote keyboard (at this point i was out of ports, and for some reason using a hub required a reinstall of my mouse, headset, gamepad, and the keyboard itself!)



so you ask if there is a demand? fuck yah there woulda been a demand... 6 months ago... but now that i have it all hammered out i don't see myself bothering to buy a piston so, meh :\

with my laptop from 2009, I had absolutley 0 problems aside from updates to FFXI itself getting it to run. The hard part getting FFXI to run on Piston is the fact that the game is Windows based and we have NO CLUE what the internal storage capacity is going to be like on this linux box (that, the CPU and the power of the GPU are a big question mark). Based upon pictures I have seen, you can hookup a keyboard, mouse, and 4 controllers at once. I would say there is a demand for it-just ask people who have it on PS2 and want to keep playing the way they are.

It's just a PC with a case that is shaped like a typical console case and perhaps priced to match. Beyond this, there's nothing special about it. XI should work just fine on it.

honestly, this thing was announced at the CES with a price point starting at $1,000 with sub-par components, better off doing research, you can get a halfway decent(not great) gaming rig for that price these days with HDMI out on it, I think Valve is making a serious mistake putting their name to this thing


Update:
after some reading, Piston is just one of the prototypes for the steam box, Xi(the manufacturer) is likely to release this as something else if Valve rejects it, Valve stated it has no plans to even announce a release for the steam box any time in 2013, but we will see I guess

Quote:

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Originally Posted by wildsprite

honestly, this thing was announced at the CES with a price point starting at $1,000 with sub-par components, better off doing research, you can get a halfway decent(not great) gaming rig for that price these days with HDMI out on it, I think Valve is making a serious mistake putting their name to this thing


Update:
after some reading, Piston is just one of the prototypes for the steam box, Xi(the manufacturer) is likely to release this as something else if Valve rejects it, Valve stated it has no plans to even announce a release for the steam box any time in 2013, but we will see I guess

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Sounds about right. I think dell/alienware was doing something sort of like this too, but people aren't going to buy in at that price point. I suppose they could market it as a premium sort of thing...

would be nice to see Valve put in something halfway decent that was cheap, but if Xi is the manufacturer I wouldn't count on it, maybe Valve will make their steam box OS choice available to people who want to get their own hardware, that would be nice

I'm just curious as to why anyone would bother paying that price for Valve's name and little else when it's possible to make a custom built PC for the same price with your choice of components, OS and whathaveyou. If anyone's that insistent on owning a Linux machine, just download a copy of Ubuntu and install it on a dead cat. It'll work, trust me.

because Ubuntu is a has been and stinks out of the box, Linux Mint is the way to go now.

as for installing it on a dead cat, yeah it would probably work but that would just be gross