Steam OS and steambox is nothing more then result of Valve hate against MS's move to imitate aplestore with a windows store. And become a direct competor of Valve steam. That why they very activly and agressivky go for Linux. Not Mac!
To be frank, Valve made this move because when releasing Windows 8 Microsoft openly said they don't care that much about gaming on Windows anymore. New lines of XBox One exclusives only (usually released on Windows afterwards) and stagnation of DirectX kinda shows that. There are lot of other, smaller details too.
In this case Linux is just a platform which is very open and easily tunable, just perfect for Valve's idea of PC console.
WiiU PS3 Xbox360 PS4 XB1 are mostly valued by how much exclusive of popular or musthave games there are avaible. PS3 and 360 are the biggest there and PS4 is just starting just like XB1. WiiU still running bit behind those new comers
Nope, not really. Recent research shows that exclusives really don't play that big role of long term health of consoles anymore. In fact, they are just important for early adopters, and can give very misguided figures about what buying audience actually want.
Wii U actually brings profit to Nitendo. They have completely different business plan and it works. Remember, it is not all about looking at the top of the hill, it is all about cold hard cash. MS is still *losing* money on XBox series.
For PC it is for masses of gamers.
Exclusives :
Windows >> ( Mac == Linux )
And that's what Valve working to change. They are actively support development and porting games to OpenGL, which are both viable and usable on Mac OS X and Linux platforms. Will they succeed - I don't know - but it is interesting process nevertheless.
Remember, Steam is still released and supported Windows. It is still Valve's major lifeline. They are just looking for alternatives, which is wise thing to do.
Games take over the OS UI so OS is only relevant by cost or performance or uniek features
Steam OS and linux is more for ( non ) gamer who put there windows hate above everything.
So windows ruling with large exclusives is ignored by hate.
So from gamers point if view steam OS and linux is a windows haters thing.
Not really. You must check out Linux sometime - Ubuntu Linux and Fedora both looks very capable of just doing their jobs. It is work done not out of hatred against something, but for love of doing open source available to common user. Most people doing work on Linux are hired to do so - just code goes back trough licensing in open source, and thus is available freely for everyone to use and to share.
As for games - most of Linux gamers are quite fine with their current set of choices. There's lot to choose from. Most of Linux gamers enjoy what's offered. Yeah, we don't have regular EA titles released for Linux platform, but some people might see it not as disadvantage.
The only thing I am interresting is how well steam controler make pure PC keyb mouse games playble on bigpicture or TV play. Games who tradition gamepad does not work well for.
Feedback so far indicates that Valve have good controller there. Will it have capabilities to mitigate disappearance of keyboard and mouse it is hard to say, but lot of PC games already support XBox 360 type of controllers, so I think there's some bigger movement in that direction than just fancy new Steam controller.
Anyway, skepticism is justified, and we will see how things will turn out. Still, I am giving Valve props for trying this. When they announced this, I was highely skeptical, because we have seen such things come and go. However when they released real prototypes for gamers to play with, it seems they are serious about this. I am wishing good luck and might even try to support it anyway I can.
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