Ashley tests out Steam In Home Streaming

[TeenageAngst]

The idea is that this is dedicated to streaming and you use the PC you already have. Because you have one. Because everyone has one.

No, people have laptops. Laptops that they're looking to use this technology on presumably. Buying a PC for a console tard means they would need to buy *the entire thing*.

What would you put in it at that price range? Considering the i3 outperforms every AMD on the market right up to the "8-core" flagships, I'd say it's a good fit. A single hyperthreading Haswell core is equivalent to two AMD modules in floating point performance (gaming!), which is "four" cores.

I wouldn't build a gaming-dedicated PC in that pricerange. I'd build it in the $1000+ pricerange because that's what you need for an entire system of adequate performance for high-end gaming.

The streaming method is exactly "capture Direct3D output, forward input". Streaming non-Steam games is not officially supported because they can't verify that it'll work. It doesn't mean "hur hur Valve will make it so you get half the frames on world of tanks".

If you're good at something, never do it for free. If Valve makes this work it will be for Steam and only for Steam to ensure marketplace dominance against competitors, because is chasing the golden goose of market share.

Uhhhhh, considering the gaming PC I put together above will more than outdo current-gen consoles at or around 1080p, I'd say you're just bitching for the sake of bitching because LOL STEAM IS DRM HOLY FUCK GUYS DRM OH SHIT HOW DARE DEVELOPERS USE THE LEAST OBTRUSIVE DRM METHOD ON THE MARKET TODAY GIVE ME BACK MY STARFORCE, SECUROM, GAMES FOR WINDOWS LIVE, AND SONY ROOTKITS

Not that you actually care about what Gaben does to begin with, since without Steam you haven't legitimately played a Valve game on PC in nearly a decade.

Outdoing current consoles is something most PCs made during the Vista generation could do. They're not the benchmark, as that's not the point of PC gaming, because if it were, you'd just buy a $300 console and call it a day. And personally I don't like DRM. I do have some Steam games, and they're "meh".

Why can't this be the case with a PC? What unearthly force is preventing this?

It can, but why would you want it to?

Which is kind of why this is a good thing? To get away from that kind of elitist bullshit?

I don't think you understand what makes PC gaming fun. Attitudes like that are why WoW sucks now and why DIII was such a goddamn disappointment. Mainstream gaming is all about instant gratification and getting everything all the time, which is why Pay 2 Win is so popular. It's a cancer on the industry. High quality, deep, interesting, and long-lived games are almost non-existent anymore. There is no modern Starcraft (SCII is meh), no new AoE II (they had to HD-ize the old one), CoD games are switched on a yearly basis because they go stale so fast. It's a money machine now.

He seems bitter about PC gaming NOT being a snobby pursuit requiring high end hardware and technical skill. o.o

I'm bitter that the only remaining platform for complex gameplay is being threatened by the Call of Duty-yearly-buying, 5 button pressing, ADHD Xbox Live 10 year old console tards. Playing WoT on PC is challenging because everyone there tend to be older and more experienced. WoT on the 360 is a joke. If you know what to do, you can steamroll an entire team of kiddies single-handed, but the double-edged sword is you get the same Randy BKs in your team and they all clump up on the end of the bridge in Westfield and DON'T FUCKING MOVE while you're trying to scout and then your flank gets annihilated.

That's another thing. Expensive PCs mean only people with money who care about the hobby get to play on them. Meaning Randy BK doesn't get one for Christmas, he gets an Xbox or a Playstation, which keeps the gene pool clean. And don't try to tell me there's just as many Randy BKs in PC gaming as there are on PSN or XBL. Not even during Burning Crusade WoW did I see such levels of bad players as I have in these console lobbies.

[AshleyAshes]

I wouldn't build a gaming-dedicated PC in that pricerange. I'd build it in the $1000+ pricerange because that's what you need for an entire system of adequate performance for high-end gaming.

This is the kinda thinking that hurts the PC gaming industry. You really don't need a monster high end box to game on. The requirements have somewhat plateaued in fact. Even so, idealy, if you were building a typical gaming PC, you'd go in $200 for an i7 4670, $100 or so for the mobo, $150-$250 for your graphics card of choice, maybe another $100 for the other odds and ends. $1000 would be pretty high end and it's the belief that that's the kinda dollars you need to spend to get into PC gaming is not accurate to current trends. You also don't even necessarily need that much power. My beloved Steam box is an A8-3870K (Essentially a Phenom II x4 3ghz, since it's integrated graphics are disabled) and an old, hand me downed Radeon HD 6850 (Which is why the integrated graphics are now disabled) and 8GB of RAM. It's by no means a remarkable machine, you could build an equivalent machine for a pretty low price. It plays a huge swath of games for me nicely. Sure, it only played Tomb Raider at 'Normal' graphics level, on par with the PS3 or 360, but I played it in the comfort of my own bed with it hooked up to the TV.

And I think that this is GREAT for the industry. Systems like Steam and others have given us automatic updates, cloud saving, and brought developers to better support their PC games. Sales of slightly older games, from a year or older, get nice discounts. PC gaming has never been more approachable and it's wonderful.

If you're good at something, never do it for free. If Valve makes this work it will be for Steam and only for Steam to ensure marketplace dominance against competitors, because is chasing the golden goose of market share.

You, uhh, might wanna look at the Steam Beta Client changelog from a few days ago...

"In-Home Streaming Beta
- Added streaming support for non-Steam games with mixed 32-bit and 64-bit binaries "

Yeah, Steam is supporting non-Steam games for in home streaming. o.o

Outdoing current consoles is something most PCs made during the Vista generation could do. They're not the benchmark, as that's not the point of PC gaming, because if it were, you'd just buy a $300 console and call it a day. And personally I don't like DRM. I do have some Steam games, and they're "meh".

I don't think you understand what makes PC gaming fun. Attitudes like that are why WoW sucks now and why DIII was such a goddamn disappointment. Mainstream gaming is all about instant gratification and getting everything all the time, which is why Pay 2 Win is so popular. It's a cancer on the industry. High quality, deep, interesting, and long-lived games are almost non-existent anymore. There is no modern Starcraft (SCII is meh), no new AoE II (they had to HD-ize the old one), CoD games are switched on a yearly basis because they go stale so fast. It's a money machine now.

I'm not sure how to respond to this really. You seem to be upset that PC gaming is growing more diverse instead of being a narrow area for 'Big shooters', 'Big RTS/4X', and 'Big MMOs.' I adore Civilization, owned every version since Civ1 which came on three floppies, but there's also space for more options than that. PC Gaming is better now than it ever has been. It's the home of wonderful indie games, clever smaller titles, platformers simulations of everything from farming to fighter jets, shoots, strategy games and tonnes more. Developers put more EFFORT into their PC ports than ever as well. PC Gaming has never been more plug & play even; With Xinput support and the standard 360 controller layout that comes with Xinput, I don't even have to configure my controllers anymore, they're mapped 'just right' with the defaults the moment I turn it on. You don't fight with drivers and other bullshit nearly as much like you once had to. Even the specifications playfield has been largely leveled. A great number of delightful games have little more than 'Dual core, DX9, 4GB of RAM' listed on their specs. You could run them on a Toaster if that toaster had an HDMI port.

I'm bitter that the only remaining platform for complex gameplay is being threatened by the Call of Duty-yearly-buying, 5 button pressing, ADHD Xbox Live 10 year old console tards. Playing WoT on PC is challenging because everyone there tend to be older and more experienced. WoT on the 360 is a joke. If you know what to do, you can steamroll an entire team of kiddies single-handed, but the double-edged sword is you get the same Randy BKs in your team and they all clump up on the end of the bridge in Westfield and DON'T FUCKING MOVE while you're trying to scout and then your flank gets annihilated.

That's another thing. Expensive PCs mean only people with money who care about the hobby get to play on them. Meaning Randy BK doesn't get one for Christmas, he gets an Xbox or a Playstation, which keeps the gene pool clean. And don't try to tell me there's just as many Randy BKs in PC gaming as there are on PSN or XBL. Not even during Burning Crusade WoW did I see such levels of bad players as I have in these console lobbies.

From here, it seems your problems are more with an evolving gaming culture that has left you behind. Crossing your arms and crying out 'Fuckers!' isn't going to put you any less behind.

[TeenageAngst]

And I think that this is GREAT for the industry. Systems like Steam and others have given us automatic updates, cloud saving, and brought developers to better support their PC games. Sales of slightly older games, from a year or older, get nice discounts. PC gaming has never been more approachable and it's wonderful.

Not really. You don't own the games, you own licenses. I can't sell my Steam games which makes me *extremely* hesitant to throw money at them.

I'm not sure how to respond to this really. You seem to be upset that PC gaming is growing more diverse instead of being a narrow area for 'Big shooters', 'Big RTS/4X', and 'Big MMOs.'

Look, if you want approachable gaming that anyone can pick up and play, you have consoles. If you want a platform that runs high end games, you have PCs, which is why the high price tag (because you people still keep forgetting people need to buy mice and monitors and stuff). If you dumb down the PC to console levels, there's no more high end gaming. As VG Cats said, "Why try for great when good sells?" There won't be a platform to shoot for anymore cause every BK in the market will have a Steambox or equivalent thereof. Why make a game that takes or uses hardware beyond that? It's a waste of time from a marketing perspective. This has been the lament of PC gamers since 2008 and Steambox is just going to solidify that notion of mediocrity.

From here, it seems your problems are more with an evolving gaming culture that has left you behind. Crossing your arms and crying out 'Fuckers!' isn't going to put you any less behind.

If by "evolving gaming culture" you mean evolving market trends, because the evolution of gaming over the past 10 years has made me think the universe is punishing me for liking *things*. Much like the NES days, the limitation of the technology is what forced game designers to get creative. When you can throw out shovelware and have it make a profit with full DRM protection and no need to worry about people buying it second-hand, then you have no incentive to make a great game. If you can patch it later, you can put out broken garbage on launch day. This is seen again and again and would have NEVER flown as early as the 16 bit era and as late as the PS2. If you'll recall, shoddy quality control in the market is what caused the video game crash of the 80s in no small part and is one of the major reasons Nintendo became so popular. I can't fault the industry for chasing the almighty dollar, but as a hobbyist I don't like where the industry is headed.

So yeah, if you enjoy listening to 10 year old BKs on the mic while playing Captain Bland's Monotonous Adventure, or are one of those weirdos who games on a trackpad, have fun with your living room Steam PC. Just leave the high end titles out of it.

[Krespo]

...what is a 'BK'?

As for the in-home streaming, I think it's a cool concept. But seeing as I only have a moderately good laptop I'm not too excited about it. Ashley, have you tested out any resource-intensive games yet? Not sure if this is bullshit I read, but visual quality and/or framerate dips to compensate for a slow connection?

[AshleyAshes]

...what is a 'BK'?

As for the in-home streaming, I think it's a cool concept. But seeing as I only have a moderately good laptop I'm not too excited about it. Ashley, have you tested out any resource-intensive games yet? Not sure if this is bullshit I read, but visual quality and/or framerate dips to compensate for a slow connection?

Googleing it seems to mean 'Badkid'. It originated on the Bungie/Halo forums as a replacement for 'Noob' when that word was banned there. 'BadKid' was later banned as well. So basically, it's an extra elitist way of saying 'Noob'.

And yes the streaming can, by default settings, reduce framerate or resolution to deal with local network congestion. However if you'd like, you can lock the resolution, framerate and even the bitrate settings if you desire.

[Runefox]

TA, I honestly don't care about your views on what the PC gaming world "should" be and what the console world "should" be because you want to feel special for buying a gaming PC. With that in mind, I'm only going to respond to the one relevant thing you've said in that sea of text between those two posts:

Not really. You don't own the games, you own licenses. I can't sell my Steam games which makes me *extremely* hesitant to throw money at them.

You've never owned the games, not even on a console. And thanks to the business models that followed single-use copy protection from the early 2000's, you can't sell PC games at all. The rare services that let you "trade in" games like Green Man Gaming give you something like $2 trade-in credit on a $10+ game.

Now, with that said, compared to console pricing, Steam is pretty swell. Even regular prices are generally $10 or more below retail on the console market, and that already is about as much as you'd get back by selling/trading in your games or by buying used. Get it during a Steam sale and you're looking at 50-75% off a lot of major titles, which is way beyond what you'd ever get back by selling your games. It also has the side effect of letting you keep the game. And unlike single-use DRM, Steam's evil DRM lets you install and play your games wherever you've signed in, with cloud saves, and in-home streaming is a natural extension of that.

EDIT: I tried out Steam In-Home Streaming with non-Steam games and it runs like a champ. Because it's not designed specifically to favour Steam games. Check it out:

Interestingly/amusingly, it also works with applications like Photoshop, Internet Explorer, and I imagine pretty much anything you want to run, though performance is mediocre for streaming things like IE (which isn't running through Direct3D); Something like 15fps, which is still pretty good as far as desktop streaming goes, particularly since the delay is still minimal.

[TeenageAngst]

Randy BK = Random Bad Kid. It's like when Call of Duty releases in November, you only get a month to play good matches before "Randy" shows up after Christmas when mom and dad buy the M-rated titles for the BKs. Randy is usually playing mainstream games like Halo, WoW, CoD, and GTA V, but also adores F2P games such as World of Tanks and League of Legends. Thankfully, most niche genres like racing (Forza III my favorite) and fighting games (MK9) are off limits because the skill curve is too great and/or the players can dictate the handicaps allowable in each match. Also private servers like Minecraft or private WoW servers tend to repel Randy as they either require some setup or the GMs don't tolerate their bull. Randy is usually either terrible at the game and drags the entire team down while whining about it the entire way through, or uses only the most cheap/irritating tactic. If there is a glitch, it will be exploited. If there is a min/max, it will be min/maxed. These are your powergamers. Here's a RL BK in action:

You can clearly see the frothing at the mouth, the tantrums, and the inevitable pooping of the pants.

You've never owned the games, not even on a console. And thanks to the business models that followed single-use copy protection from the early 2000's, you can't sell PC games at all. The rare services that let you "trade in" games like Green Man Gaming give you something like $2 trade-in credit on a $10+ game.

You can jerk off to Steam all you want and try to talk semantics about game ownership, but if I wanna ebay my 360 version Mass Effect trilogy I can. My Steam library? No such luck, I am in no uncertain terms fucked in that regard. Steam sales are the only time I dare buy a game because $30+ for a game I can't trade or sell is bullshit. As for downloading anywhere, that's useless to me. My library sits on my desktop because that's my gaming PC. I don't use games on my old laptop nor do I install games on other people's computers. As for the downloading, it takes HOURS to do most of the time, whereas if I had DVDs it'd be done in 20 minutes tops.

I am elitist about PC gaming, I don't think it should be inclusionary to the point of consoles because it was never designed to be. That's why we have consoles, and I'm not going to be convinced that opening the floodgates to the BKs is going to bring about a better, healthier gaming atmosphere on the PC. Just like when WoW started pandering to the casual crowd, it's going to take established franchises and invite hordes of screaming BKs in to whine and complain that it's too hard or too complex and it's going to go into a death-spiral.

[AshleyAshes]

So, uhh, anyway...

I'm curious how low the specs for the receiving box of Steam IHS has to be. I wish I had one of those little AMD E-350 or E-450 boxes to test out. If one of those little darlings could do IHS, at 1080p@60hz, it'd turn a tiny little box into something pretty impressive.

Anyone have anything decidedly low end to test on?

Edit: Looks like someone has and it ain't pretty. http://steamcommunity.com/groups/hom...2347235808327/

I wonder what the minimum threashold while still getting 1080p@60 is.

[TeenageAngst]

If they concentrate on high-fps low-res gaming they could infiltrate an entirely new market #netbookgaming

[Runefox]

Hmm, that E-350 setup was done in SteamOS; I wonder if they actually had the driver installed. The E-350 should have hardware h.264 decoding, but at 20fps with "slow decode" notifications, I bet it's trying to decode on CPU rather than IGP. I'd like to see something with non-SteamOS Linux or with Windows on that hardware to be sure. Unfortunately I don't have anything that low end to test myself, but it works fine with the Intel HD 3000 on my MacBook Pro when I switch it to integrated-only mode.