better them than some mega-corp like EA who treats devs like dirt.

As a consumer, I would rather it go to a public company like EA that I can buy stock in so at least I can derive some financial benefit from the price gouging.

Steam's also gotten much nicer on the memory drain in recent updates, from ~45MB to 9-10MB

Holy shit, Steam used 45MB??? What the fuck FOR???

Damn...

Creston

I hear people say stuff like this all the time, but I have yet to see it happen on my machine.

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...i am still inside here. a little bit comes bleeding through... -nin

RANDOM THOUGHTS (OT)

Somebody mentioned the "future of gaming". From what I see, consoles are the future of gaming. I'm a PC gamer to the core, but when the console delivers graphics and gameplay that equals my PC experience, I don't see the point of spending the money on a video card that costs greater than or equal to a console system. It may not happen with this next generation of consoles coming out 05-06, but we are damn close.

The Xbox 360 is supposed to come out around the $300 mark on debut. To be fair, I will probably spend at least a couple hundred more bucks on accessories for it, taking it up to $500 or so. I have an Onkyo 7.1 surround system and a Sony 53" HDTV in my living room. Many people have similar home theaters these days (which is why ticket sales are down at movie theaters). The 360 will allow me to chat and video conference with my gamer friends on Xbox Live. It will connect wirelessly to my computer and show pictures and play music (or I can just put pics and music on the 360). It also does a bunch of other stuff, and will end up doing more later. Hell the only thing it is missing is DVR capability, which may be added at some point. I will pick up a PS3 when it comes out too.

I will be playing games on a 53" 'monitor' in HD, with a kick ass surround system, wireless controllers, on the comfort of my sofa. The only things that currently make my PC gaming experience better are..

1) current console graphics suck (PS2/Xbox 1)
2) controllers suck

We all know graphics in the 360, and the PS3 are NOT going to suck, so that's one down. Controllers will get better with time, or maybe I just need to get better with controllers after gaming on a keyboard for over a decade....whatever works.

Now for me, money isn't really a concern. However, this isn't the case for a large chunk of the population, so you have to think that less people are going to worry about building a gaming PC when they can go out and add one or two high end consoles to their home theater systems for less than the cost of a gaming PC. They will be playing most of the same games you can get on a PC, and they will be playing them online.

I’m not saying consoles will completely replace PC gaming anytime soon. All I can tell you, as a seriously hardcore PC gamer, that once the quality of gaming on a console equals or surpasses my PC, I will be making the switch. Why wouldn’t I?


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...i am still inside here. a little bit comes bleeding through... -nin

I saw the Prey demo at E3 and the game is simply amazing. I would have sworn it was an Unreal 3 engine game as the game is not filled with dark shadows like Doom 3 and the levels are impressive as they take place on all three dimensions and have some amazing background views (like the planet earth as a background). I wasn't sure what to expect from this game and was a little skeptical, but it turned out to be pretty amazing.

As far as delivering the game with a system similar to Steam...I'm okay with this. I have never had problems with Half-life 2 and Steam, so I'm willing to give other games that use this method a try.

This is doomed to failure. 3DR looked at HL2 and Valve's sales figures and figured this is the way of the future, we want in on this. If Valve can do it so can we. But Valve only got away with it because they had a title like HL2. Anything lesser and Steam would have failed. They realized if they were going to do something like Steam they had to do it with the release of HL2, the two went hand in hand.

Nobody cares about Prey, nobody takes 3DR seriously anymore. Nobody's going to bother with another clone game distribution service nobody's heard of for a title like Prey.

I still haven't played HL2 and probably won't for a long long time. No internet connection.

Steam's also gotten much nicer on the memory drain in recent updates, from ~45MB to 9-10MB

Holy shit, Steam used 45MB??? What the fuck FOR???

Damn...

Creston

THIS GAME IS VAPORWARE LIKE IT WAS 10 YEARS AGO

I'd rather deal with Steam than evil crap like Starforce. At least I can close Steam, and it runs fine on every system I've ever tried. The portability aspect is also nice when I head to a friend's house. Steam's also gotten much nicer on the memory drain in recent updates, from ~45MB to 9-10MB. And if you don't want to wait for HL2 to update, select 'Do not update this game' in the game's advanced settings. While this won't work for online play, you can still play SP games or against bots. You can also have Steam make a desktop shortcut to any game you want, so one double-click will get you to the game's main menu.

However, I think the lack of a standard for game updating is going to be resolved in the next few years, as broadband gets faster and more ubiquitous. If nothing else, each publisher will have their own framework for updating. It may even end up being an OSS project, which can scan your game files (even hash check them, if necessary), grab any updates, and otherwise keep your game running as well as it can. It will happen, but the when and how are a bit unclear.

http://www.shacknews.com/ja.zz?comments=37120

I've never had a problem *manually* downloading and installing updates and additional content.

I agree, and neither do I. But a) many people do and b) if it isn't an issue to go hunting for patches on the web, it shouldn't be an issue to right-click the Steam icon and exit when you (I mean "you" as in people that complain about Steam, not you personally sJ :)) are done with HL2. I know which takes me less time.


With any anti-Steam complaints a bit of perspective is called for. It's annoying, but not like a car alarm going off outside your window all night, or a cat shitting on your doorstep. At the end of the day it's just a rather small hoop to jump through to play some great games. Think of it as the commercials at the cinema. They are irritating, pointless and Id prefer if they didn't have them. But they make my cinema tickets slightly cheaper and I still get to see the film. I don't piss and moan about them on the internet, or write to the cinema's website forums.

If you don't like it, don't buy it. Vote w/ your $$$...

On the whole this is valid, but with a game like HL2 that has a guaranteed market, Steam can be an annoying extra. People were definitely going to want to play the game so they will bite whatever bullets are necessary to do so.
Admittedly with a game like Prey whose market is going to be made up of a lot of 'just curious' peeps, sales could well be affected by having to install xStream.

No doubt there will be a cracked version on Donkey within hours of release though, as there was with HL2, for those who absolutely MUST play the game without installing all the other crap.

...it will start with Windows. THAT IS MY CHOICE TO MAKE!

It is.

Hkey_Local_Machine\software\microsoft\windows\currentversion\run

Creston

Why can't clicking on the game.exe start the game and whatever necessary resources (like Xstream and Steam)? Converesely, closing/quitting the game should turn it off and all associated programs. I will not support software that decides for me that it will start with Windows. THAT IS MY CHOICE TO MAKE! I don't care how easy it is to disable. The decision as to what is to be started and what is to remain running is my decision, not anyone elses. Period.

For the majority of my games, I use a fantastic, easily available program to update them!
A web browser.

While I can appreciate the need for services such as Steam and xStream, can the developers of these services appreciate that there are those of us out here that don't need and don't want to use them? I've never had a problem *manually* downloading and installing updates and additional content.

To quote Yoda "If optional they were, bitching less there would be".

And the 50+ thought is what turned me somewhat against Steam.

One of these for every few developers would get tiresome. Again, because Steam tries to be too much. I want to double click on an icon to fire up a game. Not double click on an icon, wait, double click on an icon, wait, play, click exit, wait, click X, right click, click exit, done.

Make it more background, make it less of a memory hog.

Personally I think Steam is a great idea. Someone complained about needing to download updates, but I'm fine with it forcing me to do what I need to do anyway.


My only complaint is that it's designed to be a resident program, but is a memory hog. Please, make it one or the other. Nothing should be both. If you want it to be a resident program find a way to keep the memory footprint, virtual and physical, under 10MB. If you can't, don't design it to sit resident in memory, requiring extra clicks to close it.

Most HL2 players probably have it kick in on startup, never turn it off, and don't realize it's the reason their PC is running slow. We're acting as if most users even understand how RAM works.

Has anyone actually read Game xStream's feature list?

They made it pretty clear that Game xStream contrary to Valve's Steam is actually non-intrusive. The streaming manager is automatically loaded when you start the game and also automatically unloaded when you exit the game.

GAIN / Gator / Claria says the same thing, that doesn't mean it's true.

Creston

Has anyone actually read Game xStream's feature list?

They made it pretty clear that Game xStream contrary to Valve's Steam is actually non-intrusive. The streaming manager is automatically loaded when you start the game and also automatically unloaded when you exit the game.

You won't have a client running in the background all the time, infact you won't even notice that there is a background manager at all.

Online distribution is here to stay, no doubt about it. Its inception has less to do with the availability of memory as it does with the widespread of broadband. Regardless, that doesnt mean all future endeavors will have an "obnoxious background client" (such a fitting desc of Steam). Heck its probably alot more resources spent to maintain Steam than a simple scheme of download dvd image, install and activate, which most companies will most likely adopt.

Don't need to get all up in arms at the very mention of Steam. Take comfort in knowing that soon you wont have to wait in long lines or fight throngs of holiday season shoppers to get that next "must have" game. Its "content on demand" and there are definite benefits to be enjoyed here.

Why didnt they make something "extremely smart" like Steam before?

Because it wasn't viable. Not enough people had broadband until recently is a major bit. Also doing this kind of thing brings a lot of additional overhead to your company -- you need a much larger accounting department, a much larger tech support department, etc.

If most game companies go off and develop their own "always on" content delivery system (ala Steam or apparantly this Game xStream service) then yes, it'll be a nightmare -- tons of apps eating up memory, conflicting, etc. But I suspect that most developers will go with an existing one (since then they don't have to deal with that bit of overhead), or go for a "MMORPG" style updater where it checks with a centralized server for updates/authorization prior to running the actual game -- at least this style doesn't eat system resources constantly.

We might end up with a couple dozen "always on" services though... and then consolidation will kick in and we'll be down to 2-3 after a few years, simply because that's how the economy tends to work itself out.

Or is confusing you opponent to death your new tactic?

I dunno. I found nin's posts readable while yours had me going "WTF is he trying to say?".