Are Steam Machines Full of Hot Air?

The next few days are ringing in more than just slot machine cranks and winning alarms because the Consumer Electronic Show is now in full swing down in the city of sin.  Wearable computing, and its meager appeal, 4K televisions, and Steam Machines seem to be the trinity of news this year.

Steam Machines are not just boxes for your next foggy concert, but are ideally the next generation of gaming devices for your living room.  With Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo currently trading blows for your gaming needs, it feels like the living room is going to explode.  Can we really squeeze another box under the TV?

Steam comes from a savvy company named Valve that has intelligently overhauled the distribution of computer games online.  Download a Steam client, and you get a fully featured online store and personal library for games.  Click to buy, click to install, and within minutes, your game is ready to play.  Very easy, very smooth.

Traditionally, Steam has always been something you download onto your computer.  These new Steam Machines are computer systems built specifically to take advantage of Steam and easily integrate into Valve's services.  So instead of buying a general computer, or building your own gaming computer system, you would purchase a Steam Machine from a hardware maker and have everything you need to start gaming in the living room.  Once again, I think Valve is looking for that very easy, very smooth experience.

This idea works and thinking it over there is only a few things that don't add up, but Valve could care less.

Hardware

The first problem is hardware.  The Steam Machines are built with gaming in mind and the ones that have released specifications for hardware are pretty impressive.  That comes with a steep price to match though.  So what you have to consider is, do you buy or build, a general computer that can run games from Steam and do everything else, or only spend money on a system built specifically for Steam?

Traditionally,  if you take the time, building your own computer will reap the most benefits.  For people in this group, a Steam only machine makes no sense.

For people who want a machine that does more than just play games, once again, a Steam Machine makes no practical sense.

If someone has the disposable income for a machine that only does steam, this could be something they want to look into. 

So after significantly limiting the ideal purchasing group, we come to the next problem, Software.

Software

For the current generation of games, and the foreseeable future, there is an unsaid law that goes something like this, "Your game is only as good as the lowest common denominator."  Take Assassin's Creed IV Black Flag for instance.  This game looks good on the computer, but with the team size and monetary backing from Ubisoft, this could have been a game light years beyond it's current incarnation.  The problem is simply that they wanted to maximize profits, so they choose to release it on a number of different platforms to reach the greatest number of consumers.

Therefore, the computer version which could benefit from so much more power has to be watered down on so many levels to match the console version and create a product on a similar level.  It doesn't matter that you have more power available on the computer side of things, it needs to match the weaker hardware configurations of home consoles.

Take a look at the current top PC games on Steam as of this morning,

Current Top PC Games on Steam

Title	PC Only	Other Platform
DayZ	Yes	NA
Rust*	Yes	NA
Starbound	No	PS3, PS Vita, PS4
Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance	No	XBox 360, PS3
7 Days to Die*	Yes	NA
Counter Strike: Global Offensive	No	Xbox 360, PS3
Kingdom Rush	No	iPad, Android
PayDay 2	No	Xbox 360, PS3
Assassin's Creed IV Black Flag	No	Pretty much every system ever
Left 4 Dead 2	No	Xbox 360

Of the top 10 selling games on Steam currently, only three are exclusive to personal computers.  Home consoles from Microsoft and Sony carry an incarnation of almost all of the other games and their own exclusives.

So from a gaming perspective, owning a more expensive Steam Machine compared to a home console means you're not going to miss out on much.

Summing up, you pay more for less with a Steam Machine and miss out on very little from traditional consoles.

Honestly though, Valve doesn't care.  They have a kick butt online gaming service that integrates with your PC OR your Steam Machine.  They don't lose out if a hardware maker can't make their sales goal.  They simply built an operating system for them to use and Steam gets free marketing and a larger user base.

Rebuttal: Oh Yeah? What about ...

R1.  Steam Machines are made to game in the living room.  Therefore, they will run quieter than a regular computer.

A1.  True, but you get what you pay for.  A well designed computer will run quieter as well but you always pay for it in the end.  Price outweighs the benefit.  ( True to the point, when I'm alone the volume goes way up and covers all hardware sounds.  With other people in the house the headphones go on, and once again, covers hardware sounds. )

R2.  Some Steam Machines will be upgradable and have a longer life than traditional consoles.

A2.  True, just as it is in regular computer systems, but the price once again will skyrocket for minimal benefit since most games are released on consoles as well.  You will get a visual upgrade on games through the lifespan of consoles, which is nice but it will cost you.

R3.  These systems are for people just getting into PC gaming, not long time gamers.

A3.  Once again, a home console makes more sense because you get a similar gaming experience spending less money and having access to their respective exclusive console libraries.  If I met someone who wanted to know more about computers and get into gaming, I would tell them to build their own computer for the learning process.  If I met someone who didn't want to worry about anything technical, I would tell them to buy a console.  Just put the disc in and it always works, you never have to worry about anything else.

*Of note, Rust and 7 Days to Die are currently unfinished products and sold as early access to alpha/beta releases.

Wearable Computing for the First World Lazy

My phone rings but I don't want to take the call, so I swipe left on my watch and off to voicemail it goes.  I have a meeting in an hour so I look at the notification on my ring while it painfully displays a tiny message from right to left like a tiny stock ticker.  I'm on the subway and want to fast forward the current song on Pandora so I tap my watch or ring a few times.

These are the wearable computer scenarios companies are trying to sell that come right out of a science fiction novel.  From Dick Tracy to KnightRider, it sounds interesting until I pick up my iPhone and realize the notifications on the lock screen has all these controls and a much easier to read interface.  Why do companies think we need a watch, ring, or any piece of jewelry that only delivers tiny screens with notifications served by Bluetooth linking to our phone?  In each of these scenarios, I still need one thing, my phone.

The phone part is required and severely limits the desirability of a smaller and inferior device.  In terms of watches, Samsung shows exactly what not to do with their Galaxy Gear.  For the not so cheap price of $300, you get bad fitting, non existent app ecosystem, and the option to only link with other Samsung devices.  For that much money, I think I'll stick to a elegant Seiko watch and keep pulling my phone out of my pocket to get things done.

Qualcomm released the toq watch to pair with Android devices as well, so don't forgot to keep you phone close by.  Once again it hits the not so cheap price of $350 and makes some improvements over the Galaxy Gear with longer battery life and a better looking screen, but it's still just mini output for relaying phone information and controlling how fast I move to my next song on Pandora.

From watches to rings, Smarty Ring met its funding goal and promises first deliveries in April of 2014.  For an estimated price of $275, you get three buttons and a tiny display. The promise of a ready to ship product in just over four months when there are only artists concept drawings on their page makes this a very wobbly investment.  Even if they deliver, what exactly does a watch bring besides a tiny screen to my fingers?  Which way do I wear the ring to read the information on it?

The idea that any of these products makes any sense at the moment is almost completely ridiculous.  Everything links through your smart phone making it an absurd expensive extension, and not much more.

For any wearable device to work there are some mandatory requirements yet to be met.  First, no more than a single physical button.  Ideally, motion would be all you need to get the watch from standby mode to ready to go.  There also needs to be a curved glass design that accepts touch input and displays on the same screen so it more comfortably fits the contours of the human appendage.

Second, voice.  The device needs to accept voice commands and relay those into your smart phone.  As odd as some people will look talking into their wrist placing an order for take out food, tweeting about their favorite restaurant, or just making a reminder, it's quick and easy enough to make it an actual useful addition.

Last, price.  When the wearable computing device costs more than a smart phone on contract and only provides these basic additions, it's still not worth buying.

Somewhere, someone is working hard to make wearable computing a main stream reality.  To turn this from a gullible tech nerd's desire and into a real usable product, work is nowhere near completed.

Apple Glue Controversy

Recently Apple released their new Mac Book Pro with Retina displays that come off stylish and beautiful, but a number of people are ready to condemn it because of some glue.  In order to keep their Mac Book Pro line thin and sleek with a bigger battery, Apple decided to remove the battery cover and directly glue it to the aluminum case.  With this change, you will no longe be able to replace the battery and will have to find a tech savvy friend, or send it directly to Apple.

This creates two issues.  First, the current voluntary standard for computer environmental friendliness, EPEAT, states that hazardous materials should be easily removed from the computer and industrial strength glue goes right against that idea.  There is no way to get to the battery without cracking open the shell and prying it off the case with this strong adhesive making this nearly impossible for the average consumer.  Apple also states through documentation that no one should attempt to remove the battery apart from Apple itself which charges a hefty fee of $199.  Second, even with a quality battery you have to expect a loss of charge and the desire to replace it down the line.  How long you expect to keep a notebook computer varies from person to person and you should also factor in the amount of time it's being used without a wall outlet connection.

Battery Replacement Cost For the United States

Apple Price
Region	MacBook Pro 13-inch and 15-inch	MacBook Pro 17-inch	MacBook Pro (Retina, Mid 2012)
United States	$129 pre taxes	$179 pre taxes	$199 pre taxes

From Apple's Battery Replacement Web Page, http://www.apple.com/support/macbookpro/service/battery/

From personal experience, heavily using a notebook computer after 18 - 24 months, you begin to notice a drop in the amount of charge it can hold.  Instead of the advertised 7 hours, I would expect something along the line of 4 hours or less.  Another 12 months and it will decrease even more to the point that I would want to replace the battery entirely.  This would give a notebook computer a portable use life of about three years till it gets to the point of desperately needing a new battery.

The spat of environmentally friendly design seems minor when you look at Apple's history of using recyclable materials like aluminium, removing arsenic from the display, and removing PVC entirely.  The battery is a hazardous item and being able to remove it safely is a valid concern.  The responsibility of it has simple been moved directly to Apple for a fee which doesn't hamper the use or environmental impact significantly in any way.  Consumers should be sending the old battery to Apple or off to a recycle facility when they are finished with it, but realistically many people do not.

If your worry is on the ability of this computer to remain usable, a three year life span for the battery would be realistic and should be expected in the final cost of ownership.

Artificial Acne Means Great Motion Capture

IGN just posted a really interesting video of how Beyond: Two Souls is creating digital actors for their new game over at Quantic Dream's motion capturing facilities.  Motion capture is the process of taking a live actor, key areas of their body is marked with easy to read computer identifiers like all the little grey balls seen here, and translating that movement into a computer generated world.  

The end product is amazingly well done, more so when you have seen some of the older computer worlds without any type of motion capture and people come across very stiff and unrealistic.

This video reminds me of playing make-believe as a child, fake dinner meals and all.  The game itself is shaping up very nicely and with this type of technology, it will at the least be a technical marvel.

LinkedIn Password, Passwords, Passwords!

I think in our current world you should expect your hashed password to leak online at some point.  How it happens is irrelevant to most people, just expect that it eventually will leak out.  Does that mean your account has been compromised?  Not necessarily, or more precisely, not immediately.

The current news blurb is that a Russian hacker was able to pull a list of all of LinkedIn's SHA1 hashed passwords out of a magic hat and posted them onto the web.  Usernames were not posted, so you can't really match a users credentials to get access to their profile.  This might be a part of the leak that the hacker is holding onto, looking for a buyer, but nothing is certain.  Examining the list I have identified a lot of the most common passwords such as, "password", "jesus123", "l1nk3d1n", and so forth. There were also a number of other hashes that I did not immediately recognize though. 

Interestingly enough, the SHA1 hashing algorithm has been compromised in that with a beefy enough computer setup, you can reverse the hash in a manageable amount of time.  Back in 2005, we are talking about 2^69 operations to find a collision, or a brute force match for a hash.  With today's hardware and computer resources, this is not an unobtainable amount of computing power for large systems. 

So why is LinkedIn using SHA1 for passwords?  Ease of use would be my first guess.  SHA1s are not too difficult to manage and compute for large systems and if someone did get a hold of a hashed password, they would still need some major computer power and time to get the original.  They probably had a lot of trust in their security setup as well and didn't anticipate a leak of this caliber. 

Either way, if you have a LinkedIn account, go change your password.  Make it unique, and for the best security measure, use an auto generated pass that you can save in a password management program. 

Interesting stats,

6_143_150 hashes listed
3_521_180 hashes listed with five prefixed zeros or presumed known passes
2_621_970 hashes listed without the five prefixed zeros or still unknown

New Quantic Dream PS3 Game!

Quantic Dream happens to me be one of my absolute favorite digital story tellers so hearing that a new experience is on the horizon is giving me goose bumps.  Unfortunately, their newly announced game, Beyond: Two Souls comes racing out of the Sony E3 press conference with a bit of a limp.

The game itself looks fantastic for this generation of hardware but it also comes across very similar to its predecessor, Heavy Rain.  Drape on a Hollywood name as the main star and I can feel myself starting to cringe. Even though Quantic Dream's portfolio is lean, each iteration of a newly developed experience has come across as a leap in story telling and technology.

Take a look at the first release trailer for Beyond:Two Souls,

 
Here's a quick reminder of what Heavy Rain looked like as well.

No doubt both look fantastic.  Hopefully as the release date gets closer, Q1 2013 which translates to Q2 2013, we can get some idea of what improvements and new ideas are being implemented. 


I think a good first step will be to get their IT team together and fix Beyond's website, ops.

Can the PS Vita Repeat the Success of the Nintendo 3DS?

Gaming has become a mainstream past time, more so with the push of mobile gaming hitting iOS and Android devices.  With the new Playstation Vita now dropping into users hands in the States, I find myself like many gamers asking the question, "Can the PS Vita make it in today's market?"

I own a PSP, Playstation 3, Nintendo DS, and iPhone 4, enjoying gaming on each in turn.  Well, let me address that, I used to play games on the PSP and DS but I do very little traveling now and since that phone in my pocket is so convenient, they just doesn't get much thumb time anymore.  I also carry my iPad with me since I use it heavily for reading and web browsing at home and on breaks during the day.

The first thing we can point at is the Nintendo 3DS with impressive sales of just over 16 million units to date.  People are obviously interested in buying a mobile device!  It took a slow start and an embarrassing price drop early in its life to get there, but you can't doubt it has become a worldwide hit.  The PS Vita started strong in Japan, tampering off in the weeks following.  The Sony consensus has been that since the PSP is still so popular in the far East, it's been slower to move this new system.  How well it does in the states is still too early to know, but I'm sure developers will be keeping an eye out in the coming months.

Whose Selling Games?

So no matter how nice the hardware is for these portable systems, what exactly can we play on them? Like most Nintendo systems, first party titles lead the pack with numbers falling quickly from 3rd party developers.

Nintendo 3DS Games Sales Feb 2012

	World Sales (Millions)	First Party?
Super Mario 3D Land	5.33	Yes
Mario Kart 7	4.80	Yes
Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D	2.49	Yes
Nintendogs + Cats	2.11	Yes
Monster Hunter 3G	1.24	No
Pokemon Rumble Blast	0.74	Yes
PilotWings Resort	0.73	Yes
SSFIV:3D Edition	0.72	No

Source: http://www.vgchartz.com

Out of the top eight titles sold on the 3DS, six are first party titles.  Only one 3rd party title has broken the 1 million mark.

There hasn't been enough time to evaluate Vita game sales, but looking historically at the PSP, only three of the top eight games are from Sony.  These include Daxter, Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters, and God of War: Chains of Olympus.

With these titles we now see the major difference in mobile gaming today.  The Andriod Market and Apple App Store do not carry Nintendo titles.  A number of titles on the PSP list have shown up for these mobile platforms, even original Playstation titles for Sony Andriod phones, in a number of different forms.  You can't get a true conversion of the newest games like Dead Space on an iPhone, but you get something in the same universe that is pretty close to the feeling of the original.

For the PS Vita to be a success, it will have to convince gamers that Sony's version of games is worth their time and money.  Even though there are games like Silent Hill, Dead Space, and Metal Gear on most mobile systems, the one on the PS Vita will be the most technology advanced and closest to console levels.  Whether that means a better gaming experience, we can't say one way or another until they are released.  In contrast, Nintendo could sell a Mario game to kids in the middle of Disney World, replacing the world of mice with plumbers, in the blink of an eye.   

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Speaking of Metal Gear and Silent Hill on iOS, the names are attention getting, but the mobile version of these games are timid in comparison to focused handheld systems.  Metal Gear on iOS is a touch game that has no stealth or any real classic MGS feeling.  Dead Space came across well done, but still having a "mobile" feeling to it.  Silent Hill is just horrid on the iPhone.  The scariest part of that game is the fact that some people paid $8 when it was first released.