9 replies to this topic

[UmarOMC1]

Steam Controller and Steam Link Are Now Supported on Mac OS X

...Valve apologized to all Mac OS X users, and as a consolation prize, they pushed the Valve Complete Pack to their Steam accounts, which includes all of Valve's games (past, present and future), promising that a fix would arrive in a few weeks.

Well, today is the day...

[ continued ]

[Thain Esh Kelch]

Never heard about Steam Link before. Is it worth it?

[DirtyHarry50]

Steam Link is cool if you want to play your games in Big Picture mode on the television but requires an ethernet connection to work well. Although wifi is supported, ethernet is highly recommended and in reports I read on the Steam forum it's really a necessity for performance reasons. Otherwise lag is going to probably be a problem in most situations. So if you have an ethernet network in your home and there happens to be ethernet at the television too, you'd be in good shape to use this for streaming games to the TV which I assume would then best be played using the Steam controller depending on the game with some games benefitting in particular I'd expect such as a strategy game.

It's 50 bucks for the Steam Link box that sits by the TV and as you probably know, I think it's another 50 for the Steam controller. This is a cheap alternative to using a Steam Box if not quite the same thing to access one's Steam library of games on the big screen. A plus here vs Steam Box is the games would be running natively on whatever computer you had them on elsewhere and so needn't be SteamOS titles.

Personally, this all looked pretty cool to me until it came to the ethernet requirement. I rent so running ethernet through the house is not an option.

[Frigidman™]

Instead of running a long ethernet cable, run a really long HDMI cable from tv to mac, and then not buy any of the steam stuff

[DirtyHarry50]

Well, that all sounds good until we get to the part with the controller. I'm guessing range would become an issue for the controller working to play anything.

Personally, I favor going console to bypass the entire issue. Then I am not relying on an underpowered Mac to drive the gaming experience to begin with.

Plus I get most awesome and amazing console exclusives that way.

[the Battle Cat]

What are Valves games they are giving away?  And do I need to join the beta to get them.

[Janichsan]

the Battle Cat, on 21 November 2015 - 11:06 AM, said:

What are Valves games they are giving away?  And do I need to join the beta to get them.

That ship has sailed: they gifted the Valve Complete Pack (which is literally all the Valve games) to Mac users who preordered either the Steam Controller or the Steam Link as compensation for not being able to use these right away.

[the Battle Cat]

Not that I ever want to use a controller, I'm a mouser like my father before me.  I just wanted the games.

[Frost]

DirtyHarry50, on 21 November 2015 - 08:27 AM, said:

Steam Link is cool if you want to play your games in Big Picture mode on the television but requires an ethernet connection to work well. Although wifi is supported, ethernet is highly recommended and in reports I read on the Steam forum it's really a necessity for performance reasons. Otherwise lag is going to probably be a problem in most situations. So if you have an ethernet network in your home and there happens to be ethernet at the television too, you'd be in good shape to use this for streaming games to the TV which I assume would then best be played using the Steam controller depending on the game with some games benefitting in particular I'd expect such as a strategy game.

NVIDIA's GameStream (via the Shield family) is actually much better. It works about as well over wifi as Steam Link does over ethernet, and it's straight frakking stellar over ethernet. You can also stream games from Origin or anywhere else, not just Steam.

The downside is you need an NVIDIA GPU, and the hardware is all a lot more expensive than the Steam Link.

[DirtyHarry50]

the Battle Cat, on 21 November 2015 - 03:24 PM, said:

Not that I ever want to use a controller, I'm a mouser like my father before me.  I just wanted the games.

I was going to ask if there was anyone who didn't already own all the Valve games anyway but then.... oops!

Get the Orange Box on sale and good to go. Get the oldies for cheap too. Still great after all these years. It was not all that long ago that I finally got around to Half-Life and so played Half-Life Source and then Opposing Forces both of which were great. Blue Shift bummed me out with a section I had to do something that was irritating me so I bailed having had enough by then but maybe someday I'll go back and finish it.

There is some special and timeless about head crabs.

I love the old sound effects in the games too. Great stuff.

As for future Valve games for free? Who are they fooling? lol