[recuter]

Umm, how is me not even being able to see Half-Life 3 when I visit the Steam store on my Steambox supposed to make me feel better when friends with more powerful PC's and newer Steamboxen can enjoy it just fine?

No. And none of this tier stuff either. The point of the Steamboxen is to kill the windows dependency of games, probably why they are future proofing them so much. They'll last 3-5 years in their present iteration and at that point it will be moot.

[breckinloggins]

> Umm, how is me not even being able to see Half-Life 3 when I visit the Steam store on my Steambox supposed to make me feel better when friends with more powerful PC's and newer Steamboxen can enjoy it just fine?

OK, you don't have to hide it, but there still needs to be some kind of guide about how games will play on your Steam Machine.

This is not a big deal right now, but what about in, say, 6 years? You have an original Steam Machine and a new game JUST came out. It doesn't run on your Steam Machine because yours doesn't have a Whatsit Quantum Coprocessor. Shouldn't the Steam UI, you know, let you know that before you go about buying and downloading that 30GB game??

And I don't want tiers, either, but Valve did say they'd have something to say about this; I'm simply speculating about what it could be.

[RokStdy]

"..Shouldn't the Steam UI, you know, let you know that before you go about buying and downloading that 30GB game??.." Yeah, wouldn't that be the point? It seams like Steam wants to be a platform, and the point of the steambox would be to own your living room (as well as your computer room).

I would think that the Steam environment will do a lot of your thinking for you. It'll check your hardware, suggest upgrades (since the boxes will evidently be upgradable), etc...

[jfb]

Don't worry, nobody's going to get to enjoy Half-Life 3.