So... I beat the odds... 0.0007%

[Cynagen]

I'm getting one of the 300 Steam Machines!

I got the email yesterday while at work. Here's an excerpt from the email:

"We have also added a special badge to your Steam community profile which indicates that you are an official Steam Universe beta participant. It’s called Steam Hardware Beta Participant, and you can see it on your Steam community profile page. (So can everyone else!)"

I checked my Steam profile shortly after this, and it's there, it's actually there. I still don't believe this... the odds were 0.0007% (300 systems, ~422k people signed up) that I would be selected. I knew that being selected for the Family Sharing Beta was a step in the right direction, but still... They also jokingly state I'm so lucky I should buy a lottery ticket. The box should ship out on December 13th, and I still don't believe I'm getting essentially a free $600 'console' (it's really a badass PC), but if that tracking number shows up on December 13th as promised; I'm buying as many lottery tickets as I can create combinations out of the tracking number.

For proof: http://steamcommunity.com/id/cynagen/badges/15

[Delphium]

Neat, congrats!

[Wijkert]

How unlikely! Let us know what you think of the product and congrats of course!

[Amon Amarth]

Very cool.

I always love it when odds are beaten.

[Cynagen]

So, I've been spending more time with the controller and all, and it defintely works, some games better than others. It does take some getting used to however. The selection of games is slim right now, but I'm sure that'll change with the In-Home Streaming.

[Delphium]

Awesome, any chance of pics and specs you got?

[Haldi]

hum... i could get a shield for 300$
Normaly shield only streams from Nvidia GPU's, but with Steam inhome Streaming that might also work ?
Or maybe in the Future.

haven't there been rumours about the next gen of Rift including an ARM chip + OS for streaming

[Cynagen]

Awesome, any chance of pics and specs you got?

I got the same specs as everyone else i5 3.2Ghz 16GB and GTX780.

:twothumb:


hum... i could get a shield for 300$
Normaly shield only streams from Nvidia GPU's, but with Steam inhome Streaming that might also work ?
Or maybe in the Future.

haven't there been rumours about the next gen of Rift including an ARM chip + OS for streaming

They outfitted these machines with the GTX780s, likely in anticipation that somebody in their beta might buy a Shield and try to stream that. That's just console streaming, and I expect it will eventually work. In-Home Streaming is something completely different and it works like so:

If you have a Steam Machine installed in your living room, you're stuck with only being able to play games locally that were built for Linux, however, with In-Home Streaming, if you have a sufficient network (either superfast WiFi, or more likely, 100/1000mbps ethernet), and a Mac or Windows based PC connected to the same network & the same Steam account, it will link up via the network. Now all your Windows/Mac games that can be played on your desktop, can be played on your Steam Machine. I assume it uses the same principals as the Shield for streaming the game, however, it doesn't require the Kepler GPUs to do it. It seems VALVe is coming up with a solution that is GPU agnostic. There are a limited number of people in the In-Home Streaming beta right now, and I hope that the Steam Machine beta users get in on it soon as I'd love to see how it performs.