Hasta La Gadget!

After hearing about it for the past few weeks, Steam Greenlight has finally launched. As many of you already know, Steam Greenlight is a new system that allows developers to submit their game to the community for approval. Should the Steam community welcome the game with open arms (or, in this case, up-votes), then it stands a good chance at being added to the Steam catalog.

This works on multiple levels: first, it rewards developers who truly have something good to offer gamers. Second, it lets Steam members feel like they actually have a say in what becomes available in the Steam store, and third, it lets Valve outsource the work of wading through the piles of submissions it undoubtedly receives each and every week. At the time of this writing, 326 games are awaiting votes on the Steam Greenlight page, and that number is sure to rise in the coming days.

There are a lot of unknown games listed on Steam Greenlight, but some immediately recognizable games include the likes of Mutant Mudds, Project Zomboid, Rekoil, and Kenshi. Valve said in a statement today that the Steam Greenlight we’re seeing now is the product of months of testing with indie partners and beta members, and that the company is planning to grow and improve Greenlight as time goes on, just as it has with Steam’s other features.

Since developers can submit assets from their games at any point in the development process (and there isn’t any approval process before a game shows up on Steam Greenlight), we’re expecting the number of game listings to grow pretty fast from here on out. Therein lies one of the problems with Greenlight, however: if developers are constantly submitting new games for the community’s approval, it seems like there would be a pretty good chance that games worthy of attention end up getting lost in the crowd. We shall see if that’s the case shortly. Have you found any games worthy of your vote in Steam Greenlight yet?

Steam Greenlight launches with hundreds of games to vote for is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Early last year, Valve mentioned it was working on something called Big Picture mode for Steam, an alternative user interface with controller support designed specifically for use on televisions. According to Gabe Newell, the distribution services’ couch-ready UI is almost upon us. “We should have both Linux and 10-foot betas out there fairly quickly,” he told Geoff Keighley in the latest episode of GTTV, noting that the interface would be available on both the current iteration of Steam and the upcoming Linux version. Newell said that Valve has been showing the interface to hardware manufacturers, but ultimately feels that the community will decide its fate. “I think customers will say ‘this is really great,’ or they’ll say it’s another interesting but not a valuable contribution, fairly quickly.” Check out the interview for yourself (and the full episode) after the break.

Continue reading Steam to debut Big Picture beta soon, make couch potatoes of PC gamers

Filed under: Gaming, Software

Steam to debut Big Picture beta soon, make couch potatoes of PC gamers originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 18 Aug 2012 00:54:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Gamescom is due to kick off in Germany tomorrow, bringing together games publishers from across to the world to highlight the latest and greatest titles coming out across various platforms. T3 has managed to spot an exciting reference in the list of games that will be announced at the conference. According to the PDF, Valve will officially announce Half-Life 3 at the gaming event.

Half-Life 3 is listed among games from other publishers, such as Arkham City: Armored Edition and Injustice: Gods Among Us. If Valve does indeed take to the stage at Gamescom, it would be a massive announcement for the gaming community. As if that wasn’t enough, Game Informer reports that it will print its latest issue a day later than usual in order to make sure a “huge announcement” at Gamescom makes it to print.

It would be an interesting move from Valve. The company has released episodic packs for Half-Life 2, with many believing that the company was hard at work on Episode 3 despite long delays. It looks like Valve may simply have skipped the additional content and gone straight to the sequel. Having said that, the company is notorious for making sure its games are perfect before releasing them: even if Half-Life 3 does make an appearance, it could be a long time before we see an official release.

Half-Life 2 was first shown off at E3 2003, impressing crowds and onlookers with its then state of the art Source engine. The game was originally slated for a release later that year, but an early version of the game leaked out onto the internet in October 2003, causing Valve to delay the title, eventually releasing it in November 2004.

UPDATE: Valve’s VP of marketing, Doug Lombardi, denies that an announcement will happen at Gamescon: “We will have the Steam team there to meet with developers and publishers. No game showing planned.”

Half-Life 3 tipped for Gamescom reveal (UPDATE: Valve denies announcement) is written by Ben Kersey & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Unless you’re the sort of geek who likes to get hands-on and make your own films using development tools, you may not be familiar with the Valve Source Filmmaker. Valve is a company with a name that’s recognizable thanks to some of its insanely popular video games like Half Life and others. Source Filmmaker is a tool offered by Valve that features a flexible and modifiable 3-D recording that can be exported as a movie or a still image.

The 3-D recording created using the tool can use the large library of maps, models, animations, objects, sounds, and effects that are included in the package. Users can also opt to import their own content. Valve says that the tool gives developers the ability to modify and control any portion of the recording at any time. This is actually the tool that Valve uses inside the Source game engine to make its own movies.

Using this tool, a geek going by LiveCurious95 on YouTube has re-created a classic scene from the Matrix. Kotaku calls the scene the coolest from the original Matrix film, but I disagree with that. The coolest scene in the film was clearly the massive gun battle in the lobby of the building leading up to the rescue Morpheus.

The scene created using the Source Filmmaker starts on the roof of the building as Neo and Trinity climb into the helicopter and shoot the Agents holding Morpheus hostage. The whole thing looks good, and it appears that the guy imported actual audio from the Matrix film. The worst part about the Source Filmmaker is that the digital character’s lips are horribly un-synced with the sound.

[via Kotaku]

Valve Source Filmmaker used to recreate classic Matrix scene is written by Shane McGlaun & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

We’ve officially reached the middle of the week, folks – only two more days to go and then the weekend is here once again. Today we didn’t have too many stories about the ongoing trial between Apple and Samsung, but what we did get was huge. A rather damning 132-page report surfaced in court today, which shows Samsung attempting to differentiate the original Galaxy S from the iPhone specifically, and we looked at the difference between competitive analysis and flat out copying as a result of the report. On the lighter side of things, Conan O’ Brien had a bit of fun with the trial on last night’s show, so be sure to give that a look.

It was a pretty big day for NASA’s Curiosity rover, as it lifted its head for the first time and sent back new images of the surface of Mars. It appears that the Galaxy Note II – which is expected to be announced at the end of this month, remember – will come complete with a flexible display that makes it more resilient than typical smartphone displays. Speaking of the Galaxy Note, T-Mobile finally received the phablet today (along with the myTouch and myTouch Q), so if you’re a T-Mobile user, you might want to check that out.

Starbucks made a multi-million dollar investment in Square today, and we tell you all you need to know about using Square to pay for your coffee. Tickets for Microsoft Build 2012 went on sale today, but don’t expect to get any now, as they sold out just one hour later. Between the two of them, Android and iOS now make up 85% of the smartphone market, with Android taking 68.1% market share for itself. Apple did a couple of things to boost security today, temporarily freezing over-the-phone password resets and announcing that it will soon bulk up identity verification measures for iCloud.

Today OUYA announced that it is in talks with Namco Bandai as its Kickstarter winds down, it was revealed that Google voice search will soon land on the iPhone, and we caught wind of a rumor that claims the new iPhone will be 7.6mm thick. RIM’s stock enjoyed a little jump after one analyst claimed that Samsung was considering buying the company, and Valve revealed today that Steam will soon begin offering non-game software, complete with support for Steam Cloud. Finally, Warner is thinking about holding limited showings of The Hobbit at 48 frames per second, which has us excited since we have a tendency to go nuts whenever The Hobbit is mentioned.

That wraps up the news, but be sure to check out our interview with Kate Beckinsale of Total Recall fame, and also spend some time with our review of the HP ENVY 4 Ultrabook. Enjoy the rest of your evening, everyone!

SlashGear Evening Wrap-Up: August 8, 2012 is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.