Steam Controller, Steam Link and Steam Machines Now Available for Pre-order

+Valve have announced the following:

A limited quantity of orders will be shipped October 16th, weeks in advance of our official launch. Pre-order now and be among Steam Hardware's first wave of users."

The controller can be pre-ordered for £39.99 on the +Steam Store.

Steam Link is also £39.99.

Two Steam Machines are also listed: +Alienware's and +Syber's. However, the prices are listed in US$ and there is no add to cart option if you are connecting to Steam Store from the UK.

So it appears as if the controller and the Link are available to pre-order in the UK, but Steam Machines are not yet available to pre-order in the UK.

Batman Arkham Knight will Arrive on Linux

Yeah Batfans! Batman Arkham Knight is being released for Linux via Steam (SteamOS). OK, so it may be several months behind the PC and console slightly delayed release date (23 June on PC, Autumn on Linux and OS X) but this is certainly still something to look forward to, if some of the previous Arkham games are anything to go by.

Being developed by +Rocksteady Games who developed Arkham Asylum and Arkham City (but not the mediocre Arkham Origins), the game is in good hands.

There will be no multiplayer, the developers preferring instead to concentrate on making the single-player game as good as can be. They made the decision to develop for latest-generation consoles and PCs, but not PS3 and Xbox360, to allow for more technical scenes. For example, riots can have around 50 on-screen characters interacting with the environment.

Pre-purchasing will give an additional character to play, Harley Quinn, the Joker's psychotic side-kick.

It comes as no surprise that there is a season pass with downloadable content, as this seems to be the norm these days for AAA titles. The season pass is priced at £32.99 which has annoyed some. In defence of the price Warner Brothers said:

Earlier this week, we announced the Season Pass for Batman: Arkham Knight. While the story of Rocksteady’s Batman: Arkham Trilogy will come to a close on June 23rd, we are excited to continue telling stories and delivering more content to explore and play through in the 6 months following the game’s release. We’ll be building more narrative, more missions, more challenges and more characters and vehicles that we want players to experience, even though they didn’t fit into the storyline of Batman: Arkham Knight.

We’ve heard from our community that you want more information on what we’ll be delivering in the Season Pass. While we aren’t ready to unveil every aspect of the content we’ll be developing, we would like to share more detail now to give you a better sense of the scope of the Season Pass.

Batgirl: A Matter of Family

An all new prequel story expansion in an entirely new location where you play as Batgirl for the very first time in the Arkham series - check out the first render of Batgirl.

The Season of Infamy

Play as Batman in all new story missions featuring legendary super-villains invading Gotham City, with new story arcs, missions and gameplay features.

Gotham City Stories

Play as Batman’s key allies in narrative missions extending their storylines, from both before and after the events in Batman: Arkham Knight

Legendary Batmobiles with Themed Tracks

Drive the most iconic Batmobiles from Batman’s 75-year history, on custom-built race tracks, each themed to that Batmobile’s specific era. Every Batmobile will be drivable across every race track.

Crimefighter Challenge Maps

Engage in a series of new challenge maps utilizing the unique play styles of Batman and his allies.

Character Skins

A variety of skins from across the eras for Batman, Robin, Nightwing and Catwoman. As we fully ramp up development on the Season Pass, we will be sharing even more details on each monthly content drop. We hope you enjoy playing Batman: Arkham Knight as much as we’ve enjoyed making it.

WB Games

Here's to yet another top tier game coming to Linux. +Valve's Gabe Newell's prediction that Linux is the future of gaming looks more accurate with each new release.

Steam Controller - will it be love or hate?

So, the folks at +Valve and +Steam have listed the Steam controller in all its glory on the Steam Store and the Steam Universe site.

According to Valve, the controller will be available from November 2015 for $49.99. 


Some tech journalists have had a try out and reported mixed feelings. The consensus seems to be that it's a bit, well, unusual. Whilst I've not picked one up yet, I have to say that I do fear that they might only succeed if the games are designed around the controller. Harking back to the Nintendo64 (what do you mean you weren't born then!?) with it's new-fangled, tri-pronged, analogue/digital hybrid gamepad this took some getting used to, but N64 games (e.g. Super Mario 64, Goldeneye, Pilotwings 64, Turok) felt like they had been designed with the N64 gamepad in mind (in fact, some had been). Soon, it felt like this gamepad was the most natural way to control a game, especially Super Mario 64. In my humble opinion, it's the best controller I've ever used, but let's not get on to that now. If you revisited Super Mario 64 on the Wii with the Wii's classic controller, you'll know how it just didn't feel right - this demonstrates how important it is for the game to fit the controller.

It takes practice and perserverance to get used to a new control input, particularly if the new design is radical. The change from digital d-pads to analogue sticks took some getting used to but of course, all console makers were on the same band-wagon, so it created its own momentum, and was unlikely to fail - everyone wanted the new generation of 32 or 64-bit consoles back in the '90s, and the new analogue gamepads that came with them.

My concern is that regardless of how good the design is of the Steam controller, and of how much potential it might have for better control than the Xbox360 controller, I believe its success (i.e. how many are sold) depends as much upon first-rate marketing as it does AAA games being designed specifically for the Steam controller.

If players feel the Steam controller is restrictive, either before buying or after, and revert to keyboard and mouse, then it's doomed.

I really hope that as we draw nearer to November we hear the media singing this controller's praises, and developers announcing they have built their game control mechanics around the Steam controller.

I, for one, am hoping this is the successful birth of a new generation of control pads, as we saw in the 1990's with digital to analogue.

HTC Vive Linux compatibility

The HTC Vive VR headset has recently been announced.

Until further details arrive, we do not know its full specifications. Some headline features are listed at http://www.htcvr.com/ such as:

• A 1,200 by 1,080 pixel screen in front of each eye
• Refresh rates of 90 frames per second
• Wide field of vision
• Headphone jack on headset
• Gyrosensor, accelerometer, and laser position sensor combine to precisely track the rotation of your head on both axes to an accuracy of 1/10th of a degree
• Ergonomic VR game controllers in each hand allow you to use virtual objects and interact with the virtual world
• HTC and Valve have partnered with Cloudhead Games, Dovetail Games and Fireproof Games
• Expected consumer release date: Holiday 2015 (I've no idea which holiday HTC refers to, but I'm assuming July/August)

What hasn't yet been confirmed is the Vive's Linux compatibility. Of course, assumptions abound when devices such as this are released with partial specs (free advertising anyone?), but part of the fun is guessing how things might work.

At present we know that the headset will use the SteamVR API. As Steam VR supports Windows, Mac and Linux, it's reasonable to assume that the Vive will work with all platforms.

VR-compatible games however are another issue. Each game will still need to be available for the underlying platform. So, for example, Dovetail Games Fishing is, at present Windows only. So this isn't playable on a VR headset plugged into a Linux PC running Steam. Half Life 2 will be though, as this has a VR mode, and is available for Linux.

It will be interesting to see which, if any, currently Windows-only VR games will be released on Linux in the near future. If Steam still has commitment to SteamOS it would be surprising if a good proportion new VR titles aren't released for Linux.