SteamOS is the important part here - if it is proven to be a good console experience (which the deck has basically proven already) then licensing of the OS to other manufacturers will put a lot of pressure on integrated h/w s/w manufacturers.
Unlike the handheld format, the tvbox console is fairly easy to manufacture and is tolerant of a lot of spec and price variety. Any slip up by Sony and Microsoft in specs and price will result in steam machine variants carving away market share, which could force more frequent console releases.
The steam machine will almost certainly come in at a higher price point than the PS5, but with no 'online' subscription charge and reasonably priced storage upgrades we may see these revenue streams disappear from the next console generation in order to compete.
SteamOS isn't perfect, and the variety inherent in the platform that is a strength is also a weakness. The core markets for Nintendo and for Sony aren't going anywhere.
I really like it. It really does feel like a "game console"; usually when I've made my own console using Linux, it always feels kind of janky. For example, RetroPie on the Raspberry Pi is pretty cool, but it doesn't feel like a proper commercial product, it feels like a developer made a GUI to launch games.
I have like 750 games on Steam that I have hoarded over the years, in addition to the Epic Games Store and GOG, which can be installed with Heroic, and the fact that I can play them on a "console" instead of a computer makes it much easier to play in my living room or bedroom. It even works fine with the Xbox One controllers; I use the official Microsoft USB dongle to minimize latency, it works great.
I think there actually is a chance that Valve could really be a real competitor, if not a winner.
What I wanted to ask you: have you converted the device into a STB as well or is that still standalone?
It's obviously not a direct replacement since it still relies on my gaming machine, which not everyone has, but it gets a pretty good console experience, and it's portable.
Valve has fought tooth and nail for a decade to make that 3.05% a reality. Linux means they control their own destiny, instead of being at the mercy of Microsoft. Valve has their eyes on this prize and they’re willing to play the long game.
Everyone’s going to talk about “winning” the console generation, but winning could mean an increase of Linux’s share to 5-6%. That would be a massive win, and would be a vindication of Valve’s strategy. Valve could achieve their goals even if Sony and Nintendo sells millions of consoles more.
Being computer-savvy means I’m still a relative outlier, but given the renewed shift away from Windows and Office; Windows unfortunately may become niche.
Highly recommend them.
When we got the game, it probably took us an hour of fucking around with downloads and accounts. Off the top of my head, I had to set up a parents EA account and kids account, set permissions, had to make my 7 year old an email address, had to set up two factor authentication, accept crazy terms of use, verify emails, etc.) And then once we got all that done we're dodging ads for in game points, coins, cards, card packs, cosmetics, pre-order bonuses, etc. to get to the actual game. It's so SO bad and just not fun.
It completely killed his enthusiasm for the game. My son wandered off multiple times during this process. When I joked with my wife that we could have built a PC in the time it took us to do this bullshit it was an exaggeration, but only a little.
Turns out most open consoles are full of either crapware or emulators, which is the reason Sony and Microsoft eventually gave up on some openess.
Microsoft has limited Xbox to Windows buy-once, Sony has… nothing. Valve is building an ecosystem that goes from handheld deck to Windows/Mac/Linux to console to VR.
It’s been a slow burn but that is a very nice strategy.
To be fair to Sony here, the PS5 uses a normal m.2 NVME SSD for storage upgrades.
The phrase “worse is better” has a lot of historical significance in computing. Long before that, though, Adolphus Busch started his brewing empire. If you take a brewery tour at an Anheuser-Busch brewery, they’ll tell you that the company’s flagship product, the aforementioned Budweiser, was never intended to be anyone’s favorite beer.
That’s right. One of the top selling beers in the world was never intended to be a personal favorite of a single buyer or beer drinker. What it was designed to be was unobjectionable, approachable, and good enough to serve your guests when their preferred beer runs out. There are so many varieties of beer that are so different, and they are often loved by some and despised by others. So an intentionally unremarkable but quality beverage was marketed to be a very popular second or third choice.
If most households have a Playstation and a Deck or Frame, or have a Switch and a Frame, or have a PC and a Deck then in total numbers the Steam machines just might be the top seller even if it’s not a universal favorite.
instant, huge parent created backlog of games available for your kids.
They already tried that the first way around when they introduced steam machines. That didn't really work.
The fact that they now took full control is what's exiting about this steam machine.
They now have a flagship first party Steam Machine and Proton to run games. They are also working with partners to create 3rd party Steam OS handhelds.
If steam machines sell well, we will likely see supported 3rd party offerings.
GTA VI will probably run single player on proton fine, GTA V does. Multiplayer will probably not.
The multiplayer with kernel level anti cheat will keep Sony safe through at least another generation; Microsoft is less safe as they're so vulnerable this generation anyway.
Now, with IA cheating being the norm now, I think Valve has a real chance to add a microchip to "certify" its console and so playing Fornite (or over 3A) on it.
Will be a added value over a gaming PC, I don't think they will miss this opportunity for too long.
The value proposition is basically play your existing Steam library (and emulated games but that will be left unsaid) in 4k on your TV with an interface suited for it. I am not sure they are that dependent of upcoming games.
I will probably buy one because I really enjoy my Deck and I would like to play some more taxing games on a large screen from time to time and I’m never going to buy a PS5 because I have no interest in tying myself to Sony and playing exclusively on my TV.
That is going to be a no go for any SteamOS device when an highly anticipated game gets released on day 1.
There’s Dota 2, CS2, TF2 all of which are much better games that you’ve listed, and thousands games more.
And you can absolutely play GTA, thankfully without horrendous online. The only thing steam should do is to ban their shitty launcher for eternity.
Why would you not need to license it? Steam isn't open source and Steam, the trademark, is owned by Valve. If we were talking about a standard distro like Fedora, no, I guess they wouldn't have to license it, but we aren't.
"what, i cant play COD online? Or Battlefield? or fifa? or Rocket League?... but thats all I play, and it costs more than a ps5?
...whats the point?"
These games have gigantic followings that ship hardware year after year. People on hackernews are substantially broader-minded than your average console gamer.
On the above basis alone, most of the regular gamers I know will not buy one of these.
That is the bar (in my opinion) today, you have to take your box over to rockstar and spec for that or you are just selling outdated hardware.
I've had to stop playing a few games once I made the switch-over (Destiny, GTA V), but am otherwise very happy with where SteamOS/ Proton is.
It really says most about what people you hang out with.
Apparently, people have forgotten that what launched Steam is it being required to play game of the decade Half-Life 2.
I think I’m old.
I have about a dozen games on the switch. In another console generation, nintendo will make all my existing switch games unplayable again. I feel like you don't really buy console games. You rent them for one console generation.
I mean, I can't tell whats worse - that Nintendo has the gall to try and sell me the same game for switch that I already bought retail on the Wii several years ago. Or that I can't play a lot of my old Wii games at all any more.
But every year I end up picking up more and more games on steam. So many games. I have hundreds, and so do most of my friends. And all of those games keep running on every PC I own.
That's the value proposition of a steam box. It ships with hundreds of games that I already own and already enjoy. Fancy playing bioshock again? Sure. Factorio? Yeah hit me. Dota? Cyberpunk? Terraria? Stardew Valley? Lets go.
How do the console makers compete with that?
Maybe some day they'll have IP3!
I mean, it already has a library of games vaster than all other consoles taken together.
On top of that, the base OS can't run a ton of games that run on console, because it runs in the way of kernel anti cheats (think: battlefield, call of duty, valorant, league of legends... the biggest games basically), while consoles are guaranteed to run most AAA games.
So with all that in mind - while I appreciate what Valve is doing a lot - I don't think it'll win the "console generation". I hardly see how it can even be called a console. It's just a PC, and that's how they call it themselves.
You're thinking of 'back in the day.' The original XBox's video card was worth more than they sold the entire system for, and the PS3 was a complete beast of computation (even if not entirely inappropriate for games...)! But in modern times (PS4 gen onward) consoles have become relatively vanilla midrange computers designed with the intent of turning profit on the hardware as quickly as possible.
The hardware cost of the PS4 was less than it's retail price from day 0 [1], and they began making a profit per unit shortly thereafter. Similarly the PS5 also reached profit per unit in less than a year. [2] XBox models from the PS4 gen onward are conspicuously similar as well.
[1] - https://tech.yahoo.com/general/article/2013-11-19-ps4-costs-...
[2] - https://www.theverge.com/2021/8/4/22609150/sony-playstation-...
However, Switch is another console that sold for more than component and manufacturing cost at launch.
But most of the cost that needs to be amortized is R&D.
I don't understand this train of thought. It absolutely can have the cheap pricing of a console, as long as Steam is the default store, and the majority of users will use the console as-is and buy games on Steam.
Let me give a quick analogy: Google paid Apple 20B USD just to be the default search engine in Safari, even though users can easily change it. Defaults matter. The vast majority of people are not highly technical users who customize everything in-depth and seek out alternatives. The vast majority of people just use whatever is the default.
It needs to either be at market rate or locked down to only be useful for gaming.
Valve hasn't committed to a price yet, but they told Gamers Nexus that it'll be priced less like a console and more like an entry level computer (i.e. more expensive than a console).
Hardware is very hard to break into. You can't treat it like software and expect to dominate.
I don't think the Steam Machine will be priced lower than a PS5 or Xbox (unless Valve is willing to burn money in exchange for market share), but I think that it'll be priced significantly lower than an equivalent-spec laptop (which would be in the $600-800 range based on the fact that the Steam Machine has an "AMD RDNA3 28CUs" GPU, which according to Google is roughly equivalent to an Nvidia RTX 4050, laptops containing which are priced around $600-800).
Yet's all the mini PCs I've come across are more expensive than their laptop equivalent
Because it's also about the demand, and how much you can mass produce them to reduce the cost
If any company has a business case for “we’ll sell the form factor at a loss with our store preinstalled” now it’s Valve, especially if they want to make the hardware only to prove the viability of the form factor, and especially since they already have been selling on platforms they don’t own.
Is it perhaps more likely that users with a convenient box attached to their TV might want to buy more games from Steam?
Now this might be difficult to track, but stay with me. Valve makes the GabeCube. Valve owns Steam. Sales from Steam go to Valve. Users with Steam hardware play a disproportionate amount of games bought from Steam. See where this is going?
There's absolutely no difference. You can run games from other stores on a GabeCube, but most people will play Steam games. People who play more games buy more games. Just like people who mainly play Xbox buy more Xbox games.
Since they have the steam deck, they also probably have enough data to back their new hardware strategy
More relevantly, none of the current generation (ps5, xbox series, switch 2) are sold at a loss. They don't have large margins, but they are sold above cost.
The Taiwanese computer manufacturers won't be phased by thin margins; that's their modus operandi.
Sega lost money on every console prior to exiting the market.
Nintendo sold various consoles at a loss (Wii U).
The PlayStation 1 through 4 sold either at a loss or break even.
Valve sold the Deck at a loss that GabeN himself described as "aggressive and painful," 3rd party estimates put it at $150/unit for the base model.
I see no reason to believe they won't employ the same strategy for the Machine. If I can lodge my own bet, I think they'll price it somewhere between a PS5 digital and pro.
They have already said its gonna be priced like a computer and not a console. [1]
As for the range of games available, it's got a lot more indie titles than console does. One rather hopes it will inspire game developers to develop more Linux-compatible anti-cheat solutions, or just host Linux versions of the game on separate servers, but I won't hold my breath. I've honestly never got the point of anti-cheat myself, it doesn't seem to work in most games. I've long thought there exist much better solutions to cheating than software ones. The simplest would be to permit cheats in the game's base servers and allow players to scan their ID (á la Online Safety Act) to access servers with a higher degree of moderation. A permanent identity-based ban would sort out the problem much more swiftly than endlessly chasing hackers.
Crazy to think that the Horizon Zero Dawns of the world would be propping up all of console gaming??
But maybe that’s why Xbox is looking to get out. And trying new monetization strategies (gamepass is on Roku or something)
Consoles are expensive. Once a consumer has bought one, they're likely to stick with it for the generation. This is why we have flame wars about them. Only a small minority has several high-end gaming devices.
An exclusive will sell fewer copies, so the console manufacturer will strike a beneficial deal to make up for it.
Do people actually play these on console? I think most people still use Windows for these?
I do look forward to buying the decade awaited iteration on the Steam Controller, though. Very underrated piece of tech.
Rather than focus too much on the technology classification, think of it in terms of extending the Steam platform to new markets. How many new people in the market for games-on-their-tv will at least consider a Steam machine. Even with the trade-offs you mention, my guess is quite a lot. And Valve doesn't care about making money on the hardware, they are already basically printing money.
I just got tired of all VPNs, the DRMs, and trying to tune my network just to try and get a decent feed. Instead, map a network drive once, find torrent, save to movies file, and let Plex (or Emby in my case, for historical reasons) find the metadata.
It’s just pointless paying.
YouTube, for example, will give you 480p. For movies. That you bought. With money.
Looks cool, though
Steam only has something like 140 million monthly active users, so moving that much hardware is incredibly far fetched.
Console generations change every decade or so and the previous console gets abandoned. Anyone who buys a Steam Machine will continue to have access to the largest collection of video games in human history. Not to mention there are emulators for every classic console already and even the Nintendo Switch has at least two great emulators for it.
The PS5 is already about five years old, has had a slim release and a PS5 Pro. The PS6 announcement is probably a year away, with a 2027 or 2028 release.
Valve is launching a last-gen console, probably at a price that won't be competitive, right before the PS6 comes out.
PS5 + 3 years of PS Plus = $740
Steam Machine = $700
Add/remove more years of PS Plus if the SM turns out to be more/less expensive.
If you add the fact that games on PC are usually cheaper and have sales more often then it's a no brainer, but that won't convince the FIFA and COD players.
Sure you don't need to subscribe to PS+, but that's somewhat easier to swallow since PS+ gives you games with the subscription.
I'm still interested in this for playing older games but I have a Steam Deck and it still isn't remotely as seamless as my Switch or PS5.
All Sony and MS have to do it market that it can't play GTA6 at launch.
Turns out the Steam Machine is exactly what I'm looking for.
I don't expect them to match either in volume but it seems like microsoft is already backing out of the dedicated console hardware space tho
Even if it is a "pricier" PS5-like machine, I'd still buy it and I bet I'd make up the difference in less than a year with just the sales games (including older games I can't play on either console).
I think most of the critiques for this are from people expecting this to be aimed at PC gamers.
I don't think it is. I think it's aimed at people that actually DON'T want to bother with building, buying, upgrading PCs, but still want to play cheap games, older games.
To this day, I can't make my PC turn on with a controller (and I've tried). Making a PC wake up as fast as a Steam Deck from sleep? Impossible.
Those little things will all add up to make this a very nice option for the non-hardcode PC game crowd.
Valve is going to steal a lot of users from console, mostly Xbox. Not PC Gaming enthusiast.
I don’t think it needs to compete on price directly, if it can deliver the polish of a console. It can also play up the angle of being a full blown computer.
Not even a third party: https://youtu.be/b7q2CS8HDHU?t=380
> the option of an ergonomic strap that you can hook onto the top, hook onto the back, to take more weight off the front of your head.
https://www.pcgamer.com/hardware/vr-hardware/steam-frame-spe...
> There's an optional ergonomic accessories kit for the Steam Frame that adds an extra strap for your head and a pair of straps, one for each controller. These added controller straps are reminiscent of those found on the Index and seem like a reasonable investment, if the price is right.
"It's on par with a PS5!" You mean the thing that was launched over 5 years ago (exactly!) ?
We don't know its price yet, which is the most crucial detail.
Even if I play 2 hours of each game, it's still a bargain =)
And because this is Valve and I've had a stellar experience with my Steam Deck, I'm pretty confident that future games will run on it too. Most likely gamedevs will add special "Steam Machine" performance profiles like they've done with the deck. And there will be a "Steam Machine certified" checkmark on Steam.
You presumably have other hardware that can also play the 570 games too? You’re spending more money on hardware that can do the same job your current hardware can do.
Why would anyone ever buy a console again? This thing has the ultimate library and works on all platforms.
Steam seems to have played the best game of chess in the industry. Sony and Microsoft were battling over exclusives and acquisitions and ways to screw over customers. This came out of left field and looks a million times better than Xbox or PS5. It has people's entire libraries on it, and the games are cheap and portable. There's no lock down. No funny business.
I almost want one. I'm excited about it and I don't even think I'd play it.
I'm also in the market for a new secondary pc, since the other one is old: the steam machine is exactly what I want with gaming primary and also do general computing.
I use the nvidia shield to stream games, but it has issues at times depending on the game being streamed.
- do you have a tv and a couch
- do you have games in your steam library that would benefit from the extra power and the setup?
If you've had steam installed through a number of christmas sales then most likely yes lol
That makes me very happy.
Half Life 3 is coming.
> This should make the fact that the Frame is using a "weaker" CPU/GPU irrelevant. Games should look fine as long as they render the slice that needs to be in full quality fast enough.
It's not foveated rendering, it's foveated streaming. The CPU/GPU should easily be able to handle decoding video, whether foveated or not.
Like the steam deck, I don't know who other than power users who will buy it. I love the openness they will bring to the market, but that doesn't mean they will win.
I absolutely do not want gaming mingled with my primary PC usage, work and stuff. For reasons of OS choice, data integrity, security and distraction management/work-play-separation. Can't over-emphasize the importance of this. But to me there is no question PC gaming is superior. However, I can't justify building a full-blown "gaming PC" just for gaming.
Some years ago, I got a PS4 Pro just to satisfy my occasional gaming urge and I love the console form factor, no tweaking and press power to play ergonomics. I wish I could install some mods for old games, tho, and the PS4 library is super limited compared to Steam. I also feel sad, the PS lock-down means unnecessary hardware obsolescence. And I hate Sony's rent seeking for online services and would never buy PS Plus.
I know quite a few people in my social sphere who are exactly in the same spot I am, who would love exactly what's shown with the Steam thingy. It will all depend on the price.
When it comes to gaming consoles, I want them to serve reliably to my family. The game console must be fun, optimized for best experience and should not break. Will that be possible with an open platform where anyone can install anything?
- “why can’t I play online with EA Sports?”
- “I can’t log into Roblox!”
- “why can’t I see my sisters world in Minecraft?”
- “I’ve lost my Fortnight skins!”
- “why does Roblox keep disconnecting me on my phone [when Roblox servers go down]?”
- “Why can’t I play this game [without updating it]?”
- “this game update takes too long to download!”
If there’s one constant in life: it’s that doctors get nagged by friends for free diagnosis, mechanics, electricians, carpenters for free repairs, and software engineers for free IT support.
Yes, SteamOS is just that. A system that is easy to rollback if you mess things up. And you have to go deep under the covers to mess things up (switch to desktop mode, disable readonly system partition, modify wrong files).
Valve should really focus on improving the polish of the steam store, as that abomination of a (react ?) frontend breaks often in very surprising ways.
SteamOS as a console system is close to a 9/10. As far as polish of steam app/store and the ux, a fair 7/10.
I recently turned on my old xbox one - literally impossible to play any game without a massive patch, debugging os software issues etc. If the steam machine just works out of the box, it'll already be miles ahead of most of the current state of consoles.
- For some games (usually those oriented around keyboard and mouse) you need to go and select one of the community control configurations, and maybe tweak it a bit. For example, I needed to do this with FTL to make it easily playable
- Occasionally (and I've basically had to do this once, in my 2+ years with a Steam Deck) you need to go and select a different Proton version to make it work. ProtonDB tells you what to do
This is all rare though. The vast majority of games have a control setup for using a controller, and they definitely do if they've ever been released on console. And they will Just Work.
In my experience this doesn't really end whether it's a closed product or not. If you're wiling to give free IT support, people will take it, as it's likely way faster/better than calling whatever support may or may not be offered by the company.
> Will that be possible with an open platform where anyone can install anything?
I can't see why these have anything to do with each other? If your brother goes out of his way to install a bunch of stuff and breaks everything, how can you possibly blame the system and not your brother?
I made one return on the PS5 in a similar situation, and it was a painful ordeal.
Try to run the original mario 64 on the switch without having to buy it again
I don't give a shit for the money, but fucking my social gaming time was unforgiveable. I still use Steam, but don't fucking trust Valves return policy.
What’s to stop people buying them to use for completely unrelated use cases?
I guess it depends on how big the loss is… if it is small, it might not be really worth it for most people; but any larger, I wonder how sustainable this will be.
For normal computer use (reading email, watching videos, doing spreadsheets), there are much cheaper and better options available. If somebody wanted a Steam Machine specifically, it'd be for the GPU.
If you needed a lot of GPU compute (for AI or blockchain or whatever), it'd be cheaper to buy or rent a dedicated server with Nvidia H100s rather than buying dozens of Steam Machines.
So the only potential use cases are those that have a significant but not too significant GPU requirement. The only ones I can think of are gaming (which is the intended use case), video editing, and 3D rendering.
Video editing is less of a concern because neither Adobe Premier nor Final Cut Pro will run on Linux (to my knowledge), so you might as well buy a Mac that runs both of those very efficiently and has decent hardware.
So we're left with 3D rendering. If people want to use Steam Machines to render things in Blender, I say "let them", and I assume that Valve does too.
Just a random blog's guess.
> What’s to stop people buying them to use for completely unrelated use cases?
Nothing. But it doesn't mean that Valve doesn't benefit from it. Valve wants the whole gaming scheme to shift toward SteamOS. Like Google wants the whole web browsing to shift to Chrome, even you can use Chrome for stuff unrelated to Google.
Plus, Steam is bordering on a monopoly for PC gaming anyway, so, even if they install another OS, a user is probably going to end up on Steam.
Getting new people into the Steam ecosystem should be worth losing a bit through the machine sales, with long term thinking.
The story was the same with the Deck. Granted it took a little while for many games to be fully supported but the transparency from Valve on the store pages about compatibility was great and is in a far better state now.
When I buy a game (even an old one), I always had to choose between Switch and PC. But now PC has most of the advantages of the Switch, and I trust my Steam library will persist and be easily playable more than Switch (although Switch 2 compat was great! to be fair)
That and intermediary consoles like the PS5 Pro are blurring the lines and adapting to the popularity of PC gaming.
Steam Controller - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45905703
Steam Machine - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45903404
Steam Frame - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45903325
With regards to DRM, it doesn't have to be as restrictive as Windows' versions, but there needs to be some cooperative effort with the game studios, and the media companies as more people expect to be able to stream Netflix/AppleTV/HBO etc. from these devices on top of gaming.
As gaming only, the most popular games tend to have a multiplayer aspect and thus far haven't been cooperative with functioning under Proton... there are solutions, but it's a matter of getting studio buyin and the effort to make it happen.
Without these, it will be a niche product and may still sell well, just not gain anything near what the consoles achieve in terms of sales.
On a PC, for $15 a month you can get a HumbleBundle subscription and get 5-6 Steam games to keep yours forever (unlike Playstation Plus "free" games). Plus 3-4 free games/month from Epic (an option, since Valve said they won't lock the hardware). Plus 3-4 games from Amazon Prime Gaming if you are a subscriber. Plus a ton of other discount websites.
Compare this to the average cost of a PS5 title and the walled garden of the Playstation Store. Not to mention that your PS5 library probably won't be playable on PS6.
Yes, AAAA games will still be expensive, but for everything else the Steam Machine will give consoles a run for their money. Cost-conscious gamer are very likely to switch.
Also, you can even install windows on the box. it's one of its selling points actually... if you really want to...
kernel level anti-cheat is generally not even needed, so perhaps those companies will now consider rolling proper anti-cheat themselves rather than third-party rubbish that no one asked for.
What i also like about this console development is that it might open the door to other smaller players creating consoles in the form of mini-PC with linux and a gaming layer on there. maybe there will be (oem?)partner for valve that make more beefy machines, machines with alternate OSes (windows + skin) etc.
its a different angle that will open up many things hopefully. make it less exclusive market between essentially 3 parties.
This is good news to hear Valve going in strong for the console market.
I'm buying one just for this sentiment alone.
The steam deck is also available for that 400-500 price point.
PC gamers will play on their PC. Couch gamers will have a PS5 or an XBox. So who is this for, couch gamers that don't have one of those? Or PC players tired of playing on a monitor?
Don't get me wrong, it's cool, and I'm definitely the target market but feel like that's pretty tiny.
Most couch gamers want their GTA or Call of Duty, which, if I read correctly, this will not run.
It's been a great entry way into gaming for my wife (lot's of cozy games) and I also play a few games from my steam backlog (Halo, Hades 2, etc). I don't feel like we're in the minority for what a couch system is used for but maybe.
The largest hurdle for steam in the living room so far has been controller support or lack of couch co-op games.
The chances of any of the Steam Machines taking the market share of any of the current generation consoles is so vanishingly miniscule, that I don't think it can even compete against any of them.
It more or less competes against the Linux ecosystem of System76 machines or the Framework computers.
But against consoles? No dent at all in their market share.
For that they need to outsell the Switch 2. 10m units in 6 months.
Good luck with that.
However, Pokemon guarantees a certain amount of Switch 2 sales--Pokemon ZA sold about 6 million units.
Anything above $600 is DOA and that's with accepting the fact that the most popular games will be not available on the platform
It's a small box, it can sit next to the tele without looking awful, and if I just need to get a controller, that's fine too.
The only way immutability helps here is you could have two OS images, the users own customisable one, and a clean one. Then when you try to load an anti cheat game, the console could in theory reboot in to the clean one, and pass all the verification checks to load the game.
Steam Frame https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45903325
Steam Machine https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45903404
SteamOS on Arm (using FEX) is going to spawn a generation of £100 devices that can play lower end Windows games, stream from PC, and emulate every console from the PS2 back. It's huge.
(Technology, demographics, popularity?)
When I buy a Steam console, I have more than 1000 games available for that console the moment it lands in my living room.
If I buy a ps5, I have 0.
Somewhat related, but I enjoy the topic. Is how freakishly good the mouse is for FPS type games. If you asked anyone to design a purpose built controller for a first person game they would not come up with a mouse. But somehow despite all odds that thing designed for moving a cursor around the screen is the best controller yet for looking around. Probably something about the huge throw distance compared to any other controller.
The only place it suffers for me is games that aren't coded to support simultaneous gamepad and mouse input, which you can work around by mapping the joystick as a keyboard input. Otherwise it's great.
What Valve offers is just one more PC configuration
There’s no doubt they’re tee’d up to radically alter the landscape. But man they better have a truly plug and play, turnkey system if they want to compete with consoles. The steamdeck even after this many years is absolutely trash at going from handheld to docked (better the other direction at least) and is incredibly hit or miss when it’s plugged into a TV in general. I had to buy a special DP->HDMI cable that forces 1080p @60 to get it to consistently appear on screen docked (LG C1 for reference).
I am excited for the steam machine. But yeah, telling me it’s a more powerful steamdeck is super exciting in some ways and eyebrow raising in others unless they got some big SteamOS overhaul coming.
On the flip side, I'm pretty confident AMD will be able to output to DisplayPort
Personally I'd love if we all just went back to playing on personal servers with your real life friends or people you otherwise trust. But I don't think this is would go over well with the average online gamer.
If anyone is capable of moving things along in this space, Valve should be it.
> Personally I'd love if we all just went back to playing on personal servers with your real life friends or people you otherwise trust. But I don't think this is would go over well with the average online gamer.
It's not the gamers that don't want this - although, yes, I do also want the option of matchmaking - it's the companies that don't allow dedicated servers, or shut down the servers after releasing that year's full-price version of the same game.
Of course, games don't need that - I'd say that every game studio is aware that without streamers, you don't sell games, and streamers can't stream when HDCP gets in their way.
But for the use case of a home theater? PS4 and 5 as well as some Xbox varieties can do 4K Netflix [1], no issues. Installing Windows, I'd guess that's fine too. But Steam OS? Nope. Anything too "open" gets the boot, including Android if you dare root your device, Widevine L1 refuses to work as the TEE doesn't reveal the keys if it detects an unlocked bootloader.
1) front speaker instead of this magnetic panel that is only for esthetic
2) wireless charging pad on top
3) home router functionality - just attach 4g modem to usb-a
4) matter hub for smart home
They could advertise you getting 7in1 devices for the same price:
- game console
- smart speaker like alexa
- smart tv (miracast, google cast, airplay)
- smart home hub for matter devices
- home router
- wireless charging pad
- mini home server (private cloud, home backup, vpn, pihole)
Then with software wish it could easily have app store like umbrel: https://umbrel.com
While PC likely has the most exclusives by a ridiculously large margin, it probably has the fewest AAA exclusives.
The reasoning works like this: I want to play that game.
hth
That said, I feel we're trading evil gaming monopolies for a less evil monopoly. I can only truly support Valve once they start actually selling games rather than game "licenses".
What I want is GOG's transparency and philosophy with Valve's Linux and hardware investments.
Who would have thought that not actively engaging in enshittification can be a secret winning recipe!
