[HN Gopher] Valve is about to win the console generation
___________________________________________________________________
Valve is about to win the console generation
Author : moonleay
Score : 553 points
Date : 2025-11-12 23:35 UTC (23 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (xeiaso.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (xeiaso.net)
| miohtama wrote:
| So no Half Life 3? (':
| juris wrote:
| Rumor has it that it'd be released with the VR set in 2026 ;)
| embedding-shape wrote:
| It'd be a good plan. Make HL3 a VR game since you built VR
| experience by making Alyx, take it to the next level by
| launching your own VR headset, everything is perfectly made
| together and HL3 launch would be as big if not bigger than
| GTA, and you optimize it for your own hardware.
| Orygin wrote:
| HL3 is most likely not a VR game as Valve said they aren't
| working on a first party VR title (plus data mining seems
| to confirm). Plus they already have Alyx as the
| masterpiece, and it was already made with their own VR
| headset in mind: the Valve Index.
|
| Maybe HLX will have some kind of VR interaction possible,
| as they want to push technology further with each Half life
| game.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| Valve also said something like "ARM gaming won't be a
| thing for us for a very long time", but seems tides can
| change :) I wouldn't put too much weight into any
| publisher/developer saying what they aren't doing, even
| if they were working on HL3, they'd keep that under very
| tight wraps.
| Orygin wrote:
| I mean, there are plenty of info available on the status
| of HL3 (code named HLX) and all point to it not being a
| VR title.
|
| Also I don't think ARM is really a thing for them, even
| now. They want to support running software on the
| headset, and sure why not enable compatibility layers to
| play some small games, but the end goal is clearly
| streaming from a PC. Maybe if some good ARM cpu hit the
| market they will pivot, but up until recently "ARM
| gaming" meant mobile phones.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > there are plenty of info available on the status of HL3
| (code named HLX) and all point to it not being a VR title
|
| Anything besides rumors? AFAIK, there is absolutely zero
| official information beyond the rumor mill.
|
| > Also I don't think ARM is really a thing for them, even
| now.
|
| I mean, then you're just looking the other way
| intentionally, they're quite literally adding support for
| ARM now,
| https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2025/11/codeweavers-launch-
| a-n... That's not something you do on a whim, it's a
| calculated step towards something.
|
| And they're clearly setting up the new VR head to both do
| standalone gameplay for people without PCs, and to do
| streaming from PC.
|
| None of the Steam hardware seems to have only a single
| use in fact, all of them are multipurpose, not sure why
| the VR headset should be any different, especially when
| what we know points to it also being multipurpose, quite
| explicitly so at that.
| utopiah wrote:
| I wish... https://www.uploadvr.com/valve-isnt-currently-
| working-on-a-n...
|
| :(
| qudat wrote:
| Wasn't that Alyx?
| accrual wrote:
| Perhaps Alyx walked so HL3 could run.
| attendant3446 wrote:
| They announced 3 devices. 3! HL3 confirmed :D
| thrownawaysz wrote:
| >I think it's safe to say that Valve is about to win the next
| console generation.
|
| For that they need to outsell the Switch 2. 10m units in 6
| months.
|
| Good luck with that.
| xena wrote:
| Nintendo is in its own category in which the other competitor
| is also Valve. For now Nintendo is winning there.
| lawlessone wrote:
| I love great graphics but , Nintendo carved a nice big niche
| out for themselves by recognizing the constant drive for best
| graphics is a bit of rat race.
| esseph wrote:
| Nintendo has a tiny library.
|
| Steam does not.
| neighbour wrote:
| Steam Deck has a tiny install base.
|
| Switch 2 does not.
|
| I'm mostly a PC gamer but let's be real here.
| taeric wrote:
| Though, to be fair, my kids steal my Steam Deck from me
| more often than I try to get the Switch from them. The
| family share features of the Switch leave a lot to be
| desired.
| throwaway17_17 wrote:
| Nintendo has Mario, Zelda, Kirby, Donkey Kong, Starfox,
| Pokemon, and a few other less super famous and
| internationally known IP franchises. The core games and
| their spinoffs make more games than most children can
| reasonably expected to play through childhood and early
| adolescence. That the machine then collects dust doesn't
| hurt Nintendo because they already sold it.
|
| Yes Steam has huge library (my 'want to play' list is
| over 100 titles at this point) full of games of all
| genres, qualities, and niches. But Nintendo has more than
| enough to do what they have done for years, i.e. sit
| tight on their beloved IP and dole it out at varying
| levels of quality on strictly low end hardware and watch
| their earning go up.
| SchemaLoad wrote:
| They have enough first party games which only release on
| their hardware that people are willing to buy a Switch for
| nintendo games, and another gaming device for everything
| else.
| throwaway17_17 wrote:
| Sad part is that I would be willing to pay a substantial
| mark up to be able to play some of those first party titles
| on my PC, but since my kids have a Switch I just settle for
| using it. So even if I don't think I'd buy a console just
| for their games, I'm gonna end up buying it anyway and
| Nintendo still wins.
| throw4847285 wrote:
| Or the many people like myself who are willing to buy a
| Switch for Nintendo games and that's their only console.
| surgical_fire wrote:
| Many times what happens is that people buy the Switch for
| Nintendo games, but since third parties also publish there
| they just buy games there anyway.
|
| Funnily enough, I own a Switch and a PS5. I mostly buy and
| play on the Switch while the PS5 main function is getting
| covered in a thin layer of dust.
| bsder wrote:
| I'm on a Switch and will not move because of the "Game Key
| Card" bullshit where you have a card but _still_ don 't get the
| files you need to play them game.
|
| However, Pokemon guarantees a certain amount of Switch 2 sales
| --Pokemon ZA sold about 6 million units.
| sunaookami wrote:
| That's not an argument in the Steam Machine's case as you
| have the same situation there (even worse because you can't
| resell your games).
| bsder wrote:
| You aren't wrong.
|
| However, the single digital service that hasn't killed my
| digital library at some point is Steam. Games that I bought
| many years ago are still fine. Sony, Microsoft, and
| Nintendo all killed digital games that I bought.
|
| That having been said: I've transferred a lot of my
| purchasing to GoG. Steam doesn't get the benefit of the
| doubt anymore.
| sunaookami wrote:
| >Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo all killed digital games
| that I bought.
|
| No? All stores are still online. Some don't allow buying
| new games anymore (DSi Shop, Wii Shop, PS3 store for
| example) but redownloading still works.
| theoldgreybeard wrote:
| They announced 3 products guys. The first time Valve has counted
| to 3.
|
| Half Life 3 is coming.
| preisschild wrote:
| Maybe try Half Life Alyx :P
| alexchantavy wrote:
| Been a decade since I've seen a Half Life 3 joke on the
| internet, thanks for this
| altairprime wrote:
| By making it immutable out of the box, VAC enforcement because
| vastly easier and third-party multiplayer anti-cheating kernel
| rootkits are replaced by "attest that you are unmodified", which
| Steam Linux _and_ macOS /tvOS/iOS/iPadOS can do -- but not
| Windows 10/11, because sealed boot functionality is behind
| Microsoft's enterprise annual subscription fee paywall. This
| positions Steam Linux as the monopoly provider of console-gaming
| Linux, since no one else is doing sealed attestation Linux at
| scale, and opens the door for multiplayer AAA games to target
| _Steam_ Linux for their day-one releases as a competitive equal
| to Xbox /PS5/Switch and as a _better_ defended console platform
| than Windows PCs. The modifications described by OP are still
| possible, but won't be compatible with multiplayer anti-cheating
| enforcement, which is perfectly fine; boot to sealed for
| competitive gaming, boot to custom for single player, everyone
| wins _except_ Microsoft's Windows division. (If Microsoft hadn't
| shot off their foot with Windows 10, they could have simply
| enabled sealed booting for all 10 /11 installations and remained
| competitive as a gaming platform, but I think they're done with
| that business.) Nice to see my predictions pan out and I look
| forward to buying one :)
| SchemaLoad wrote:
| Immutability doesn't provide this on it's own. You can load any
| custom immutable image you want. What game devs want is full
| boot chain attestation where every part of the OS is measured
| and verified untampered with, and then to load their own
| spyware at the highest level.
|
| 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.
| altairprime wrote:
| I am, indeed, assuming that their immutable image can
| generate attestations chained appropriately. If not, it's a
| catastrophic business error on their part to put in all that
| work, and I don't consider that degree of failure _likely_.
| Definitely curious to see if they can enable the chain on
| existing Steamdecks or not.
| SchemaLoad wrote:
| Immutable images provide many benefits that are unrelated
| to DRM. The main one being that the entire fleet of Steam
| Decks/Machines are all in a known state. Updates are a
| matter of pushing a new OS image, you don't have to worry
| about migrating files, conflicting configurations, strange
| user changes. And if an update fails, the bootloader shows
| a screen where you can boot a previous OS image that
| worked.
|
| It's like docker images for the whole OS. As far as I can
| tell, the Steam Deck does not have secure boot or any kind
| of attestation enabled. They have been very forward in
| marketing it as an open and free system you can do anything
| on. The hardware does have a TPM that is seemingly unused
| currently, not sure if it supports some form of secure
| boot.
| altairprime wrote:
| > _They have been very forward in marketing it as an open
| and free system you can do anything on._
|
| Attested sealed images and Open and Free systems have no
| conflict with each other. Mod it all you want; sure,
| it'll generate a different attestation than the shipping
| sealed image, or if your customizations turn off
| attestations and/or secure boot, none at all. You do you!
| Source code releases will never include the private key
| used to sign them, just as with all open source today, so
| either the OS's attestation will be signed by Valve or by
| you or by someone else. It takes me about sixty seconds
| to add my own signing key to my PC BIOS today and it
| would not surprise me to find Valve's BIOS implements the
| same, as I'm pretty certain this is basic off-the-shelf
| functionality on Zen4/Zen5. But, regardless, Free/Open
| Source is wholly unconcerned by _whose_ release signing
| key is used; otherwise it wouldn't be Free /Open! The
| decision to care about whose release signature is live
| right now is the gaming server's decision, not Steam
| Linux's, and that decision is not restricted by any OSS-
| approved license that I'm aware of.
|
| Secure boot attestations plus sealed images _do_ enable
| "unmodified Valve Linux release" checks to be performed
| by multiplayer game _servers_ , without needing the user
| to be locked out of making changes at all. This is
| already demonstrated in macOS today with e.g. Wallet's
| Apple Pay support; you can disable and mod the OS as much
| as you wish, and certain server features whose
| attestation requirements require an Apple release
| signature on the booted OS will suspend themselves when
| the attestation doesn't match. When you're ready to use
| those servers, you secure boot to an OEM sealed
| environment and they resume working immediately. This is
| live, today, on every Apple Silicon (and T2 chipped
| Intel) device worldwide, and has been available for
| developers to use for years.
|
| Attestations are, similarly, already _available_ on all
| AMD devices with a TPM today, so long as the BIOS to OS
| chain implements Secure Boot -- not requires, but
| _implements_ , as there's no reason to deny users
| unsigned OS booting once you're checking attestation
| signatures server-side. As you note, it remains to be
| seen if the Steam Box will make use of it. If they do, it
| coexists just fine with full reputposability and
| modifiable, because you can do whatever you like with the
| device -- and, correspondingly, each game may choose to
| require an unmodified environment to ensure a level
| playing field without kernel or OS modifications.
|
| It would be a lost opportunity for them if they were not
| the first fully open OS with a fully secure multiplayer
| environment that _prohibits_ both third-party cheating
| mods _and_ third-party DRM rootkits. VAC becomes as
| simple as a sysctl, and patches are still welcome. Open
| source for the win, and one step further towards the
| Linux desktop _finally_ overtaking residential Windows,
| _and_ thr ability to play console-grade multiplayer
| without the proliferation of on-device software-only
| hacks? Yes, please.
|
| (Note that manufacturers who use Secure Boot to _lock
| out_ device modifications are not in-scope here; that
| choice has _no effect_ on attestations. Secure Boot is
| "the OS booted had this checksum and signature" with HSM
| backing, so that the software can't lie. It is extremely
| unlikely that Valve would _demand_ that the OS booted be
| signed by Valve. That would be no different than Xbox
| /PS5/Switch, and they'd be leaving a massive competitive
| advantage over tvOS on the table: device
| repurposeability.)
| killingtime74 wrote:
| There's hardware level (on a separate device) ability to
| capture video and send key/mouse now. Impossible to be detected
| by anticheat.
| https://wiki.sipeed.com/hardware/en/kvm/NanoKVM_Pro/cua.html
| altairprime wrote:
| Yes, but that works just as readily on consoles as it does
| PCs, so it doesn't affect immutable Steam any more or less
| than any other gaming steam. Sealed protections are still
| valuable regardless!
| altairprime wrote:
| gaming *system
| Orygin wrote:
| It affects console too, but watch game publishers disable
| linux support, blaming cheaters while producing graphs that
| don't support their arguments. While console packs and
| cheats are rampant, and their game servers even being
| hacked during competition.
| altairprime wrote:
| If the status quo doesn't change, then you'll be right to
| have claimed here that the status quo you've described
| won't change. But that would be worse for all of us.
| Besides, Linux is an excellent platform for modding games
| in realtime, no matter what their charts show -- so
| certainly the sealed-attestation stuff would deny them a
| plausible reason to deny Linux. If Microsoft offered
| sealed Windows for free, they'd deny unsealed Windows as
| fast as humanly possible, just to stem the tide of
| software cheating. The next couple years will be very
| interesting :)
| Orygin wrote:
| I totally agree with you, and I hope the status quo will
| change. But I'm still skeptical after the Steam Deck
| success where many games enabled anti cheat, but some did
| roll back like I said previously.
|
| Attestation could help, but I'm not sure if it goes in
| the spirit of what Valve tries to do with their OS. The
| system is open and you can easily access the desktop
| (it's a first party feature) and thus do what you want.
| Maybe with a separate verified boot state without desktop
| but the user experience would not be great.
|
| And in the end, like you said, they'd run to only support
| sealed attested systems if they could. But cheats have
| evolved past being run on the computer running the game.
| Some use DMA or are in between the keyboard/mouse and the
| usb port. Consoles also have their fair share of
| cheaters. None of those would be solved by attestation.
|
| Valve has shown recently that it's possible to fight
| cheaters without kernel AC or attestation. It's just a
| bit more difficult and intensive so other AC providers
| won't go the same route.
| Hikikomori wrote:
| For good reason, anticheat on linux are basically
| useless. Not that cheating isn't rampant on other
| platforms, but you don't have to leave the door open on
| purpose.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| Steam Controller 1 wasn't good IMO and is now accumulating dust.
| esseph wrote:
| I asked a coworker today about those and he said it's the only
| controller he cares to use at all, especially for FPS.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| I don't know. I couldn't really get used to it, it has a
| weird feeling to it.
| Normal_gaussian wrote:
| Its an odd one; the v1 controller feels cheap and definitely
| isn't as high fidelity as a modern PS5 controller. It struggled
| to match the quality of contemporary controllers at the same
| price point. But the touchpads worked. They shouldn't work,
| they should be abysmal, but with a little practice they're
| fantastic.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| The rumble is really weird.
| somat wrote:
| The main problem was the missing second stick. It was well
| built, but for game where a controller is nice touch pads sort
| of suck compared to a stick and for games where a mouse is nice
| touch pads sort of suck compared to a mouse. So the only real
| advantage a touch pad brings is in an environment where you
| can't bring a mouse. I really liked the extra back buttons.
| with two sticks that is where all the face buttons should be,
| on the back.
|
| 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.
| AngryData wrote:
| I still use mine for any driving or flying in games, the stick
| it does have is super accurate. And for watching movies its a
| great remote when you arent at the keyboard. If you turn the
| right pad to simulate a weighted track ball it is what I
| consider the best Dark Souls controller.
| lewispollard wrote:
| It's the only controller I use (bar the Steam Deck's built in
| controller) despite owning plenty of other conventional
| controllers. Once you get used to it and make use of Steam
| Input's per-game customisation and mapping it works really
| well, especially if you treat it as a mouse-like input rather
| than conventional gamepad.
|
| 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.
| mcphage wrote:
| Win the console generation in what sense? In outselling the PS5?
| The Switch 2? I have trouble picturing it being cheaper than
| either.
| m000 wrote:
| It's the PC games library that will be the catalyst for
| winning.
|
| 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.
| mcphage wrote:
| > It's the PC games library that will be the catalyst for
| winning.
|
| How does the Steam Machine affect this at all, then?
| itsdrewmiller wrote:
| Love the enthusiasm but expensive versions of commodity products
| with last gen specs are not going to win that generation or the
| next one.
| SchemaLoad wrote:
| I think the hardest battle is going to be with anti cheat. The
| anti cheat that developers want basically requires dystopian
| levels of restrictions which are against everything valve has
| done on SteamOS so far.
|
| 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.
| sedatk wrote:
| If anti-virus software can function in user mode, anti-cheat
| software can too.
| https://www.theverge.com/news/692637/microsoft-windows-kerne...
| Orygin wrote:
| We know, and the game devs know too. But Kernel anti cheat is
| not a solution but simply a marketing feature to make their
| users think they try.
|
| Just seeing all the gamers requesting a kernel AC for CS2,
| saying VAC does not work; but now they have banned a lot of
| cheaters and seem to have less cheaters than the new
| Battlefield which has kernel AC.
| throwaway17_17 wrote:
| Hard agreement from me, but my 16 year old bricked his PC on
| Sunday trying to enable Valorant's BS anti-cheat, secure boot
| required crap. He even knew ahead of time that he couldn't
| enable it, but the pull of online gaming turned off his brain.
| I don't think we're gonna win this battle and the war is
| probably done as well.
| squigz wrote:
| > I think the hardest battle is going to be with anti cheat.
| The anti cheat that developers want basically requires
| dystopian levels of restrictions which are against everything
| valve has done on SteamOS so far.
|
| 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.
| beeflet wrote:
| It was fine like 10 years ago
| Hikikomori wrote:
| What restrictions are you talking about?
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| As the article says, "The only way that they could mess this up
| is with the pricing. ... I'd expect the pricing to be super
| aggressive." The price to beat is the $400-$500 price point of
| PS5 and XBox. I'm guessing Valve is going to have a very hard
| time matching that. We'll know soon enough.
| nemomarx wrote:
| Is that the price point of those anymore? I see 550 ish for the
| base ps5 with a disc drive and closer to 750 for the pro.
|
| 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
| cryzinger wrote:
| They don't even necessarily have to beat the PS5/Xbox. I
| already own the former but sometimes lament not being able to
| play the many, many PC exclusives out there (or at least
| nothing released in the past 10+ years since my daily driver
| laptop has poor specs). Just recently I was wondering whether
| one of those all-in-one Lenovo desktop boxes would have decent
| enough specs to play current-gen PC games at halfway decent
| settings, and my guess is that they don't, but I don't want to
| go through the hassle of building a PC and definitely don't
| want a tower with a huge footprint.
|
| Turns out the Steam Machine is _exactly_ what I 'm looking for.
| sedatk wrote:
| Exactly. I have both PS5 and Xbox One X, but I still connect
| my Steam Deck to TV to play Hades II because the game hasn't
| come out on those two consoles yet.
| hinkley wrote:
| I bought a steam deck to play Age of Wonders 4. Briefly got
| sucked into playing a Skyrim again.
| throwaway17_17 wrote:
| I think that realistically, Valve probably only need to be on
| par with the top of Sony's offering hardware wise. The ability
| to have Steam integration on the machine (including the large
| amount of subpar but very cheap games) will prompt at least
| some movement. I'd say $800 is probably the high-end of
| reasonable for price point. I can certain say I'd rather just
| buy my kids a StreamBox than have to deal with them want full
| capability PCs.
| hugocbp wrote:
| I agree. Steam's prices on sales are still mostly unmatched
| by consoles.
|
| 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.
| Normal_gaussian wrote:
| Totally. SteamOS is everything here.
| pixelatedindex wrote:
| $699 (maybe 799 for a more premium model) seems to be a good
| compromise given what it would take to build a sufficiently
| similar PC while being close enough to the PS5/Switch. Xbox is
| practically dead.
|
| 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.
| hinkley wrote:
| You can tell XBox is cooked because Halo was released on the
| PS5.
| uoaei wrote:
| With the specs these devices have I don't think it's far-
| fetched to assume that pricing will be competitive. Maybe they
| will charge a bit extra if they tout all the extra stuff you
| can install on the Machine vs Xbox as a selling point, which
| they are kind of doing, to justify a slightly higher price
| point.
| dagmx wrote:
| They told press that it wouldn't be console pricing and would
| match entry level PC. I think it's going to be $800
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| 800 is probably already too much for the compromises you need
| to make. You happily make those compromises for a handheld
| due to its nature. But a desktop is a harder sell.
| nodja wrote:
| All they have to do is market the fact you don't have to pay
| for online.
|
| 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.
| Aeolun wrote:
| Plus a game catalog that stretches back some 30 years?
| wpm wrote:
| And +X years, because you could write your own games for it
| and install them without begging for permission from Valve.
| pezezin wrote:
| More like 50 years if you consider emulators (RetroArch is
| available on Steam).
| culi wrote:
| It doesn't even need to be available on Steam to be fair.
| You can run whatever games you want. You could even run a
| Nintendo Switch emulator if you want
| tapoxi wrote:
| This system won't run FIFA, GTA Online, Battlefield, Valorant
| or CoD, it's a nonstarter for many.
|
| 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.
| cirelli94 wrote:
| > This system won't run FIFA, GTA Online, Battlefield,
| Valorant or CoD, it's a nonstarter for many.
|
| That's largely known now but still a bummer. I wonder if
| anything will ever change in this area and if Valve will be
| able to pressure game editors or create an anti-cheat so
| good and for any platform to be able to change something.
| Hikikomori wrote:
| Valve can't even do it for cs2 on windows.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Don't see why they'd risk it. They already had to reduce
| their cut just to attract players like Activision and
| Take Two onto their platform.
|
| Also, making anti cheat on Linux feels like the most
| Anti-Linux thing to do. But I don't play many multiplayer
| games, so I have no skin in the game.
| culi wrote:
| Steam Machine is just a PC. You can dual boot or use a VM
| or use Wine/Proton .
|
| It can be involved but it's certainly possible
| silveraxe93 wrote:
| Why not? You can just install windows on it.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| "Just", YMMV.
|
| It has a custom motherboard for example, which may or may
| not be supported by Microsoft.
| _flux wrote:
| Windows works in SteamDeck, so I think it seems highly
| likely that Valve will provide the drivers for this
| device as well.
| Sammi wrote:
| *yet
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| >All they have to do is market the fact you don't have to pay
| for online.
|
| All Sony and MS have to do it market that it can't play GTA6
| at launch.
| jijijijij wrote:
| All Valve has to do is bundle it with Half-Life 3.
| redwall_hp wrote:
| Or Fortnite, Genshin Impact, Roblox, Marvel Rivals or any
| other popular live service game. Which are the games most
| people care about now.
| culi wrote:
| Hard disagree with that claim. The truth is anyone with a PC
| and a steam machine basically already has a Steam Machine.
| Steam doesn't _need_ to sell at a loss like most consoles.
| Their only real goal is to prove that there 's nothing a
| console can do that a PC can't do.
| asadotzler wrote:
| It won't outsell Quest 2, much less the real consoles, not in the
| next half decade anyway.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Related:
|
| Steam Frame https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45903325
|
| Steam Machine https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45903404
| skissane wrote:
| So, Steam is planning to sell these at a loss, but isn't planning
| to lock out third party OS?
|
| 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.
| killingtime74 wrote:
| Did they say they are selling at a loss?
| TheRoque wrote:
| I don't think they have, but it's the business model of most
| consoles, to be able to be very affordable. So since the
| headline is implying it'll do better than consoles, it's
| implying it'll be sold at a loss too. But honestly, I find
| that article BS.
| Normal_gaussian wrote:
| Valve haven't said that, but the article randomly claims it.
| protimewaster wrote:
| I think the explanation is that people love Valve beyond
| reason, so a vast majority will just use Steam on it.
|
| 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.
| TheRoque wrote:
| If that's what happens, then I'm buying one of these right away
| for sure. I mean, I use steam a lot, but I certainly won't be
| locked in their "SteamOS". Maybe they are betting that most
| users will be too lazy to change the defaults and stick to
| SteamOS (which might very well be the case, and they have a
| hint of this thanks to the data they have on the Steam Deck)
| opan wrote:
| You can install Windows (or Bazzite, or whatever else) on a
| Steam Deck as well.
| raincole wrote:
| > Steam is planning to sell these at a loss
|
| 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.
| ethmarks wrote:
| What non-gaming use cases do you imagine people might use these
| for?
|
| 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.
| bsder wrote:
| > What non-gaming use cases do you imagine people might use
| these for?
|
| Media box under your TV? Right now I don't have a lot of
| options that also don't inundate me with ads.
|
| Sure, I can build one, but if Valve can put this out at a
| price that makes me go "Nah. Not worth building it myself."
| that's a win.
| ethmarks wrote:
| Couldn't you use a Raspberry Pi or a mini PC for this?
| bsder wrote:
| Sure? But RPi's are anemic and not cheap while refurb
| mini PC's are $400.
|
| So, there's quite a bit of pricing room.
| lotyrin wrote:
| I think the mini PCs they're talking about are more
| likely to be N100 systems or similar that are sub 100
| dollars new. Significantly less anemic, and their
| hardware media decode (which is well supported by
| software) is more than sufficient for realtime 4k
| playback.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| You can get 100-200EUR Chinese mini (or micro?) PCs with an
| Intel N97/N100 CPU that can do this perfectly.
|
| No need to buy an almost 1000EUR massively overpowered
| custom gaming machine for that.
| James_K wrote:
| You can run media from a potato. This will be at least 5x
| the cost of a cheap mini-PC. And you can't forget power
| draw. The Steam Machine has a 30W CPU, and I'd guess about
| 60W RAM which would add up to something like $120+ annually
| where a mini PC would cost closer to $7. 5 years later and
| the Steam Machine has eaten it's cost in power. Assuming it
| costs $500 like most consoles, you are looking at a total
| 5-year cost of $1100 where a mini-PC would be $100-200.
| xgulfie wrote:
| What's stopping someone from using a steam deck for running
| emulators, SuperTuxKart, and pirated games? This isn't their
| first rodeo
| SchemaLoad wrote:
| I doubt the steam deck is sold at a loss.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| no modern console is sold at a loss this is silly speculation
| neilv wrote:
| What is the multiplayer cheating situation like on Steam games?
|
| (Technology, demographics, popularity?)
| TheRoque wrote:
| "steam games", doesn't really mean anything. Most games are on
| steam nowadays. It mostly depends on the OS on which the games
| run. Games with kernel anti cheat: low cheaters population,
| runs on Windows but not Linux. Games without kernel anti cheat:
| low to high (think counter strike official servers) cheaters
| population.
| Normal_gaussian wrote:
| Valve certainly won't win it, but they're bringing the heat where
| it wasn't before.
|
| 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.
| robomc wrote:
| Yeah I mean... can I play Fortnite, BF6 or the upcoming GTA on
| steamOS?
| rvz wrote:
| If any game has DRM or anti-cheat technology which BF6 does
| and even most AAA games, then it cannot play it at all
| without it.
|
| That is going to be a no go for any SteamOS device when an
| highly anticipated game gets released on day 1.
| aaomidi wrote:
| Market pressure can change game studios behavior.
| LexiMax wrote:
| Battlefield 6 might never run on the average Linux
| desktop, but I could see a future where it would run on
| Steam hardware in an end-to-end Secure Boot environment.
|
| Gamers don't like playing with cheaters.
| aaomidi wrote:
| We're going to have to figure out a better way of dealing
| with cheaters.
|
| You could be playing against an AI model specifically
| trained on that game. No anti cheat is going to detect
| that.
| cestith wrote:
| A few anti-cheat systems rather than inspecting the local
| machine look for things like impossibly fast target
| acquisition in FPS games, or the server noticing when a
| shot is taken on an opponent who's supposed to be totally
| obscured. Those aren't perfect, but they don't require
| kernel-level anticheat.
| rangestransform wrote:
| Cheating detection server side is expensive and
| probabilistic at best, kernel level anti cheat is a
| purely financial decision
| LexiMax wrote:
| I find it much more likely that Valve enables Secure Boot
| on their Steam hardware.
|
| I imagine that if this happens, it will be followed by
| popular Linux distros finally becoming serious about
| their Secure Boot implementations, instead of simply
| shimming it or seen as a rarely-used feature reserved for
| enterprise distros like RHEL.
|
| Some of us actually think that having some sort of
| validation that our OS hasn't been tampered with is a
| feature and not a bug. It's only a problem when companies
| parlay that validation into anti-consumer DRM - but
| that's a political problem, not a technological one.
| Hikikomori wrote:
| Or rebooting to a secure mode where you can only run the
| game and maybe discord.
| hlfshell wrote:
| ARC Raiders runs fine with anticheat on Linux. As does the
| Finals.
| ethmarks wrote:
| I think that the idea is that if you get enough users on
| Linux, it seems foolish from the game studio's perspective
| not to add Linux support to their anticheat.
| walletdrainer wrote:
| Not necessarily, the anticheat will end up much easier to
| defeat on Linux.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| This depends heavily on how customised the linux is. Back
| in the day Amazon had to fork Android to add kernel-level
| support for DRM, otherwise the studios weren't going to
| permit streaming video on Fire tablets. One could imagine
| Valve adding an optional kernel DRM module to solve the
| same problem.
| walletdrainer wrote:
| You still lose because the dev team has to split their
| attention.
|
| And anyway I (and many other people!) have valid keys for
| basically all widevine streams extracted from supposedly
| secure android devices. That DRM approach ended up
| failing miserably and torrent sites are full of WEB-DLs.
| ethmarks wrote:
| But you can still stream video on normal Android devices,
| no? My Motorola phone supports Disney+. Why did studios
| object to streaming on Fire tablets unless it had kernel
| DRM but they're fine with streaming on easily-rootable
| phones?
| swiftcoder wrote:
| Not at that time, no - this was several years before
| Google decided to ship Widevine in Android
| walletdrainer wrote:
| FWIW rooting the phone is not enough to get you the
| widevine keys.
|
| Also some services will just downgrade you to a lower
| quality stream if your device doesn't have the
| appropriate keys.
| ethmarks wrote:
| It's possible that 'adding Linux support' would take the
| form of just making the anticheat optional.
|
| Maybe playing with the anticheat enabled makes you immune
| to being reported for cheating (because they can verify
| down to the kernel level that you aren't), but you can
| still play without it (but without the immunity from
| being reported).
|
| Obviously they wouldn't do this in today's market because
| there's no incentive to do so, but if a significant
| portion of gamers moved to Linux, offering a Linux
| solution might become a reasonable choice for game
| studios.
| pbronez wrote:
| Optional anti-cheat could be really interesting. Make it
| a matchmaking option; let the players decide who they
| want to play with. This effectively makes "PC without
| Anti-cheat" a new platform in cross-platform match
| making.
|
| I can imagine a whole scene popping up where everyone
| cheats to the max, creating whole new game modes.
| ethmarks wrote:
| > I can imagine a whole scene popping up where everyone
| cheats to the max, creating whole new game modes.
|
| That would be very interesting. I also bet that people
| would start developing bots that play the game better
| than a human could and eventually it would essentially
| turn into digital BattleBots.
| fulafel wrote:
| Not the case - lots of games including AAA ones have these
| things on the Steam Deck.
| johnny22 wrote:
| anti-cheat is one thing, but i'm not aware of any DRM that
| doesn't work on linux? I know denuvo is one of the most
| popular ones and it definitely does
| Normal_gaussian wrote:
| Probably not. Kernel level anti cheat is the problem. I know
| BF6 isn't proton safe. Fortnite is the same.
|
| 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.
| eptcyka wrote:
| GTA V multiplayer was working fine on Proton not too long
| ago. Haven't played in years though.
| pbmonster wrote:
| There where changes a few months ago. Multiplayer is
| completely non-viable since then.
| rkangel wrote:
| There's a circular opportunity though - if the SteamOS
| market share gets anywhere, then it might become worth it
| for these developers to support anti-cheat on the that
| platform. Some systems (notably BattleEye) actually have
| Linux support, they just need to enable it, but there's no
| incentive for them to do so.
| Kbelicius wrote:
| > Some systems (notably BattleEye) actually have Linux
| support, they just need to enable it, but there's no
| incentive for them to do so.
|
| This isn't really true. As GP said, there isn't a kernel
| level anti cheat for linux. You can switch a flick on
| BattleEye to run on linux but it wont be a kernel level
| as it is on windows. So there is an incentive for them to
| not turn it on because it simply is the worse version
| than the windows one. As far as I know even on windows
| you get cheats even if it is kernel level. Meaning,
| allowing linux you'd probably be flooded with cheaters if
| you already get them on windows.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Meaning, allowing linux you'd probably be flooded with
| cheaters if you already get them on windows.
|
| There's an easy way to not get cheaters, or at least to
| slow down their impact: stop making your games "free to
| play". When cheaters have to buy 60EUR games everytime
| they get b&, eventually they'll run out of money.
| Hikikomori wrote:
| That really doesn't stop cheaters. Tarkov EoD edition is
| $150 or so, cheaters still cheat on those. They cheat in
| cs2 with skins worth thousands.
| unaindz wrote:
| Battleeye games get flooded with cheaters no matter what.
| On most anti cheats is the same anyways. Just see tarkov
| for a battleeye game with rampant cheaters
| moomin wrote:
| After the CrowdStrike debacle, it's amazing Microsoft isn't
| coming for kernel-level gaming patches.
| rowanG077 wrote:
| That you are talking about a hypothetical game not running
| says enough...
| lanfeust6 wrote:
| Fortnite came out in '17, at some point it's no longer going
| to be relevant.
| jsheard wrote:
| Counter Strike came out in '99 and it's more relevant than
| ever. Some games just keep going and going.
| Ferret7446 wrote:
| I hate to break it to you, but CS is not relevant. How
| much money do you think it makes, compared to recent top
| sellers or live service/mobile games?
| refulgentis wrote:
| About $1B/year.
|
| CS:GO is the highest grossing game on Steam, according to
| some sources, all agree its top 5.
|
| Why is that irrelevant?
| jsheard wrote:
| Also consistently the most played game on Steam by a fair
| margin. That doesn't necessarily make it the most played
| PC game since some big titles like League and Fortnite
| aren't on Steam, but it's at least close.
| Ferret7446 wrote:
| Raid shadow legends is also estimated to make around
| $1B/year, and there are many such mobile games.
|
| Roblox made $3.6B in 2024. Fornite makes $3-5B/year for
| the past ~decade.
|
| Genshin Impact is estimated to make ~$10B this year.
|
| Not only in revenue, but all of the above have way more
| cultural impact/awareness too.
|
| The pond is very big, but it's easy to miss that if
| you're in a bubble in that pond.
| Yokolos wrote:
| CS is consistently the top played game on Steam every
| year. Are you saying Steam isn't relevant? That's quite
| the claim to be making.
| refulgentis wrote:
| You didn't know what you were talking about and got
| caught in it.
|
| That's fine! I was surprised too.
|
| Something I've learned with age is it's better to have a
| laugh together than throw out more cover.
| bloqs wrote:
| I dont give the slightest of shits about CS but have you
| seen the figures? It's doing absurdly well. In addition
| the separate economy for skins peaked at 6 billion
| recently.
|
| thats not irrelevant
| lanfeust6 wrote:
| Its not the same game today as it was '99. You could try
| to make the argument for Fortnite but the differences are
| not substantial.
|
| Point being that if changes are a given, then it's
| possible for it to run on Linux in the future.
| brendoelfrendo wrote:
| No, and I understand if that's a deal-breaker for you, but
| for me I refuse avoid kernel level anticheat wherever
| possible, so I'm none too fussed about it. If a game wants to
| run malware, it can do it on a console where it's nice and
| segmented off from my general-purpose computing.
| Hikikomori wrote:
| Do you also game on a separate windows/Linux user?
| cestith wrote:
| I can't speak for brendo, but I do most of my gaming on a
| separate PC-class machine from my home workstation, both
| of which are separate from my work laptop and personal
| laptop.
| bathtub365 wrote:
| It's unlikely you'll be able to play GTA 6 on any PC platform
| as it's only coming out on consoles.
| Agentlien wrote:
| At least to start. Microsoft strongly encourages all Xbox
| games to also come out on PC, though they sometimes release
| later. I cannot find any game developed originally for Xbox
| Series X|S where this hasn't happened eventually (and the
| developers definitively aren't still working on the PC
| version).
| pjmlp wrote:
| And they might eventually steer all games into XBox
| store.
|
| I am expecting the day Microsoft decides to take all
| their studios out of Steam, if SteamOS starts to be too
| much of a pain.
| wraptile wrote:
| These are not winner games these days. Gaming trends are so
| fast that indie games like the one where you play a duck with
| a gun is what's driving the gaming community these days.
| itsn0tm3 wrote:
| I would say that's a bit overly simplified, as much as the
| indie or indie like game scene is thriving, so is the
| online multiplayer scene. Gaming is huge and just because
| one thing is big doesn't mean another is not. Not a zero
| sum game here.
| wraptile wrote:
| Sure but not being able to play 4 games is not an
| indication of success either way. It's not 2012 when you
| had to have Call of Duty - you can not have battlefield,
| cod or fort nite and still never run out of incredible,
| popular games to play.
| SkiFire13 wrote:
| If you have a bunch of friends that have
| battlefield/cod/fortnite and want to play them, they will
| still do so without you, or at least heavily pressure you
| into getting them.
| wraptile wrote:
| I'm not sure what could that even mean from consumer pov
| - I'm not going to buy a platform because some of my
| friends might want me to play a specific game with me?
|
| The pressure to get more games on your platform has never
| been as low as it is today and has never been this low on
| Steam itself. You could spend a lifetime with the current
| Steam library and never feel bored.
|
| From product pov Valve feels very comfortable and I bet
| they have the data to back up this move with basically
| unlimited war chest. If anything I feel like Valve is
| pressuring game developers of these major games here -
| not the other way around.
| SkiFire13 wrote:
| > I'm not sure what could that even mean from consumer
| pov - I'm not going to buy a platform because some of my
| friends might want me to play a specific game with me?
|
| Yeah exactly. Depending how much you care about playing
| with friends compared to playing at all you might make
| that choice.
| dgfl wrote:
| That's exactly the thought process of every teenager
| ever, and also most people who want to connect with their
| friends through gaming beyond their teenage years.
|
| Not everyone experiences gaming the same way.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| > I'm not sure what could that even mean from consumer
| pov - I'm not going to buy a platform because some of my
| friends might want me to play a specific game with me?
|
| That's exactly how console sales worked in the past. I
| bought an Xbox because all my friends were playing Halo,
| and I wanted to join in...
|
| The recent phenomenon of games supporting cross-play out
| of the gate is probably eating into this, but exclusives
| were a hell of a moat back in the day.
| bloqs wrote:
| thats not accurate. they have improved, but the market does
| not look as you described
| crote wrote:
| Sure, but those AAA games still exist, and people still
| want to play them.
|
| As a gamer, why would you want to spend a few hundred bucks
| on a gaming box, when it isn't able to play the biggest
| hits? Who would want to _deliberately_ limit their
| ecosystem to indie games?
|
| There's a nonzero chance that BF6/GTA6/etc becomes a thing
| that everyone wants to play. If all your friends are raging
| about how much fun it is and are all playing together,
| aren't you going to regret buying a Steam Machine?
|
| Sure, you can still play Super Meat Boy, but that _doesn 't
| matter_ - they regret what they _can 't_ do.
| dontlaugh wrote:
| Exactly, this competes with a second hand PS5.
| chmod775 wrote:
| Nonsense. People don't buy a PS5 and regret they can't
| play League of Legends. There's been games exclusive to
| one platform or the other since the dawn of time, yet
| people still buy them for the games they _do_ have.
|
| That thing is going to run a ton of games that other
| consoles don't.
|
| Few customers are going to replace their PC with it, but
| if you have the cash and want to add a sleek console to
| your living room that will also stream from your desktop
| in a pinch, it's probably a great deal.
| unionpivo wrote:
| >As a gamer, why would you want to spend a few hundred
| bucks on a gaming box, when it isn't able to play the
| biggest hits? Who would want to deliberately limit their
| ecosystem to indie games?
|
| ???
|
| Look at steam top 100, sure there are 2 or 3 games you
| wont be able to play on there, but there rest work just
| fine. And sure there are popular games outside steam, but
| even if none of them worked (which is not true), for most
| gamers its a non issue. (And Valve is probably not really
| concerned about them)
|
| The only games this limits are online competitive (most
| of the time FPS) games. There are plenty of gamers,
| myself included, that have 0 interest in such games.
|
| In short even if 0 online FPS games are playable on steam
| console(which is not true), there are still 10s of
| millions of gamers, who wouldn't care.
|
| As far as why wouldn't people pick something that can
| play 100% of games is because they cant. Even the best PC
| cant play Nintendo games, not all PS games are on PC or
| xbox, etc. You always have a trade off. And plenty of
| people still buy PC's,Deck, PS5's and Switch consoles.
|
| My guess id more people won't buy it because, they want
| better specs, not because a few games wont work on them.
|
| But that still leaves millions, potentially tens of
| millions of people.
| philistine wrote:
| According to your logic, then no one should be currently
| buying a Switch 2, because it won't play GTA6. Yet people
| are buying that console!
|
| Is it you, or is it the children? No, it's definitely the
| children who are wrong.
| Arainach wrote:
| The Switch 2 has exclusives that people DO want. The
| Steam Machine does not.
| butlike wrote:
| Risking pedantry here, but there are some windows-only
| games that could be considered PC exclusive (and by
| extension, steam machine exclusive)
| Arainach wrote:
| None at the AAA-tier which sell consoles.
| philistine wrote:
| The sale success of the Steam Deck proves you wrong. The
| PC is the strongest platform for exclusives because most
| of everything ends up there eventually. The Xbox has no
| exclusives anymore, Sony is publishing everything on PC
| eventually. Only Nintendo remains as never publishing on
| PC. If you are flexible about your choice of multiplayer-
| only titles (if you're even interested in that type of
| things) then the Steam Machine is the best console.
|
| Sony's in trouble; their crown jewels are all on PC right
| now! You can buy a Steam Machine next year and play all
| the Spider-Mensch, the Lost Hose, the Ghouls of Yo-Kai!
| msabalau wrote:
| If there is a non-zero chance that I might want to play
| such a game, from time to time, I can stream it.
|
| Why would I want to limit my options for occasional AAA
| gaming to the graphics supported by a particular console,
| when I can spring for GeForce Ultimate for a month and
| play BF6 with amazing graphics at 120 FPS, on my TV or my
| laptop, or my iPad or my phone? And play with even better
| graphics two years from now, as the state of the art
| advances.
|
| Sure a different option would likely be best for people
| who know they want to play AAA, all the time. Although,
| even for many of these people, the Steam machine is
| probably a great second box for many, that gets you
| however many 100s or 1000s of titles they have in their
| Steam library.
|
| But a fear based "you might miss out occasionally"
| argument is unpersuasive. Especially in a world where
| some games are exclusive. My swanky new PlayStation is no
| help if everyone is raving about the new Nintendo game.
| slightwinder wrote:
| That's a misconception. Majority of players are with the
| big Franchises, and they stay with them. The variety-gamers
| who are playing multiple different games are a minority,
| though they are a big crowd, loud and have for obvious
| reasons more attention, leading to this misconception. For
| example, Escape from Duckov, which you are speaking about,
| had at it's peak "just" roughly as many players as
| Battlefield 6 has on average every day. And Battlefield is
| the smaller one of the big games.
| Aerroon wrote:
| I don't think it's entirely the case. They are on
| franchises, but not the ones you think of - they're
| playing live service games that have been around for
| years. Games like League of Legends, Counterstrike,
| Fortnite, Dota, WoW, PUBG etc. Games like Battlefield are
| up there, but I don't think they're the games people
| mainly play over the years. (Although Fifa and GTA
| definitely are.)
|
| For example, the top 10 games in Korean PC bangs last
| week were:
|
| 1. League of Legends
|
| 2. PUBG (I think)
|
| 3. Fifa
|
| 4. Valorant
|
| 5. Overwatch 2
|
| 6. Sudden Attack (a KR FPS game)
|
| 7. Maple Story
|
| 8. Lost Ark
|
| 9. Dungeon Fighter Online
|
| 10. StarCraft (Brood War, I believe)
|
| The next 15: Diablo 2 Resurrection, World of Warcraft,
| Diablo 4, Lineage, Eternal Return, Path of Exile,
| Warcraft 3, Black Desert, Cyphers, Aion, Path of Exile 2,
| Diablo 3, StarCraft 2, Tales Runner, Final Fantasy 14.
|
| Lineage and Brood War weren't even made in this
| millennium!
| slightwinder wrote:
| > I don't think it's entirely the case. They are on
| franchises, but not the ones you think of
|
| I didn't name any franchise. I only mentioned Battlefield
| to compare it with the mentioned Duck-Game, as they are
| both on Steam where everyone can see the numbers. I mean
| if we are talking about the real big numbers, then we
| would be with Minecraft, Roblox, Fortnite, LoL, which are
| all not on Steam; making number-checking a tad harder.
|
| > Games like Battlefield are up there, but I don't think
| they're the games people mainly play over the years.
|
| As a Franchise it seems moving Fifa, very popular, but
| also seasonal peaks. Each new version shoves in players
| for a while, until they are satisfied again. Though, I
| don't really play them, so it's just external
| observation.
| rirze wrote:
| Man, I'm surprised DFO still in the top 10. I thought
| that game died out spectacularly.
| wraptile wrote:
| That's a lot of guesswork for such a strong claim as
| yours. You can actually see gaming distribution on open
| steamdb[1] stats and every year the amount of games avg
| player plays grows higher and higher.
|
| A linux native game called Banana got almost a million
| concurrent player peak (compared to #1 CS2 having only
| 1.8M). This didn't exist 10 years ago - the gaming
| landscape is entirely different in 2025.
|
| This call that gamers generally play 1 game only is
| extremely dated especially when flavor of the month games
| are extremely in right now. I'm sure Valve with the
| biggest gaming dataset in the world didn't just dive into
| this blind.
|
| 1 - https://steamdb.info/charts/
| Ekaros wrote:
| The reality of native Linux gaming must be really sad if
| the top example is in essence "NFT" generator with
| minimal if no gameplay...
|
| It is essentially a software toy people left running to
| generate random items some of which ended up being
| speculated on generating some money for "players".
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| The last 3 games I played on Linux were Hades 2,
| Hearthstone, Baldurs Gate 3. It is not a sad state of
| affairs at all
| slightwinder wrote:
| > That's a lot of guesswork
|
| It's not guesswork, it's reading the statistics. Gaming
| Reports are regularly showing that the majority of gamers
| and income is with only a handful of games/franchises.
|
| > You can actually see gaming distribution on open
| steamdb[1] stats and every year the amount of games avg
| player plays grows higher and higher.
|
| Yes, because the market grows. But look at the numbers,
| the top is always with the same games, with the same
| numbers, which are usually in a complete different league
| then the rest. The Top 5 Games have usually 10-20 times
| as many players as every other games. And, be aware that
| this is only Steam. The gaming market is much, much
| bigger than just steam. Steam is kinda its own bubble
| with a skewed view.
|
| I'm not saying steam or indie-market is small, but people
| looking at PC and Indie-games develop a kind of natural
| filter for the real behemoths of the market.
|
| > A linux native game called Banana got almost a million
| concurrent player peak
|
| We have at the moment >3 Billion Players. 1 Million
| gamers for a shady shortlived hype-game is not bad, but
| it's not even remotely winning the market, or setting a
| trend. At best, it's setting a trend in a specific niche.
| Valve wiped out billions of value in CS-Skins some week
| ago. That's more market-influence than a free game with
| shady skin-business will ever gain.
| zyx321 wrote:
| Duckov is not indie. It's a reasonably sized game backed by
| a large (Chinese) publisher.
| _ache_ wrote:
| 5 years ago, if someone told you about a commercial Linux
| gaming console. You were right to laugh.
|
| 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.
| wiseowise wrote:
| Jesus, since when Fortnite and BF6 became gaming benchmark
| nowadays?
|
| 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.
| onion2k wrote:
| _Jesus, since when Fortnite and BF6 became gaming benchmark
| nowadays?_
|
| In order to 'win' a console generation there needs to be
| support for the games people want to play. Capitalism is a
| literal popularity contest, and any console that doesn't
| have Fortnite, COD, FIFA, etc won't win, regardless of what
| you or I might think of the games.
|
| The reason why Steam can't win a console generation is
| simply because Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo have enough
| sway over publishers (especially ones they own) than they
| stop popular games being available on a rival platform.
| They market it as 'exclusives' but really it's just anti-
| consumer.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I can see developers work on SteamOS anticheat soon, once it
| gains more traction (chicken / egg problem though). Those
| games are available on mobile phones and consoles as well, so
| "windows" is not a requirement.
| kotaKat wrote:
| If you can't play Fortnite on it it sounds like a great time
| to line up a lawsuit against Epic Games for refusing to allow
| you to play Fortnite on the Steam box.
| StopDisinfo910 wrote:
| I think Valve has a fairly good grasp of what they
| addressable market is at this point with the Steam Deck
| having been out for so 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.
| tombert wrote:
| My main game console right now is one of those little gaming
| boxes you can buy on Amazon for about $400, where I have
| installed NixOS + Jovian to get the "SteamOS" interface.
|
| 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.
| Mistletoe wrote:
| Do you have link to the little gaming box?
| tombert wrote:
| Yep! https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D733JFML?th=1
|
| The one I ordered had 32 gigs of memory; this was more than
| a year ago so I'm sure there are better ones now, but I
| have to say that I feel like this thing "punches above its
| weight" in that it does seem to run a lot more stuff than I
| thought it would at a decent framerate.
| chintech2 wrote:
| These are the Beelink boxes.
|
| They got very popular when they released a video of the
| manufacturing process.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohwI3V207Ts
| Mistletoe wrote:
| Wow these are so much more well made than I thought.
| stavros wrote:
| Hm, does it work well for games? I have a NUC I could
| use...
| pizlonator wrote:
| I have one of the higher-end beelinks. Super small,
| quiet, doesn't get hot and I can play modern AAA titles
| on it, driving my huge screen TV in my living room.
| stavros wrote:
| Sorry, I more meant "does Jovian work well?". I have a
| Beelink ME and love it, but I want a gaming "appliance"
| OS.
| tombert wrote:
| Jovian works pretty great actually. Once I got it set up
| it pretty much worked exactly as I expected.
| johnmaguire wrote:
| Can you quantify this? Which Beelink? Are you powering a
| 4K TV? When you talk about playing modern AAA games,
| which ones, and what settings do you run at?
| pizlonator wrote:
| Fortnite, Cyberpunk, Starfield, probably others I'm
| forgetting
|
| I believe the TV is 4K, yeah.
|
| It's the Beelink SER9 AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370
| 12core/24thread AI PC Turbo Freq 5.1GHz
| whazor wrote:
| I installed NixOS + Jovian on my Steamdeck and it works great
| as well.
| GardenLetter27 wrote:
| Nix support is built-in to SteamOS already btw, I used that
| to set up Ship of Harkinian for example.
| s0l1dsnak3123 wrote:
| Could you elaborate? Does steamOS ship the nix binary &
| mountpoints?
| MrDrMcCoy wrote:
| IIRC, the nix package manager can run entirely user-level
| on any distro. It doesn't ship on the Deck, but it's the
| same process there as anywhere else.
| Fnoord wrote:
| That sounds interesting because with NixOS it should be very
| easy to move your config to the next thing, and honestly I
| prefer NixOS over Arch.
|
| What I wanted to ask you: have you converted the device into
| a STB as well or is that still standalone?
| abustamam wrote:
| Which box is that? I personally have a Nvidia Shield with
| Steam Link to stream games from my gaming computer to my TV.
| I connected an Xbox controller and it works pretty well. I
| also use an old iPad for streaming games for games that don't
| lend themselves well to a controller.
|
| 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.
| feffe wrote:
| Steam on Linux works really well now. I sort of built my own
| steam machine a few months back with a framework desktop that
| now sits in my TV rack. Gaming on it is a really good
| experience. Had to buy a PS5 controller though because I could
| not get the XBOX controller to work over bluetooth which was a
| bit of a bummer. For me the new controller is most interesting
| as most games have XBOX controller support (with xbox button
| captions) and the steam controller adopts the button naming.
| zeta0134 wrote:
| I just built one of these as well. For your Xbox controller,
| see if this works: find any Windows PC and download the Xbox
| Accessories app. Connect the controller (via USB) and update
| its firmware. Once I did this, I was able to pair it with the
| framework desktop via bluetooth (under linux) reliably, and
| it's been rock solid ever since. Apparently some of the
| models shipped with buggy firmware that linux really doesn't
| like for whatever reason.
| exitb wrote:
| If you still have the xbox controller, I'd recommend the
| dedicated USB wireless adapter. It's reasonably priced and
| very solid.
| hamdingers wrote:
| Especially if you ever use more than one controller at a
| time, a dedicated dongle is essential.
| snalty wrote:
| > reasonably priced storage upgrades
|
| To be fair to Sony here, the PS5 uses a normal m.2 NVME SSD for
| storage upgrades.
| extraduder_ire wrote:
| And the ps3/ps4 before it used 2.5 inch sata drives.
| testdelacc1 wrote:
| Current OS split of Steam users - 94.84% windows, 2.11% mac,
| 3.05% Linux.
|
| 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.
| nobodyandproud wrote:
| Valve's strategy being that Microsoft will continue down this
| user-hostile and privacy-hostile experience.
|
| 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.
| badosu wrote:
| Why unfortunately? Isn't that a good thing? (Assuming > 0%
| will switch to Linux instead of iOS)
| cestith wrote:
| Honestly, as much as I prefer Linux for most things Linux
| staying pat and macOS stealing market share from Windows
| is almost as good as Linux taking those users. I think
| we're currently seeing a trend starting of people leaving
| Windows for each of them, and some users for both of
| them.
| spooky_deep wrote:
| I'd bet that most PC Windows gamers care a lot more about
| Steam than they do about Windows. If Microsoft did anything
| drastic - like blocking Steam like Apple do on iOS - it would
| hurt Windows severely.
| bloqs wrote:
| their biggest fight is this:
|
| "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.
| blitzar wrote:
| "Will it play GTA6, and play it well, whenever that
| eventually comes out?"
|
| 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.
| rs186 wrote:
| I assume people who choose a Steam Machine over PS5 know
| what they are doing.
|
| On the other hand, people are probably dumber than I think.
| vintermann wrote:
| There are presumably mobile games which have even bigger
| playerbases. Most of the "regular gamers" of this sort I know
| will probably not buy a console either. Does it matter?
|
| It really says most about what people you hang out with.
| wingmanjd wrote:
| For what it's worth, Rocket League plays just fine on Linux
| if you use Proton, but your point on the others still stands.
|
| 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.
| ninetyninenine wrote:
| Steam needs IP. Something as iconic as Kratos or Mario. That's
| how you go toe to toe with consoles.
| b3lvedere wrote:
| Gordon Freeman and Glados should be able to handle that.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Probably not, unless they learn to count to three, those
| series seem to be over.
|
| Valve seems to be more of a platform company these days (a
| very good one, though).
| paride5745 wrote:
| Remember Valve released HL: Alyx to promote their first
| VR headset.
|
| It is not unreasonable to get a pair of titles to promote
| these two new products.
|
| A man can dream, but a new HL for the Steam Machine and a
| new Portal for the Frame would be great.
| b3lvedere wrote:
| It would also be the biggest sales pitch in the universe
|
| "Buy a Steam Machine and get Half Life 3 for free" "Buy a
| Steam Frame and get Portal 3 for free"
|
| Tech and software support should be absolutely perfect
| though..
| jonkoops wrote:
| It doesn't need IP, it is already THE marketplace for PC
| gaming. People will get a box like this to play the library
| they already own, or get great deals on new games.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| > it is already THE marketplace for PC gaming
|
| Yeah, but console gamers don't necessarily know or care
| about that. If you want to cut into the console market, you
| kind of have to meet console gamers halfway
| iteria wrote:
| Not if you are playing the long game. You get console
| gamers by buying consoles. Steam now has the concept of
| parental controls and kid accounts. That's the story of
| why my kid has never played a console. And I have grabbed
| a lot of her friends as well. In 5 or 6 years when these
| kids are teens, they will stay with steam and play
| whatever works on that platform over picking up whatever
| Nintendo, Sony or Microsoft drop.
|
| PC gaming had been dying because it was losing kids with
| the rise of tablets and phones. This is a decent solution
| even if it will not pay off immediately.
| vintermann wrote:
| But only halfway. You don't need to have _exactly_ the
| same market as an existing console. It 's not as if the
| existing consoles have exactly the same market as each
| other either.
|
| And Valve is already a lot more than halfway from what I
| can tell.
| Yoric wrote:
| Does it?
|
| I mean, it already has a library of games vaster than all
| other consoles taken together.
| jimangel2001 wrote:
| Steam/Valve is the IP already. It's the default goto for
| gamers.
| josephg wrote:
| I bought a bunch of games for console over the years that I
| can't play any more.
|
| 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?
| TiredOfLife wrote:
| Switch 2 plays all* switch 1 games.
|
| Xbox series plays all xbox one and even a bunch of xbox 360
| games
|
| Ps5 plays all* ps4 games
|
| Every console has moved to essentially off the shelf soc so
| backwards compatiblity comes as a side effect
| josephg wrote:
| Once burned, twice shy. It's going to take a few more
| generations to see how long they actually maintain that
| compatibility for going forward.
|
| I suspect consoles will move to arm chips at some point.
| When they do, will Sony and Nintendo bother making a
| Rosetta type layer for backwards compatibility to play
| the games they're selling now? I doubt it. We'll see.
| akimbostrawman wrote:
| I think most people would take the biggest library of past,
| current and future games, cheaper games and free online over
| those. Not to mention valve of all devs has enough legendary
| IPs. Kratos and many others have been on steam for years.
| StopDisinfo910 wrote:
| There is something vaguely amusing to me about complaining
| that Valve of _Half-Life_ , _Counter Strike_ , _Portal_ ,
| _Team Fortress_ and _Dota_ fame doesn't have IP and giving as
| an alternative what I view as a minor IP, _God of War_.
|
| 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.
| cubefox wrote:
| They might make Half-Life 3 PC exclusive.
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| What IP does Sony or MS have these days that would sell
| consoles? They fumbled Halo completely and Sony exclusives
| are now all on PC. Nintendo does have their Zelda and Mario
| that they have taken care of well for decades but Steam has..
| every PC and console game with an emulator
| vintermann wrote:
| I know a lot more about Team Fortress, Portal and Half-Life
| than I know about Kratos. Valve already have their "meme IP".
| eptcyka wrote:
| Licensing? What do you mean, licensing? Other manufacturers are
| free to take it. It's all open source.
| Yokolos wrote:
| Yes, you need to license SteamOS to preinstall it on devices
| you sell: https://store.steampowered.com/steamos/oem
|
| 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.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| It's also about protecting their brand.
|
| If someone starts selling completely shitty "SteamOS PCs"
| without licensing, it'll hurt Valve more than the no-name
| Chinese PC manufacturer.
|
| Licensing -> Valve can dictate minimum specs and QA
| requirements -> Good for everyone.
| napolux wrote:
| SteamOS isn't perfect, but it's "open" to mods like a PS5 or
| XBOX will never be. As an avid console gamer it's time to go
| back to my roots.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Some PS were open (still have my PS2Linux) and XBoxes have
| dev mode, even if it is stuck on UWP, and there was XNA as
| well.
|
| 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.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| Random trivia: The PS2 Linux was purely for tax evasion.
|
| EU had a higher tax rate for "gaming computers" than
| "generic computers" so Sony slapped Linux on the console to
| get better profits.
| frou_dh wrote:
| Good example of being confidently wrong. You are thinking
| of the little Basic interpreter that was on the pack-in
| consumer demo disc. Not the Linux Kit which was a very
| real initiative and had universities involved. We were
| using them in a big dedicated lab.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Not at all, you're mixing up with YA BASIC, that came
| with PS 2 demo disc.
|
| People that weren't there keep mixing channels on this
| one.
|
| To acquire PS2 Linux, you had to pay additionally 300
| euros for the Linux distribution, the PS2 hard disk, and
| cables that would only work in monitors using sync on
| green signal.
|
| Initially the price was much higher, and got reduced to
| around 300 in 2004.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Actually I think PS2 Linux was made so saddam Hussein
| could build a Beowulf cluster of PS2s
| spooky_deep wrote:
| You mean PS3 Linux?
| deafpolygon wrote:
| I don't know -- per Microsoft's recent announcement.. the
| Xbox will basically be a Windows PC in a tiny package. So, no
| more Xbox Live needed to play online and you can install
| other marketplaces on there (such as Epic and GOG).
| philistine wrote:
| You're speculating. Microsoft executives have made
| statements, but we have not seen definite announcements.
|
| Remember when one Microsoft executive said one time that
| Windows 10 is the last Windows and everyone believed it?
| WorldMaker wrote:
| Microsoft hasn't announced the next Xbox yet. They've been
| promoting the Xbox-branded ROG Ally this cycle, which _is_
| just a Windows PC in a tiny package, but that 's not the
| next console, just a current generation SteamDeck
| competitor.
|
| They've been implying there will be a greater convergence
| in which Windows devices feel (play) like an Xbox, but
| they've been saying the same things since initiatives like
| Xbox Play Anywhere originally launched in 2016 (almost a
| decade ago!), which didn't result in the Xbox Series X
| being a PC in 2020 (despite similar speculation that it
| might be at the time).
|
| It will be interesting to see where Xbox is planning to go,
| but so far most of the speculation is just reading (decade
| old) tea leaves.
| jaapz wrote:
| > then licensing of the OS to other manufacturers
|
| 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.
| Zhyl wrote:
| They tried it without a flagship and without a large library
| of compatible games.
|
| 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.
| brookst wrote:
| Yes. It's the Pixel / Surface / strategy: show there is a
| market for premium, flagship reference devices and let
| those guide the second tier manufacturers.
|
| You don't even have to be the #1 vendor, the reference
| implementation does a lot of good for the ecosystem.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| This is only possible due to how the console space has changed
| over the last 10 years. The killer app for console over PC used
| to be simplicity - you pop in the disc/cartridge and you just
| go. This is rarely true anymore. Even Switch 2 games often
| require waiting to download a bunch of stuff before you can
| play. Meanwhile the PC experience has generally gotten simpler
| and most games "just work", in part thanks to Steam itself.
| wmeredith wrote:
| Thank you for calling this out. As a long time console gamer,
| I hadn't noticed this creeping bloat until I started playing
| games with my young children. My son begged for a new Madden
| game after playing it at his friend's house.
|
| 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.
| layla5alive wrote:
| This is so very sad and so very ripe for disruption.
|
| So many of the top players in our modern late stage
| capitalism economy fit this mold of having a terrible user
| experience with a large unsatisfied user base. Usually it's
| not even a monopoly, but all the top players are roughly
| equally awful to their users.
|
| I'm tempted to start some companies to just do the thing in
| a way that doesn't suck for the actual paying customers. I
| think just doing a good/competent/user-needs-centric job at
| the same basic product would be enough to disrupt the
| market in many cases.
| brookst wrote:
| 100% agree with everything you said, and also Valve is a huge
| value prop in the cross-platform Steam store. I already prefer
| Steam because I have both Windows and Mac machines and
| generally travel with a MacBook.
|
| 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.
| cestith wrote:
| The x86 running Windows isn't perfect. The x86 rack system
| running Linux isn't perfect. Android isn't perfect. The Ford
| F150 isn't the perfect pickup. Budweiser is far from the
| perfect beer.
|
| 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.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| We heard this literally with the previous steam machine lol
|
| 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.
| Normal_gaussian wrote:
| Most of the deck/dock screen issues are related to dock
| firmware and USBC display negotiation. The steam machine has
| built in HDMI and Display port which are presumably relatively
| bog standard.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| This is the steamdeck official dock plugged into my LGC1,
| which is one model in a very popular line of TV's, via hdmi.
| SchemaLoad wrote:
| The official steam deck dock seems to be fairly buggy, it's
| widely complained about. I've been using an Apple USB-C to
| HDMI adapter and it's worked perfect on every TV I've tried
| it on. Since the steam machines don't use USB-C video out
| this wouldn't be an issue.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| That may be the case but "official valve hardware is
| buggy even after almost 4 years" is a troubling yet true
| statement when their entire pitch today was literally
| "check out our new hardware."
|
| I love my deck. But a smooth experience it is not. Up
| until idk a year ago...? Flipping from gaming mode to
| desktop mode or vice versa had a solid 50-50 shot of
| inducing a fail state requiring a hard reset.
| xgulfie wrote:
| Literally every USB-C dock I've ever used with any laptop has
| these sorts of issues.
|
| On the flip side, I'm pretty confident AMD will be able to
| output to DisplayPort
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| Yeah but what laptop is trying to be a gaming rig on your tv
| via a separate $100 dock?
| TheRoque wrote:
| I hardly understand the headline. Steam machine is just a
| computer, and since it can be used for other stuff than playing
| games, then it can't have the cheap pricing of a console. Most
| consoles are sold at a loss, and the benefits are made when
| selling console-exclusive games. If you sell something at a loss,
| but users aren't forced to buy your games, then you're not gonna
| make any money. Hence, the Steam Machine (AKA GabeCube) is gonna
| be as expensive as a laptop (or slightly less expensive because
| of the bigger form factor and lack of portability).
|
| 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.
| chamomeal wrote:
| Is money still made from console exclusives? I feel like I see
| less of them these days. The biggest games are cross platform
| monsters, and the smallest are indie games.
|
| 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)
| Normal_gaussian wrote:
| Exclusives sold consoles which determined future revenues. MS
| messed up horrendously with both a worse console and meh
| exclusives.
|
| An exclusive will sell fewer copies, so the console
| manufacturer will strike a beneficial deal to make up for it.
| tormeh wrote:
| In principle the consoles themselves and the exclusives are
| both loss leaders. Or, sold at cost, anyway. The actual money
| is made from the 30% cut on any third party game sales, and
| the online subscriptions required to play online.
|
| 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.
| ethmarks wrote:
| Laptops have lots of components that the Steam Machine doesn't
| have. The screen, keyboard, touchpad, cameras, microphones,
| speakers, battery, et cetera are all fairly small costs, but
| they add up. Plus using a Linux-based OS instead of Windows
| automatically knocks around $50 off the price because the price
| doesn't include the cost of an OEM Windows license.
|
| 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).
| Telaneo wrote:
| The 'AMD RDNA3 28CUs' is likely to be the 7600M, as all the
| major specs are the same (power draw and clocks is lower, but
| given that the Steam Machine is not a laptop, it probably
| will have more headroom for that).
| TheRoque wrote:
| > Laptops have lots of components that the Steam Machine
| doesn't have. The screen, keyboard, touchpad, cameras,
| microphones, speakers, battery, et cetera are all fairly
| small costs, but they add up. Plus using a Linux-based OS
| instead of Windows automatically knocks around $50 off the
| price because the price doesn't include the cost of an OEM
| Windows license.
|
| 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
| wpm wrote:
| I mean, Valve built this with the profits, at least, in no
| small part with the profits from selling games, DLC, and
| gacha skins on their storefront which has many many
| competitors too bozo-brained to run their stores as well as
| Valve does.
|
| 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.
| kouteiheika wrote:
| > I hardly understand the headline. Steam machine is just a
| computer, and since it can be used for other stuff than playing
| games, then it can't have the cheap pricing of a console.
|
| 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.
| jsheard wrote:
| > It absolutely can have the cheap pricing of a console
|
| 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).
| kouteiheika wrote:
| I didn't say it "will", I said it "can". And since pricing
| is not announced yet we have no idea what they will do in
| the end.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Sega can also come back and announce a Dreamcast 2.
|
| I'd rather work on likelyhoods than dreams.
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| Weird statement, because I can search for PS5 pro & see
| $750 price points, and entry level computers have been far
| far cheaper. Cheaper than Xbox series X at $650. Getting
| pretty solid laptops for a bit under $500 has been possible
| for many years now.
|
| But "entry level computer" has a very broad interpretation
| available. Could be higher for sure.
| jsheard wrote:
| I assumed they meant an entry level _gaming_ computer,
| not something with potato-grade integrated graphics, but
| I agree it 's vague.
| somenameforme wrote:
| You can build an entry level gaming computer for under
| $400 easily. Here [1] is one example (parts list/link in
| the description).
|
| [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vecR26Nz_YA
| jsheard wrote:
| That build uses a 13 year old CPU from AliExpress,
| there's no accounting for taste but I think most entry
| level builds are aiming a little higher than that. Some
| newer games won't even try to run on a CPU of that
| vintage since it doesn't have AVX2 support.
| somenameforme wrote:
| It was released in 2016 and does support AVX2. In general
| what matters when building a decent rig is aiming to
| balance performance to optimize against bottle necks. He
| demonstrated the system in various modern games, for
| instance running Delta Force at 4k/120FPS. And the CPU
| was scarcely getting touched - running at around 20%.
|
| You can spend a ton of money on a bleeding edge CPU and
| see 0 performance gain in almost all cases, because
| basically no modern games are CPU limited, or even
| remotely close to it, so you're sitting there with your
| overpriced CPU basically idling.
|
| -----
|
| I think many people are out of the loop on PC costs and
| performance. The days where you needed some $1000+
| bleeding edge rig to even begin to play the latest stuff
| are long gone. Since this thread is on consoles - an
| approximate PS5 equivalent video card is the RX 6700 XT
| which is like $200-$300, and that is, by far, the biggest
| expense.
| jsheard wrote:
| > It was released in 2016 and does support AVX2
|
| My mistake, I missed off the important "v4" when looking
| up the model. Embarrassing.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Gaming tends to adjust to consors, and we're nearing 6
| years of gen 9 consoles. expect any "entry level gaming"
| computer to either be portable or competitive with the
| $600 price point I can grab at any major retailer.
|
| Otherwise, sure. I can build a potato for $300 and i will
| probably enjoy Silksong just fine. But at that point why
| not buy a non-gaming laptop?
| Telaneo wrote:
| Do those computers play games competently? I doubt they
| play them as well as the PS5 or Series X. We aren't in
| the days where integrated graphics instantly meant sub 20
| FPS on any game no matter how simple, but I still
| wouldn't throw any recent triple A game at even new-ish
| computers with integrated graphics and expect them to
| perform all that well. They'll play Rocket League,
| Stardew Valley and Minecraft just fine, and maybe that's
| all they need to do, but a Steam Machine that can't play
| tomorrow's title roughly on par with current gen consoles
| seems like a losing bet unless the price is equivalently
| lower.
| shootingoyster wrote:
| The Steam Machine uses a dedicated graphics chip, similar
| to a discrete AMD RX 7060M. Laptop chip sure, but a
| stone's throw from integrated graphics. These Machines
| will be able to keep up.
| somenameforme wrote:
| Yes. There's a peer thread below this one with more
| examples, but in general the biggest (and most relevant)
| cost you're looking at with a new computer is the video
| card. And a PS5 level video card is the RX 6700 XT which
| is like $200-$300. If you're willing to purchase second
| hand you can go substantially lower.
|
| I suspect most of us are of a vaguely similar age, and
| when "we" were growing up, PC gaming was ridiculously
| expensive. A new gaming PC was thousands of dollars and
| then obsolete within a couple of years, leaving you
| constantly checking new release 'minimum system
| requirements.' It was quite painful and a big reason I
| (and I suspect others) migrated to console gaming. But
| now a days? I have a relatively old PC and never even
| bother looking at spec requirements - it'll run it, just
| fine.
| TiredOfLife wrote:
| Steam machine is barely at base ps5 level in performance
| SchemaLoad wrote:
| The main problem I see is that if this is any cheaper than
| it's hardware, people will buy 100s of them and stack them in
| server racks for CI runners or whatever. Generating only
| losses for Valve and making the hardware unavailable to
| gamers.
|
| It needs to either be at market rate or locked down to only
| be useful for gaming.
| lucyjojo wrote:
| you don't remember playstation clusters?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_3_cluster
|
| that said, practically buying hundreds of them should prove
| to be quite difficult.
| crote wrote:
| The PS3 was uniquely powerful, compared to its x86 peers.
| It wasn't _just_ cheap - it provided the compute of 30
| desktop computers in the space, power, _and_ price
| envelope of one.
| solid_fuel wrote:
| I think the limitation on server gear these days is
| electricity price vs compute, with the hardware price being
| an up front investment but not dominating the lifetime
| cost. At least at this end of the price range - it's a
| consumer GPU, not an A100 or anything.
| pjerem wrote:
| Iiuc, unlike Sony's PS3 (which were bought and used like
| this), Steam is the unique distributor so it would be easy
| for them to not allow (or make really difficult to) buying
| thousands of machines.
|
| (Or they could sell it everywhere for higher price but the
| Machine would come with a non transferable Steam gift
| card.)
| crote wrote:
| I don't think they could possibly make it cheap enough for
| that - especially once you consider all the money being
| wasted on RGB/Bluetooth/a GPU you won't use.
|
| Messing around with weird consumer hardware in a datacenter
| context isn't exactly attractive. If all you need is some
| x86 cores, an off-the-shelf blade server approach gets you
| far more compute in the same space with far less hassle.
| Even if the purchase cost is attractive, TCO won't be.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| The RGB costs maybe 2EUR to add, the bluetooth chip is
| maybe 50c.
| estimator7292 wrote:
| It happened to the PS3
| teamonkey wrote:
| The PS3 was weird. It had a unique architecture that made
| it especially useful for HPC in an era before GPUs were
| useful for that purpose. The CPU and GPU in the Steam
| Machine are not particularly high-end.
| voxic11 wrote:
| And I think that was part of the reason it was one of the
| last consoles sold for a loss.
| eptcyka wrote:
| Does it have IPMI? Does it have ECC ram? Racking Mac Minis
| is a painful enough, this form factor is less rackable than
| that. If you need to physically adjust the form factor per
| device, whatever you could've saved will be immediately
| lost in labor.
| Gigachad wrote:
| Orgs racked PlayStation 3s back in the day. If it's
| subsidised hardware it could be worth it.
| jimmydoe wrote:
| It's like android. You sell pixel at relatively high price
| but create a wave of other with cheaper alternatives, so you
| end up make money from being default store.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Defaults matter at scale. And as for scale, the Steam Deck
| has the most generous estimates at 7 million. For a side
| hustle that's great. For trying to compete with the scale of
| other consoles, that's not enough.
|
| Hardware is very hard to break into. You can't treat it like
| software and expect to dominate.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Very few consoles were sold at a loss. Some certainly were,
| like the fat PS3. But that was the exception, not the rule.
|
| 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.
| tinybear1 wrote:
| Microsoft testified under oath in court that they lost money
| on every Xbox sold prior to the current generation.
|
| 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.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| You're listing the losers in the market, the ones that had
| to drop prices to make sales. The real volume sellers
| weren't generally sold at a loss. Most Nintendo consoles
| were never sold at a loss. Sony often sold at a loss in the
| first year or so, but their redesigns made them profitable,
| and the vast majority of sales happened after redesigns.
| Moore's law was responsible for a large portion of the
| profits from hardware sales.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Okay. That doesn't conflict with their point. "No one had
| to sell at a loss... Except every non-market leader" only
| proves their point.
|
| >, but their redesigns made them profitable
|
| No one says consoles always sell at a loss. They are sold
| over 6-8 years and price drops are pretty conservative
| (until last gen where they ceased to be). Every conse
| eventually becomes profitable, but not in the years where
| they sell the most.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| > but not in the years where they sell the most.
|
| Nope. Take 1 example, the PS3. It lost money in 2007 &
| 2008, but became profitable in 2009. They sold 16 million
| PS3's in 2007 and 2008 out of a total 87 million. So
| approximately 20% of PS3's were sold at a loss.
|
| And the PS3 is perhaps the console that was sold at the
| biggest loss at the beginning due to the horrendously
| expensive Cell chip.
|
| It's kind of moot, anyways. The discussion is about the
| consoles of 2026 competing against Steam Machine. The
| PS5, Xbox Series X|S and Switch 2 are all currently being
| sold for positive margin.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| The ps3 was certainly a unique case, because despite
| selling at a loss it still wasn't a competitive price.
| The infamous "599 USD" now translates to 950 dollars
| today, so that really shows you how utterly expensive it
| was (when the PS5 pro just needed to price hike to
| $800).so it coming down in price for consumers and
| manufacturers helped it immensely.
|
| But I do believe that was a unique case. Consoles don't
| typically "come back" later in life. The vita later on
| didn't. The Wii U and Xbox one didn't. The dreamcast sure
| didn't. Sony's big turnaround should be praised, but not
| accepted as a norm of business.
| quantummagic wrote:
| > I hardly see how it can even be called a console.
|
| 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.
| dgrin91 wrote:
| GabeCube gave me a good chuckle, thank you.
| somenameforme wrote:
| > Most consoles are sold at a loss
|
| 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-...
| musicale wrote:
| PS2 and PS3 were price-competitive with stand-alone DVD and
| Blu-Ray players (respectively) at launch.
|
| 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.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| > PS3 were price-competitive with stand-alone Blu-Ray
| players at launch.
|
| We got a PS3 at home for this very reason, needless to say
| my brother and I were ecstatic.
| James_K wrote:
| A console is really just a PC with the word "console" tagged on
| the side of it. It's more of a branding exercise than a proper
| distinction. The only real difference is you boot up the
| console and it takes you straight to a game library.
|
| 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 (a 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.
| nicce wrote:
| > think: battlefield, call of duty, valorant, league of
| legends... the biggest games basically
|
| Do people actually play these on console? I think most people
| still use Windows for these?
| hamdingers wrote:
| It's strange how neither you nor seemingly any of your replies
| have heard of the Steam Deck.
|
| 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.
| wnevets wrote:
| > I see no reason to believe they won't employ the same
| strategy for the Machine.
|
| They have already said its gonna be priced like a computer
| and not a console. [1]
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/bWUxObt1efQ?si=KCNHtUt1fGqkqlOn&t=58
| hamdingers wrote:
| An "entry level" computer which could mean anything. The
| first thing I did after the announcement was put together a
| micro atx PC with similar specs on PCPartPicker and came up
| with $800, so I consider that the ceiling.
|
| Assuming they can bring costs down at scale and subsidize a
| bit, I don't think undercutting the PS5 pro is
| unreasonable.
| wnevets wrote:
| > An "entry level" computer which could mean anything.
|
| Perhaps but I don't feel like Valve going out of their
| way to specifically say that the steam machine will not
| be priced like a console leaves a ton of room for
| interpretation. With the current state of the industry &
| tariffs I would be shocked if its under $1000 USD.
| hamdingers wrote:
| A similar spec laptop from ASUS with a 7600S is $988 on
| Amazon right now, and it comes with a screen, keyboard,
| mouse, battery, and Windows license.
|
| I'd be shocked if Valve is so out of touch they would
| kill this thing with an unwarranted price tag, but I
| guess we'll see.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| "Id be shocked if Valve is so out of touch they would
| kill this thing with an unwarranted price tag"
|
| It happened a decade ago. Wouldn't surprise me.
|
| My bet is it will be similar to steam deck. The starting
| specs will be somewhat comoetitve to a PS5 Pro but with
| huge compromises (in Steam Deck'Deck's case, flash
| storage). A model that competently competes with a proper
| gaming oc will probably be 1000 or so.
|
| Valve got popularity in the handheld space because
| everyone else except Nintendo gave up in terms of
| consoles. That plus seeing the handheld PCs from china
| pop up showed ample opportunity. I'm not sure the same
| will apply here.
| hamdingers wrote:
| > It happened a decade ago.
|
| The Steam Deck shows they learned every available lesson
| from that endeavor. Why would they retread mistakes
| they've already proven they know not to make?
|
| > The starting specs will be somewhat comoetitve to a PS5
| Pro but with huge compromises (in Steam Deck'Deck's case,
| flash storage). A model that competently competes with a
| proper gaming oc will probably be 1000 or so.
|
| The specs are already public, the only thing we don't
| know is the pricing. RTFA
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >RTFA
|
| Okay
|
| >TL;DR: The Steam Machine's specs are on par or better
| with the PS5.
|
| So, a ps5 pro with huge compromises? What did i miss
| here? Comparing a console to a PC isn't apples to apples
| so just looking at raw specs won't give us the full
| picture.
|
| >Why would they retread mistakes they've already proven
| they know not to make?
|
| Because they think the road is different today, with more
| people willing to follow them this time.
|
| You can take the wrong lessons from success and
| catastrophically fail next time. Gaming is rife with that
| trend because of failed experiments, being too early to
| market, or completely misunderstanding what consumers
| resonated with.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Yeah, the fanboys are in bliss right now, but seeing this pre
| built cost 999 (and that's my most generous estimate) will
| bring them back down to earth.That would still be a good deal
| as long as the GPU is decent. But it's not "console killer"
| territory in the slightest.
|
| I do look forward to buying the decade awaited iteration on the
| Steam Controller, though. Very underrated piece of tech.
| estimator7292 wrote:
| Are you assuming that nobody who buys a GabeCube is going to
| buy a game on Steam _ever again_?
|
| 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.
| evo_9 wrote:
| One other semi-unrecognized advantage Valve has over consoles is
| their generous return policy. I've bought many games on a whim
| knowing if I don't jive with it I can safely get a full refund.
| Contrast that with my Ps5 where my 2 year old managed to smash
| buttons while I was tied up on a work call and bought COD for $69
| bucks... no way to refund it and I'm not a fan of shooters.
| Basically Fd on that one.
| _carbyau_ wrote:
| My experience is otherwise. I returned _one game_ and got
| banned from buying other games for a month - during a sale, so
| I missed that sale and was out of sync with friends for a bit.
|
| 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.
| hananova wrote:
| Is there anything more to this? I've returned dozens of games
| that I didn't end up liking and the only consequence I've
| faced is that games with trading cards don't start dropping
| them until 2 hours of play time, which I think is completely
| fair.
| okayjustonemore wrote:
| There most certainly is. This is not Steam's default refund
| procedure in the slightest. I'd be willing to bet they were
| abusing the system somehow and support caught them red
| handed.
| bitmasher9 wrote:
| I've made dozens of returns without a single issue on Steam.
|
| I made one return on the PS5 in a similar situation, and it was
| a painful ordeal.
| rvz wrote:
| > Really, the only thing that can go wrong with any of this
| hardware is the price.
|
| 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.
| pipeline_peak wrote:
| They're not gonna win the console generation, this marks the end
| of the console generation.
|
| That and intermediary consoles like the PS5 Pro are blurring the
| lines and adapting to the popularity of PC gaming.
| AceJohnny2 wrote:
| I don't really understand the early enthusiasm about the Steam
| Machine, and I happily own a Steam Deck.
|
| "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.
| echelon wrote:
| I don't play games much anymore, so maybe I'm not the right
| person to respond.
|
| 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.
| noobermin wrote:
| In the era of mobile games, hardware really isn't a thing
| anymore. Even AAA titles are niche IMO given the cost to play
| them at full settings. All that matters now are the exclusive
| titles. You refer to this derisively but really that's what
| made the nintendo switch, clearly the weakest compared to the
| PS5 and even the steam deck in the last generation the clear
| winner.
| funflame wrote:
| And do you think PC has less exclusives compared to PS5 /
| other consoles? How many games on Steam has never been
| released on consoles vs the other way round?
|
| By that logic I'd expect this one to completely dominate.
| noobermin wrote:
| So, we should define terms. To "dominate" should mean to
| sell more than or make more money than the competition,
| which may include taking market share from the
| competition. I don't doubt valve will continue to make
| money in an absolute sense, it already does and this
| likely doesn't change that.
|
| Steam already has a monopoly in the PC space and has the
| "exclusives" you talk about, essentially games that never
| were ported to the PS5 or the switch. Thus, in order for
| the steam machine to take market share from the other
| consoles, you a) have to take console share from those
| players, likely by pressuring those developers to port
| from the consoles to PC. That could be something, but no
| doubt that pressure already exists, as steam already
| exists. I don't see how the steam machine changes that.
| In fact, the opposite situation exists which is why steam
| makes so much money, as you said. To actually dominate,
| it can only happen after situation c) below.
|
| New customers or dollars cannot come from people who have
| a PC and can now forgo using their pc for gaming (by
| neglecting to upgrade their pc to keep up to date to play
| new AAAs), as the assumption here is they are selling the
| consoles at a loss (which may not be true, we'll have to
| find out). That if anything, is essentially a soft form
| of b) cannibalisation. So that isn't really "gaining
| market share" more so than it's changing the means of
| consumption of the same thing. Moreover, if they choose
| to sell at a loss, then I only can imagine this leading
| to actual cannibalisation from their existing PC
| customers as there isn't really any actual profit being
| made here.
|
| So finally, the only route they have to expanding their
| player base in my mind is c) new gamers, that is casual
| phone players or other non-enthusiast gamers who don't
| really play games but will be willing to buy a console.
| This is how the Wii excelled in its generation and how
| the switch won the last one. Here, it all comes down to
| price and thus how much Valve is willing to sell at a
| loss or otherwise subsidise the steam machine using steam
| proper. So, this to feels like their only real route to
| "dominating."
|
| As I alluded to above, a) can only happen if c) happens,
| as Steam already has the mindshare it does and thus it
| already has the same allure to developers as is the case
| today, and those developers are still pursuing exclusives
| with the PS5 and the switch. Thus, if certain developers
| or games are stuck on the switch or the PS5 with current
| conditions, they won't move enmass to the steam machine
| unless c) happens first and thus their calculus changes.
| And of course, selling at a loss means that they also run
| the risk of only b) occurring if they don't gain enough
| new players fast enough to offset the loss from selling
| consoles.
|
| That leaves them not selling the hardware at a loss, then
| I don't really know. It's just the steam machine will
| likely be north of 700 usd if you're not subsidising it,
| and like the steam deck it will be a novelty item they
| may or may not make a profit off of. That I wouldn't call
| "domination", although they may make money overall so I
| don't doubt they will end up happy.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| If it can play all games on Steam _today_ at 4k60fps (even with
| FSR) it means I have about 570 games on my Steam library it can
| play in perpetuity.
|
| 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.
| bitmasher9 wrote:
| > I have about 570 games on my Steam library it can play in
| perpetuity.
|
| 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.
| 7v3x3n3sem9vv wrote:
| Not OP but I happily throw money at companies that help
| Linux adoption and more open hardware grow. I bought the
| steam deck, used it for a while and gave it to a nephew
| (I'm not big on mobile gaming), I've bougt the Pinebook,
| Librem 5, and will happily throw Valve more of my hard
| earned cash for enabling a more open ecosystem. We need to
| vote with our wallets or Microsoft, Apple, Meta, et al will
| gladly remove your ability to own your hardware.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| Yes and no. I have a Steam Deck and a Macbook M1 Pro, my
| previous Windows PC is from 2010, it ran Overwatch 1 at
| about 30fps on a good day and managed through multiplayer
| Valheim games during covid lockdowns =)
|
| I _can_ play something like CP2077 on the Deck, but it's
| not exactly a worthy experience, it's better suited for
| stuff like Citizen Sleeper or Rogue Trader
| baby wrote:
| The enthusiasm is based on:
|
| - 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
| wnevets wrote:
| Putting the steam machine in the same category as a console
| didn't make sense to me a decade ago and doesn't make much sense
| to me today.
| intexpress wrote:
| To win this console generation and outsell the PS5, Valve would
| have to sell 85 million Steam Machines (as of today, and likely
| need to sell 120 million by the end of the generation). About a
| 0% chance of that happening.
|
| Looks cool, though
| xena wrote:
| I'm implying they'd win via a cultural victory TBH
| wongogue wrote:
| I am up for a lego pyramid made of Steam machines.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Everyone is sinking culture on real time. So winning by
| throwing a bread crumb out is technically correct, but not
| significant.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Surely the Steam Machine is in a newer generation than the PS5?
| redwall_hp wrote:
| Its specs seem on par with the PS5 Pro, and this doesn't even
| have a price or a shipping date yet.
|
| 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.
| someNameIG wrote:
| I think Digital Foundry has expects the performance to be
| bit below the base PS5 in most cases. It has a new
| generation of CPU/GPU than the PS5, but less cores/ CUs.
| VRAM is also only 8GB, PCs generally need more than that to
| match PS5 settings.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Is console generation really a statement about performance?
|
| Where does that leave e.g. Nintendo Wii, which is generally
| considered to be the same generation as the Xbox 360 or
| PS3, despite having not nearly the performance.
| brees504 wrote:
| and do that while having none of the big multiplayer games
| redwall_hp wrote:
| The Nintendo Switch also sold over 150 million units, and the
| Switch 2 has had a faster sales velocity so far.
|
| Steam only has something like 140 million monthly active users,
| so moving that much hardware is incredibly far fetched.
| culi wrote:
| Valve has the advantage of practically infinite backwards
| compatibility.
|
| 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.
| starkparker wrote:
| > The only possible flaw I can see is that the strap it ships
| with doesn't go over the top of your head. If this ends up being
| an issue in practice, somebody is going to make a third party
| strap that just fixes this problem
|
| 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.
| tumidpandora wrote:
| "At par with PS5.." comparing hardware specs with a console loved
| by millions and into year 6 of it's lifecycle. I'd rather play my
| PS5 titles on a PS5 or a portal than on the steam machine. Steam
| deck is dated, went with the portal and love it.
| protocolture wrote:
| Whats the media experience like on SteamOS these days? Does it
| have built in support for media playback? I used to have Kodi
| running on PhantomOS but it was janky.
| mtillman wrote:
| This is really cool. I still play my series X on occasion but
| tend to prefer the experience I get from my Saturn and Dreamcast
| when I load a game and it plays without needing to update. Every
| time I turn on my Xbox or PC with steam/GOG I have to wait for an
| update of some kind.
| dang wrote:
| Related ongoing threads:
|
| _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
| thordenmark wrote:
| Attached my old gaming rig to the TV to run Steam on it and it is
| a better experience than any consoles I have (being a gaming nerd
| I have everything from my old Atari 2600 and most mainstreams
| systems since then up to PS5).
|
| This is good news to hear Valve going in strong for the console
| market.
| woile wrote:
| same, I just attached my old laptop with nixos + steam +
| jellyfin, everything running on KDE and it's been super smooth
| so far.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| This feels like Valve's iPhone, while the original 2012 Steam
| Machines were the Newton.
| silisili wrote:
| Not a chance. As much as I respect all the work Valve has done
| for gaming...this doesn't understand the market.
|
| 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.
| h05sz487b wrote:
| I am very much a PC gamer turned couch gamer. I have a capable
| PC sitting next to my Xbox Series X. The user experience is
| worse, as everytime I turn it on soemthing needs updating, I
| cannot control all of Windows through my gamepad. This ticks a
| lot of boxes for me. Might start witht the Controller first.
| silisili wrote:
| Two of us! As mentioned, I'm probably part of the target
| market and will probably check it out.
|
| It's not useless by any definition, but will it really
| outsell the PS5? Because that is, to me, what the headline is
| implying...
| terribleperson wrote:
| I don't think it'll outsell any current console. Not even
| the anemic and dying Xbox Series X.
|
| I think that appropriately priced and supported, it will
| put Valve in a strategic position to actually compete in
| subsequent console generations as a real player. It's a
| little behind in terms of specs, but with as slow as uptake
| of this generation has been, I expect that developers will
| continue to target base PS5 specs for another six years at
| least (PS6 supposedly landing in 2027). Then they can drop
| their Steam Machine 2 in 2029 or 2030, hitting base PS6
| specs at an affordable price. It's been a winning approach
| for Nintendo.
| thoughtpalette wrote:
| Just to add I'm also in this boat. We have a ASUS ROG NUC in
| our living room and it's a pain logging into Windows (cant find
| an actual tutorial to skip that works) .
|
| 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.
| noobermin wrote:
| I generally like the OP's posts, but I really don't buy their
| argument. If anything, the nintendo switch winning the last
| generation is a great example of how hardware isn't always that
| important, the game library essentially is what makes a console
| win, and in as much as the hardware enables the breadth of the
| library, that's all that matters.
|
| 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.
| jijijijij wrote:
| I would totally buy it, if it's not silly expensive. I am not a
| power gamer or whatever, at all.
|
| 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.
| hoppp wrote:
| Year of linux desktop..I mean console.. . Confirmed?
| ensocode wrote:
| I'm not a gamer and not into consoles, but I'm watching Valve and
| SteamOS from the sidelines with a lot of goodwill. It's great to
| see more people buying hardware that runs on Arch -- that alone
| is a good thing. Still, something about this feels a bit too good
| to be true.
| unpopularopp wrote:
| If they want to capture the console audience its better be priced
| like one too and not prevent me from playing multiplayer games
| due to Linux and anti cheat software not playing nice
|
| Anything above $600 is DOA and that's with accepting the fact
| that the most popular games will be not available on the platform
| oliwarner wrote:
| It's even worse for their competitors than this acknowledges.
|
| SteamOS on Arm (using FEX) is going to spawn a generation of
| PS100 devices that can play lower end Windows games, stream from
| PC, _and_ emulate every console from the PS2 back. It 's huge.
| pezezin wrote:
| You don't need Valve for that, Chinese brands like Anbernic,
| Ayn or Ayaneo are smashing the market right now.
| acdbddh wrote:
| As much as I love hacking with various things, there are reasons
| why I buy "closed products" for myself and for my family. I like
| to do hacking when I want it (with ESP32, rpi etc). I don't want
| to be forced to serve as a free IT support guy anytime someone
| presses a wrong button.
|
| 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?
| baq wrote:
| and then you have to download a 100GB patch each time you turn
| the thing on anyway, by the time it ends installing my time
| slot is gone
| acdbddh wrote:
| Agree. By "best experience" I also mean "don't force me to
| wait". But my console doesn't do that. Some online games may
| require patches before playing for better (anticheat) or
| worse reasons but thats a fault of the game supplier - not
| the console supplier.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| Unfortunately buying closed systems hasn't stopped me from
| being IT support:
|
| - "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.
| jojomodding wrote:
| The constant in life is that there are some people for whom
| you do things without expecting financial gain.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| Cost want my point. It's that if you have skills then
| people will call upon them.
|
| I'm also not making a point about whether that's a good or
| a bad thing, before you make that assumption too
| endymion-light wrote:
| That would be great - but the last gaming console that I've
| experienced that with has been the switch.
|
| 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.
| mhitza wrote:
| > 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?
|
| 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.
| squigz wrote:
| > I don't want to be forced to serve as a free IT support guy
| anytime someone presses a wrong button.
|
| 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?
| acdbddh wrote:
| I want a console that is brother-proof. He should not be able
| to break it by just pressing buttons
| tianreyma wrote:
| My nephew changed the DNS settings on his PS5, some things
| stopped working, and took me quite a while to figure out
| what he had done.
| squigz wrote:
| Lock it down some more. Why would a user need to change
| their DNS ever anyway?
| rkangel wrote:
| If you buy a Steam Deck and just use it as a handheld console
| and never select "reboot to desktop mode" it will act just like
| a closed console. The exceptions compared to something like a
| Switch:
|
| - 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.
| stavros wrote:
| > Who are we to tell you how to use your computer?
|
| I'm buying one just for this sentiment alone.
| stavros wrote:
| > The big thing I want to see in practice is their implementation
| of foveated rendering. This beautiful hack abuses the fact that
| human eyes have the most sharpness and fidelity at the exact
| centre of your field of vision, whereas your peripheral vision is
| abysmal at it. This means that on average you only have to render
| about 10% of the frame at maximum quality for it to feel like
| it's running at full resolution all over the screen.
|
| > 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.
| xena wrote:
| It is for games running natively
| 827a wrote:
| What they're saying is that they might have a foviated
| rendering solution in addition to the foviated streaming
| solution we know about, and we'd like to hear about it.
| aa-jv wrote:
| Does anyone know if the foveated rendering feature of the Steam
| Frame depends on eye-tracking? Is it tracking the iris to
| determine the center of foveation, or is there some other trick
| to doing this?
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| Needs eye tracking and it's foveated streaming not rendering.
| zombot wrote:
| > Valve does nothing and still wins.
|
| Who would have thought that _not_ actively engaging in
| enshittification can be a secret winning recipe!
| jsmailes wrote:
| For me, the big killer feature would be if this device is
| approved for modern media DRM. As much as I'm tired of streaming
| and its level of control over how I watch TV, it's still a decent
| part of my media consumption, but any Linux mini-PC I connect to
| the TV can only do low-resolution streaming from most providers.
| If the steam machine is approved for high-resolution streaming,
| it could totally replace the smart TV stack in most homes.
| ZeroCool2u wrote:
| Yes, I think one of the most important things we as consumers
| can do is flood the zone for companies like Netflix, Disney,
| and Apple and keep asking about native Steam Machine apps
| installed directly from the Steam store that support 4k
| streams.
| linuxftw wrote:
| But if more people didn't have locked down devices, the
| streamers would be forced to open up.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Yeah. This is why I threw that all away and simply pirate for
| my NAS. Im not watching much new media to begin with. and they
| make it hell, if not impossible, to stream a lot of older
| shows. And of I do find them I need to compromise with how I
| stream it, with what account, and where.
|
| 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.
| MagicMoonlight wrote:
| If you pay PS20/month you'll get 720p. If you pay PS0/month
| you get 4k original rips.
|
| It's just pointless paying.
| nitwit005 wrote:
| If Netflix can only get approval with Microsoft Edge or their
| app on Windows, with specific supported graphics hardware, I
| doubt there is much hope of that. They want essentially all the
| hardware and software locked down.
| lousken wrote:
| why is that a problem? if those companies don't give you
| options, you can pirate everything up to 4k just fine
| tjpnz wrote:
| I don't think they're even trying to do that. But they will kill
| Xbox.
| plodman wrote:
| Maybe this is less of an issue now we're in the digital era of
| console games but one of the biggest aspects for me is that if I
| buy one of these new machines, my existing library is just there.
| No starting from scratch or worrying about backwards
| compatibility. It's a PC that has everything I need from the get
| go.
|
| 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.
| whateveracct wrote:
| I just dock my Deck but it was still worth it for the reason
| you say. Just Works and lets me play my decades-old Steam
| collection on my TV with the ease of a console.
|
| 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)
| christkv wrote:
| Unless it's reasonably priced who is the market for this box? If
| it's at 499 - 599 then it's probably selling well but at 799-899
| I'm not sure who would buy it. If it's your first computer you
| still need more gear like screen, keyboard and mouse etc.
| James_K wrote:
| People who want to play video games would buy it. While us
| enlightened Computer Intellectuals may appreciate that there is
| no difference between a console and a PC, the majority of naive
| computer peasants will much prefer something with the word
| "console" tagged on that boots straight to a game library. As
| for the keyboard and mouse thing, there's this other
| announcement they've made called the "Steam Controller" which
| addresses that issue.
| LandR wrote:
| I'd maybe buy it to get access to games I want to play on Steam
| that I can't get on PS5 to play on the sofa in my living room.
|
| 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.
| qiine wrote:
| by not making a console
| kragen wrote:
| > _Yes, Steam Machine is optimized for gaming, but it 's still
| your PC. Install your own apps, or even another operating system.
| Who are we to tell you how to use your computer?_
|
| That makes me very happy.
| paxys wrote:
| They are not going to win the console generation by releasing a
| machine that cannot play Call of Duty, Battlefield, Valorant,
| Fortnite, PUBG, Apex Legends, FIFA, Madden, League of Legends,
| Destiny, Genshin Impact, Forza.
| glimshe wrote:
| This is another status quo improvement from Valve. Great job!
|
| 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.
| isoprophlex wrote:
| But what about the price?! 15 year old kids are never gonna drop
| 800+ on this nerd box if they can play fifa for, what, 400-500?
| And THAT'S the demographic to win if you want to break up Big
| Game.
| bitmasher9 wrote:
| The demographics of gaming is shifting older. Valve is clearly
| running towards where the ball will be.
|
| The steam deck is also available for that 400-500 price point.
| brees504 wrote:
| The Steamdeck has sold like 4 mil units in 3 years. Handheld
| PCs are an incredibly niche market.
| viktorcode wrote:
| Consoles win a marketshare by having games ported or developed
| for their hardware, improving experience.
|
| What Valve offers is just one more PC configuration
| syngrog66 wrote:
| The author fundamentally fails to understand the attractions and
| benefits of console gaming systems in the first place.
| sim7c00 wrote:
| i see a lot of complaints about certain games (windows / kernel-
| anti-cheat) not working. Consoles have always had exclusive
| titles. Windows also has them now via this anti-cheat stuff. This
| changes litterally nothing.
|
| 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.
| amne wrote:
| Anyone familiar with how they're running x86 on a snapdragon? I'm
| more interested in that hitting your regular android phone ..
| think retroarch but you can play hades 2.
| opyate wrote:
| This is all I know: https://github.com/FEX-Emu/FEX
| doubled112 wrote:
| This exists already for Android with Winlator, GameHub, and
| others.
| pzo wrote:
| what I wish this device had:
|
| 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
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Something I haven't seen discussed at all is HDCP compliance.
|
| 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] https://help.netflix.com/de/node/23888
|
| [2] https://help.netflix.com/de/node/23889
| brees504 wrote:
| Releasing a box that cannot play any multiplayer or sports games
| is so silly.
| pkilgore wrote:
| If it doesn't play GTA 6 or CoD or whatever sports games are cool
| these days it won't win, but it sure looks interesting.
| zamalek wrote:
| The largest hurdle that a Steam console will face isn't kernel-
| level anti-cheats or somesuch. The real problem is far more
| idiotic: platform exclusives. Console gamers stereotypically care
| that their platform has a game that others do not, I have no idea
| how the reasoning works, but exclusives are a major talking point
| for OEMs and gamers alike.
|
| While PC likely has the most exclusives by a ridiculously large
| margin, it probably has the fewest AAA exclusives.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| > I have no idea how the reasoning works
|
| The reasoning works like this: I want to play that game.
|
| hth
| zamalek wrote:
| That does not, in fact, help. _Exclusives_ not _releases._
| Why care that a game is not accessible on a different
| platform.
| devinprater wrote:
| Steam has even added accessibility to their machines. Sure it's
| just Orca and ESpeak TTS, but I mean Steam Big Picture works.
| guluarte wrote:
| the problem with valve is that at least in mexico I have never
| seen a steam deck on display, while xbox, switch, playstation are
| everywhere and online the markup price from resellers is too high
| baby wrote:
| Ive used my steamdeck much more than my switch 2, but I still
| can't play competitive multiplayers on the deck, so it is clearly
| a console and not a "PC gaming" experience
| phplovesong wrote:
| SteamOS is handheld only right? What they need is a Xbox/PS
| alternative, you can plug in to a screen (tv/monitor) and
| optionally use a mouse/keyboard (valve has some huge FPS titles,
| like counter strike) for games that you cant play with a
| controller (usually competitive fps titles).
| hiccuphippo wrote:
| They just announced exactly what you are asking for
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45903404
| Jnr wrote:
| SteamOS is not a handheld. It is an OS. And did you even open
| the link?
| xattt wrote:
| One thing that came out of the HTPC "wars" of the 2000s and
| 2010s was that mobile/handheld UI were more suited for the
| 10-foot interface, versus full-blown computers like Windows
| MCE.
| venom2001viper wrote:
| So this will only play pc games?
| vintermann wrote:
| Maybe a bit early to call it, but I'm hoping for it as well.
| Snowfield9571 wrote:
| I think this article makes one assumption that isn't correct.
| "This means that even though Valve will be selling this hardware
| at a loss..." From the reviews I have read, Valve is not planning
| on doing this. They are not doing an Xbox type of deal where
| games are overpriced and console is cheap. If I am not mistaken,
| I got this information from the LTT review where they talked with
| Valve about this directly.
| enbugger wrote:
| Random guy excessively overusing mango pics and making bold
| statements is definitely worth attention
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I just hope a 10' user-interface for the popular streaming
| services for Linux might come out of this. I switched away from
| Kodi as my STB exclusively because of how much a PITA it was to
| use streaming services from it.
| jeffwask wrote:
| Personally, I am very much over paying Sony and X-Box a monthly
| fee to "play games online" in 2025. I bowed out of the last
| console generation, but I would be up for a small form factor
| multimedia PC that made may Steam library accessible on my TV.
| flux3125 wrote:
| Isn't Steam Machine just a glorified PC? What am I missing? Can't
| I just plug my PC on the TV and install SteamOS on it?
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-11-13 23:01 UTC)