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Comment by LeoPanthera | Hacker News Reader

It feels like this thing is tailor made for SteamOS.

Isn't steam great for mostly indie games, which doesn't really need cutting-edge, power-hungry hardware to render (let alone 4K) ?

No? Not sure where you'd get that idea. The only games that aren't on Steam are the ones that have Origin exclusivity. And increasingly they have SteamOS (=Linux) compatibility, thanks to the Steam Boxes.

You can browse the Steam store on the web: http://store.steampowered.com

Hey Leo, maybe I wasn't 100% accurate. Comparing games in Steam vs. Origin, I get the idea, but console gaming has moved into a whole new level already and they are the ones that are (relatively) more power-hungry in my assessment. The fact that console games have started diverging from PC games, and even when there is a PC version, the big title games are primarily being developed for consoles and then being (kind of) ported to PCs, was my point in evaluating SteamOS. In a world where 2 consoles will single-mindedly focus on driving hardware power and distribution plays with big studios, I am still thinking that Steam might end up representing primarily the distribution channel for indies to get into console business.

Both the PS4 and the XBone are PCs. They just run a fancy OS. It's still Intel and a standard GPU underneath.

There's no "porting" going on, not like in previous gen systems, which were Weird.

Console exclusives are exclusives because the console manufacturer paid for them to be so, and not because the hardware is special, because it just isn't.

Yes, Steam is great for indies, but that's completely irrelevant here.

> thanks to the Steam Boxes.

More like thanks to Valve. I have not see ANY indication that the Steam Machines marketed by Alienware or other vendors are selling well at all. Most of them are massively underpowered for some of the best games available on Steam for Linux.

You know that Steam is working on the Vive with HTC for VR games right? That's going to be downright power-hungry.

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