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Comment by StopDisinfo910 | Hacker News Reader

It’s an iterative process.

Valve launched Steam Machines with their own OS and started shipping a version of Steam on Linux with predictable library versions. At the same time, they started working with the Wine project and shipping things which is now called Proton but is actually the cumulative results of their own patches.

This paved the way for the success of the Steam Deck when adequate material became available.

I don’t think it makes sense to call the Steam Machine a misstep because there was no Proton. There would be no Proton nor Steam Deck without the ground work started with the Steam Machines.

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>I don’t think it makes sense to call the Steam Machine a misstep because there was no Proton. There would be no Proton nor Steam Deck without the ground work started with the Steam Machines.

I’ve written before about how I think the Steam Deck is one of the best v1 products in recent memory, in large part because Valve learned so much (and so well) from the failures of the Steam Machines.

I don’t know if I would call it a misstep, but it was absolutely a failure. And a brutal one. Valve should be lauded for taking the right lessons from that failure and investing in Proton and doing the compatibility work themselves rather than expecting devs to do it (Apple is the only company that consistently gets developers to rebuild for their platform, and even game developers won’t do that), but we shouldn’t let the fact that it wound up on the right path years later diminish the fact that the original strategy —- if not the devices or idea itself —- was hugely flawed.

I have a Steam Machine, one of the Alienware ones. You're completely correct. SteamOS as shipped on those machines sucked. The controllers sucked. The PC hardware wasn't bad and could play games alright but the experience sucked. I made it into a Linux desktop I used for years and it worked much better for that than as a dedicated games console. But the SteamDeck very plainly incorporated lessons learned from Steam Machines.

But all the update you like in your SteamDeck also came to the Steam Machines plus nice remote play on your local network. You couldn’t see because you stopped using it as an actual Steam Machine. I personally deeply disagree about the controller too.

Personally, for such an early and unlikely product, I don’t view it as a failure at all. They ironed everything they had to using the platform as a stepping stone.

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