I don’t need a Steam Machine
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Then eventually I saw how much community support, ready made hardware emerged around it, to the point that after a while, not going the Arduino route was a decision you needed to justify heavily.
Same thing with the Raspberry Pi - there are commercial devices now running or more or less stock Pi hardware with some accomodations - the power of the community is just too large - you can either spend an insane amount of time getting things working on your custom SBC, or get something well-supported for free.
I hope that the same thing will happen with the Steam Machine - the pull of the community will result in a well-supported 'default' device where people (and Valve) will put in the effort to create a comparable desktop experience to the commercial OSes.
Valve already helped immensely with Wayland - it's crazy to think that the project was stared cca. 2008, and today there's still arguments to be made it's not mature yet - by investing the necessary energy to make sure games run well, the drivers are optimized, and there's a high-quality end-user library (wlroots) for writing compositors has been the push that Wayland needed.
Isn't it alteady comparable? My Linux desktop has almost the same game compatibility that Windows has, and none of the advertising and jank. Gone are the legendary days of xorg.conf. Linux has less problems than Windows now. Support from professional software vendors (Dassault, Autodesk, et al) and Nvidia could be better, admittedly, but these restrictions aren't very relevant to me. As for Mac OS it's fine, I guess, but I strongly dislike the settings program, and it's not like you can install an nvidia card there.
I think that's maybe what GP was getting at. If you know how to debug stuff and such then Linux is perfectly serviceable today.
With something like this, between Valve presumably publishing some docs and a big community for a single platform it should become a lot easier for people who are less familiar to search "I got xyz error on my steam box what do I do" and get help they can use. For mass adoption I think that's a big step. And then from there they can start venturing further out, if they want.
With bad Nvidia support very often you can, there exist a lot of workarounds found by people.
With Dassault support you are right, because a lot less people use their products than Nvidia products and those people typically don't share on public forums.
People using Steam Machine will be sharing problems and solutions on public forums and there will be more of them than people using Dassault products.
Quality of support from Nvidia on linux is the reason that I went with AMD for my linux work+gaming rig. That's why probably Valve chosen AMD too. As amount of linux gamers increases, maybe Nvidia will see the light too. For me, linux+AMD+Steam stack "just works".
They probably don't even bother picking up the phone when Valve calls. Only AMD will sell you an integrated CPU/GPU system with the power envelope needed for modern games.
Conversely You can also turn the Steam Machine into a desktop by installing another OS
The perception and the marketing are very different. it is small and looks like games console. This is something people will buy instead of a Playstation or a gaming PC. A lot of people buying it will not know what Linux is.
If you look at this page:
https://store.steampowered.com/sale/steammachine
It does not use the word "Linux" at all and only mentions Arch and KDE right at the bottom of the specs.
> Linux has less problems than Windows now.
I agree, and it has been my experience for the last few years. I am not a gamer nor do I use any of the software you mention so its even better for me. I am very glad not to be using Windows 11 from what I hear of it.
I have a Linux desktop and a mental block around playing games on a computer. The computer is supposed to be where I work or write code, etc. If I have leisure time, I "should" do something away from the computer.
Getting a steam deck let me shake some of that. I'd be very tempted by a box that is a Linux computer, but for fun use only.
Speaking of which, I recently bought a Ryzen Framework laptop assuming the recommended Linux distro would run smoothly, but unfortunately I hit a few glitches, including a really annoying amdgpu bug that keeps making the screen flicker. I might have to mess with kernel boot parameters. Disappointing.
Since the Steam Machine is meant as a consumer product, hopefully it will run Linux solidly, and that's a big plus for me. I wouldn't touch Windows with a 10 foot pole these days.
I'd be astonished if they manage to get the Steam Machine down to 800$ (bundled with a controller). Knowing how Valve loves their margins, it's probably closer to 1000$ or even more. This is not something you spontaneously buy to play around with.
The CPU and GPU in this are last generation, and he believes Valve got a bulk discount on unsold RDNA3 mobile GPUs. They did something similar with the Steam Deck riding off a Magic Leap custom design. People predicted that would be pricey too but launched with (and still has) a $399 model.
The lower SKUs for Steam Deck are sold pretty much with zero margin or even at a loss, as Newell said this was a strategic decision to enter the mobile gaming market. However, for PC gaming, Valve already has a monopoly, and selling general-purpose hardware with little or no margin sounds like a recipe for losing money quick, which is not what Valve is known for...
But hey, we don't have to argue. Let's meet on HN again when the price is announced and I'll happily eat my words. :-)
Consider what the Steam Machine requires sacrificing:
- fewer USB-C connectors
- larger physical footprint
- can't buy and take it home today
It's hard to do an apples-to-apples comparison between the chips, but where one is better than the other on some dimension, it's offset by some other. They're approximately comparable.
Now, what's the price of the Mac Mini? $598.92
When people are talking about price points that have a higher margin than even Apple's devices have, you have to stop and consider whether people who are tossing around numbers like $750 with a straight face are actually trying to be rational but failing or they are just totally yielding to getting caught up in the hype.
The Mac Mini can play many games, but it cannot play most games like this Steam Machine. Developers barely supported the Mac before the ARM switch, and now it's somehow even worse.
Gaming with a Mac is an exercice in zen enlightenment.
Now, of course Apple takes ridiculous money for additional RAM and storage, but this is exactly how they achieve their famous margins (everything's soldered, so you cannot upgrade yourself). Thanks to the AI hype, DDR5 RAM is very expensive at the moment, as is GDDR5, as is SSD storage. Nobody here, including you, knows what kind of deal Valve will be able to get here. There's a reason they are not announcing any prices yet, because there are so many uncertainties at the moment (tariffs, anyone?), that most probably Valve themselves do not know yet.
Having said that, it would be great to see the GabeCube come in around the prices he's guesstimating. I hope it finds great success.
Plus the 7600M (which is suspected to be the Steam Machine GPU) is an existing design on a legacy node, and they don't have to worry about it threatening their current lineup. They can go pretty low with the price.
They might get something out of it - considering the modest hardware, devs will have to optimize for it, which might get them a couple extra percent on more modern hardware as well.
The 2023 game of the year was Baldurs Gate III. During the development they specifically tested on the Deck and it played pretty well. But they optimised the heck out of it, finally shipping a native Deck build earlier this year.
That’s why the Deck punches well above its weight - all the optimisation that devs do for it. And that’s why gamers continue to buy it, years after it released. Devs aren’t lazy, or averse to optimisation. They just need a large enough target to optimise for. If the Deck/GabeCube is a large enough proportion of the player base, they’ll put in the effort.
By the time you’ve finished saying “gcc and a custom toolchain” you’ve lost most of your potential audience. If you’re a professional or even an experienced hobbyist, it’s no big deal. But if the idea of programming embedded systems is new to you, it’s a lot of effort. And it’s not clear how much effort it will be, or if you’ll even be capable of it. It’s not fun to be knee deep in a complicated install and have no idea if you’ll ever be able to get it working. Lots of people will find something else to occupy their time rather than attempt it.
That then leads to community and better tools, and maybe it becomes a good choice even for experts. And even if it never does, it provides a great stepping stone, since trying and failing to set up the more complicated tools is a lot more tolerable if you can fall back to the simple IDE you’ve been using.
You don’t have to choose “all or nothing”. You are not being locked in an ecosystem like you do with the consoles Steam Machine aims to compete with.
Windows is broken on steamdeck. the only OS that works properly is SteamOS for obvious reasons.
A “console” that I can use as a PC? I am in 100%. You’ll get the world biggest game library at a discount, this is why I sold my PlayStation after spending 200 euros and watching it becoming useless.
I also suspect a lot of game devs will optimize for steam machine and finally we’ll get a console like experience on PC.
Don’t let the “low specs” fool you, it has the same specs or better as 70% of steam users.
Given Valve gave money to a lot of open source maintainers , it’s also great for Linux.
Just take my money
Sony makes zero dollars off of the consoles, and while they do enjoy taking their PS Store royalties rather than giving it up to Steam, they also have a huge collection of first party studios that might even be a more important business.
And it’s not like Sony is giving their big console releases PC ports on day one, if you want to own them right away you have to buy a PlayStation.
Every Steam Machine sold that plays Sony's exclusives is a genuine threat to Sony's control over the gaming market. The more I think about it, the more I believe Sony's games coming to PC is over since yesterday's announcement.
I like the Xbox because they changed so much in the console ecosystem, play anywhere, backwards compatibility without extra cost.
Whereas a playstation or a switch, once I don't game anymore, it's just an expensive paperweight
But there's still plenty of couch co-op games. They're usually quite niche though and not your typical racing or shooting game.
What's the point with a console then though?
Although, Nintendo is still doing a good job at keeping the couch-social experience alive, and building 1st party games that can be good solo experiences but really shine when played next to a friend sitting on the same couch.
The Trine series was a big hit for us way back.
If you want something a bit different, check out "keep talking or everbody explodes".
nidhogg - deserves to be in an arcade cabinet but honestly this one is ALWAYS a hit...just 2player though
Broforce - 80s action stars in 80s action movie multiplayer platformer
Ultimate Chicken Horse - competitively build a platformer level and then race to complete the level first, best with 4 players
TowerFall Ascension - 2-4 players, also deserves to be in an arcade cabinet
Screen Cheat - FPS made for the couch; think N64 Goldeneye or Quake, but all the players are invisible, so the only way to figure out where your opponents are is to look at their quadrants (screencheat)
Overcooked 2 - it's pretty kid-oriented on the surface, but it's a game where you must out-communicate the absolute chaos unfolding around you in order to succeed...such a good couch-multiplayer experience, but best for experienced gamers imho
Rocket League
Magicka
Regular Human Basketball - control giant basketball automatons by jumping inside them and operating the manual controls in a team v team. Minimum 4 players to really work well, supports up to 10 players shared screen
That should get you started! But oops that wasn't my casual coop list, more my "makes for memorable group experiences" list.
It Takes Two, Portal 2, Untitled Goose Game, Halo Master Chief Collection was like $10 recently, all come to mind as positive local coop experiences I've had.
We enjoyed Split Fiction and It Takes Two recently, but those are quite couple-y. And Blue Prince is very playable as a group effort.
Then there are games like “overcooked”, though again not many. IIRC there’s a new Katamari on the way as well.
But there really aren’t that many “get your mates together” games any more.
It's especially fascinating against the lens of this return-to-office phase we're living through. I'm a big fan of WFH but hear me out: online gaming (physically by yourself) is somewhat analogous to work-from-home. It empowers you to optimize your entertainment, challenge, competition into narrower and narrower facets of the experience. And tribe.
But jibba jabba around the water cooler can be enjoyable with the right people, just like it can be on the couch with friends and fam with Mario Kart, NHL '97, or Jackbox. Or board games.
There's room in this zeitgeist for a breakout multiplayer hit that just doesn't feel good unless you're in person.
We are also out of the rat race of hardware requirements of the 90s. I'm on a 7 year old system and if you're not chasing to max out the latest AAA game on launch, that thing can run a lot of games. It's mainly storage and RAM for modded minecraft or Satisfactory that's a bit of a mess atm. Though RAM prices are spicy at the moment, jeez.
Similar, my dad has my system from 10 years ago or more, and the only real snag for his strategy games is now a DX12 requirement.
Yep, people who didn't fall for the resolution meme can play any games maxed out with a 2060. People chasing 4k and 120+ fps will never ever get satisfied and will always spend $1k every other year for the new high end gpu
I made two upgrades since 2015, ryzen 7 1700 to ryzen 5 5600,for $100. And I swapped my gtx 970 for an rtx 2060, for $300
Not really. An existential crisis to System76, Framework computer and all the other Linux computer companies.
> A “console” that I can use as a PC? I am in 100%. You’ll get the world biggest game library at a discount, this is why I sold my PlayStation after spending 200 euros and watching it becoming useless.
No different to getting a regular PC but this time you can just buy a high performance state of the art GPU like the NVIDIA RTX 5090 and it runs all your games at 4K @ 120 FPS instead of 60.
> I also suspect a lot of game devs will optimize for steam machine and finally we’ll get a console like experience on PC.
Proton is the software that is doing the optimizations. However once you want to run a highly anticipated game like Battlefield 6 and your friends are playing it on their Windows PCs and consoles on day 1, the Steam Machine is left behind waiting for compatibility updates.
> Don’t let the “low specs” fool you, it has the same specs or better as 70% of steam users.
2020 specs in 2026 isn't really good for convincing 70% of Windows PC gamers or console players either.
The real test is when the next generation Xbox or Playstation arrives, will the Steam Machine outsell them?
> Given Valve gave money to a lot of open source maintainers , it’s also great for Linux.
We will see if that is enough to convince Steam players to run SteamOS instead of Windows or consoles. but so far it is totally underpowered and you might as well get a Windows PC + Nvidia RTX 5090 which runs all your games well including the highly anticipated ones.
No thanks and no deal.
The Steam Machine is marketed primarily as something sitting under your TV. I don't have 5090 under my TV money, 99.9% of people don't. That's not the target demographic.
Microsoft has seen the writing on the wall for years now, and they've expanded their library to run across platforms. The Xbox as we knew it is effectively dead.
Sony and Nintendo are still holding on to the legacy concept, and trying to lure people into their walled garden, but even their hardware is essentially a general purpose PC that happens to be locked down in software.
So I suspect we'll see one last traditional "console" generation with the PS6 and whatever Nintendo makes next, and after that the concept of a single-purpose machine will fizzle out. Nintendo will probably be the last to give in, since they have the strongest first-party IPs to make that feasible, but eventually they'll follow suit as well.
The low specs aren't a problem if it's cheap enough, but for every dollar this goes above the retail price of a PS5 will seriously hurt its mass appeal.
The problem for Valve is that they can't really sell this thing at a console-like discount, because it's a general purpose computer. If this thing is way cheaper than a regular computer of the same spec, corporations will just buy up Steam Machines by the palette load and use them as office machines or whatever (just like what happened to Sony when they allowed the PS3 to boot into Linux and they had to release an emergency update that disabled the linux functionality even though it was an advertised feature).
I really hope this will be successful, but it'll likely be successful in a specific niche. The nice thing though about this niche is that they don't have to hit anywhere near the same sales numbers as a console to be a success because the R&D costs are lower, and games didn't have to be specifically tailor made for it.
E.g. the PS Vita sold more units than the SteamDeck, but the Vita was an unmitigated failure for Sony because unlike the SteamDeck, the Vita needed games to be specifically made for it, whereas the SteamDeck benefits from the entire PC ecosystem so doesn't need the same level of adoption to be a (limited) success.
On one hand, this would be a problem.
On the other hand, if the Steam Machine doesn't support windows, businesses fleeing from MS Windows en masse because the Steam Machine is cheap would be a VERY interesting turn of events, and I'd be VERY curious to see how it all unfolds.
If that happened, Valve would get bankrupted by companies buying up subsidized Steam Machines with no intention of playing games on them.
Amazon was once a bookstore. There's nothing stopping Steam from adapting to a "Steam Business Machines" / "Steam OS Business Edition" once it has a foothold in the business market. After all, the store already distributes software, they're just not as popular as games. So if this scenario were to happen, and Microsoft failed to react, I'm sure Steam would adapt very quickly to take advantage of it rather than sit and wait for the bankruptcy.
Sure, but corporations don't want/need the same spec. They don't need the GPU, they don't need the fancy controller. If you just want a cheap PC that'll run a browser and Office, you can get them for under $200. If you want a Beelink with CPU/RAM/SSD similar to the Steam Machine, that's $350, and it includes a Windows license. Steam machine has an estimated BOM of $425, so even $500 will be a subsidized price after overhead. As long as Valve prices well above $250 it'll be safe from this concern, since corporations will likely want to add a Windows license to the cost.
To add to this, PlayStation is almost entirely sustained by exclusives at this point, and it's starting to backfire (more and more players are just waiting for the PC release, and the wait is killing some of marketing/hype that a game would have had, e.g., FF16 likely would have done a lot better if it released for PC at the same time rather than starting with PS exclusivity, and I suspect Death stranding 2 will be the same
If you want a console you can use as a PC, the next Xbox is rumoured to be along those lines. It will run Windows so you can play Steam, GOG etc but will also run the existing Xbox library natively.
The 70% figure needs to be taken in context, tons of people have Steam installed on old computers that they use for old games. I currently have it installed on three devices, and yes two of them are worse specs than this. But I don't have any intention of upgrading them either, they are just old machines I have hanging around. They do the job if I'm travelling.
because "console" isn't what a product is (supply) - it is a name for product niche (demand)
when someone talks about buying a console, the expectations are 1)significantly cheaper than "usual" computer 2)most likely optimized for games (controller input, easy install) 3)expectation of using already existing TV as display
consoles weren't different from low-end pc all the way since x-box
Just like the deck popularized the idea of "handheld PCs". Maybe the Machine will do the same to "console PC". It's a PC, but also a console.
Someone might say I can install Linux on my PC but then I have to deal with maintaining it.
So, what I hope the Steam Machine is, is effectively PC based console with no Microsoft, no root kits, and no maintainence.
What maintenance do you mean? I do not know of an OS that does not require allowing updates to keep secure.
It definitely meets the other criteria you want.
I've tried to hit the $600 mark and in the past few years it's gotten harder and harder. The GPU invariably ruins things. And normal APUs are too asthmatic to really game on.
Also you don't necessarily need a dedicated GPU, unless you go with Intel.
This is the context. A Steam Deck is bizarrely great value compared to anything you can buy, even without a screen, controller and battery.
Again if you know otherwise, please share.
AMD does have some pretty powerful APUs right now, but I don't think we'll see it on many mass market
How customized it is, I guess we'll find out closer to release, but I am guessing just based on the dimensions that it is just customized specifically for the case, for space and cooling reasons.
A similar PC without the fit and finish with just consumer parts comes in at around $900.
Curious how much pull valve has with AMD to get this into people's hands.
* I don't care what the intention is, they are _objectively_ intrusive.
** Last time I argued this, someone seemed to assume that I was claiming that writing Linux kernel drivers is harder than Windows kernel drivers. I am not arguing that, you need some kind of trusted party enforcing signed kernel drivers and a signed kernel in order to make KLA sufficiently hard to bypass.
*** In terms of the average Joe just wanting their game to run rather than having to think about the ethical implications of buying hardware you don't actually own or running an OS which gives control of your hardware to various corporations (but not you).
Given that valve refuses to use KLA for their own competitive multiplayer games, and has gone out of their way to not make their hardware locked down, I really dont think they will go down the path of making a locked down platform or facilitating intrusive anti cheat.
A TPM is entirely under your control. It's designed in such a way that you can't do certain things with data within it, but that's not because (at least in theory) someone else can and is controlling your TPM to prevent you from doing those things. The TPM, unlike an installation of Windows, doesn't only listen to Microsoft.
Similarly, the presence of unsigned software on a computer would not stop a Linux kernel level anti-cheat from working, and the kernel level anti-cheat shouldn't prevent the unsigned software from working. Once you run that unsigned software, your machine is tainted similarly to the way your kernel is tainted if you load the NVidia driver.
There are several products that rely on a USB device like this for DRM solutions. It’s probably much easier to unlock static assets than validate running code, but I don’t have insight on the true complexity.
What does the USB stick actually do? The hard part of implementing the anti-cheat (ie. either invasive scanning or attestation with hardware root of trust) is entirely unaddressed, so your description is as helpful as "would it be possible to implement a quantum computer as a USB stick?"
They have bet on the behavioral analysis anti-cheat horse but it hasn't won any races yet.
Moreover, they've proven that it's certainty more difficult to get it working than regular old fuck-the-end-user anti cheat.
Lastly, don't assume that the success of the platform will persuade these companies. They were already firmly un-persuaded when the steam deck got popular. And really, I think the popularity of a platform depends on the support of these companies more than the support of these companies depends on the popularity of a platform.
Depends on just how successful SteamOS gets. If it start to have a significant market share, competitive multiplayer games might start to find it hard to ignore it. Though how they decide to deal with that, I have no idea.
I think Valve see a future for anti-cheat where most of it is behavioral analysis. Client-side anti-cheat is a big game of cat and mouse. It does make cheat harder to develop, but to a point where the customer is impacted. Post game analysis cannot be countered "technically". Cheat would need to mimic a real player behavior, which at the end is a success. If you can't tell if a player is cheating or not, does it matter that they are ? Although for things like wallhacks, it might be harder to detect.
This is basically effectively where KLA has gotten to. There are still plenty of cheaters, people just don't realize.
I think it does matter in a strictly moral sense, and if people were more aware of how bad the problem is, they would likely be outraged. Alas, since they can't see it, they are not aware of it, so there is no outrage and the games companies are satisfied.
They use different means to detect cheaters, which means sometimes they are banned several weeks after the fact, but they do ban cheaters.
Xbox, as a console, already is in an existential crisis.
I think people have weird expectations about what the Steam Machine will cost. From what Valve has said so far (cheaper than if you build it yourself from parts), it will still cost significantly more than a PS5, and probably also more than a PS5 Pro, while having less performance than both. You will not beat the PS5 in terms of performance per dollar. Yes, games are more expensive on PS5, but most people don't work that way but just want to know whether they'll be able to play GTA6 on day one.
In both cases I suppose it was the dedicated gaming-machines (Switch now, Atari then) that were feeling the squeeze.
A lot of home computing used tvs back then
What do you mean by that? The PC experience with adequate hardware is almost universally better than the console experience.
Some games just run better on the PS when compared to the PC version, regardless of you having the latest and best PC. You can see this fairly well on the Nintendo Switch, which is a low spec tablet but the games run very well and the experience is great.
PC Games, generally speaking, tend to favor keyboard and mouse not controllers.
This is why I suspect game devs will start optimising for the Steam Machine, provided it sells well.
If there's any time for people who believe in open systems and open software to step up and buy the hell out of something, this it it. It will be very interesting to see if the play works out our not.
It’s not about the fact that I’m actually going to use it. It’s about the fact that I want people to keep making things like this. It’s about the fact I want to reward them for not locking it down completely.
I know a lot of people that behave this way with phone purchases.
That's still higher than what seems reasonable for a simple store front, but they aren't as bad as Valve or Apple.
Note that Valve is a relatively small company with only a few hundred employees, but with one of the most extreme revenue-per-employee ratios in the world, estimated at $19 million per employee:
https://upptic.com/valve-structure-employment-numbers-revenu...
That's orders of magnitude higher than companies like Apple, Elsevier or Nintendo. Steam is basically free money for Valve. Valve is extracting huge rents (around 6.5 billion yearly revenue) for negligible expenses (only 79 people working on Steam).
Based on what? Your arbitrary standards. I still don't understand what's wrong with 30% for everything Steam provides as a platform. It's perfectly acceptable. It's not making indie developers poorer. It helping to ensure Valve can focus on the things that matter to them and do things like invest in Steam Input, Proton, SteamOS, and Steam Deck/Machine/Controller/Frame/etc. And it's still significantly better than the times when your only option was brick and mortar, where you maybe got 10-30% as the developer.
Every other digital storefront does far less and still takes 15-30%. Why is Valve the big boogey man and everybody else is free to charge whatever they want on developers while doing fuck all for anybody but themselves?
Based on a strongly and persistently imbalanced ratio of revenue to expenses, which indicates a form of market inefficiency.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_rent#Monopoly_rent (the mentioned network effects are basically what drives Steam rents)
> I still don't understand what's wrong with 30% for everything Steam provides as a platform. It's perfectly acceptable. It's not making indie developers poorer.
Of course it makes them poorer if a big chunk of what you pay for their games goes to Valve.
> It helping to ensure Valve can focus on the things that matter to them and do things like invest
But they basically aren't doing that. If a company has an extreme revenue-to-expense ratio, it means they are hardly investing any of their revenue. They only have a few hundred employees while making around 6.5 billion per year.
> Every other digital storefront does far less and still takes 15-30%. Why is Valve the big boogey man
Well, Microsoft seems to do 12-15% in the Microsoft Store. And I fully agree Apple is significantly worse than Valve with iOS, because there is no way to circumvent the 30% fee in iOS; indeed, it wouldn't even be possible to offer a software like Steam on iOS. (But it should also be noted that Apple has a much lower revenue-per-employee ratio than Valve, indicating that they reinvest a lot more of their revenue.)
None of them dethroned steam, so 30% is still the cost to access the steam user base.
If tens of billions can't overcome this "inefficiency" then it sure seems like there might be more to the story than economics 101.
The fact is that Steam has an incredibly loyal _userbase_ and you won't convince them to leave unless steam betrays their trust, which they haven't.
The trust in any competitor is nearly 0 compared with Steam which has been a platform people have loved and used for over a decade now with basically 0 issues. No corporate missteps.
Arguably the biggest controversy is the latest way they made CS2 loot boxes less valuable, popping the insane bubble in the skins market. That's still ultimately good for the average gamer and I expect they'll come out smelling like roses.
Yes, network effects, as discussed in the Wikipedia article linked above. It's the reason why Facebook or Twitter are so hard to replace, or eBay, or Amazon. In these cases larger platforms benefit from the fact that everyone else is already there, which makes switching hard. That doesn't mean they are inherently better though. They can even be significantly worse than alternatives, apart from network effects.
Are you sure?
I hate the iOS store because it’s full of ad-riddled slop. Steam isn’t remotely close to that. If I find a game on there, even if it’s bad, someone clearly spent time and love making it.
If the final price doesn't change based on the storefront cut, then as a consumer, I don't care.
https://www.wolfire.com/blog/2021/05/Regarding-the-Valve-cla...
Please, compare that with Amazon and AWS, spot the difference
Let's break down what you actually get for that 30% with Microsoft/Sony
- $120/yr (xbox) or $80/yr (ps) subscription fee
- Price subsidized console
- Friends system, voice chat/messages
- Online store/publishing regional pricing and associated locks
- Store for MTX
- Cloud based game saves
- Trophies/achivements and other player related goal setting
- CDN to distribute your game
- Remote play e.g. using your console to stream to your PC/Phone
- First class controller support
Steam gives you all of the above with literally 0 cost to the consumer aside from purchasing your game. The fact that anyone even pretends like this is a valid argument is a joke.
Since PC is an open platform, the proper comparison would be other PC store fronts which are substantially cheaper than Steam. Unfortunately there is no incentive for users to switch, as Valve apparently contractually forbids games to be sold at a lower price outside Steam.
Furthermore, is it not Valves right to say if you wish to offer the same product at a lower price, we reserve the right not to sell your product anymore. Keep in mind in most cases when a game is not freely purchased through steam anymore you can still download the game from the CDN, you can also still use all of the online features for the game. You just cannot purchase a new copy
I really don't understand why price parity requirement is a bad thing. If you want to take a bigger slice of the pie you can eat up the infrastructure costs yourself or take your business elsewhere, EOS, Xbox, PlayStation store ect
"There are only a few hundred people working at Valve, with 79 working on Steam, but they are making 6.5 billion USD yearly. That's extreme. One of the highest revenues per employee ratios in the world. They are spending almost nothing. The 30% are almost pure profit."
You are absolutely right. that is far too much money and to which I simply ask the question why no other serious competition? Companies have poured millions into this and always miss the first stop gap of consumer rights first meaning any attempt they have to eat away at the market share fails so hard its actually embarrassing. Anyone arguing against the current system is just arguing against capitalism.
Out of all the companies in the gamer space hardware/software Valve are the only one who actually care for their customers and have regularly extended rights that go well beyond the legal minimum requirement, this is just a fraction of a reason why they have been and will continue to be first class in the gaming space
Highly likely this could replace my desktop, as I don't need something much more powerful, just with more modern hardware. I don't do much AAA gaming and nearly game in my Steam library would run on this just fine. My regular daily computing needs can reasonably be satisfied with the compute power of a Raspberry Pi. I can swap flatpak based immutable SteamOS with plain Arch without losing the advantages (i.e. custom hardware settings integration) that one might sacrifice doing so on the Steam Deck.
This is going to be a no-brainer for my next upgrade.
I think that this is the issue with most people these days... The combination of work, seen it all, and frankly, often disappointing AAA games.
The time spend is often on more smaller studios that do something creative, and those are often not triple A graphical monsters anyway.
> This is going to be a no-brainer for my next upgrade.
Really depends on the price... Do not forget that its going to be released in 2026... At that time we get new Zen 6 CPUs (remember, this Steam Deck is Zen4), what will drive the prices of the old Zen4 down even more. Same with new GPUs.
Like, the Steam deck was incredible pricing for the hardware you got when released and sure, its still a good value for a handheld console, but from a hardware point of view, its really old now (zen2 cores).
go donate to khronos or the wine team. maybe even Godot, which treats Linux as a 1° class citizen
Valve has single-handedly massively contributed to Linux gaming. Buying their products is obviously beneficial to Linux gaming as a whole. It's in their best interest to continue their trend of supporting and improving Linux gaming.
And with the most recent announcements, we can expect to see a similar sort of growth in the FEX emulator and general ARM support for various projects, which is all every exciting even as a non-gamer.
I've been gaming for ~40 years without ever touching a controller, why would I start now?
Regardless, some games are far better with a joystick, some with mouse. If we care for gaming experiences, it should be whatever is best.
Admittedly, the only one I can think of at the moment is Eldenring: The PC (mouse+keyboard) experience was terrible.
I still passed on a controller but the controller first experience was glaring.
I feel similar, but for us there's also no point to get a Steam Machine. Playing games while sitting on a living room couch in front of a TV with mouse and keyboard is not comfortable at all.
Using mouse and keyboard it is better to play games at a proper desk with an office chair and I already have such a PC.
Memory (both main and VRAM) might be a bit on the weak side for some non-gaming workloads though. I hope we'll see those bump up once the current supply squeeze is over.
I have an M1 Macbook, no gaming for me. So the Steam Machine is perfect for me.
I can just tap a button, it'll turn on and I can be gaming on my main monitor before I have time to grab a controller.
All the components come at a premium price and you also get to spend hours finding obscure forums with exact measurements of cases and components to see if the GPU fits lengthwise or whether a specific CPU + cooler is too tall for the case =)
And even if you make it, you're easily way over 1k€ before get to even picking the M.2 drive and RAM.
Thus: Steam Machine. I click "buy" on Steam, it appears on my doorstep, I plug it in and it'll start working.
Its like there is a identify crisis even at Valve. Why can this not be a streaming machine for people who want to remote game. Why do you need a controller, if maybe you have a steam deck and stream PC games from the Steam PC > Deck...
What if you just want to use this as a cheap dedicated gaming PC with a monitor and keyboard/mouse.
I feel like there is a identify crisis with the product. Like the started out making a console, but then realized that nothing prevents people from using this as a cheap PC, if Valve puts the price too low. So you have this retraction on the pricing.
But the Gabe Cube just lives rent free in my head. It looks sleek. I know that the software experience is going to be top-notch since I have a Steam Deck. I know that it is only going to get better with time (when the Steam Deck was released I barely touched it since lots of things didn't work well, but this year the Steam Deck is by far my most played machine).
Also I am finding gaming fun again since on Steam I can play lots of good and cheap games, since they're almost always on sale and there are lots of indie games that never get released in console.
I want to sell all my other consoles and just invest in the Steam ecosystem, especially nowadays that almost all games will eventually be multi-platform (even the ones from Xbox and PlayStation). It is not like I like to play lots of AAA games anyway, and at least the ones I am interested are already available or will be available in PC eventually (like Final Fantasy VII Remake, MGS3: Remake, etc). I also don't care about online multiplayer for the lack of kernel anti-cheat on SteamOS/Linux to be a problem.
I am seriously considering buying another TV (we only have one in our home right now) just to justify buying a Gabe Cube.
So a single-purpose PC-based console basically made for Steam? That sounds great to me. I don't even have a 4K TV so the performance might be just what I need.
If steam continues the way it is, it will be hard for me to justify having a gaming PC and a console instead of just one machine.
But I think the best way to do it is to have a cheap PC (or maybe an Android TV device or something?) connected to your TV. You can stream games to it from your gaming PC in the other room: https://store.steampowered.com/remoteplay
The main issue which has kept me at the desk for games, however, is that I'm way too used to keyboard & mouse and the controller experience is frustrating.
If the Steam Machine becomes the base configuration that most games start targeting, then I think everyone will benefit from it.
Only to play almost nothing or very badly if not supported natively. And no devs won't support mac games there is no incentive. Emulation is subpar compared to Proton on Linux, Apple people should really start stop thinking macbooks can do modern gaming, excepts for a couple of Capcom portings that were paid by apple to have them and some retro gaming
It is painfully annoying to compile any MacOS application without actually having a machine with Xcode installed. The server solutions you can get a hold of are bad because apple will not sell any rack mounted servers to the public and the machines they do sell are restricted to a max of two instances of OSX virtualized.
Your best bet is to rent a Mac server from one of these providers who just hoarde mac minis and throw them in custom datacenter racks
Steam has already failed at this once, and it won’t try a third time.
(And Windows is currently at its lowest point, so it’s the perfect opportunity.)
I see no evidence for this, and plenty of evidence to the contrary. Notably, after the initially failed Steam Machines, we now have Steam Deck, Steam Machine Mark II, Steam Frame, Steam Controller Mark II, etc.
And critically, Valve seems to be learning, iterating, and the Steam Deck and Steam Controller Mark II are both much more enjoyable to use than the first Steam Controller.
From their perspective, Valve are otherwise dependent on Microsoft or Apple who see them as competition to squeeze out. Success of the Steam hardware platforms is their only way to change that situation. Therefore all evidence points to Valve continuing to iterate until they find success. They are a private company, so they can afford to do so indefinitely without worrying about pissing off a board or investors.
But such changes are mostly more negative.
The 10 years Valve took between Steam machines was invested (wisely, I think) in Linux infrastructure like Wayland, Wine/Proton, GPU and audio drivers, etc. None of which Valve will have to repeat.
To make my point, there was only 1.5 years between the release of the Steam Deck, and Steam Deck OLED, and that involved a new silicon tapeout.
If their mission is SteamOS, then I'm tempted to say they need to expand their area of influence beyond what they're doing with linux now which seems to be strictly game related, which likely involves whittling down the major or minor reasons people don't use desktop linux (and all the projects that comprise it) in general, not just their distro. So long as they're supporting (in one way or another) the majority of windows games in a foreign environment and the richness that mods can bring they could do with improving the experience of that relative to windows and not just the happy path of what happens if the base game launches. And that's before the enigma of anti-cheat. Then find some way to reap the rewards, if any, for doing that greatly expanded workload or investment.
So will I, if anything to support the effort, and check it out maybe I'll buy more for my kids or something.
My current PC has a Ryzen 7 5800X and an Intel Arc B580 and I don't really have the need for a device to connect to a TV (which I also don't have), but I can definitely see the appeal to something that is both okay at games, as well as has hardware that the software works really well with, with minimal amounts of driver weirdness. Not everyone views building or buying PC as non-intimidating, especially because of how many different parts of different specs and vendors are there.
I ended up getting a MacBook (M1 Air) and an iPhone (SE 2022) for some work stuff a while back, and while my use cases of those particular devices are a bit limited, I appreciate how most of the computing and updates out of the box... just work (at least for now, in contrast I got a bit unlucky with Windows updates on my main PC so I had to mess around with where the disk partitions are, otherwise it refused to boot after one update, no idea what's up with that).
Plus maybe it'll push developers in the direction of optimize their games a bit more (or at least add more performance oriented presets).
I just hope that they won't pull an Intel Core Ultra with the pricing, which will probably make or break the Steam Machine as something that'd see widespread usage.
Steam Link works okay but is still noticeable for some games. Docking a Steam Deck wasn’t powerful enough. Running a long HDMI cable isn’t feasible in my current living space. So I’m very intrigued to have this lower powered cube sit under my TV for when I just want to do some couch co-op or play something more casual to wind down at night.
It's a laptop APU with graphics card moved to a daughter board, hence "semi-custom".
"Proper" is very subjective here. My entire workflow for developing 3D engines is covered a couple of times over with the announced Steam Machine specs. In fact, even when I was working in web backend development it would've covered it as a dedicated development machine and that was with some pretty pathological dev setups, language servers that ate up way too much memory, etc..
In my experience, relation of game's hardware requirements to the amount of fun it provides is inversely proportional. Best games of all time (opinionated, of course) run well on integrated graphics.
The Steam Machine is surely meant to be somewhere between mainstream and niche. It’s going to be cheap enough to be a pretty good deal for what it is, but I think those who are already PC builders (at least, those who aren’t unusually high-income and will toss money at a novelty) might not jump on it.
The device does offer some unique features you can’t get on the PC market like HDMI-CEC, which will make it a great living room box.
Perhaps it’s even being somewhat underrated as a PC on your desk type of solution. Perhaps the type of person who wants a small form factor plug and play solution at their desk and isn’t a small form factor expert would want it. The only barrier there is that SteamOS doesn’t bring you to desktop mode instantly, but in that case the user could install their own OS like Bazzite or Windows.
>If CrossOver is struggling to run that particular game you so badly want to play, it’ll be buttery smooth in a few years. You’re going to do the laptop upgrade anyway regardless of the Steam Machine.
The only times I've heard the fan come on on my M4 were with games like Kerbal Space Program and Cities Skylines. Having tried both of them on a variety of MBPs over the years (both Intel and Apple Silicon) I'm not convinced they'll ever run well - in fact they both play worse on my M4. Newer games like CP2077 and No Man's Sky do put in a good showing but they've been optimized for Metal.
I'm a Nintendo fanboy. Untold thousands from my wallet to their pockets over the last 30 years. NES on up, we've had every console except the virtual boy and specific iterations of mobile consoles (e.g switch but not switch lite). 512gb sd in the switch to fit all the games I bought on it. My house has 5 3DSs in it, which I maintain to this day is the best console ever made.
Sadly though I'll not spend another dollar on a Nintendo product for the rest of my life. Their aggressive targeting of emulation developers and their litigiousness in general I believe is harmful to the videogame industry.
Nintendo imo makes some of the best games ever made, but that's ok, there's still lots of other really good ones that run on my steam deck or my PC, and I can do whatever I want with the save files for those games, play them on my own terms.
I want to quit windows, but I'm always disappointed by running Linux that isn't backed by a company. I think Valve might be one of the companies I trust the most.
I kinda wonder if someone will start selling productivity tools on steam...
The point is the target demographics. And, just like the Steam Deck, this is not something for power users. Most people on here know how to build a PC and install Linux with KDE on it, which is the same experience you would get with a Steam Machine.
Valve is selling this to an audience of gamers, specifically those who want an easy gaming experience on low end hardware. This is the same demographic which Sony and Microsoft are selling to.
Steam has nowhere near the same name recognition as Playstation or Xbox in the general public.
Inserting a random factoid does not make a sentence have a point.
Valve also does not need to advertise to the general public, the general public is not their demographic.
So while the Steam Machine is intriguing, I really don't have a good reason to buy one. That being said, I like the idea of supporting this kind of hardware development.
At the same time I don't need a living room machine to be a full-fledged desktop. Nor is that desirable with kids.
But I do benefit from the announcement, because this means Valve will continue investing in the GNU/Linux ecosystem, and this will net more Linux players, which in turn means better software overall. Yay!
Your list has hopefully saved me ~300eur thanks. And to add to your list, hopefully it comes non-upgradable, choca full of adverts, forced AI, spyware/root-kit/anti-cheat, mandatory age verified account requirements, and all the other modern essentials to make me never ever want one.
Still, it is kinda cute.
Especially when both run ARM so you have a apple(s) to apples comparison.
I still hope they succeed. Steam is the one good monopolists that will probably only go full evil when Gabe dies.
My dream would be Steam OS on hardware that can rival apple silicone.
But I love how amazing of an idea it is. A form factor and ease-of-setup of a console that brings all the best features of PC gaming (inter-generational compatibility, free multiplayer...) into the living room. And unlike with the original Steam Machine, the market is ready this time.
> It’s Steam, not Good Old Games. Sure it can run GOG games but the Machine is primarily designed to run Steam. You avoid purchasing from Steam like the plague, yet you’re willing to buy a Machine dedicated to it? Are you crazy?
I prioritise getting games on GOG, and the Steam Deck experience with it is good.
I use Heroic Launcher to install them, and Steam mode to play it.
> You don’t have time to fiddle with configuration. Button and trackpad mappings to get the controls just right enough to play strategy games designed to be played with keyboard and mouse will only leave you frustrated.
+1. I don't bother with configuration. If a game only supports keyboard and mouse I just play it when docked.
> Fuck it, I’m getting one.
Haha.
Buy a gamsir g8 and now you have a Switch (via steam link).
At this point it's like releasing a new Fred Astaire musical. A new episode of The Lone Ranger.
Oh, this is ugly! Haven't noticed this being mentioned anywhere.
Not sure what the author meant here. Maybe they're referring for the fact that you can't purchase a cheaper version of Steam Machine without the Steam Controller.
Yes. Games are a complete waste of time and the sooner you realize it the better
And Steam has my gaming habits because I want it to have them: it provides good tips in what to buy.
Steam has none of my voice chats and the last 260 hours I played videogames, it doesn't think I even logged in. My favorite game of the year barely shows up on my profile page because I use it through a mod.
I agree on multiplayer games, but that's due to the business, single player games don't have that incentive.
And Steam is full of beautiful work of arts in the indie game space
Secondly Valve makes disgusting amount of money from the lootboxes and the unregulated underage gambling market (estimated billions) which are almost a 0 effort system. Running an API and releasing a new lootbox every 2nd month or so are peanuts compared to the development, manifacturing, and distribution of the Steam Machine
> Fuck it, I'm getting one.
You can see the alternative with PS5 and Xbox, where AMD designed and produced large bespoke custom chips. Versions of these chips which don't fully pass QA could have a few defective cores or CUs fused off and used elsewhere, but we don't see that outside of some very niche Chinese motherboards.
Valve's approach instead allows them to re-use standard PC components which just didn't quite meet muster.
So in effect, "our next console will be a bunch of refurbished PCs we have sourced from local junkyard" is exactly what Valve did here.
But the OP didn't discuss "Should Valve do something about the sorry state of the world", it discussed whether we individually should buy a Steam Machine.
So literally the best thing Valve could do here is carry on like usual.
Notice that I'm also not criticizing Valve. They're doing what they feel is best for their business.
What I'm disagreeing with is enthusiasm for buying yet another gaming rig in the above circumstances.
Noice how I also discussed international relationships. I didn’t miss your point.
> Notice that I'm also not criticizing Valve. They're doing what they feel is best for their business. What I'm disagreeing with is enthusiasm for buying yet another gaming rig in the above circumstances.
My same rebuttal applies.
Degrowth as a cure is worse than what it is purported to treat. Itwould hurt people. Developing countries improve their standard of living by exporting stuff to us, by consuming resources, etc. The poorest countries trade the least and its not an enviable lifestyle.
We are not headed for collapse by any metric. Fuel use in China has plateaued despite growing energy demand, owing to rapid solar scaling. Matter of time before we catch up. IPCC says climate will suck and be expensive, not apocalyptic. And finally, global population growth is projected to completely stall. The fertility rate is already stagnant in the 1st world. Innovation also improves efficiency, allowing us to build with less energy and resources over time.
We grow only BC of immigration, and immigrants are not coming to consume less, but to consume more.
(Nice nickname, btw. French or Belgian?)
I don't think it will make my life better today. One day though I will be in the market for a modern console to play next-gen, because that's fun.
For me, I am considering it, depending on the price. I already have a small form factor PC that I run Bazzite on in the living room. The problem? There's some kind of hardware issue. Unfortunately, it might be the Intel CPU. It results in sporadic issues including periods of time where memory errors spike like crazy. I love the PC ecosystem for what it is, but here's the problem: without redundant parts, I can't reasonably isolate the problem to figure out what to RMA. It's not abundantly clear, because the problem is sporadic. I'd need to replace parts one-by-one. So I've just been working around it for now.
But the Steam Machine is sold as a single unit, and it already runs the KDE desktop that I'm used to using on my TV. (It's better than you'd expect, with a couple of tweaks, though I hope the SteamOS version that ships with the Steam Machine moves to a Wayland session as my TV supports HDR.) If I have a problem with the hardware, I can send it back to Valve. Even better, I kind of actually trust Valve.
So for me it totally depends on price point. I don't game all that much on TV, but I do want a box connected to my TV that can game. Plus, bonus points if it's able to achieve a better idle power usage than my current small form factor build. Plus, even better, the device ships with native HDMI CEC support, which is fairly rare on PC graphics cards, requiring very frustrating workarounds. This is clearly a potential killer option for people who want a living room PC setup for their TV.
(Aside: if you are wondering what the experience with using a living room PC with KDE is like, it's not too bad. You have to crank up the scale factor a bit, but with a Bluetooth keyboard and touchpad device, it's pretty easy to use. There's no easy way to support receiving Chromecasts, though, though there is Shanocast, but it's a bit sketchy. Funny enough, I believe Apple's AirPlay is less locked down and you can use UxPlay to receive AirPlay requests. I mostly just use Librewolf with some quality of life extensions like YouTube Shorts Block and Sponsorblock and the like. It is a little clunky but my previous weapon of choice was Android TV and it has been horrifically enshittified, so those devices are basically ewaste now.)
If they manage an under $800 price point and deliver on performance, thermals and noise, you simply won't be able to beat this thing in almost any dimension buying parts new to make a build yourself. It is significantly smaller than anything you can build, and it theoretically packs significant power per inch in the sub-$1000 price point. As long as you don't mind paying Valve, I absolutely think this is a potential killer deal for many use cases that will involve barely ever actually using Steam.
(But, despite the end of this article, it is definitely worth some consideration whether you really need one. Even if you ultimately decide you want it anyways :P)
This may come as a surprise to you, but us humans need entertainment