Comment by topgrain2 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by topgrain2 | Hacker News Reader

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End-to-end (hardware, OS, UI software) support from a single vendor for a narrowly-configured gaming PC, with actual serious support in terms of software updates and such, not just "we'll maybe honor the warranty if it breaks", including for TV-attached use cases where PCs (windows or Linux, either) tend to be kinda wonky[0], was appealing enough to me that I planned to buy it day-1 if it was under $700, and probably would still have bought it up to $800, to replace my giant gaming tower with Bazzite on it, even though performance-wise it would be roughly a lateral move or slight downgrade. I was really looking forward to the day I took that thing out of my house, but now... nope, gonna be a while because a few billionaires bid PC hardware up to the Moon.

I'm not aware of a single other product on the market that offers what Valve's device does. Tons of companies offer gaming PCs and you can slap Bazzite on lots of them, but that won't get you everything the Steam Machine offers. It's, AFAIK, unique.

[0] "But I've been running a PC attached to a TV literally for decades..." yeah, you've probably been missing some HDMI features that you don't care about but others do, or had trouble with them, while any gaming console or media player will have those features and have few or no problems with them; do you have surround sound over HDMI to a proper audio receiver, with non-broken mode-switching depending on current output? Use CEC features to wake your PC from sleep? What's your color gamut like? I've done this before too, a lot, hell I did it all the way back when I needed a composite or S-Video out on my video card to make it happen, on a CRT TV before HDMI ports were really a thing. Really good support for the use case looks a lot different than what you usually get by just plugging a PC or laptop into a TV.

Do you want to buy it to play video games on or do you want to buy it as a display/bragging rights piece?

What games do you play now that this specialized piece of hardware would better?

> What games do you play now that this specialized piece of hardware would better?

It'd likely be better as a living room TV PC than any PC I've ever owned or have seen for sale before, and it's likely to enjoy years of good support and frequent updates for its entire software stack by the same vendor that's selling the hardware, which is something I've never seen from anyone but Apple (aside from Valve, of course, for my Steam Deck) in more than 25 years of buying PCs and PC hardware. I tend to use my gaming PCs for five or so years at a time, despite never buying any parts that are top-of-the-line, so I'd expect to use this at least five years, and if the steam deck is any indication, it'll likely have 1st-party support for exactly the device and software I am using that entire time.

It'd be better for approximately all the games I play now than the power-hungry giant tower I have (it's effectively a lateral move on everything except 3D processing speed, which'll be roughly double what I've got now), plus, unlike this bazzite-running franken-PC, I expect it won't do stuff like have a weird whole-screen momentary color-shift every couple minutes (multiple monitors, it's the software, not the monitor's fault), constantly forget how to connect to bluetooth devices it's paired with (this, with a USB-attached bluetooth chip that's allegedly "really good on Linux", LOL; incidentally, it also can't pair with some devices in "desktop mode" [KDE] but can connect to them there once paired in "Gaming Mode", it's so weird), freak the hell out and scream like the damned(!) if a game tries to output something other than stereo audio, et c. I expect it'll have fewer "minor" problems like that on account of the 1st party vendor support and their having very few total hardware configs to test against.

I want it to play video games. Who in god's name would brag about something they merely bought? Especially if that something is mass-produced electronics.

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