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Comment by voidUpdate | Hacker News Reader

Valve fixed it by making a console that plays PC games, rather than making a PC

But that's not the same. I'm heavy PC user but I only play games on a console. The reason is simple: zero friction.

I play games when I'm tired, so if I have to wait a minute for a Steam update (which happened a month ago on the rare day I wanted to play on my PC), I simply give up and go watch TV.

Console games need to update too. I don't know how the steam machine handles it, but steam downloads updates for my games in the background, so if it goes to sleep instead of doing a full power off, it might be able to keep games updated while you're not playing too

Yeah, but at least the XBOX sits in a low power mode that does updates and keeps the spot you were in your game saved. It's really transparent. I'm not saying Steam can't do that but it's not in the same league yet.

Steam does exactly that for me, thought when I'm casually using my computer, not when my computer has gone to sleep. But since Valve controls the whole steam machine ecosystem, I'd imagine it would be possible for the steam machine to do the same sleep-updates as xbox

I don’t think anyone has the steam machine to test this stuff yet but I can’t see any reason it can’t do exactly the same thing.

Except they don't _need_ to update, it's just a manifestation of the the very PC-ification we're talking about. You used to pop the game in, press the on button, and be playing. At some point someone figured out that if PC gamers were willing ot put up with unfinished games being shipped, so would console gamers, and it was downhill from there.

Well yes, but if we are assuming that console games need to update, pc games would also need to update

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