Valve is about to win the console generation(xeiaso.net) |
Valve is about to win the console generation(xeiaso.net) |
What Valve offers is just one more PC configuration
There’s no doubt they’re tee’d up to radically alter the landscape. But man they better have a truly plug and play, turnkey system if they want to compete with consoles. The steamdeck even after this many years is absolutely trash at going from handheld to docked (better the other direction at least) and is incredibly hit or miss when it’s plugged into a TV in general. I had to buy a special DP->HDMI cable that forces 1080p @60 to get it to consistently appear on screen docked (LG C1 for reference).
I am excited for the steam machine. But yeah, telling me it’s a more powerful steamdeck is super exciting in some ways and eyebrow raising in others unless they got some big SteamOS overhaul coming.
On the flip side, I'm pretty confident AMD will be able to output to DisplayPort
Personally I'd love if we all just went back to playing on personal servers with your real life friends or people you otherwise trust. But I don't think this is would go over well with the average online gamer.
Just seeing all the gamers requesting a kernel AC for CS2, saying VAC does not work; but now they have banned a lot of cheaters and seem to have less cheaters than the new Battlefield which has kernel AC.
If anyone is capable of moving things along in this space, Valve should be it.
> Personally I'd love if we all just went back to playing on personal servers with your real life friends or people you otherwise trust. But I don't think this is would go over well with the average online gamer.
It's not the gamers that don't want this - although, yes, I do also want the option of matchmaking - it's the companies that don't allow dedicated servers, or shut down the servers after releasing that year's full-price version of the same game.
Of course, games don't need that - I'd say that every game studio is aware that without streamers, you don't sell games, and streamers can't stream when HDCP gets in their way.
But for the use case of a home theater? PS4 and 5 as well as some Xbox varieties can do 4K Netflix [1], no issues. Installing Windows, I'd guess that's fine too. But Steam OS? Nope. Anything too "open" gets the boot, including Android if you dare root your device, Widevine L1 refuses to work as the TEE doesn't reveal the keys if it detects an unlocked bootloader.
1) front speaker instead of this magnetic panel that is only for esthetic
2) wireless charging pad on top
3) home router functionality - just attach 4g modem to usb-a
4) matter hub for smart home
They could advertise you getting 7in1 devices for the same price:
- game console
- smart speaker like alexa
- smart tv (miracast, google cast, airplay)
- smart home hub for matter devices
- home router
- wireless charging pad
- mini home server (private cloud, home backup, vpn, pihole)
Then with software wish it could easily have app store like umbrel: https://umbrel.com
While PC likely has the most exclusives by a ridiculously large margin, it probably has the fewest AAA exclusives.
The reasoning works like this: I want to play that game.
hth
That said, I feel we're trading evil gaming monopolies for a less evil monopoly. I can only truly support Valve once they start actually selling games rather than game "licenses".
What I want is GOG's transparency and philosophy with Valve's Linux and hardware investments.
Who would have thought that not actively engaging in enshittification can be a secret winning recipe!
I love my deck. But a smooth experience it is not. Up until idk a year ago…? Flipping from gaming mode to desktop mode or vice versa had a solid 50-50 shot of inducing a fail state requiring a hard reset.
I'm buying one just for this sentiment alone.
The steam deck is also available for that 400-500 price point.
PC gamers will play on their PC. Couch gamers will have a PS5 or an XBox. So who is this for, couch gamers that don't have one of those? Or PC players tired of playing on a monitor?
Don't get me wrong, it's cool, and I'm definitely the target market but feel like that's pretty tiny.
Most couch gamers want their GTA or Call of Duty, which, if I read correctly, this will not run.
It's not useless by any definition, but will it really outsell the PS5? Because that is, to me, what the headline is implying...
It's been a great entry way into gaming for my wife (lot's of cozy games) and I also play a few games from my steam backlog (Halo, Hades 2, etc). I don't feel like we're in the minority for what a couch system is used for but maybe.
The largest hurdle for steam in the living room so far has been controller support or lack of couch co-op games.
The chances of any of the Steam Machines taking the market share of any of the current generation consoles is so vanishingly miniscule, that I don't think it can even compete against any of them.
It more or less competes against the Linux ecosystem of System76 machines or the Framework computers.
But against consoles? No dent at all in their market share.
For that they need to outsell the Switch 2. 10m units in 6 months.
Good luck with that.
However, Pokemon guarantees a certain amount of Switch 2 sales--Pokemon ZA sold about 6 million units.
Anything above $600 is DOA and that's with accepting the fact that the most popular games will be not available on the platform
It's a small box, it can sit next to the tele without looking awful, and if I just need to get a controller, that's fine too.
The only way immutability helps here is you could have two OS images, the users own customisable one, and a clean one. Then when you try to load an anti cheat game, the console could in theory reboot in to the clean one, and pass all the verification checks to load the game.
Steam Frame https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45903325
Steam Machine https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45903404
SteamOS on Arm (using FEX) is going to spawn a generation of £100 devices that can play lower end Windows games, stream from PC, and emulate every console from the PS2 back. It's huge.
(Technology, demographics, popularity?)
When I buy a Steam console, I have more than 1000 games available for that console the moment it lands in my living room.
If I buy a ps5, I have 0.
Somewhat related, but I enjoy the topic. Is how freakishly good the mouse is for FPS type games. If you asked anyone to design a purpose built controller for a first person game they would not come up with a mouse. But somehow despite all odds that thing designed for moving a cursor around the screen is the best controller yet for looking around. Probably something about the huge throw distance compared to any other controller.
The only place it suffers for me is games that aren't coded to support simultaneous gamepad and mouse input, which you can work around by mapping the joystick as a keyboard input. Otherwise it's great.
I think that appropriately priced and supported, it will put Valve in a strategic position to actually compete in subsequent console generations as a real player. It's a little behind in terms of specs, but with as slow as uptake of this generation has been, I expect that developers will continue to target base PS5 specs for another six years at least (PS6 supposedly landing in 2027). Then they can drop their Steam Machine 2 in 2029 or 2030, hitting base PS6 specs at an affordable price. It's been a winning approach for Nintendo.
Funnily enough, I own a Switch and a PS5. I mostly buy and play on the Switch while the PS5 main function is getting covered in a thin layer of dust.
However, the single digital service that hasn't killed my digital library at some point is Steam. Games that I bought many years ago are still fine. Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo all killed digital games that I bought.
That having been said: I've transferred a lot of my purchasing to GoG. Steam doesn't get the benefit of the doubt anymore.
No? All stores are still online. Some don't allow buying new games anymore (DSi Shop, Wii Shop, PS3 store for example) but redownloading still works.
It's like docker images for the whole OS. As far as I can tell, the Steam Deck does not have secure boot or any kind of attestation enabled. They have been very forward in marketing it as an open and free system you can do anything on. The hardware does have a TPM that is seemingly unused currently, not sure if it supports some form of secure boot.
Attested sealed images and Open and Free systems have no conflict with each other. Mod it all you want; sure, it’ll generate a different attestation than the shipping sealed image, or if your customizations turn off attestations and/or secure boot, none at all. You do you! Source code releases will never include the private key used to sign them, just as with all open source today, so either the OS’s attestation will be signed by Valve or by you or by someone else. It takes me about sixty seconds to add my own signing key to my PC BIOS today and it would not surprise me to find Valve’s BIOS implements the same, as I’m pretty certain this is basic off-the-shelf functionality on Zen4/Zen5. But, regardless, Free/Open Source is wholly unconcerned by whose release signing key is used; otherwise it wouldn’t be Free/Open! The decision to care about whose release signature is live right now is the gaming server’s decision, not Steam Linux’s, and that decision is not restricted by any OSS-approved license that I’m aware of.
Secure boot attestations plus sealed images do enable “unmodified Valve Linux release” checks to be performed by multiplayer game servers, without needing the user to be locked out of making changes at all. This is already demonstrated in macOS today with e.g. Wallet’s Apple Pay support; you can disable and mod the OS as much as you wish, and certain server features whose attestation requirements require an Apple release signature on the booted OS will suspend themselves when the attestation doesn’t match. When you’re ready to use those servers, you secure boot to an OEM sealed environment and they resume working immediately. This is live, today, on every Apple Silicon (and T2 chipped Intel) device worldwide, and has been available for developers to use for years.
Attestations are, similarly, already available on all AMD devices with a TPM today, so long as the BIOS to OS chain implements Secure Boot — not requires, but implements, as there’s no reason to deny users unsigned OS booting once you’re checking attestation signatures server-side. As you note, it remains to be seen if the Steam Box will make use of it. If they do, it coexists just fine with full reputposability and modifiable, because you can do whatever you like with the device — and, correspondingly, each game may choose to require an unmodified environment to ensure a level playing field without kernel or OS modifications.
It would be a lost opportunity for them if they were not the first fully open OS with a fully secure multiplayer environment that prohibits both third-party cheating mods and third-party DRM rootkits. VAC becomes as simple as a sysctl, and patches are still welcome. Open source for the win, and one step further towards the Linux desktop finally overtaking residential Windows, and thr ability to play console-grade multiplayer without the proliferation of on-device software-only hacks? Yes, please.
(Note that manufacturers who use Secure Boot to lock out device modifications are not in-scope here; that choice has no effect on attestations. Secure Boot is “the OS booted had this checksum and signature” with HSM backing, so that the software can’t lie. It is extremely unlikely that Valve would demand that the OS booted be signed by Valve. That would be no different than Xbox/PS5/Switch, and they’d be leaving a massive competitive advantage over tvOS on the table: device repurposeability.)
Maybe HLX will have some kind of VR interaction possible, as they want to push technology further with each Half life game.
Also I don't think ARM is really a thing for them, even now. They want to support running software on the headset, and sure why not enable compatibility layers to play some small games, but the end goal is clearly streaming from a PC. Maybe if some good ARM cpu hit the market they will pivot, but up until recently "ARM gaming" meant mobile phones.
Steam does not.
Yes Steam has huge library (my ‘want to play’ list is over 100 titles at this point) full of games of all genres, qualities, and niches. But Nintendo has more than enough to do what they have done for years, i.e. sit tight on their beloved IP and dole it out at varying levels of quality on strictly low end hardware and watch their earning go up.
Switch 2 does not.
I'm mostly a PC gamer but let's be real here.
It is far, far better to have tons of high quality software available for a platform, than to have an amazing platform, but a limited choice of software.
Attestation could help, but I'm not sure if it goes in the spirit of what Valve tries to do with their OS. The system is open and you can easily access the desktop (it's a first party feature) and thus do what you want. Maybe with a separate verified boot state without desktop but the user experience would not be great.
And in the end, like you said, they'd run to only support sealed attested systems if they could. But cheats have evolved past being run on the computer running the game. Some use DMA or are in between the keyboard/mouse and the usb port. Consoles also have their fair share of cheaters. None of those would be solved by attestation.
Valve has shown recently that it's possible to fight cheaters without kernel AC or attestation. It's just a bit more difficult and intensive so other AC providers won't go the same route.
I hope that changes though.
Anything besides rumors? AFAIK, there is absolutely zero official information beyond the rumor mill.
> Also I don't think ARM is really a thing for them, even now.
I mean, then you're just looking the other way intentionally, they're quite literally adding support for ARM now, https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2025/11/codeweavers-launch-a-n... That's not something you do on a whim, it's a calculated step towards something.
And they're clearly setting up the new VR head to both do standalone gameplay for people without PCs, and to do streaming from PC.
None of the Steam hardware seems to have only a single use in fact, all of them are multipurpose, not sure why the VR headset should be any different, especially when what we know points to it also being multipurpose, quite explicitly so at that.
If you count datamining as rumors, then no, nothing else. But the data mining is real data coming from valve so it's more than just "somebody said...". You can find lists of all the references to HLX found in other games, and what that tells us about the game.
>I mean, then you're just looking the other way intentionally, they're quite literally adding support for ARM now
Yes, I'm not looking the other way. But ARM is not their bread and butter and won't be for a good while. I'm fairly certain they are pushing this because they can, not because there is a strategic importance to supporting ARM. Had they been able to use a x86 cpu in the Frame, I'm sure they would have.
Plus, ARM gaming implies games made for ARM running on steam, like on mobile phones. This is "just" an emulation layer to play x86 games on ARM. Just like Apple is doing with the Game Porting Toolkit, and just like Microsoft is doing with their Windows on ARM. Are they really pushing ARM Gaming, or PC gaming or ARM?
On windows with kernel anti cheat you would need to find some vulnerable driver, sign your own driver, or use external cheats like DMA or vision based. This funnels cheat devs into using a few methods that anti cheat devs can focus on for detection. Is it perfect? Clearly not as there's plenty of cheaters anyway. But its much more effective than what these anti cheats can do on linux.
SteamOS is the important part here - if it is proven to be a good console experience (which the deck has basically proven already) then licensing of the OS to other manufacturers will put a lot of pressure on integrated h/w s/w manufacturers.
Unlike the handheld format, the tvbox console is fairly easy to manufacture and is tolerant of a lot of spec and price variety. Any slip up by Sony and Microsoft in specs and price will result in steam machine variants carving away market share, which could force more frequent console releases.
The steam machine will almost certainly come in at a higher price point than the PS5, but with no 'online' subscription charge and reasonably priced storage upgrades we may see these revenue streams disappear from the next console generation in order to compete.
SteamOS isn't perfect, and the variety inherent in the platform that is a strength is also a weakness. The core markets for Nintendo and for Sony aren't going anywhere.
I really like it. It really does feel like a "game console"; usually when I've made my own console using Linux, it always feels kind of janky. For example, RetroPie on the Raspberry Pi is pretty cool, but it doesn't feel like a proper commercial product, it feels like a developer made a GUI to launch games.
I have like 750 games on Steam that I have hoarded over the years, in addition to the Epic Games Store and GOG, which can be installed with Heroic, and the fact that I can play them on a "console" instead of a computer makes it much easier to play in my living room or bedroom. It even works fine with the Xbox One controllers; I use the official Microsoft USB dongle to minimize latency, it works great.
I think there actually is a chance that Valve could really be a real competitor, if not a winner.
What I wanted to ask you: have you converted the device into a STB as well or is that still standalone?
It's obviously not a direct replacement since it still relies on my gaming machine, which not everyone has, but it gets a pretty good console experience, and it's portable.
Valve has fought tooth and nail for a decade to make that 3.05% a reality. Linux means they control their own destiny, instead of being at the mercy of Microsoft. Valve has their eyes on this prize and they’re willing to play the long game.
Everyone’s going to talk about “winning” the console generation, but winning could mean an increase of Linux’s share to 5-6%. That would be a massive win, and would be a vindication of Valve’s strategy. Valve could achieve their goals even if Sony and Nintendo sells millions of consoles more.
Being computer-savvy means I’m still a relative outlier, but given the renewed shift away from Windows and Office; Windows unfortunately may become niche.
Highly recommend them.
When we got the game, it probably took us an hour of fucking around with downloads and accounts. Off the top of my head, I had to set up a parents EA account and kids account, set permissions, had to make my 7 year old an email address, had to set up two factor authentication, accept crazy terms of use, verify emails, etc.) And then once we got all that done we're dodging ads for in game points, coins, cards, card packs, cosmetics, pre-order bonuses, etc. to get to the actual game. It's so SO bad and just not fun.
It completely killed his enthusiasm for the game. My son wandered off multiple times during this process. When I joked with my wife that we could have built a PC in the time it took us to do this bullshit it was an exaggeration, but only a little.
Turns out most open consoles are full of either crapware or emulators, which is the reason Sony and Microsoft eventually gave up on some openess.
Microsoft has limited Xbox to Windows buy-once, Sony has… nothing. Valve is building an ecosystem that goes from handheld deck to Windows/Mac/Linux to console to VR.
It’s been a slow burn but that is a very nice strategy.
To be fair to Sony here, the PS5 uses a normal m.2 NVME SSD for storage upgrades.
The phrase “worse is better” has a lot of historical significance in computing. Long before that, though, Adolphus Busch started his brewing empire. If you take a brewery tour at an Anheuser-Busch brewery, they’ll tell you that the company’s flagship product, the aforementioned Budweiser, was never intended to be anyone’s favorite beer.
That’s right. One of the top selling beers in the world was never intended to be a personal favorite of a single buyer or beer drinker. What it was designed to be was unobjectionable, approachable, and good enough to serve your guests when their preferred beer runs out. There are so many varieties of beer that are so different, and they are often loved by some and despised by others. So an intentionally unremarkable but quality beverage was marketed to be a very popular second or third choice.
If most households have a Playstation and a Deck or Frame, or have a Switch and a Frame, or have a PC and a Deck then in total numbers the Steam machines just might be the top seller even if it’s not a universal favorite.
instant, huge parent created backlog of games available for your kids.
They already tried that the first way around when they introduced steam machines. That didn't really work.
The fact that they now took full control is what's exiting about this steam machine.
They now have a flagship first party Steam Machine and Proton to run games. They are also working with partners to create 3rd party Steam OS handhelds.
If steam machines sell well, we will likely see supported 3rd party offerings.
GTA VI will probably run single player on proton fine, GTA V does. Multiplayer will probably not.
The multiplayer with kernel level anti cheat will keep Sony safe through at least another generation; Microsoft is less safe as they're so vulnerable this generation anyway.
Now, with IA cheating being the norm now, I think Valve has a real chance to add a microchip to "certify" its console and so playing Fornite (or over 3A) on it.
Will be a added value over a gaming PC, I don't think they will miss this opportunity for too long.
The value proposition is basically play your existing Steam library (and emulated games but that will be left unsaid) in 4k on your TV with an interface suited for it. I am not sure they are that dependent of upcoming games.
I will probably buy one because I really enjoy my Deck and I would like to play some more taxing games on a large screen from time to time and I’m never going to buy a PS5 because I have no interest in tying myself to Sony and playing exclusively on my TV.
That is going to be a no go for any SteamOS device when an highly anticipated game gets released on day 1.
There’s Dota 2, CS2, TF2 all of which are much better games that you’ve listed, and thousands games more.
And you can absolutely play GTA, thankfully without horrendous online. The only thing steam should do is to ban their shitty launcher for eternity.
Why would you not need to license it? Steam isn't open source and Steam, the trademark, is owned by Valve. If we were talking about a standard distro like Fedora, no, I guess they wouldn't have to license it, but we aren't.
"what, i cant play COD online? Or Battlefield? or fifa? or Rocket League?... but thats all I play, and it costs more than a ps5?
...whats the point?"
These games have gigantic followings that ship hardware year after year. People on hackernews are substantially broader-minded than your average console gamer.
On the above basis alone, most of the regular gamers I know will not buy one of these.
That is the bar (in my opinion) today, you have to take your box over to rockstar and spec for that or you are just selling outdated hardware.
I've had to stop playing a few games once I made the switch-over (Destiny, GTA V), but am otherwise very happy with where SteamOS/ Proton is.
It really says most about what people you hang out with.
Apparently, people have forgotten that what launched Steam is it being required to play game of the decade Half-Life 2.
I think I’m old.
I have about a dozen games on the switch. In another console generation, nintendo will make all my existing switch games unplayable again. I feel like you don't really buy console games. You rent them for one console generation.
I mean, I can't tell whats worse - that Nintendo has the gall to try and sell me the same game for switch that I already bought retail on the Wii several years ago. Or that I can't play a lot of my old Wii games at all any more.
But every year I end up picking up more and more games on steam. So many games. I have hundreds, and so do most of my friends. And all of those games keep running on every PC I own.
That's the value proposition of a steam box. It ships with hundreds of games that I already own and already enjoy. Fancy playing bioshock again? Sure. Factorio? Yeah hit me. Dota? Cyberpunk? Terraria? Stardew Valley? Lets go.
How do the console makers compete with that?
On top of that, the base OS can't run a ton of games that run on console, because it runs in the way of kernel anti cheats (think: battlefield, call of duty, valorant, league of legends... the biggest games basically), while consoles are guaranteed to run most AAA games.
So with all that in mind - while I appreciate what Valve is doing a lot - I don't think it'll win the "console generation". I hardly see how it can even be called a console. It's just a PC, and that's how they call it themselves.
I just got tired of all VPNs, the DRMs, and trying to tune my network just to try and get a decent feed. Instead, map a network drive once, find torrent, save to movies file, and let Plex (or Emby in my case, for historical reasons) find the metadata.
It’s just pointless paying.
YouTube, for example, will give you 480p. For movies. That you bought. With money.
Looks cool, though
Steam only has something like 140 million monthly active users, so moving that much hardware is incredibly far fetched.
Console generations change every decade or so and the previous console gets abandoned. Anyone who buys a Steam Machine will continue to have access to the largest collection of video games in human history. Not to mention there are emulators for every classic console already and even the Nintendo Switch has at least two great emulators for it.
The PS5 is already about five years old, has had a slim release and a PS5 Pro. The PS6 announcement is probably a year away, with a 2027 or 2028 release.
Valve is launching a last-gen console, probably at a price that won't be competitive, right before the PS6 comes out.
Not even a third party: https://youtu.be/b7q2CS8HDHU?t=380
> the option of an ergonomic strap that you can hook onto the top, hook onto the back, to take more weight off the front of your head.
https://www.pcgamer.com/hardware/vr-hardware/steam-frame-spe...
> There's an optional ergonomic accessories kit for the Steam Frame that adds an extra strap for your head and a pair of straps, one for each controller. These added controller straps are reminiscent of those found on the Index and seem like a reasonable investment, if the price is right.
"It's on par with a PS5!" You mean the thing that was launched over 5 years ago (exactly!) ?
We don't know its price yet, which is the most crucial detail.
That makes me very happy.
Half Life 3 is coming.
> This should make the fact that the Frame is using a "weaker" CPU/GPU irrelevant. Games should look fine as long as they render the slice that needs to be in full quality fast enough.
It's not foveated rendering, it's foveated streaming. The CPU/GPU should easily be able to handle decoding video, whether foveated or not.
Like the steam deck, I don't know who other than power users who will buy it. I love the openness they will bring to the market, but that doesn't mean they will win.
I absolutely do not want gaming mingled with my primary PC usage, work and stuff. For reasons of OS choice, data integrity, security and distraction management/work-play-separation. Can't over-emphasize the importance of this. But to me there is no question PC gaming is superior. However, I can't justify building a full-blown "gaming PC" just for gaming.
Some years ago, I got a PS4 Pro just to satisfy my occasional gaming urge and I love the console form factor, no tweaking and press power to play ergonomics. I wish I could install some mods for old games, tho, and the PS4 library is super limited compared to Steam. I also feel sad, the PS lock-down means unnecessary hardware obsolescence. And I hate Sony's rent seeking for online services and would never buy PS Plus.
I know quite a few people in my social sphere who are exactly in the same spot I am, who would love exactly what's shown with the Steam thingy. It will all depend on the price.
When it comes to gaming consoles, I want them to serve reliably to my family. The game console must be fun, optimized for best experience and should not break. Will that be possible with an open platform where anyone can install anything?
I made one return on the PS5 in a similar situation, and it was a painful ordeal.
Try to run the original mario 64 on the switch without having to buy it again
I don't give a shit for the money, but fucking my social gaming time was unforgiveable. I still use Steam, but don't fucking trust Valves return policy.
What’s to stop people buying them to use for completely unrelated use cases?
I guess it depends on how big the loss is… if it is small, it might not be really worth it for most people; but any larger, I wonder how sustainable this will be.
Getting new people into the Steam ecosystem should be worth losing a bit through the machine sales, with long term thinking.
The story was the same with the Deck. Granted it took a little while for many games to be fully supported but the transparency from Valve on the store pages about compatibility was great and is in a far better state now.
When I buy a game (even an old one), I always had to choose between Switch and PC. But now PC has most of the advantages of the Switch, and I trust my Steam library will persist and be easily playable more than Switch (although Switch 2 compat was great! to be fair)
That and intermediary consoles like the PS5 Pro are blurring the lines and adapting to the popularity of PC gaming.
Steam Controller - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45905703
Steam Machine - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45903404
Steam Frame - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45903325
With regards to DRM, it doesn't have to be as restrictive as Windows' versions, but there needs to be some cooperative effort with the game studios, and the media companies as more people expect to be able to stream Netflix/AppleTV/HBO etc. from these devices on top of gaming.
As gaming only, the most popular games tend to have a multiplayer aspect and thus far haven't been cooperative with functioning under Proton... there are solutions, but it's a matter of getting studio buyin and the effort to make it happen.
Without these, it will be a niche product and may still sell well, just not gain anything near what the consoles achieve in terms of sales.
On a PC, for $15 a month you can get a HumbleBundle subscription and get 5-6 Steam games to keep yours forever (unlike Playstation Plus "free" games). Plus 3-4 free games/month from Epic (an option, since Valve said they won't lock the hardware). Plus 3-4 games from Amazon Prime Gaming if you are a subscriber. Plus a ton of other discount websites.
Compare this to the average cost of a PS5 title and the walled garden of the Playstation Store. Not to mention that your PS5 library probably won't be playable on PS6.
Yes, AAAA games will still be expensive, but for everything else the Steam Machine will give consoles a run for their money. Cost-conscious gamer are very likely to switch.
How does the Steam Machine affect this at all, then?
Also, you can even install windows on the box. it's one of its selling points actually... if you really want to...
kernel level anti-cheat is generally not even needed, so perhaps those companies will now consider rolling proper anti-cheat themselves rather than third-party rubbish that no one asked for.
What i also like about this console development is that it might open the door to other smaller players creating consoles in the form of mini-PC with linux and a gaming layer on there. maybe there will be (oem?)partner for valve that make more beefy machines, machines with alternate OSes (windows + skin) etc.
its a different angle that will open up many things hopefully. make it less exclusive market between essentially 3 parties.
This is good news to hear Valve going in strong for the console market.
Maybe some day they'll have IP3!
I mean, it already has a library of games vaster than all other consoles taken together.
You're thinking of 'back in the day.' The original XBox's video card was worth more than they sold the entire system for, and the PS3 was a complete beast of computation (even if not entirely inappropriate for games...)! But in modern times (PS4 gen onward) consoles have become relatively vanilla midrange computers designed with the intent of turning profit on the hardware as quickly as possible.
The hardware cost of the PS4 was less than it's retail price from day 0 [1], and they began making a profit per unit shortly thereafter. Similarly the PS5 also reached profit per unit in less than a year. [2] XBox models from the PS4 gen onward are conspicuously similar as well.
[1] - https://tech.yahoo.com/general/article/2013-11-19-ps4-costs-...
[2] - https://www.theverge.com/2021/8/4/22609150/sony-playstation-...
However, Switch is another console that sold for more than component and manufacturing cost at launch.
But most of the cost that needs to be amortized is R&D.
I don't understand this train of thought. It absolutely can have the cheap pricing of a console, as long as Steam is the default store, and the majority of users will use the console as-is and buy games on Steam.
Let me give a quick analogy: Google paid Apple 20B USD just to be the default search engine in Safari, even though users can easily change it. Defaults matter. The vast majority of people are not highly technical users who customize everything in-depth and seek out alternatives. The vast majority of people just use whatever is the default.
It needs to either be at market rate or locked down to only be useful for gaming.
Valve hasn't committed to a price yet, but they told Gamers Nexus that it'll be priced less like a console and more like an entry level computer (i.e. more expensive than a console).
Hardware is very hard to break into. You can't treat it like software and expect to dominate.
I don't think the Steam Machine will be priced lower than a PS5 or Xbox (unless Valve is willing to burn money in exchange for market share), but I think that it'll be priced significantly lower than an equivalent-spec laptop (which would be in the $600-800 range based on the fact that the Steam Machine has an "AMD RDNA3 28CUs" GPU, which according to Google is roughly equivalent to an Nvidia RTX 4050, laptops containing which are priced around $600-800).
Yet's all the mini PCs I've come across are more expensive than their laptop equivalent
Because it's also about the demand, and how much you can mass produce them to reduce the cost
If any company has a business case for “we’ll sell the form factor at a loss with our store preinstalled” now it’s Valve, especially if they want to make the hardware only to prove the viability of the form factor, and especially since they already have been selling on platforms they don’t own.
Is it perhaps more likely that users with a convenient box attached to their TV might want to buy more games from Steam?
Now this might be difficult to track, but stay with me. Valve makes the GabeCube. Valve owns Steam. Sales from Steam go to Valve. Users with Steam hardware play a disproportionate amount of games bought from Steam. See where this is going?
There's absolutely no difference. You can run games from other stores on a GabeCube, but most people will play Steam games. People who play more games buy more games. Just like people who mainly play Xbox buy more Xbox games.
Since they have the steam deck, they also probably have enough data to back their new hardware strategy
More relevantly, none of the current generation (ps5, xbox series, switch 2) are sold at a loss. They don't have large margins, but they are sold above cost.
The Taiwanese computer manufacturers won't be phased by thin margins; that's their modus operandi.
Sega lost money on every console prior to exiting the market.
Nintendo sold various consoles at a loss (Wii U).
The PlayStation 1 through 4 sold either at a loss or break even.
Valve sold the Deck at a loss that GabeN himself described as "aggressive and painful," 3rd party estimates put it at $150/unit for the base model.
I see no reason to believe they won't employ the same strategy for the Machine. If I can lodge my own bet, I think they'll price it somewhere between a PS5 digital and pro.
They have already said its gonna be priced like a computer and not a console. [1]
As for the range of games available, it's got a lot more indie titles than console does. One rather hopes it will inspire game developers to develop more Linux-compatible anti-cheat solutions, or just host Linux versions of the game on separate servers, but I won't hold my breath. I've honestly never got the point of anti-cheat myself, it doesn't seem to work in most games. I've long thought there exist much better solutions to cheating than software ones. The simplest would be to permit cheats in the game's base servers and allow players to scan their ID (á la Online Safety Act) to access servers with a higher degree of moderation. A permanent identity-based ban would sort out the problem much more swiftly than endlessly chasing hackers.
Crazy to think that the Horizon Zero Dawns of the world would be propping up all of console gaming??
But maybe that’s why Xbox is looking to get out. And trying new monetization strategies (gamepass is on Roku or something)
Consoles are expensive. Once a consumer has bought one, they're likely to stick with it for the generation. This is why we have flame wars about them. Only a small minority has several high-end gaming devices.
An exclusive will sell fewer copies, so the console manufacturer will strike a beneficial deal to make up for it.
Do people actually play these on console? I think most people still use Windows for these?
I do look forward to buying the decade awaited iteration on the Steam Controller, though. Very underrated piece of tech.
Rather than focus too much on the technology classification, think of it in terms of extending the Steam platform to new markets. How many new people in the market for games-on-their-tv will at least consider a Steam machine. Even with the trade-offs you mention, my guess is quite a lot. And Valve doesn't care about making money on the hardware, they are already basically printing money.
PS5 + 3 years of PS Plus = $740
Steam Machine = $700
Add/remove more years of PS Plus if the SM turns out to be more/less expensive.
If you add the fact that games on PC are usually cheaper and have sales more often then it's a no brainer, but that won't convince the FIFA and COD players.
Sure you don't need to subscribe to PS+, but that's somewhat easier to swallow since PS+ gives you games with the subscription.
I'm still interested in this for playing older games but I have a Steam Deck and it still isn't remotely as seamless as my Switch or PS5.
All Sony and MS have to do it market that it can't play GTA6 at launch.
Turns out the Steam Machine is exactly what I'm looking for.
I don't expect them to match either in volume but it seems like microsoft is already backing out of the dedicated console hardware space tho
Even if it is a "pricier" PS5-like machine, I'd still buy it and I bet I'd make up the difference in less than a year with just the sales games (including older games I can't play on either console).
I think most of the critiques for this are from people expecting this to be aimed at PC gamers.
I don't think it is. I think it's aimed at people that actually DON'T want to bother with building, buying, upgrading PCs, but still want to play cheap games, older games.
To this day, I can't make my PC turn on with a controller (and I've tried). Making a PC wake up as fast as a Steam Deck from sleep? Impossible.
Those little things will all add up to make this a very nice option for the non-hardcode PC game crowd.
Valve is going to steal a lot of users from console, mostly Xbox. Not PC Gaming enthusiast.
I don’t think it needs to compete on price directly, if it can deliver the polish of a console. It can also play up the angle of being a full blown computer.
Even if I play 2 hours of each game, it's still a bargain =)
And because this is Valve and I've had a stellar experience with my Steam Deck, I'm pretty confident that future games will run on it too. Most likely gamedevs will add special "Steam Machine" performance profiles like they've done with the deck. And there will be a "Steam Machine certified" checkmark on Steam.
You presumably have other hardware that can also play the 570 games too? You’re spending more money on hardware that can do the same job your current hardware can do.
Why would anyone ever buy a console again? This thing has the ultimate library and works on all platforms.
Steam seems to have played the best game of chess in the industry. Sony and Microsoft were battling over exclusives and acquisitions and ways to screw over customers. This came out of left field and looks a million times better than Xbox or PS5. It has people's entire libraries on it, and the games are cheap and portable. There's no lock down. No funny business.
I almost want one. I'm excited about it and I don't even think I'd play it.
I'm also in the market for a new secondary pc, since the other one is old: the steam machine is exactly what I want with gaming primary and also do general computing.
I use the nvidia shield to stream games, but it has issues at times depending on the game being streamed.
- do you have a tv and a couch
- do you have games in your steam library that would benefit from the extra power and the setup?
If you've had steam installed through a number of christmas sales then most likely yes lol
- “why can’t I play online with EA Sports?”
- “I can’t log into Roblox!”
- “why can’t I see my sisters world in Minecraft?”
- “I’ve lost my Fortnight skins!”
- “why does Roblox keep disconnecting me on my phone [when Roblox servers go down]?”
- “Why can’t I play this game [without updating it]?”
- “this game update takes too long to download!”
If there’s one constant in life: it’s that doctors get nagged by friends for free diagnosis, mechanics, electricians, carpenters for free repairs, and software engineers for free IT support.
Yes, SteamOS is just that. A system that is easy to rollback if you mess things up. And you have to go deep under the covers to mess things up (switch to desktop mode, disable readonly system partition, modify wrong files).
Valve should really focus on improving the polish of the steam store, as that abomination of a (react ?) frontend breaks often in very surprising ways.
SteamOS as a console system is close to a 9/10. As far as polish of steam app/store and the ux, a fair 7/10.
I recently turned on my old xbox one - literally impossible to play any game without a massive patch, debugging os software issues etc. If the steam machine just works out of the box, it'll already be miles ahead of most of the current state of consoles.
- For some games (usually those oriented around keyboard and mouse) you need to go and select one of the community control configurations, and maybe tweak it a bit. For example, I needed to do this with FTL to make it easily playable
- Occasionally (and I've basically had to do this once, in my 2+ years with a Steam Deck) you need to go and select a different Proton version to make it work. ProtonDB tells you what to do
This is all rare though. The vast majority of games have a control setup for using a controller, and they definitely do if they've ever been released on console. And they will Just Work.
In my experience this doesn't really end whether it's a closed product or not. If you're wiling to give free IT support, people will take it, as it's likely way faster/better than calling whatever support may or may not be offered by the company.
> Will that be possible with an open platform where anyone can install anything?
I can't see why these have anything to do with each other? If your brother goes out of his way to install a bunch of stuff and breaks everything, how can you possibly blame the system and not your brother?
For normal computer use (reading email, watching videos, doing spreadsheets), there are much cheaper and better options available. If somebody wanted a Steam Machine specifically, it'd be for the GPU.
If you needed a lot of GPU compute (for AI or blockchain or whatever), it'd be cheaper to buy or rent a dedicated server with Nvidia H100s rather than buying dozens of Steam Machines.
So the only potential use cases are those that have a significant but not too significant GPU requirement. The only ones I can think of are gaming (which is the intended use case), video editing, and 3D rendering.
Video editing is less of a concern because neither Adobe Premier nor Final Cut Pro will run on Linux (to my knowledge), so you might as well buy a Mac that runs both of those very efficiently and has decent hardware.
So we're left with 3D rendering. If people want to use Steam Machines to render things in Blender, I say "let them", and I assume that Valve does too.
Media box under your TV? Right now I don't have a lot of options that also don't inundate me with ads.
Sure, I can build one, but if Valve can put this out at a price that makes me go "Nah. Not worth building it myself." that's a win.
Just a random blog's guess.
> What’s to stop people buying them to use for completely unrelated use cases?
Nothing. But it doesn't mean that Valve doesn't benefit from it. Valve wants the whole gaming scheme to shift toward SteamOS. Like Google wants the whole web browsing to shift to Chrome, even you can use Chrome for stuff unrelated to Google.
Plus, Steam is bordering on a monopoly for PC gaming anyway, so, even if they install another OS, a user is probably going to end up on Steam.
Remember when one Microsoft executive said one time that Windows 10 is the last Windows and everyone believed it?
They've been implying there will be a greater convergence in which Windows devices feel (play) like an Xbox, but they've been saying the same things since initiatives like Xbox Play Anywhere originally launched in 2016 (almost a decade ago!), which didn't result in the Xbox Series X being a PC in 2020 (despite similar speculation that it might be at the time).
It will be interesting to see where Xbox is planning to go, but so far most of the speculation is just reading (decade old) tea leaves.
In order to 'win' a console generation there needs to be support for the games people want to play. Capitalism is a literal popularity contest, and any console that doesn't have Fortnite, COD, FIFA, etc won't win, regardless of what you or I might think of the games.
The reason why Steam can't win a console generation is simply because Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo have enough sway over publishers (especially ones they own) than they stop popular games being available on a rival platform. They market it as 'exclusives' but really it's just anti-consumer.
If someone starts selling completely shitty "SteamOS PCs" without licensing, it'll hurt Valve more than the no-name Chinese PC manufacturer.
Licensing -> Valve can dictate minimum specs and QA requirements -> Good for everyone.
Where does that leave e.g. Nintendo Wii, which is generally considered to be the same generation as the Xbox 360 or PS3, despite having not nearly the performance.
On the other hand, people are probably dumber than I think.
EU had a higher tax rate for "gaming computers" than "generic computers" so Sony slapped Linux on the console to get better profits.
People that weren't there keep mixing channels on this one.
To acquire PS2 Linux, you had to pay additionally 300 euros for the Linux distribution, the PS2 hard disk, and cables that would only work in monitors using sync on green signal.
Initially the price was much higher, and got reduced to around 300 in 2004.
We got a PS3 at home for this very reason, needless to say my brother and I were ecstatic.
You don’t even have to be the #1 vendor, the reference implementation does a lot of good for the ecosystem.
Yeah, but console gamers don't necessarily know or care about that. If you want to cut into the console market, you kind of have to meet console gamers halfway
PC gaming had been dying because it was losing kids with the rise of tablets and phones. This is a decent solution even if it will not pay off immediately.
And Valve is already a lot more than halfway from what I can tell.
Nintendo has wavered a tad, but they're the closet to the original experience. You pop in a thingy, hook up another controller, or two, or three, and you're off. It just works, maybe you can input a name for your guy, maybe not, maybe you just always play Waluigi so everyone knows who you are.
> I had to make a fucking account.
i wish console makers would be a bit more strict with policies like this cause as you indicate, it hurts whole usecase of consoles in the first place
So many of the top players in our modern late stage capitalism economy fit this mold of having a terrible user experience with a large unsatisfied user base. Usually it's not even a monopoly, but all the top players are roughly equally awful to their users.
I'm tempted to start some companies to just do the thing in a way that doesn't suck for the actual paying customers. I think just doing a good/competent/user-needs-centric job at the same basic product would be enough to disrupt the market in many cases.
I tried making it my main media center, but I couldn't figure out a way to get good quality streaming from the main services, since they limit the quality and bitrate pretty heavily for the browsers. I thought I could just live with it, but it was bad enough to really bother me. After a lot of effort to try and get things working with different emulators and user agent settings, I was unsuccessful getting the quality tolerable.
I haven't fully given up on that dream, but right now I'm just using an Nvidia Shield TV that I already had.
So all you have to do is install Nix as a user.
Point being that if changes are a given, then it's possible for it to run on Linux in the future.
CS:GO is the highest grossing game on Steam, according to some sources, all agree its top 5.
Why is that irrelevant?
thats not irrelevant
Xbox series plays all xbox one and even a bunch of xbox 360 games
Ps5 plays all* ps4 games
Every console has moved to essentially off the shelf soc so backwards compatiblity comes as a side effect
I suspect consoles will move to arm chips at some point. When they do, will Sony and Nintendo bother making a Rosetta type layer for backwards compatibility to play the games they’re selling now? I doubt it. We’ll see.
The one I ordered had 32 gigs of memory; this was more than a year ago so I'm sure there are better ones now, but I have to say that I feel like this thing "punches above its weight" in that it does seem to run a lot more stuff than I thought it would at a decent framerate.
They got very popular when they released a video of the manufacturing process. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohwI3V207Ts
>, but their redesigns made them profitable
No one says consoles always sell at a loss. They are sold over 6-8 years and price drops are pretty conservative (until last gen where they ceased to be). Every conse eventually becomes profitable, but not in the years where they sell the most.
Nope. Take 1 example, the PS3. It lost money in 2007 & 2008, but became profitable in 2009. They sold 16 million PS3's in 2007 and 2008 out of a total 87 million. So approximately 20% of PS3's were sold at a loss.
And the PS3 is perhaps the console that was sold at the biggest loss at the beginning due to the horrendously expensive Cell chip.
It's kind of moot, anyways. The discussion is about the consoles of 2026 competing against Steam Machine. The PS5, Xbox Series X|S and Switch 2 are all currently being sold for positive margin.
It does not mean that a device was sold cheaper than its own hardware
Basically, you have r&d but that is out of the topic
I am expecting the day Microsoft decides to take all their studios out of Steam, if SteamOS starts to be too much of a pain.
If a Valve employee with rights to look into it is reading this - I'd love to know what I did so wrong. But given that human explanations from modern software based corporations are non-existent, I will assume I was treated as per their returns policy.
And the outcome has worked in Steams favour. I buy for (account) life now, for better or for worse. As previously mentioned, I don't care about the money so much as the social.
But my decision making process to drop the significant money required for Steam hardware will assume the return/warranty is worth precisely zero.
I’m also not making a point about whether that’s a good or a bad thing, before you make that assumption too
I _can_ play something like CP2077 on the Deck, but it's not exactly a worthy experience, it's better suited for stuff like Citizen Sleeper or Rogue Trader
Roblox made $3.6B in 2024. Fornite makes $3-5B/year for the past ~decade.
Genshin Impact is estimated to make ~$10B this year.
Not only in revenue, but all of the above have way more cultural impact/awareness too.
The pond is very big, but it's easy to miss that if you're in a bubble in that pond.
That's fine! I was surprised too.
Something I've learned with age is it's better to have a laugh together than throw out more cover.
This isn't really true. As GP said, there isn't a kernel level anti cheat for linux. You can switch a flick on BattleEye to run on linux but it wont be a kernel level as it is on windows. So there is an incentive for them to not turn it on because it simply is the worse version than the windows one. As far as I know even on windows you get cheats even if it is kernel level. Meaning, allowing linux you'd probably be flooded with cheaters if you already get them on windows.
There's an easy way to not get cheaters, or at least to slow down their impact: stop making your games "free to play". When cheaters have to buy 60€ games everytime they get b&, eventually they'll run out of money.
By that logic I'd expect this one to completely dominate.
Steam already has a monopoly in the PC space and has the "exclusives" you talk about, essentially games that never were ported to the PS5 or the switch. Thus, in order for the steam machine to take market share from the other consoles, you a) have to take console share from those players, likely by pressuring those developers to port from the consoles to PC. That could be something, but no doubt that pressure already exists, as steam already exists. I don't see how the steam machine changes that. In fact, the opposite situation exists which is why steam makes so much money, as you said. To actually dominate, it can only happen after situation c) below.
New customers or dollars cannot come from people who have a PC and can now forgo using their pc for gaming (by neglecting to upgrade their pc to keep up to date to play new AAAs), as the assumption here is they are selling the consoles at a loss (which may not be true, we'll have to find out). That if anything, is essentially a soft form of b) cannibalisation. So that isn't really "gaining market share" more so than it's changing the means of consumption of the same thing. Moreover, if they choose to sell at a loss, then I only can imagine this leading to actual cannibalisation from their existing PC customers as there isn't really any actual profit being made here.
So finally, the only route they have to expanding their player base in my mind is c) new gamers, that is casual phone players or other non-enthusiast gamers who don't really play games but will be willing to buy a console. This is how the Wii excelled in its generation and how the switch won the last one. Here, it all comes down to price and thus how much Valve is willing to sell at a loss or otherwise subsidise the steam machine using steam proper. So, this to feels like their only real route to "dominating."
As I alluded to above, a) can only happen if c) happens, as Steam already has the mindshare it does and thus it already has the same allure to developers as is the case today, and those developers are still pursuing exclusives with the PS5 and the switch. Thus, if certain developers or games are stuck on the switch or the PS5 with current conditions, they won't move enmass to the steam machine unless c) happens first and thus their calculus changes. And of course, selling at a loss means that they also run the risk of only b) occurring if they don't gain enough new players fast enough to offset the loss from selling consoles.
That leaves them not selling the hardware at a loss, then I don't really know. It's just the steam machine will likely be north of 700 usd if you're not subsidising it, and like the steam deck it will be a novelty item they may or may not make a profit off of. That I wouldn't call "domination", although they may make money overall so I don't doubt they will end up happy.
They are literally two different markets.
I know they get put together because of "videogames", but a gamer that plays on a console is not going to play mobile games, except those that are ports of console games onto phone.
There are exceptions of course.
But "entry level computer" has a very broad interpretation available. Could be higher for sure.
I suspect most of us are of a vaguely similar age, and when "we" were growing up, PC gaming was ridiculously expensive. A new gaming PC was thousands of dollars and then obsolete within a couple of years, leaving you constantly checking new release 'minimum system requirements.' It was quite painful and a big reason I (and I suspect others) migrated to console gaming. But now a days? I have a relatively old PC and never even bother looking at spec requirements - it'll run it, just fine.
Valve seems to be more of a platform company these days (a very good one, though).
It is not unreasonable to get a pair of titles to promote these two new products.
A man can dream, but a new HL for the Steam Machine and a new Portal for the Frame would be great.
"Buy a Steam Machine and get Half Life 3 for free" "Buy a Steam Frame and get Portal 3 for free"
Tech and software support should be absolutely perfect though..
I'd rather work on likelyhoods than dreams.
No need to buy an almost 1000€ massively overpowered custom gaming machine for that.
So, there's quite a bit of pricing room.
Now, shit just lasts forever. I upgraded from a 1st gen i7 920 _this year_ into some mid-range Ryzen 5. I'm still using the 2070 RTX I bought over 5 years ago to power the HTC Vive and a 1440p monitor; with this new CPU the gfx card is finally getting a workout and has become the bottleneck while also giving me a massively better experience.
I'm tempted by the 9070 graphics cards but honestly, I just don't need it. I can tweak settings on any AAA game and get ~50fps of real frames and I'm just fine with that. I probably won't upgrade the graphics card until I pick up a dramatically better display device that requires it. Maybe the Frame will push the issue, maybe it won't.
Messing around with weird consumer hardware in a datacenter context isn't exactly attractive. If all you need is some x86 cores, an off-the-shelf blade server approach gets you far more compute in the same space with far less hassle. Even if the purchase cost is attractive, TCO won't be.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_3_cluster
that said, practically buying hundreds of them should prove to be quite difficult.
(Or they could sell it everywhere for higher price but the Machine would come with a non transferable Steam gift card.)
Maybe playing with the anticheat enabled makes you immune to being reported for cheating (because they can verify down to the kernel level that you aren't), but you can still play without it (but without the immunity from being reported).
Obviously they wouldn't do this in today's market because there's no incentive to do so, but if a significant portion of gamers moved to Linux, offering a Linux solution might become a reasonable choice for game studios.
Gamers don't like playing with cheaters.
You could be playing against an AI model specifically trained on that game. No anti cheat is going to detect that.
Assuming they can bring costs down at scale and subsidize a bit, I don't think undercutting the PS5 pro is unreasonable.
Perhaps but I don't feel like Valve going out of their way to specifically say that the steam machine will not be priced like a console leaves a ton of room for interpretation. With the current state of the industry & tariffs I would be shocked if its under $1000 USD.
I'd be shocked if Valve is so out of touch they would kill this thing with an unwarranted price tag, but I guess we'll see.
But I do believe that was a unique case. Consoles don't typically "come back" later in life. The vita later on didn't. The Wii U and Xbox one didn't. The dreamcast sure didn't. Sony's big turnaround should be praised, but not accepted as a norm of business.
Those seven consoles significantly outnumber the 50 consoles that didn't.
Even the PS3 didn't sell 100 million units. Relative flops like the xbox one or the wii U are insignificant fractions of console sales.
Yes, I'm aware on how consoles are monetized. They take a loss in the first few years and make up for that with software sales, which they take a 30% cut on.
I'm not dispelling if the model isn't profitable, I'm simply stating that the hardware is historically sold at razor thin margins early on, if not outright a loss (until this generation)
That's largely known now but still a bummer. I wonder if anything will ever change in this area and if Valve will be able to pressure game editors or create an anti-cheat so good and for any platform to be able to change something.
Also, making anti cheat on Linux feels like the most Anti-Linux thing to do. But I don't play many multiplayer games, so I have no skin in the game.
It can be involved but it's certainly possible
It has a custom motherboard for example, which may or may not be supported by Microsoft.
I believe the TV is 4K, yeah.
It's the Beelink SER9 AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 12core/24thread AI PC Turbo Freq 5.1GHz
You can spend a ton of money on a bleeding edge CPU and see 0 performance gain in almost all cases, because basically no modern games are CPU limited, or even remotely close to it, so you're sitting there with your overpriced CPU basically idling.
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I think many people are out of the loop on PC costs and performance. The days where you needed some $1000+ bleeding edge rig to even begin to play the latest stuff are long gone. Since this thread is on consoles - an approximate PS5 equivalent video card is the RX 6700 XT which is like $200-$300, and that is, by far, the biggest expense.
My mistake, I missed off the important "v4" when looking up the model. Embarrassing.
Otherwise, sure. I can build a potato for $300 and i will probably enjoy Silksong just fine. But at that point why not buy a non-gaming laptop?
I can imagine a whole scene popping up where everyone cheats to the max, creating whole new game modes.
That would be very interesting. I also bet that people would start developing bots that play the game better than a human could and eventually it would essentially turn into digital BattleBots.
as I said, 7 consoles.
> They take a loss in the first few years and make up for that with software sales, which they take a 30% cut on.
Some consoles took a loss in the first 1-2 years.
> until this generation
Nope. The early generations didn't sell at a loss. Atari 2600, NES, et cetera weren't. That practice started with PS1 / XBox and ended with PS4/XBone.
4 consoles 2 handhelds, and a hybrid (switch). I have no clue if the gameboy and DS were actually sold at a loss. These were pre-smartphone devices sold more like toys, so I can see them being manufactured for very cheaply in a pre-smartphone era with minimal peripheral requirements.
> That practice started with PS1 / XBox and ended with PS4/XBone.
Okay, fair enough. Atari and NES were very expensive for their time. Nintendo had a few generations to itself to revive the industry and I'm thankful, but I'm also glad their blunder ended up creating competiton in the market.
And anyway I (and many other people!) have valid keys for basically all widevine streams extracted from supposedly secure android devices. That DRM approach ended up failing miserably and torrent sites are full of WEB-DLs.
Also some services will just downgrade you to a lower quality stream if your device doesn’t have the appropriate keys.
It happened a decade ago. Wouldn't surprise me.
My bet is it will be similar to steam deck. The starting specs will be somewhat comoetitve to a PS5 Pro but with huge compromises (in Steam Deck'Deck's case, flash storage). A model that competently competes with a proper gaming oc will probably be 1000 or so.
Valve got popularity in the handheld space because everyone else except Nintendo gave up in terms of consoles. That plus seeing the handheld PCs from china pop up showed ample opportunity. I'm not sure the same will apply here.
The Steam Deck shows they learned every available lesson from that endeavor. Why would they retread mistakes they've already proven they know not to make?
> The starting specs will be somewhat comoetitve to a PS5 Pro but with huge compromises (in Steam Deck'Deck's case, flash storage). A model that competently competes with a proper gaming oc will probably be 1000 or so.
The specs are already public, the only thing we don't know is the pricing. RTFA
Okay
>TL;DR: The Steam Machine's specs are on par or better with the PS5.
So, a ps5 pro with huge compromises? What did i miss here? Comparing a console to a PC isn't apples to apples so just looking at raw specs won't give us the full picture.
>Why would they retread mistakes they've already proven they know not to make?
Because they think the road is different today, with more people willing to follow them this time.
You can take the wrong lessons from success and catastrophically fail next time. Gaming is rife with that trend because of failed experiments, being too early to market, or completely misunderstanding what consumers resonated with.
I imagine that if this happens, it will be followed by popular Linux distros finally becoming serious about their Secure Boot implementations, instead of simply shimming it or seen as a rarely-used feature reserved for enterprise distros like RHEL.
Some of us actually think that having some sort of validation that our OS hasn't been tampered with is a feature and not a bug. It's only a problem when companies parlay that validation into anti-consumer DRM - but that's a political problem, not a technological one.
All the platforms that went all-in on secure boot like things and attestation are anti-consumer hellholes that slurp all your data. The evidence just does not look good. Maybe Linux is different, but it's swimming against the tide here. It would be the first of it's kind.
For example, the top 10 games in Korean PC bangs last week were:
1. League of Legends
2. PUBG (I think)
3. Fifa
4. Valorant
5. Overwatch 2
6. Sudden Attack (a KR FPS game)
7. Maple Story
8. Lost Ark
9. Dungeon Fighter Online
10. StarCraft (Brood War, I believe)
The next 15: Diablo 2 Resurrection, World of Warcraft, Diablo 4, Lineage, Eternal Return, Path of Exile, Warcraft 3, Black Desert, Cyphers, Aion, Path of Exile 2, Diablo 3, StarCraft 2, Tales Runner, Final Fantasy 14.
Lineage and Brood War weren't even made in this millennium!
I didn't name any franchise. I only mentioned Battlefield to compare it with the mentioned Duck-Game, as they are both on Steam where everyone can see the numbers. I mean if we are talking about the real big numbers, then we would be with Minecraft, Roblox, Fortnite, LoL, which are all not on Steam; making number-checking a tad harder.
> Games like Battlefield are up there, but I don't think they're the games people mainly play over the years.
As a Franchise it seems moving Fifa, very popular, but also seasonal peaks. Each new version shoves in players for a while, until they are satisfied again. Though, I don't really play them, so it's just external observation.
A linux native game called Banana got almost a million concurrent player peak (compared to #1 CS2 having only 1.8M). This didn't exist 10 years ago - the gaming landscape is entirely different in 2025.
This call that gamers generally play 1 game only is extremely dated especially when flavor of the month games are extremely in right now. I'm sure Valve with the biggest gaming dataset in the world didn't just dive into this blind.
It's not guesswork, it's reading the statistics. Gaming Reports are regularly showing that the majority of gamers and income is with only a handful of games/franchises.
> You can actually see gaming distribution on open steamdb[1] stats and every year the amount of games avg player plays grows higher and higher.
Yes, because the market grows. But look at the numbers, the top is always with the same games, with the same numbers, which are usually in a complete different league then the rest. The Top 5 Games have usually 10-20 times as many players as every other games. And, be aware that this is only Steam. The gaming market is much, much bigger than just steam. Steam is kinda its own bubble with a skewed view.
I'm not saying steam or indie-market is small, but people looking at PC and Indie-games develop a kind of natural filter for the real behemoths of the market.
> A linux native game called Banana got almost a million concurrent player peak
We have at the moment >3 Billion Players. 1 Million gamers for a shady shortlived hype-game is not bad, but it's not even remotely winning the market, or setting a trend. At best, it's setting a trend in a specific niche. Valve wiped out billions of value in CS-Skins some week ago. That's more market-influence than a free game with shady skin-business will ever gain.
It is essentially a software toy people left running to generate random items some of which ended up being speculated on generating some money for "players".
As a gamer, why would you want to spend a few hundred bucks on a gaming box, when it isn't able to play the biggest hits? Who would want to deliberately limit their ecosystem to indie games?
There's a nonzero chance that BF6/GTA6/etc becomes a thing that everyone wants to play. If all your friends are raging about how much fun it is and are all playing together, aren't you going to regret buying a Steam Machine?
Sure, you can still play Super Meat Boy, but that doesn't matter - they regret what they can't do.
Is it you, or is it the children? No, it's definitely the children who are wrong.
Why would I want to limit my options for occasional AAA gaming to the graphics supported by a particular console, when I can spring for GeForce Ultimate for a month and play BF6 with amazing graphics at 120 FPS, on my TV or my laptop, or my iPad or my phone? And play with even better graphics two years from now, as the state of the art advances.
Sure a different option would likely be best for people who know they want to play AAA, all the time. Although, even for many of these people, the Steam machine is probably a great second box for many, that gets you however many 100s or 1000s of titles they have in their Steam library.
But a fear based "you might miss out occasionally" argument is unpersuasive. Especially in a world where some games are exclusive. My swanky new PlayStation is no help if everyone is raving about the new Nintendo game.
???
Look at steam top 100, sure there are 2 or 3 games you wont be able to play on there, but there rest work just fine. And sure there are popular games outside steam, but even if none of them worked (which is not true), for most gamers its a non issue. (And Valve is probably not really concerned about them)
The only games this limits are online competitive (most of the time FPS) games. There are plenty of gamers, myself included, that have 0 interest in such games.
In short even if 0 online FPS games are playable on steam console(which is not true), there are still 10s of millions of gamers, who wouldn't care.
As far as why wouldn't people pick something that can play 100% of games is because they cant. Even the best PC cant play Nintendo games, not all PS games are on PC or xbox, etc. You always have a trade off. And plenty of people still buy PC's,Deck, PS5's and Switch consoles.
My guess id more people won't buy it because, they want better specs, not because a few games wont work on them.
But that still leaves millions, potentially tens of millions of people.
That thing is going to run a ton of games that other consoles don't.
Few customers are going to replace their PC with it, but if you have the cash and want to add a sleek console to your living room that will also stream from your desktop in a pinch, it's probably a great deal.
Gaming has just gotten so absurdly cheap, but most people's mindsets are stuck in 15 years ago, when it was absurdly expensive and consoles were really the only way to help keep it to a relatively reasonable, and stable, cost. In modern times consoles will generally be price competitive for about a year, but then fall off as hardware prices decline, yet their retail sticker price generally stays the same.
On top of this now a days just about everything also comes to PC as well, so one of the biggest arguments of the past (console exclusives) is no longer valid. Even Japan is finally bringing their stuff to PC. And there also tends to be much more competition on PC, so rare will be the time that you need to pay $60++ for a new game. Though that is one area where many Japanese studios are still lagging behind the rest.
>Though that is one area where many Japanese studios are still lagging behind the rest.
Its a different model. They aren't trying to sell millions of copies to report engagement and sales, so they want to lock in the smaller audience they have and get as much out of that. Nintendo style. That's why you'll see the larger public studios like Square Enix and Capcom doing western style, generous sales so their sales calls can be "we sold 20% more YoY from new releases". Koei Tecmo, not so much. And Sega seems to straddle the line depending on the franchise.
For contrast most PS5 games are going to run at 1080p at the highest, which is then upscaled to 4k output, and generally capped at 60FPS.
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I think Japanese studios are simply mispricing their games. Shin Megami Tensei V is a game that could probably be quite big on the PC but instead has less than 3500 reviews (as a ballpark for sales) because of a price that's way outside the peak point on the supply:demand curve. It also has almost no regional pricing adjustments - like $50 in India and Vietnam, $40 in China, etc, for a game may as well have a label saying 'please pirate me, I don't want your patronage.'
In classical advertising it was believed that lowering the price of something was subconsciously associated with a lower quality/brand damage in the consumer, and they're probably still under this school of thought. But I think at this point it's largely obsolete, certainly in software. People, in general, just don't pay $60 (or anywhere near it) for games on PC anymore.
The pressure to get more games on your platform has never been as low as it is today and has never been this low on Steam itself. You could spend a lifetime with the current Steam library and never feel bored.
From product pov Valve feels very comfortable and I bet they have the data to back up this move with basically unlimited war chest. If anything I feel like Valve is pressuring game developers of these major games here - not the other way around.
Not everyone experiences gaming the same way.
Yeah exactly. Depending how much you care about playing with friends compared to playing at all you might make that choice.
That's exactly how console sales worked in the past. I bought an Xbox because all my friends were playing Halo, and I wanted to join in...
The recent phenomenon of games supporting cross-play out of the gate is probably eating into this, but exclusives were a hell of a moat back in the day.
Sony's in trouble; their crown jewels are all on PC right now! You can buy a Steam Machine next year and play all the Spider-Mensch, the Lost Hose, the Ghouls of Yo-Kai!
It's almost certain no one bought a Steam Deck primarily to play DotA, and it remains to be seen if any has a meaningful impact on the Steam Machine, but I doubt it.