I am a person who will look at the Steam Machine and cry(blog.zarfhome.com) |
I am a person who will look at the Steam Machine and cry(blog.zarfhome.com) |
Lately I find myself playing classic games on emulator, or generally games without huge graphics demands (been playing that climbing game PEAK a lot lately).
For me, getting a random no-name-brand Mini PC is such a fantastic deal these days. Throw bazzite or now real Steam OS on it, have access to your whole library - it's a linux machine you can configure to your hearts content. I love it. Probably the best deal on amazon right now is this machine, though there's others if you know how to search.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DK34WJ84
Example of real-life gaming performance here - nothing mindblowing, but more than you'd expect from a tiny box that costs like $400.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlup85AxRd0
Just wipe windows immediately and put SteamOS on it and you're good to go
People in western societies tend to ignore that developing countries are not merelly poorer but also generally marked by extreme wealth and income inequality. The rich and the upper middle class for all practical effects live like the citizens of developed countries, it is just that there are less of them compared to the general population.
Obviously they looked at all the skyscrapers with bewilderement.
Anyone I know who has needed to look for work has had a hell of a time with it. It's a scary world out there.
You can install Steam on almost any Linux device. The Steam Machine is great for those who want a portable console-like device. Have you ever tried to build and maintain a shuttle PC yourself? It's obnoxious. This makes the goal of high quality portable gaming much easier.
The benefit of a SFF PC you made yourself it that it doesn’t use proprietary hardware like the Steam Machine, is easily repaired and easily upgraded.
The writing is on the wall. This thing is going to flop.
Only thing they can do now is keep it on the market, and in a few years upgrade *and* discount this thing in hopes of reigniting the hype.
If they withdraw it, the very small but existing set of current buyers will scream bloody murder about being abandoned, and if they then try and re-release, trust will already have been broken.
This thing is going to sell out.
If prices go back to normal, v2 of this product will be great. This version, at these specs, at this point in time would only be a buy if it was good value (like $500). People will buy them all anyway.
What matters is if they make a profit throughout the product's lifecycle. Not whether they sell out on initial release.
Gaming reviews have diverged from reality. Everything is about finding controversy and something to be angry about. Gaming journalism and social media are extremely toxic, but not really indicative of average gamers or consumers any more.
> The writing is on the wall. This thing is going to flop.
I would bet that it's going to be oversubscribed and sell out.
For me the Steam Deck proved to me that Linux gaming was viable (finally! I've been trying since the days of Unreal Tournament being a current game and having an official Linux binary, LOL) and that I like the idea of an official Valve device, but that I needed a little more power and a desktop-alike form factor to reach a point of "good enough" for me (well, portable would still be fine, I just wouldn't use it that way so it'd be better if I didn't have to pay for the extra parts or have the added complexity and jank-risk of a dock)
Like if my gaming PC broke I would't replace it (at least not for quite a while) but I would plug my Steam Deck into my monitor and start using it again, it's not that the device is wholly useless to me. It just wasn't quite a fit for what I do & want, it turns out. I do use my gaming PC, and that's what a Steam Machine would have replaced. I even have Bazzite on there so I for-sure would have used the Steam Machine, as I basically have a somewhat rougher-edged (and way bigger, with obnoxious "gamer light" horse-shit all over because that's hard to avoid for some reason) version of it already.
So what now? The short answer is that I have (a) a nice couch; (b) a big TV; (c) a Steam Deck that I never use. I even have a dock for the Deck.This is the real answer. Why lust over new hardware and fret about finances when you have everything you need to play some games right now? There's not even any mention of what games they want to play on the Steam Machine that they can't play on their Steam Deck. They already bought a new TV to use with the Steam Deck and then didn't use it, so why even consider spending more money on more gaming hardware?
I'm not sure what type of sympathy people want to court with the "woe is me" narrative around how they need a third gaming device. The selling point of the Steam Machine is the software. Nothing about the bespoke hardware is worth crying over, it feels like object fetishism for the sake of it.
New ones are $800-950. Other new handhelds that have much less brand caché out there are $1,000 or even more.
as much as we are blaming the pandemic, and the crypto and AI bubbles I think Moore's law was really about transistors getting exponentially cheaper not just exponentially smaller. If you can't afford them it doesn't matter how big or small they are!
I think the EUV transition broke the long-term cost decreases and we might be seeing the end of progress in electronics and computing unless there is some fundamental change.
It's cheaper than new and it'll do everything you need it to without even breaking a sweat.
Steam Machine launches today
The only thing that keeps me from being genuinely baffled by this person taking the time to write this is the fact that I'm seeing similar takes elsewhere, which also baffle me to no end.
Are people really this enamored by "the thought of buying new thing," as opposed to, like, thinking about whether they'll use it?
Anyway, the Steam Machine seems like an extremely solid deal. It's a reasonably powered PC, and for an extra $200 or so, you'll get the guarantee that everything will just work, at least game-wise.
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.
I did what you said last year and it’s been a delight.
I absolutely agree on your notion of "what is with this 'I need the shiny new thing for sake of having a shiny new thing.' "
Snark aside, the second hand market is off the rails, too... The Steam Machine is cheaper than any DIY gaming PC I can build right now, even from parts off of OLX... And unlike the one I'd make, the Steam Machine will get the Steam Deck treatment as far as optimisation and certification (as in Runs on the Deck) goes.
Unemployment is nearly at historical lows. But don't let data distract you from the same tired "everything is terrible" line that's every other post here.
Very common for people suddenly laid-off from salaried work to turn to part-time gig work and that immediately removes them from the 4.3% unemployed statistic.
Also in my experience part time contractor roles are awesome. <20hr/wk = low stress, most of my big purchases like computer hardware were deductible business expenses, and the coveredca subsidy let me get a very good health plan (courtesy of all the full time guys who bleed taxes and get zero subsidies in return)
They're all just tools to get people to buy more games, which is where the margin is. And the existence of the Steam Machine makes the ecosystem more attractive even if you don't actually buy the Machine.
If you have no revenue, you can say you’re pre-revenue... It’s not about how much you earn. It’s about what you’re worth. And who’s worth most? Companies that lose money.
That may not matter either.
In fact, the most likely outcome is that they sell out of inventory, and the next iteration of the device gets GTA6 level hype. The scarcity of the premium product.
If it turns into a Google Glass or an Apple Vision Pro and is left nearly or actually abandoned, then I think people won't be so interested.
They use the OS in multiple products. Tons of people run it on their own hardware.
They could probably not update a single thing on there and it wouldn't matter, the games themselves are mostly running through an emulation layer anyway and will continue to work.
Not many people run games on linux, only about 5%, amd of those nearly all keep a windows OS around to handle edge cases and upgrading firmware, etc.
This is what the fight is about. If Steam can't get linux based devices into the hands of enough people continuing to support it will remain a money pit for them for as long as they try.
Releasing the Steam box at this price is not helping their cause. They have to recover from this now.
> So what are you saying? They can do this single limited release and then discontinue it and everyone is going to be happy about it?
They're selling a gaming console, of which in their case the hardware is the least important part and a means to an end. It is commodity hardware. No integrated memory. No special sauce.
These are hardware drivers that are apart of the Linux kernel.
What they are selling is a portal (grin) to their ecosystem, and an experience that is different from their competitors. One that unlike many of their competitors, doesn't require a monthly fee to be a part of (multiplayer). AND access to it is now scarce. A limited premium product.
> Not many people run games on linux, only about 5%
You're going to find a bunch of those on this website, myself included. No windows PC laying around though.
I game on Fedora 44 w/ Steam.
> Releasing the Steam box at this price is not helping their cause. They have to recover from this now.
You just don't get it.