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Comment by candiddevmike

3 days ago

Valve should acquire Framework and have them do Steam Machine 2.0.

I'd much rather a partnership than an acquisition. Valve is great, but open, repairable hardware is not their core mission. I think Framework needs to stay independent to maintain that.

But also, Valve is doing a decent job of it on their own already, with the steamdeck being quite repairable and upgradeable, especially in comparison to the competition. I'd rather there be a greater number of companies all independently demonstrating that repairable hardware can be a commercial success rather than the market takeaway being "oh that's just that weird Framework thing, it won't work for us".

I love the idea in one sense, which is that I think they're two great companies working in areas that could plausibly converge and be quite complementary. I do have to imagine there's something about their different respective business missions or business cultures, and the ethos and philosophies that inform them that might not make it work in practice. Although I definitely see a place for a framework laptop that's happy to run SteamOS.

I think perhaps that's the goal is that there's any number of companies that we feel are pretty great that are phenomenal at serving a specific vision of gaming and computing that's oriented around Linux and that are quite happy to talk to each other in effective ways and so I wouldn't necessarily say that the culmination of that should be a merger between those companies but an ecosystem that thrives with deeply compatible hardware and software.

The Framework Desktop is what you would want for a Steam Machine 2.0. But the price is around $1,186 and I think that price is too high for a game console. As a PlayStation 5 Pro is $700. Maybe they could reach that price with a second-gen chip? Or when they introduce a new chip and this machine gets discounted.

I do think Linux-based experience for a TV based game console is still lacklustre. There are rumours that Valve integrating either Google TV/Chrome OS. And it would be nice for a game console to also be used as a media center for Netflix and others.