Valve certainly won't win it, but they're bringing the heat where it wasn't before.
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.
My main game console right now is one of those little gaming boxes you can buy on Amazon for about $400, where I have installed NixOS + Jovian to get the "SteamOS" interface.
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.
Which box is that? I personally have a Nvidia Shield with Steam Link to stream games from my gaming computer to my TV. I connected an Xbox controller and it works pretty well. I also use an old iPad for streaming games for games that don't lend themselves well to a controller.
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.
Current OS split of Steam users - 94.84% windows, 2.11% mac, 3.05% Linux.
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.
Valve’s strategy being that Microsoft will continue down this user-hostile and privacy-hostile experience.
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.
I’d bet that most PC Windows gamers care a lot more about Steam than they do about Windows. If Microsoft did anything drastic - like blocking Steam like Apple do on iOS - it would hurt Windows severely.
Steam on Linux works really well now. I sort of built my own steam machine a few months back with a framework desktop that now sits in my TV rack. Gaming on it is a really good experience. Had to buy a PS5 controller though because I could not get the XBOX controller to work over bluetooth which was a bit of a bummer. For me the new controller is most interesting as most games have XBOX controller support (with xbox button captions) and the steam controller adopts the button naming.
I just built one of these as well. For your Xbox controller, see if this works: find any Windows PC and download the Xbox Accessories app. Connect the controller (via USB) and update its firmware. Once I did this, I was able to pair it with the framework desktop via bluetooth (under linux) reliably, and it's been rock solid ever since. Apparently some of the models shipped with buggy firmware that linux really doesn't like for whatever reason.
I tried several solutions, including an old PS3, Xbox One controller (with the official dongle) and I ended up buying an 8bitDo xbox controller. They are well manufactured (better than the xbox controller), has a built in batter (unlike the xbox controller) and has a usb dock for charging.
This is only possible due to how the console space has changed over the last 10 years. The killer app for console over PC used to be simplicity - you pop in the disc/cartridge and you just go. This is rarely true anymore. Even Switch 2 games often require waiting to download a bunch of stuff before you can play. Meanwhile the PC experience has generally gotten simpler and most games "just work", in part thanks to Steam itself.
Thank you for calling this out. As a long time console gamer, I hadn't noticed this creeping bloat until I started playing games with my young children. My son begged for a new Madden game after playing it at his friend's house.
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.
I don't know -- per Microsoft's recent announcement.. the Xbox will basically be a Windows PC in a tiny package. So, no more Xbox Live needed to play online and you can install other marketplaces on there (such as Epic and GOG).
100% agree with everything you said, and also Valve is a huge value prop in the cross-platform Steam store. I already prefer Steam because I have both Windows and Mac machines and generally travel with a MacBook.
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.
The x86 running Windows isn’t perfect. The x86 rack system running Linux isn’t perfect. Android isn’t perfect. The Ford F150 isn’t the perfect pickup. Budweiser is far from the perfect beer.
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.
It doesn't have to dethrone anyone. If SteamOS-powered boxes start eating into the "enthusiast console" nich that alone could force Microsoft and Sony to rethink their current lock-in-heavy strategies
They tried it without a flagship and without a large library of compatible games.
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.
Probably not. Kernel level anti cheat is the problem. I know BF6 isn't proton safe. Fortnite is the same.
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.
These are not winner games these days. Gaming trends are so fast that indie games like the one where you play a duck with a gun is what's driving the gaming community these days.
No, and I understand if that's a deal-breaker for you, but for me I refuse avoid kernel level anticheat wherever possible, so I'm none too fussed about it. If a game wants to run malware, it can do it on a console where it's nice and segmented off from my general-purpose computing.
5 years ago, if someone told you about a commercial Linux gaming console. You were right to laugh.
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.
I think Valve has a fairly good grasp of what they addressable market is at this point with the Steam Deck having been out for so 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.
If you can’t play Fortnite on it it sounds like a great time to line up a lawsuit against Epic Games for refusing to allow you to play Fortnite on the Steam box.
I can see developers work on SteamOS anticheat soon, once it gains more traction (chicken / egg problem though). Those games are available on mobile phones and consoles as well, so "windows" is not a requirement.
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.
There are presumably mobile games which have even bigger playerbases. Most of the "regular gamers" of this sort I know will probably not buy a console either. Does it matter?
It really says most about what people you hang out with.
It doesn't need IP, it is already THE marketplace for PC gaming. People will get a box like this to play the library they already own, or get great deals on new games.
There is something vaguely amusing to me about complaining that Valve of Half-Life, Counter Strike, Portal, Team Fortress and Dota fame doesn’t have IP and giving as an alternative what I view as a minor IP, God of War.
Apparently, people have forgotten that what launched Steam is it being required to play game of the decade Half-Life 2.
What IP does Sony or MS have these days that would sell consoles? They fumbled Halo completely and Sony exclusives are now all on PC. Nintendo does have their Zelda and Mario that they have taken care of well for decades but Steam has.. every PC and console game with an emulator
I think most people would take the biggest library of past, current and future games, cheaper games and free online over those. Not to mention valve of all devs has enough legendary IPs. Kratos and many others have been on steam for years.
I bought a bunch of games for console over the years that I can't play any more.
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.
I hardly understand the headline. Steam machine is just a computer, and since it can be used for other stuff than playing games, then it can't have the cheap pricing of a console. Most consoles are sold at a loss, and the benefits are made when selling console-exclusive games. If you sell something at a loss, but users aren't forced to buy your games, then you're not gonna make any money. Hence, the Steam Machine (AKA GabeCube) is gonna be as expensive as a laptop (or slightly less expensive because of the bigger form factor and lack of portability).
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.
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.
Tariffs/inflation/everything has raised the unit cost to the point that they're probably close to running a loss again sometimes on the latest gen consoles.
> I hardly understand the headline. Steam machine is just a computer, and since it can be used for other stuff than playing games, then it can't have the cheap pricing of a console.
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.
The main problem I see is that if this is any cheaper than it's hardware, people will buy 100s of them and stack them in server racks for CI runners or whatever. Generating only losses for Valve and making the hardware unavailable to gamers.
It needs to either be at market rate or locked down to only be useful for gaming.
> It absolutely can have the cheap pricing of a console
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).
Defaults matter at scale. And as for scale, the Steam Deck has the most generous estimates at 7 million. For a side hustle that's great. For trying to compete with the scale of other consoles, that's not enough.
Hardware is very hard to break into. You can't treat it like software and expect to dominate.
It’s like android. You sell pixel at relatively high price but create a wave of other with cheaper alternatives, so you end up make money from being default store.
Laptops have lots of components that the Steam Machine doesn't have. The screen, keyboard, touchpad, cameras, microphones, speakers, battery, et cetera are all fairly small costs, but they add up. Plus using a Linux-based OS instead of Windows automatically knocks around $50 off the price because the price doesn't include the cost of an OEM Windows license.
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).
> Laptops have lots of components that the Steam Machine doesn't have. The screen, keyboard, touchpad, cameras, microphones, speakers, battery, et cetera are all fairly small costs, but they add up. Plus using a Linux-based OS instead of Windows automatically knocks around $50 off the price because the price doesn't include the cost of an OEM Windows license.
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
The 'AMD RDNA3 28CUs' is likely to be the 7600M, as all the major specs are the same (power draw and clocks is lower, but given that the Steam Machine is not a laptop, it probably will have more headroom for that).
I mean, Valve built this with the profits, at least, in no small part with the profits from selling games, DLC, and gacha skins on their storefront which has many many competitors too bozo-brained to run their stores as well as Valve does.
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.
Are you assuming that nobody who buys a GabeCube is going to buy a game on Steam ever again?
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.
I guess you're right, even though it's possible to change the gabecube into a workstation and use it for work, never gaming, it's really unlikely it'll ever be a significant proportion of the buyers.
Since they have the steam deck, they also probably have enough data to back their new hardware strategy
Very few consoles were sold at a loss. Some certainly were, like the fat PS3. But that was the exception, not the rule.
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.
It's strange how neither you nor seemingly any of your replies have heard of the Steam Deck.
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.
A console is really just a PC with the word “console” tagged on the side of it. It's more of a branding exercise than a proper distinction. The only real difference is you boot up the console and it takes you straight to a game library.
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.
Is money still made from console exclusives? I feel like I see less of them these days. The biggest games are cross platform monsters, and the smallest are indie games.
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)
In principle the consoles themselves and the exclusives are both loss leaders. Or, sold at cost, anyway. The actual money is made from the 30% cut on any third party game sales, and the online subscriptions required to play online.
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.
Yeah, the fanboys are in bliss right now, but seeing this pre built cost 999 (and that's my most generous estimate) will bring them back down to earth.That would still be a good deal as long as the GPU is decent. But it's not "console killer" territory in the slightest.
I do look forward to buying the decade awaited iteration on the Steam Controller, though. Very underrated piece of tech.
> I hardly see how it can even be called a console.
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.
For me, the big killer feature would be if this device is approved for modern media DRM. As much as I'm tired of streaming and its level of control over how I watch TV, it's still a decent part of my media consumption, but any Linux mini-PC I connect to the TV can only do low-resolution streaming from most providers. If the steam machine is approved for high-resolution streaming, it could totally replace the smart TV stack in most homes.
Yeah. This is why I threw that all away and simply pirate for my NAS. Im not watching much new media to begin with. and they make it hell, if not impossible, to stream a lot of older shows. And of I do find them I need to compromise with how I stream it, with what account, and where.
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.
Yes, I think one of the most important things we as consumers can do is flood the zone for companies like Netflix, Disney, and Apple and keep asking about native Steam Machine apps installed directly from the Steam store that support 4k streams.
If Netflix can only get approval with Microsoft Edge or their app on Windows, with specific supported graphics hardware, I doubt there is much hope of that. They want essentially all the hardware and software locked down.
To win this console generation and outsell the PS5, Valve would have to sell 85 million Steam Machines (as of today, and likely need to sell 120 million by the end of the generation). About a 0% chance of that happening.
Valve has the advantage of practically infinite backwards compatibility.
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.
Its specs seem on par with the PS5 Pro, and this doesn't even have a price or a shipping date yet.
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.
As the article says, "The only way that they could mess this up is with the pricing. ... I'd expect the pricing to be super aggressive." The price to beat is the $400-$500 price point of PS5 and XBox. I'm guessing Valve is going to have a very hard time matching that. We'll know soon enough.
All they have to do is market the fact you don't have to pay for online.
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.
They don't even necessarily have to beat the PS5/Xbox. I already own the former but sometimes lament not being able to play the many, many PC exclusives out there (or at least nothing released in the past 10+ years since my daily driver laptop has poor specs). Just recently I was wondering whether one of those all-in-one Lenovo desktop boxes would have decent enough specs to play current-gen PC games at halfway decent settings, and my guess is that they don't, but I don't want to go through the hassle of building a PC and definitely don't want a tower with a huge footprint.
Turns out the Steam Machine is exactly what I'm looking for.
Exactly. I have both PS5 and Xbox One X, but I still connect my Steam Deck to TV to play Hades II because the game hasn't come out on those two consoles yet.
800 is probably already too much for the compromises you need to make. You happily make those compromises for a handheld due to its nature. But a desktop is a harder sell.
I think that realistically, Valve probably only need to be on par with the top of Sony’s offering hardware wise. The ability to have Steam integration on the machine (including the large amount of subpar but very cheap games) will prompt at least some movement. I’d say $800 is probably the high-end of reasonable for price point. I can certain say I’d rather just buy my kids a StreamBox than have to deal with them want full capability PCs.
I agree. Steam's prices on sales are still mostly unmatched by consoles.
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.
$699 (maybe 799 for a more premium model) seems to be a good compromise given what it would take to build a sufficiently similar PC while being close enough to the PS5/Switch. Xbox is practically dead.
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.
With the specs these devices have I don't think it's far-fetched to assume that pricing will be competitive. Maybe they will charge a bit extra if they tout all the extra stuff you can install on the Machine vs Xbox as a selling point, which they are kind of doing, to justify a slightly higher price point.
Hard disagree with that claim. The truth is anyone with a PC and a steam machine basically already has a Steam Machine. Steam doesn't need to sell at a loss like most consoles. Their only real goal is to prove that there's nothing a console can do that a PC can't do.
> The only possible flaw I can see is that the strap it ships with doesn't go over the top of your head. If this ends up being an issue in practice, somebody is going to make a third party strap that just fixes this problem
> 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.
If it can play all games on Steam _today_ at 4k60fps (even with FSR) it means I have about 570 games on my Steam library it can play in perpetuity.
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.
> I have about 570 games on my Steam library it can play in perpetuity.
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.
In my younger years I built gaming pcs. Old me has no time for that. I console game because it respects my time and I can play any major release. I’m interested in the new offering from steam as a way to play indie games I miss on console with a machine that doesn’t look out of place next to my tv.
This, plus I also find that the fact that I'm not going to spend random time thinking about upgrading my console, looking at components, etc, also respects my time (and money).
I don't play games much anymore, so maybe I'm not the right person to respond.
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.
In the era of mobile games, hardware really isn't a thing anymore. Even AAA titles are niche IMO given the cost to play them at full settings. All that matters now are the exclusive titles. You refer to this derisively but really that's what made the nintendo switch, clearly the weakest compared to the PS5 and even the steam deck in the last generation the clear winner.
I have a family of 4 (and both me and my wife are gamers) and a pc is expensive.
A steam machine is a great compromise.
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.
> Yes, Steam Machine is optimized for gaming, but it's still your PC. Install your own apps, or even another operating system. Who are we to tell you how to use your computer?
> The big thing I want to see in practice is their implementation of foveated rendering. This beautiful hack abuses the fact that human eyes have the most sharpness and fidelity at the exact centre of your field of vision, whereas your peripheral vision is abysmal at it. This means that on average you only have to render about 10% of the frame at maximum quality for it to feel like it's running at full resolution all over the screen.
> 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.
What they're saying is that they might have a foviated rendering solution in addition to the foviated streaming solution we know about, and we'd like to hear about it.
I generally like the OP's posts, but I really don't buy their argument. If anything, the nintendo switch winning the last generation is a great example of how hardware isn't always that important, the game library essentially is what makes a console win, and in as much as the hardware enables the breadth of the library, that's all that matters.
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 would totally buy it, if it's not silly expensive. I am not a power gamer or whatever, at all.
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.
As much as I love hacking with various things, there are reasons why I buy "closed products" for myself and for my family. I like to do hacking when I want it (with ESP32, rpi etc). I don't want to be forced to serve as a free IT support guy anytime someone presses a wrong button.
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?
Unfortunately buying closed systems hasn’t stopped me from being IT support:
- “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.
> 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?
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.
That would be great - but the last gaming console that I've experienced that with has been the switch.
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.
If you buy a Steam Deck and just use it as a handheld console and never select "reboot to desktop mode" it will act just like a closed console. The exceptions compared to something like a Switch:
- 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.
Agree. By "best experience" I also mean "don't force me to wait". But my console doesn't do that. Some online games may require patches before playing for better (anticheat) or worse reasons but thats a fault of the game supplier - not the console supplier.
> I don't want to be forced to serve as a free IT support guy anytime someone presses a wrong button.
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?
One other semi-unrecognized advantage Valve has over consoles is their generous return policy. I’ve bought many games on a whim knowing if I don’t jive with it I can safely get a full refund. Contrast that with my Ps5 where my 2 year old managed to smash buttons while I was tied up on a work call and bought COD for $69 bucks… no way to refund it and I’m not a fan of shooters. Basically Fd on that one.
My experience is otherwise. I returned one game and got banned from buying other games for a month - during a sale, so I missed that sale and was out of sync with friends for a bit.
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.
Is there anything more to this? I’ve returned dozens of games that I didn’t end up liking and the only consequence I’ve faced is that games with trading cards don’t start dropping them until 2 hours of play time, which I think is completely fair.
So, Steam is planning to sell these at a loss, but isn’t planning to lock out third party OS?
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.
What non-gaming use cases do you imagine people might use these for?
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.
> 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.
If that's what happens, then I'm buying one of these right away for sure. I mean, I use steam a lot, but I certainly won't be locked in their "SteamOS". Maybe they are betting that most users will be too lazy to change the defaults and stick to SteamOS (which might very well be the case, and they have a hint of this thanks to the data they have on the Steam Deck)
I don't think they have, but it's the business model of most consoles, to be able to be very affordable. So since the headline is implying it'll do better than consoles, it's implying it'll be sold at a loss too. But honestly, I find that article BS.
I think this article makes one assumption that isn't correct.
"This means that even though Valve will be selling this hardware at a loss..."
From the reviews I have read, Valve is not planning on doing this. They are not doing an Xbox type of deal where games are overpriced and console is cheap. If I am not mistaken, I got this information from the LTT review where they talked with Valve about this directly.
They are not going to win the console generation by releasing a machine that cannot play Call of Duty, Battlefield, Valorant, Fortnite, PUBG, Apex Legends, FIFA, Madden, League of Legends, Destiny, Genshin Impact, Forza.
Maybe this is less of an issue now we’re in the digital era of console games but one of the biggest aspects for me is that if I buy one of these new machines, my existing library is just there. No starting from scratch or worrying about backwards compatibility. It’s a PC that has everything I need from the get go.
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.
I just dock my Deck but it was still worth it for the reason you say. Just Works and lets me play my decades-old Steam collection on my TV with the ease of a console.
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)
I think it will largely come down to price and DRM support from the AAA studios for multiplayer gaming and media apps. On the former, at $400 with one controller it will probably sell well, at over $600 I think more people might choose a PS5 instead.
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.
It's the PC games library that will be the catalyst for winning.
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.
i see a lot of complaints about certain games (windows / kernel-anti-cheat) not working. Consoles have always had exclusive titles. Windows also has them now via this anti-cheat stuff. This changes litterally nothing.
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 really cool. I still play my series X on occasion but tend to prefer the experience I get from my Saturn and Dreamcast when I load a game and it plays without needing to update. Every time I turn on my Xbox or PC with steam/GOG I have to wait for an update of some kind.
Attached my old gaming rig to the TV to run Steam on it and it is a better experience than any consoles I have (being a gaming nerd I have everything from my old Atari 2600 and most mainstreams systems since then up to PS5).
This is good news to hear Valve going in strong for the console market.
But what about the price?! 15 year old kids are never gonna drop 800+ on this nerd box if they can play fifa for, what, 400-500? And THAT'S the demographic to win if you want to break up Big Game.
It'd be a good plan. Make HL3 a VR game since you built VR experience by making Alyx, take it to the next level by launching your own VR headset, everything is perfectly made together and HL3 launch would be as big if not bigger than GTA, and you optimize it for your own hardware.
Not a chance. As much as I respect all the work Valve has done for gaming...this doesn't understand the market.
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.
I am very much a PC gamer turned couch gamer. I have a capable PC sitting next to my Xbox Series X. The user experience is worse, as everytime I turn it on soemthing needs updating, I cannot control all of Windows through my gamepad. This ticks a lot of boxes for me. Might start witht the Controller first.
Just to add I'm also in this boat. We have a ASUS ROG NUC in our living room and it's a pain logging into Windows (cant find an actual tutorial to skip that works) .
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.
> Really, the only thing that can go wrong with any of this hardware is the price.
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.
I love great graphics but , Nintendo carved a nice big niche out for themselves by recognizing the constant drive for best graphics is a bit of rat race.
They have enough first party games which only release on their hardware that people are willing to buy a Switch for nintendo games, and another gaming device for everything else.
I'm on a Switch and will not move because of the "Game Key Card" bullshit where you have a card but still don't get the files you need to play them game.
However, Pokemon guarantees a certain amount of Switch 2 sales--Pokemon ZA sold about 6 million units.
If they want to capture the console audience its better be priced like one too and not prevent me from playing multiplayer games due to Linux and anti cheat software not playing nice
Anything above $600 is DOA and that's with accepting the fact that the most popular games will be not available on the platform
Unless it's reasonably priced who is the market for this box? If it's at 499 - 599 then it's probably selling well but at 799-899 I'm not sure who would buy it. If it's your first computer you still need more gear like screen, keyboard and mouse etc.
People who want to play video games would buy it. While us enlightened Computer Intellectuals may appreciate that there is no difference between a console and a PC, the majority of naïve computer peasants will much prefer something with the word “console” tagged on that boots straight to a game library. As for the keyboard and mouse thing, there's this other announcement they've made called the “Steam Controller” which addresses that issue.
Personally, I am very much over paying Sony and X-Box a monthly fee to "play games online" in 2025. I bowed out of the last console generation, but I would be up for a small form factor multimedia PC that made may Steam library accessible on my TV.
I’m not a gamer and not into consoles, but I’m watching Valve and SteamOS from the sidelines with a lot of goodwill. It’s great to see more people buying hardware that runs on Arch — that alone is a good thing. Still, something about this feels a bit too good to be true.
By making it immutable out of the box, VAC enforcement because vastly easier and third-party multiplayer anti-cheating kernel rootkits are replaced by “attest that you are unmodified”, which Steam Linux and macOS/tvOS/iOS/iPadOS can do — but not Windows 10/11, because sealed boot functionality is behind Microsoft’s enterprise annual subscription fee paywall. This positions Steam Linux as the monopoly provider of console-gaming Linux, since no one else is doing sealed attestation Linux at scale, and opens the door for multiplayer AAA games to target Steam Linux for their day-one releases as a competitive equal to Xbox/PS5/Switch and as a better defended console platform than Windows PCs. The modifications described by OP are still possible, but won’t be compatible with multiplayer anti-cheating enforcement, which is perfectly fine; boot to sealed for competitive gaming, boot to custom for single player, everyone wins except Microsoft’s Windows division. (If Microsoft hadn’t shot off their foot with Windows 10, they could have simply enabled sealed booting for all 10/11 installations and remained competitive as a gaming platform, but I think they’re done with that business.) Nice to see my predictions pan out and I look forward to buying one :)
Immutability doesn't provide this on it's own. You can load any custom immutable image you want. What game devs want is full boot chain attestation where every part of the OS is measured and verified untampered with, and then to load their own spyware at the highest level.
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.
I am, indeed, assuming that their immutable image can generate attestations chained appropriately. If not, it’s a catastrophic business error on their part to put in all that work, and I don’t consider that degree of failure likely. Definitely curious to see if they can enable the chain on existing Steamdecks or not.
Yes, but that works just as readily on consoles as it does PCs, so it doesn’t affect immutable Steam any more or less than any other gaming steam. Sealed protections are still valuable regardless!
It's even worse for their competitors than this acknowledges.
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.
I just hope a 10' user-interface for the popular streaming services for Linux might come out of this. I switched away from Kodi as my STB exclusively because of how much a PITA it was to use streaming services from it.
"steam games", doesn't really mean anything. Most games are on steam nowadays. It mostly depends on the OS on which the games run. Games with kernel anti cheat: low cheaters population, runs on Windows but not Linux. Games without kernel anti cheat: low to high (think counter strike official servers) cheaters population.
Does anyone know if the foveated rendering feature of the Steam Frame depends on eye-tracking? Is it tracking the iris to determine the center of foveation, or is there some other trick to doing this?
Anyone familiar with how they're running x86 on a snapdragon? I'm more interested in that hitting your regular android phone .. think retroarch but you can play hades 2.
The main problem was the missing second stick. It was well built, but for game where a controller is nice touch pads sort of suck compared to a stick and for games where a mouse is nice touch pads sort of suck compared to a mouse. So the only real advantage a touch pad brings is in an environment where you can't bring a mouse. I really liked the extra back buttons. with two sticks that is where all the face buttons should be, on the back.
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.
It's the only controller I use (bar the Steam Deck's built in controller) despite owning plenty of other conventional controllers. Once you get used to it and make use of Steam Input's per-game customisation and mapping it works really well, especially if you treat it as a mouse-like input rather than conventional gamepad.
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.
Its an odd one; the v1 controller feels cheap and definitely isn't as high fidelity as a modern PS5 controller. It struggled to match the quality of contemporary controllers at the same price point. But the touchpads worked. They shouldn't work, they should be abysmal, but with a little practice they're fantastic.
I still use mine for any driving or flying in games, the stick it does have is super accurate. And for watching movies its a great remote when you arent at the keyboard. If you turn the right pad to simulate a weighted track ball it is what I consider the best Dark Souls controller.
while I would like them to succeed, I'm really not convinced it will work. The steam deck is an unexpected success but I don't think it sold at the level of the nintendo switch. And more importantly it was providing something unique but the GabeBox will compete with cheaper and more established consoles on one side and windows PC providing a better experience with steam on the other side
Whats the media experience like on SteamOS these days? Does it have built in support for media playback? I used to have Kodi running on PhantomOS but it was janky.
We heard this literally with the previous steam machine lol
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.
Most of the deck/dock screen issues are related to dock firmware and USBC display negotiation. The steam machine has built in HDMI and Display port which are presumably relatively bog standard.
the problem with valve is that at least in mexico I have never seen a steam deck on display, while xbox, switch, playstation are everywhere and online the markup price from resellers is too high
"At par with PS5.." comparing hardware specs with a console loved by millions and into year 6 of it's lifecycle. I'd rather play my PS5 titles on a PS5 or a portal than on the steam machine. Steam deck is dated, went with the portal and love it.
I think the hardest battle is going to be with anti cheat. The anti cheat that developers want basically requires dystopian levels of restrictions which are against everything valve has done on SteamOS so far.
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.
Hard agreement from me, but my 16 year old bricked his PC on Sunday trying to enable Valorant’s BS anti-cheat, secure boot required crap. He even knew ahead of time that he couldn’t enable it, but the pull of online gaming turned off his brain. I don’t think we’re gonna win this battle and the war is probably done as well.
We know, and the game devs know too. But Kernel anti cheat is not a solution but simply a marketing feature to make their users think they try.
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.
> I think the hardest battle is going to be with anti cheat. The anti cheat that developers want basically requires dystopian levels of restrictions which are against everything valve has done on SteamOS so far.
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.
Something I haven't seen discussed at all is HDCP compliance.
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.
Ive used my steamdeck much more than my switch 2, but I still can't play competitive multiplayers on the deck, so it is clearly a console and not a "PC gaming" experience
The largest hurdle that a Steam console will face isn't kernel-level anti-cheats or somesuch. The real problem is far more idiotic: platform exclusives. Console gamers stereotypically care that their platform has a game that others do not, I have no idea how the reasoning works, but exclusives are a major talking point for OEMs and gamers alike.
While PC likely has the most exclusives by a ridiculously large margin, it probably has the fewest AAA exclusives.
This is another status quo improvement from Valve. Great job!
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.
SteamOS is handheld only right? What they need is a Xbox/PS alternative, you can plug in to a screen (tv/monitor) and optionally use a mouse/keyboard (valve has some huge FPS titles, like counter strike) for games that you cant play with a controller (usually competitive fps titles).
One thing that came out of the HTPC “wars” of the 2000s and 2010s was that mobile/handheld UI were more suited for the 10-foot interface, versus full-blown computers like Windows MCE.
Valve certainly won't win it, but they're bringing the heat where it wasn't before.
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.
My main game console right now is one of those little gaming boxes you can buy on Amazon for about $400, where I have installed NixOS + Jovian to get the "SteamOS" interface.
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.
That sounds interesting because with NixOS it should be very easy to move your config to the next thing, and honestly I prefer NixOS over Arch.
What I wanted to ask you: have you converted the device into a STB as well or is that still standalone?
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I installed NixOS + Jovian on my Steamdeck and it works great as well.
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Which box is that? I personally have a Nvidia Shield with Steam Link to stream games from my gaming computer to my TV. I connected an Xbox controller and it works pretty well. I also use an old iPad for streaming games for games that don't lend themselves well to a controller.
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.
Do you have link to the little gaming box?
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Current OS split of Steam users - 94.84% windows, 2.11% mac, 3.05% Linux.
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.
Valve’s strategy being that Microsoft will continue down this user-hostile and privacy-hostile experience.
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.
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I’d bet that most PC Windows gamers care a lot more about Steam than they do about Windows. If Microsoft did anything drastic - like blocking Steam like Apple do on iOS - it would hurt Windows severely.
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Steam on Linux works really well now. I sort of built my own steam machine a few months back with a framework desktop that now sits in my TV rack. Gaming on it is a really good experience. Had to buy a PS5 controller though because I could not get the XBOX controller to work over bluetooth which was a bit of a bummer. For me the new controller is most interesting as most games have XBOX controller support (with xbox button captions) and the steam controller adopts the button naming.
I just built one of these as well. For your Xbox controller, see if this works: find any Windows PC and download the Xbox Accessories app. Connect the controller (via USB) and update its firmware. Once I did this, I was able to pair it with the framework desktop via bluetooth (under linux) reliably, and it's been rock solid ever since. Apparently some of the models shipped with buggy firmware that linux really doesn't like for whatever reason.
If you still have the xbox controller, I'd recommend the dedicated USB wireless adapter. It's reasonably priced and very solid.
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I tried several solutions, including an old PS3, Xbox One controller (with the official dongle) and I ended up buying an 8bitDo xbox controller. They are well manufactured (better than the xbox controller), has a built in batter (unlike the xbox controller) and has a usb dock for charging.
Highly recommend them.
This is only possible due to how the console space has changed over the last 10 years. The killer app for console over PC used to be simplicity - you pop in the disc/cartridge and you just go. This is rarely true anymore. Even Switch 2 games often require waiting to download a bunch of stuff before you can play. Meanwhile the PC experience has generally gotten simpler and most games "just work", in part thanks to Steam itself.
Thank you for calling this out. As a long time console gamer, I hadn't noticed this creeping bloat until I started playing games with my young children. My son begged for a new Madden game after playing it at his friend's house.
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.
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SteamOS isn't perfect, but it's "open" to mods like a PS5 or XBOX will never be. As an avid console gamer it's time to go back to my roots.
Some PS were open (still have my PS2Linux) and XBoxes have dev mode, even if it is stuck on UWP, and there was XNA as well.
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.
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I don't know -- per Microsoft's recent announcement.. the Xbox will basically be a Windows PC in a tiny package. So, no more Xbox Live needed to play online and you can install other marketplaces on there (such as Epic and GOG).
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100% agree with everything you said, and also Valve is a huge value prop in the cross-platform Steam store. I already prefer Steam because I have both Windows and Mac machines and generally travel with a MacBook.
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.
> reasonably priced storage upgrades
To be fair to Sony here, the PS5 uses a normal m.2 NVME SSD for storage upgrades.
And the ps3/ps4 before it used 2.5 inch sata drives.
The x86 running Windows isn’t perfect. The x86 rack system running Linux isn’t perfect. Android isn’t perfect. The Ford F150 isn’t the perfect pickup. Budweiser is far from the perfect beer.
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.
It doesn't have to dethrone anyone. If SteamOS-powered boxes start eating into the "enthusiast console" nich that alone could force Microsoft and Sony to rethink their current lock-in-heavy strategies
this ALONE is reason for families to buy the valve console https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/593110/view/41495750...
instant, huge parent created backlog of games available for your kids.
> then licensing of the OS to other manufacturers
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 tried it without a flagship and without a large library of compatible games.
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.
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Yeah I mean... can I play Fortnite, BF6 or the upcoming GTA on steamOS?
Probably not. Kernel level anti cheat is the problem. I know BF6 isn't proton safe. Fortnite is the same.
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.
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These are not winner games these days. Gaming trends are so fast that indie games like the one where you play a duck with a gun is what's driving the gaming community these days.
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No, and I understand if that's a deal-breaker for you, but for me I refuse avoid kernel level anticheat wherever possible, so I'm none too fussed about it. If a game wants to run malware, it can do it on a console where it's nice and segmented off from my general-purpose computing.
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5 years ago, if someone told you about a commercial Linux gaming console. You were right to laugh.
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.
It’s unlikely you’ll be able to play GTA 6 on any PC platform as it’s only coming out on consoles.
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I think Valve has a fairly good grasp of what they addressable market is at this point with the Steam Deck having been out for so 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.
If you can’t play Fortnite on it it sounds like a great time to line up a lawsuit against Epic Games for refusing to allow you to play Fortnite on the Steam box.
I can see developers work on SteamOS anticheat soon, once it gains more traction (chicken / egg problem though). Those games are available on mobile phones and consoles as well, so "windows" is not a requirement.
If any game has DRM or anti-cheat technology which BF6 does and even most AAA games, then it cannot play it at all without it.
That is going to be a no go for any SteamOS device when an highly anticipated game gets released on day 1.
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Jesus, since when Fortnite and BF6 became gaming benchmark nowadays?
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.
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That you are talking about a hypothetical game not running says enough...
Fortnite came out in '17, at some point it's no longer going to be relevant.
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Licensing? What do you mean, licensing? Other manufacturers are free to take it. It's all open source.
Yes, you need to license SteamOS to preinstall it on devices you sell: https://store.steampowered.com/steamos/oem
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.
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Ah, imagine, every game on PC, on one unified platform (yet with many stores of course).
their biggest fight is this:
"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.
"Will it play GTA6, and play it well, whenever that eventually comes out?"
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.
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For what it's worth, Rocket League plays just fine on Linux if you use Proton, but your point on the others still stands.
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.
There are presumably mobile games which have even bigger playerbases. Most of the "regular gamers" of this sort I know will probably not buy a console either. Does it matter?
It really says most about what people you hang out with.
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Steam needs IP. Something as iconic as Kratos or Mario. That's how you go toe to toe with consoles.
It doesn't need IP, it is already THE marketplace for PC gaming. People will get a box like this to play the library they already own, or get great deals on new games.
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There is something vaguely amusing to me about complaining that Valve of Half-Life, Counter Strike, Portal, Team Fortress and Dota fame doesn’t have IP and giving as an alternative what I view as a minor IP, God of War.
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.
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Gordon Freeman and Glados should be able to handle that.
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What IP does Sony or MS have these days that would sell consoles? They fumbled Halo completely and Sony exclusives are now all on PC. Nintendo does have their Zelda and Mario that they have taken care of well for decades but Steam has.. every PC and console game with an emulator
I think most people would take the biggest library of past, current and future games, cheaper games and free online over those. Not to mention valve of all devs has enough legendary IPs. Kratos and many others have been on steam for years.
I know a lot more about Team Fortress, Portal and Half-Life than I know about Kratos. Valve already have their "meme IP".
I bought a bunch of games for console over the years that I can't play any more.
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?
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Steam/Valve is the IP already. It's the default goto for gamers.
Well, they have IP, IP2, IP2 Episode 2, etc etc.
Maybe some day they'll have IP3!
Does it?
I mean, it already has a library of games vaster than all other consoles taken together.
I hardly understand the headline. Steam machine is just a computer, and since it can be used for other stuff than playing games, then it can't have the cheap pricing of a console. Most consoles are sold at a loss, and the benefits are made when selling console-exclusive games. If you sell something at a loss, but users aren't forced to buy your games, then you're not gonna make any money. Hence, the Steam Machine (AKA GabeCube) is gonna be as expensive as a laptop (or slightly less expensive because of the bigger form factor and lack of portability).
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.
> Most consoles are sold at a loss
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-...
PS2 and PS3 were price-competitive with stand-alone DVD and Blu-Ray players (respectively) at launch.
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.
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Tariffs/inflation/everything has raised the unit cost to the point that they're probably close to running a loss again sometimes on the latest gen consoles.
> I hardly understand the headline. Steam machine is just a computer, and since it can be used for other stuff than playing games, then it can't have the cheap pricing of a console.
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.
The main problem I see is that if this is any cheaper than it's hardware, people will buy 100s of them and stack them in server racks for CI runners or whatever. Generating only losses for Valve and making the hardware unavailable to gamers.
It needs to either be at market rate or locked down to only be useful for gaming.
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> It absolutely can have the cheap pricing of a console
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).
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Defaults matter at scale. And as for scale, the Steam Deck has the most generous estimates at 7 million. For a side hustle that's great. For trying to compete with the scale of other consoles, that's not enough.
Hardware is very hard to break into. You can't treat it like software and expect to dominate.
It’s like android. You sell pixel at relatively high price but create a wave of other with cheaper alternatives, so you end up make money from being default store.
Laptops have lots of components that the Steam Machine doesn't have. The screen, keyboard, touchpad, cameras, microphones, speakers, battery, et cetera are all fairly small costs, but they add up. Plus using a Linux-based OS instead of Windows automatically knocks around $50 off the price because the price doesn't include the cost of an OEM Windows license.
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).
> Laptops have lots of components that the Steam Machine doesn't have. The screen, keyboard, touchpad, cameras, microphones, speakers, battery, et cetera are all fairly small costs, but they add up. Plus using a Linux-based OS instead of Windows automatically knocks around $50 off the price because the price doesn't include the cost of an OEM Windows license.
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
The 'AMD RDNA3 28CUs' is likely to be the 7600M, as all the major specs are the same (power draw and clocks is lower, but given that the Steam Machine is not a laptop, it probably will have more headroom for that).
I mean, Valve built this with the profits, at least, in no small part with the profits from selling games, DLC, and gacha skins on their storefront which has many many competitors too bozo-brained to run their stores as well as Valve does.
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.
Are you assuming that nobody who buys a GabeCube is going to buy a game on Steam ever again?
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.
I guess you're right, even though it's possible to change the gabecube into a workstation and use it for work, never gaming, it's really unlikely it'll ever be a significant proportion of the buyers.
Since they have the steam deck, they also probably have enough data to back their new hardware strategy
Very few consoles were sold at a loss. Some certainly were, like the fat PS3. But that was the exception, not the rule.
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.
Microsoft testified under oath in court that they lost money on every Xbox sold prior to the current generation.
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.
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It's strange how neither you nor seemingly any of your replies have heard of the Steam Deck.
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.
> I see no reason to believe they won't employ the same strategy for the Machine.
They have already said its gonna be priced like a computer and not a console. [1]
[1] https://youtu.be/bWUxObt1efQ?si=KCNHtUt1fGqkqlOn&t=58
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A console is really just a PC with the word “console” tagged on the side of it. It's more of a branding exercise than a proper distinction. The only real difference is you boot up the console and it takes you straight to a game library.
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.
GabeCube gave me a good chuckle, thank you.
Is money still made from console exclusives? I feel like I see less of them these days. The biggest games are cross platform monsters, and the smallest are indie games.
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)
In principle the consoles themselves and the exclusives are both loss leaders. Or, sold at cost, anyway. The actual money is made from the 30% cut on any third party game sales, and the online subscriptions required to play online.
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.
Exclusives sold consoles which determined future revenues. MS messed up horrendously with both a worse console and meh exclusives.
An exclusive will sell fewer copies, so the console manufacturer will strike a beneficial deal to make up for it.
> think: battlefield, call of duty, valorant, league of legends... the biggest games basically
Do people actually play these on console? I think most people still use Windows for these?
Yeah, the fanboys are in bliss right now, but seeing this pre built cost 999 (and that's my most generous estimate) will bring them back down to earth.That would still be a good deal as long as the GPU is decent. But it's not "console killer" territory in the slightest.
I do look forward to buying the decade awaited iteration on the Steam Controller, though. Very underrated piece of tech.
> I hardly see how it can even be called a console.
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.
For me, the big killer feature would be if this device is approved for modern media DRM. As much as I'm tired of streaming and its level of control over how I watch TV, it's still a decent part of my media consumption, but any Linux mini-PC I connect to the TV can only do low-resolution streaming from most providers. If the steam machine is approved for high-resolution streaming, it could totally replace the smart TV stack in most homes.
Yeah. This is why I threw that all away and simply pirate for my NAS. Im not watching much new media to begin with. and they make it hell, if not impossible, to stream a lot of older shows. And of I do find them I need to compromise with how I stream it, with what account, and where.
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.
If you pay £20/month you’ll get 720p. If you pay £0/month you get 4k original rips.
It’s just pointless paying.
Yes, I think one of the most important things we as consumers can do is flood the zone for companies like Netflix, Disney, and Apple and keep asking about native Steam Machine apps installed directly from the Steam store that support 4k streams.
But if more people didn't have locked down devices, the streamers would be forced to open up.
If Netflix can only get approval with Microsoft Edge or their app on Windows, with specific supported graphics hardware, I doubt there is much hope of that. They want essentially all the hardware and software locked down.
Won't happen. HDMI 2.0 only. This is due to HDMI forum blocking open source implementation in the Linux kernel with lawyers citing security risk
why is that a problem? if those companies don't give you options, you can pirate everything up to 4k just fine
Hmm there's a chance you simply need to make sure the Widevine drm is installed on your system
This doesn't help much. It will let the content load, but many platforms will limit you to 720p or even standard definition (gasp!!)
YouTube, for example, will give you 480p. For movies. That you bought. With money.
To win this console generation and outsell the PS5, Valve would have to sell 85 million Steam Machines (as of today, and likely need to sell 120 million by the end of the generation). About a 0% chance of that happening.
Looks cool, though
The Nintendo Switch also sold over 150 million units, and the Switch 2 has had a faster sales velocity so far.
Steam only has something like 140 million monthly active users, so moving that much hardware is incredibly far fetched.
I'm implying they'd win via a cultural victory TBH
Everyone is sinking culture on real time. So winning by throwing a bread crumb out is technically correct, but not significant.
I am up for a lego pyramid made of Steam machines.
Valve has the advantage of practically infinite backwards compatibility.
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.
Surely the Steam Machine is in a newer generation than the PS5?
Its specs seem on par with the PS5 Pro, and this doesn't even have a price or a shipping date yet.
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.
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and do that while having none of the big multiplayer games
As the article says, "The only way that they could mess this up is with the pricing. ... I'd expect the pricing to be super aggressive." The price to beat is the $400-$500 price point of PS5 and XBox. I'm guessing Valve is going to have a very hard time matching that. We'll know soon enough.
All they have to do is market the fact you don't have to pay for online.
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.
This system won't run FIFA, GTA Online, Battlefield, Valorant or CoD, it's a nonstarter for many.
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.
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Plus a game catalog that stretches back some 30 years?
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>All they have to do is market the fact you don't have to pay for online.
All Sony and MS have to do it market that it can't play GTA6 at launch.
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They don't even necessarily have to beat the PS5/Xbox. I already own the former but sometimes lament not being able to play the many, many PC exclusives out there (or at least nothing released in the past 10+ years since my daily driver laptop has poor specs). Just recently I was wondering whether one of those all-in-one Lenovo desktop boxes would have decent enough specs to play current-gen PC games at halfway decent settings, and my guess is that they don't, but I don't want to go through the hassle of building a PC and definitely don't want a tower with a huge footprint.
Turns out the Steam Machine is exactly what I'm looking for.
I bought a steam deck to play Age of Wonders 4. Briefly got sucked into playing a Skyrim again.
Exactly. I have both PS5 and Xbox One X, but I still connect my Steam Deck to TV to play Hades II because the game hasn't come out on those two consoles yet.
They told press that it wouldn’t be console pricing and would match entry level PC. I think it’s going to be $800
800 is probably already too much for the compromises you need to make. You happily make those compromises for a handheld due to its nature. But a desktop is a harder sell.
Is that the price point of those anymore? I see 550 ish for the base ps5 with a disc drive and closer to 750 for the pro.
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
I think that realistically, Valve probably only need to be on par with the top of Sony’s offering hardware wise. The ability to have Steam integration on the machine (including the large amount of subpar but very cheap games) will prompt at least some movement. I’d say $800 is probably the high-end of reasonable for price point. I can certain say I’d rather just buy my kids a StreamBox than have to deal with them want full capability PCs.
I agree. Steam's prices on sales are still mostly unmatched by consoles.
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.
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$699 (maybe 799 for a more premium model) seems to be a good compromise given what it would take to build a sufficiently similar PC while being close enough to the PS5/Switch. Xbox is practically dead.
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.
I think the steam machine will be 999 given they said "priced as a pc". I hope to be wrong, because at 700 it's insta buy for me.
You can tell XBox is cooked because Halo was released on the PS5.
With the specs these devices have I don't think it's far-fetched to assume that pricing will be competitive. Maybe they will charge a bit extra if they tout all the extra stuff you can install on the Machine vs Xbox as a selling point, which they are kind of doing, to justify a slightly higher price point.
Hard disagree with that claim. The truth is anyone with a PC and a steam machine basically already has a Steam Machine. Steam doesn't need to sell at a loss like most consoles. Their only real goal is to prove that there's nothing a console can do that a PC can't do.
> The only possible flaw I can see is that the strap it ships with doesn't go over the top of your head. If this ends up being an issue in practice, somebody is going to make a third party strap that just fixes this problem
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.
I don't really understand the early enthusiasm about the Steam Machine, and I happily own a Steam Deck.
"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.
If it can play all games on Steam _today_ at 4k60fps (even with FSR) it means I have about 570 games on my Steam library it can play in perpetuity.
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.
> I have about 570 games on my Steam library it can play in perpetuity.
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.
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In my younger years I built gaming pcs. Old me has no time for that. I console game because it respects my time and I can play any major release. I’m interested in the new offering from steam as a way to play indie games I miss on console with a machine that doesn’t look out of place next to my tv.
This, plus I also find that the fact that I'm not going to spend random time thinking about upgrading my console, looking at components, etc, also respects my time (and money).
I don't play games much anymore, so maybe I'm not the right person to respond.
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.
In the era of mobile games, hardware really isn't a thing anymore. Even AAA titles are niche IMO given the cost to play them at full settings. All that matters now are the exclusive titles. You refer to this derisively but really that's what made the nintendo switch, clearly the weakest compared to the PS5 and even the steam deck in the last generation the clear winner.
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I have a family of 4 (and both me and my wife are gamers) and a pc is expensive. A steam machine is a great compromise.
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.
The enthusiasm is based on:
- 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
> Yes, Steam Machine is optimized for gaming, but it's still your PC. Install your own apps, or even another operating system. Who are we to tell you how to use your computer?
That makes me very happy.
They announced 3 products guys. The first time Valve has counted to 3.
Half Life 3 is coming.
Been a decade since I've seen a Half Life 3 joke on the internet, thanks for this
Maybe try Half Life Alyx :P
Careful now, you're gonna jinx it
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> The big thing I want to see in practice is their implementation of foveated rendering. This beautiful hack abuses the fact that human eyes have the most sharpness and fidelity at the exact centre of your field of vision, whereas your peripheral vision is abysmal at it. This means that on average you only have to render about 10% of the frame at maximum quality for it to feel like it's running at full resolution all over the screen.
> 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.
What they're saying is that they might have a foviated rendering solution in addition to the foviated streaming solution we know about, and we'd like to hear about it.
Implementing foveated rendering is pretty much up to the game developers.
It is for games running natively
I generally like the OP's posts, but I really don't buy their argument. If anything, the nintendo switch winning the last generation is a great example of how hardware isn't always that important, the game library essentially is what makes a console win, and in as much as the hardware enables the breadth of the library, that's all that matters.
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 would totally buy it, if it's not silly expensive. I am not a power gamer or whatever, at all.
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.
As much as I love hacking with various things, there are reasons why I buy "closed products" for myself and for my family. I like to do hacking when I want it (with ESP32, rpi etc). I don't want to be forced to serve as a free IT support guy anytime someone presses a wrong button.
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?
Unfortunately buying closed systems hasn’t stopped me from being IT support:
- “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.
The constant in life is that there are some people for whom you do things without expecting financial gain.
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> 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?
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.
That would be great - but the last gaming console that I've experienced that with has been the switch.
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.
If you buy a Steam Deck and just use it as a handheld console and never select "reboot to desktop mode" it will act just like a closed console. The exceptions compared to something like a Switch:
- 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.
and then you have to download a 100GB patch each time you turn the thing on anyway, by the time it ends installing my time slot is gone
Agree. By "best experience" I also mean "don't force me to wait". But my console doesn't do that. Some online games may require patches before playing for better (anticheat) or worse reasons but thats a fault of the game supplier - not the console supplier.
> I don't want to be forced to serve as a free IT support guy anytime someone presses a wrong button.
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?
I want a console that is brother-proof. He should not be able to break it by just pressing buttons
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One other semi-unrecognized advantage Valve has over consoles is their generous return policy. I’ve bought many games on a whim knowing if I don’t jive with it I can safely get a full refund. Contrast that with my Ps5 where my 2 year old managed to smash buttons while I was tied up on a work call and bought COD for $69 bucks… no way to refund it and I’m not a fan of shooters. Basically Fd on that one.
I’ve made dozens of returns without a single issue on Steam.
I made one return on the PS5 in a similar situation, and it was a painful ordeal.
What about backward compatibility?
Try to run the original mario 64 on the switch without having to buy it again
My experience is otherwise. I returned one game and got banned from buying other games for a month - during a sale, so I missed that sale and was out of sync with friends for a bit.
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.
Is there anything more to this? I’ve returned dozens of games that I didn’t end up liking and the only consequence I’ve faced is that games with trading cards don’t start dropping them until 2 hours of play time, which I think is completely fair.
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So, Steam is planning to sell these at a loss, but isn’t planning to lock out third party OS?
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.
What non-gaming use cases do you imagine people might use these for?
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.
> What non-gaming use cases do you imagine people might use these for?
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.
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> Steam is planning to sell these at a loss
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.
I think the explanation is that people love Valve beyond reason, so a vast majority will just use Steam on it.
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.
If that's what happens, then I'm buying one of these right away for sure. I mean, I use steam a lot, but I certainly won't be locked in their "SteamOS". Maybe they are betting that most users will be too lazy to change the defaults and stick to SteamOS (which might very well be the case, and they have a hint of this thanks to the data they have on the Steam Deck)
What's stopping someone from using a steam deck for running emulators, SuperTuxKart, and pirated games? This isn't their first rodeo
I doubt the steam deck is sold at a loss.
You can install Windows (or Bazzite, or whatever else) on a Steam Deck as well.
Did they say they are selling at a loss?
Valve haven't said that, but the article randomly claims it.
I don't think they have, but it's the business model of most consoles, to be able to be very affordable. So since the headline is implying it'll do better than consoles, it's implying it'll be sold at a loss too. But honestly, I find that article BS.
no modern console is sold at a loss this is silly speculation
I think this article makes one assumption that isn't correct. "This means that even though Valve will be selling this hardware at a loss..." From the reviews I have read, Valve is not planning on doing this. They are not doing an Xbox type of deal where games are overpriced and console is cheap. If I am not mistaken, I got this information from the LTT review where they talked with Valve about this directly.
Honestly, if I was Valve, I wouldn't just sell it at a loss, but I would also bundle some store credit.
Getting new people into the Steam ecosystem should be worth losing a bit through the machine sales, with long term thinking.
They are not going to win the console generation by releasing a machine that cannot play Call of Duty, Battlefield, Valorant, Fortnite, PUBG, Apex Legends, FIFA, Madden, League of Legends, Destiny, Genshin Impact, Forza.
Maybe this is less of an issue now we’re in the digital era of console games but one of the biggest aspects for me is that if I buy one of these new machines, my existing library is just there. No starting from scratch or worrying about backwards compatibility. It’s a PC that has everything I need from the get go.
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.
I just dock my Deck but it was still worth it for the reason you say. Just Works and lets me play my decades-old Steam collection on my TV with the ease of a console.
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)
They’re not gonna win the console generation, this marks the end of the console generation.
That and intermediary consoles like the PS5 Pro are blurring the lines and adapting to the popularity of PC gaming.
It won't outsell Quest 2, much less the real consoles, not in the next half decade anyway.
Related ongoing threads:
Steam Controller - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45903325
I think it will largely come down to price and DRM support from the AAA studios for multiplayer gaming and media apps. On the former, at $400 with one controller it will probably sell well, at over $600 I think more people might choose a PS5 instead.
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.
Win the console generation in what sense? In outselling the PS5? The Switch 2? I have trouble picturing it being cheaper than either.
It's the PC games library that will be the catalyst for winning.
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.
> It's the PC games library that will be the catalyst for winning.
How does the Steam Machine affect this at all, then?
i see a lot of complaints about certain games (windows / kernel-anti-cheat) not working. Consoles have always had exclusive titles. Windows also has them now via this anti-cheat stuff. This changes litterally nothing.
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 really cool. I still play my series X on occasion but tend to prefer the experience I get from my Saturn and Dreamcast when I load a game and it plays without needing to update. Every time I turn on my Xbox or PC with steam/GOG I have to wait for an update of some kind.
Attached my old gaming rig to the TV to run Steam on it and it is a better experience than any consoles I have (being a gaming nerd I have everything from my old Atari 2600 and most mainstreams systems since then up to PS5).
This is good news to hear Valve going in strong for the console market.
same, I just attached my old laptop with nixos + steam + jellyfin, everything running on KDE and it's been super smooth so far.
> Who are we to tell you how to use your computer?
I'm buying one just for this sentiment alone.
But what about the price?! 15 year old kids are never gonna drop 800+ on this nerd box if they can play fifa for, what, 400-500? And THAT'S the demographic to win if you want to break up Big Game.
The demographics of gaming is shifting older. Valve is clearly running towards where the ball will be.
The steam deck is also available for that 400-500 price point.
The Steamdeck has sold like 4 mil units in 3 years. Handheld PCs are an incredibly niche market.
So no Half Life 3? (':
Rumor has it that it’d be released with the VR set in 2026 ;)
It'd be a good plan. Make HL3 a VR game since you built VR experience by making Alyx, take it to the next level by launching your own VR headset, everything is perfectly made together and HL3 launch would be as big if not bigger than GTA, and you optimize it for your own hardware.
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I wish... https://www.uploadvr.com/valve-isnt-currently-working-on-a-n...
:(
Wasn’t that Alyx?
Perhaps Alyx walked so HL3 could run.
They announced 3 devices. 3! HL3 confirmed :D
Not a chance. As much as I respect all the work Valve has done for gaming...this doesn't understand the market.
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.
I am very much a PC gamer turned couch gamer. I have a capable PC sitting next to my Xbox Series X. The user experience is worse, as everytime I turn it on soemthing needs updating, I cannot control all of Windows through my gamepad. This ticks a lot of boxes for me. Might start witht the Controller first.
Two of us! As mentioned, I'm probably part of the target market and will probably check it out.
It's not useless by any definition, but will it really outsell the PS5? Because that is, to me, what the headline is implying...
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Just to add I'm also in this boat. We have a ASUS ROG NUC in our living room and it's a pain logging into Windows (cant find an actual tutorial to skip that works) .
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.
> Really, the only thing that can go wrong with any of this hardware is the price.
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.
>I think it's safe to say that Valve is about to win the next console generation.
For that they need to outsell the Switch 2. 10m units in 6 months.
Good luck with that.
Nintendo is in its own category in which the other competitor is also Valve. For now Nintendo is winning there.
I love great graphics but , Nintendo carved a nice big niche out for themselves by recognizing the constant drive for best graphics is a bit of rat race.
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They have enough first party games which only release on their hardware that people are willing to buy a Switch for nintendo games, and another gaming device for everything else.
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I'm on a Switch and will not move because of the "Game Key Card" bullshit where you have a card but still don't get the files you need to play them game.
However, Pokemon guarantees a certain amount of Switch 2 sales--Pokemon ZA sold about 6 million units.
That's not an argument in the Steam Machine's case as you have the same situation there (even worse because you can't resell your games).
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The author fundamentally fails to understand the attractions and benefits of console gaming systems in the first place.
If they want to capture the console audience its better be priced like one too and not prevent me from playing multiplayer games due to Linux and anti cheat software not playing nice
Anything above $600 is DOA and that's with accepting the fact that the most popular games will be not available on the platform
Unless it's reasonably priced who is the market for this box? If it's at 499 - 599 then it's probably selling well but at 799-899 I'm not sure who would buy it. If it's your first computer you still need more gear like screen, keyboard and mouse etc.
People who want to play video games would buy it. While us enlightened Computer Intellectuals may appreciate that there is no difference between a console and a PC, the majority of naïve computer peasants will much prefer something with the word “console” tagged on that boots straight to a game library. As for the keyboard and mouse thing, there's this other announcement they've made called the “Steam Controller” which addresses that issue.
I'd maybe buy it to get access to games I want to play on Steam that I can't get on PS5 to play on the sofa in my living room.
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.
Personally, I am very much over paying Sony and X-Box a monthly fee to "play games online" in 2025. I bowed out of the last console generation, but I would be up for a small form factor multimedia PC that made may Steam library accessible on my TV.
I’m not a gamer and not into consoles, but I’m watching Valve and SteamOS from the sidelines with a lot of goodwill. It’s great to see more people buying hardware that runs on Arch — that alone is a good thing. Still, something about this feels a bit too good to be true.
By making it immutable out of the box, VAC enforcement because vastly easier and third-party multiplayer anti-cheating kernel rootkits are replaced by “attest that you are unmodified”, which Steam Linux and macOS/tvOS/iOS/iPadOS can do — but not Windows 10/11, because sealed boot functionality is behind Microsoft’s enterprise annual subscription fee paywall. This positions Steam Linux as the monopoly provider of console-gaming Linux, since no one else is doing sealed attestation Linux at scale, and opens the door for multiplayer AAA games to target Steam Linux for their day-one releases as a competitive equal to Xbox/PS5/Switch and as a better defended console platform than Windows PCs. The modifications described by OP are still possible, but won’t be compatible with multiplayer anti-cheating enforcement, which is perfectly fine; boot to sealed for competitive gaming, boot to custom for single player, everyone wins except Microsoft’s Windows division. (If Microsoft hadn’t shot off their foot with Windows 10, they could have simply enabled sealed booting for all 10/11 installations and remained competitive as a gaming platform, but I think they’re done with that business.) Nice to see my predictions pan out and I look forward to buying one :)
Immutability doesn't provide this on it's own. You can load any custom immutable image you want. What game devs want is full boot chain attestation where every part of the OS is measured and verified untampered with, and then to load their own spyware at the highest level.
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.
I am, indeed, assuming that their immutable image can generate attestations chained appropriately. If not, it’s a catastrophic business error on their part to put in all that work, and I don’t consider that degree of failure likely. Definitely curious to see if they can enable the chain on existing Steamdecks or not.
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There's hardware level (on a separate device) ability to capture video and send key/mouse now. Impossible to be detected by anticheat. https://wiki.sipeed.com/hardware/en/kvm/NanoKVM_Pro/cua.html
Yes, but that works just as readily on consoles as it does PCs, so it doesn’t affect immutable Steam any more or less than any other gaming steam. Sealed protections are still valuable regardless!
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Related:
Steam Frame https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45903404
It's even worse for their competitors than this acknowledges.
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.
You don't need Valve for that, Chinese brands like Anbernic, Ayn or Ayaneo are smashing the market right now.
I just hope a 10' user-interface for the popular streaming services for Linux might come out of this. I switched away from Kodi as my STB exclusively because of how much a PITA it was to use streaming services from it.
What is the multiplayer cheating situation like on Steam games?
(Technology, demographics, popularity?)
"steam games", doesn't really mean anything. Most games are on steam nowadays. It mostly depends on the OS on which the games run. Games with kernel anti cheat: low cheaters population, runs on Windows but not Linux. Games without kernel anti cheat: low to high (think counter strike official servers) cheaters population.
This is often overlooked, but I'll bring this up:
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.
Does anyone know if the foveated rendering feature of the Steam Frame depends on eye-tracking? Is it tracking the iris to determine the center of foveation, or is there some other trick to doing this?
Needs eye tracking and it's foveated streaming not rendering.
Anyone familiar with how they're running x86 on a snapdragon? I'm more interested in that hitting your regular android phone .. think retroarch but you can play hades 2.
This is all I know: https://github.com/FEX-Emu/FEX
This exists already for Android with Winlator, GameHub, and others.
Steam Controller 1 wasn't good IMO and is now accumulating dust.
The main problem was the missing second stick. It was well built, but for game where a controller is nice touch pads sort of suck compared to a stick and for games where a mouse is nice touch pads sort of suck compared to a mouse. So the only real advantage a touch pad brings is in an environment where you can't bring a mouse. I really liked the extra back buttons. with two sticks that is where all the face buttons should be, on the back.
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.
It's the only controller I use (bar the Steam Deck's built in controller) despite owning plenty of other conventional controllers. Once you get used to it and make use of Steam Input's per-game customisation and mapping it works really well, especially if you treat it as a mouse-like input rather than conventional gamepad.
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.
Its an odd one; the v1 controller feels cheap and definitely isn't as high fidelity as a modern PS5 controller. It struggled to match the quality of contemporary controllers at the same price point. But the touchpads worked. They shouldn't work, they should be abysmal, but with a little practice they're fantastic.
The rumble is really weird.
I asked a coworker today about those and he said it's the only controller he cares to use at all, especially for FPS.
I don't know. I couldn't really get used to it, it has a weird feeling to it.
I still use mine for any driving or flying in games, the stick it does have is super accurate. And for watching movies its a great remote when you arent at the keyboard. If you turn the right pad to simulate a weighted track ball it is what I consider the best Dark Souls controller.
while I would like them to succeed, I'm really not convinced it will work. The steam deck is an unexpected success but I don't think it sold at the level of the nintendo switch. And more importantly it was providing something unique but the GabeBox will compete with cheaper and more established consoles on one side and windows PC providing a better experience with steam on the other side
If Valve nails the price point, this could be a real shift and not just for gaming, but for how people think about "consoles" vs PCs
Whats the media experience like on SteamOS these days? Does it have built in support for media playback? I used to have Kodi running on PhantomOS but it was janky.
Please win. This is the first system with the ability to stop the walled garden nightmares that are consoles.
Putting the steam machine in the same category as a console didn't make sense to me a decade ago and doesn't make much sense to me today.
Consoles win a marketshare by having games ported or developed for their hardware, improving experience.
What Valve offers is just one more PC configuration
Isn't Steam Machine just a glorified PC? What am I missing? Can't I just plug my PC on the TV and install SteamOS on it?
It has CEC for a more seamless console like experience on the TV. You won't be able to do that with a regular PC.
If it doesn't play GTA 6 or CoD or whatever sports games are cool these days it won't win, but it sure looks interesting.
Steam has even added accessibility to their machines. Sure it's just Orca and ESpeak TTS, but I mean Steam Big Picture works.
We heard this literally with the previous steam machine lol
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.
Most of the deck/dock screen issues are related to dock firmware and USBC display negotiation. The steam machine has built in HDMI and Display port which are presumably relatively bog standard.
This is the steamdeck official dock plugged into my LGC1, which is one model in a very popular line of TV’s, via hdmi.
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Literally every USB-C dock I've ever used with any laptop has these sorts of issues.
On the flip side, I'm pretty confident AMD will be able to output to DisplayPort
Yeah but what laptop is trying to be a gaming rig on your tv via a separate $100 dock?
Random guy excessively overusing mango pics and making bold statements is definitely worth attention
This feels like Valve's iPhone, while the original 2012 Steam Machines were the Newton.
I don't think they're even trying to do that. But they will kill Xbox.
the problem with valve is that at least in mexico I have never seen a steam deck on display, while xbox, switch, playstation are everywhere and online the markup price from resellers is too high
"At par with PS5.." comparing hardware specs with a console loved by millions and into year 6 of it's lifecycle. I'd rather play my PS5 titles on a PS5 or a portal than on the steam machine. Steam deck is dated, went with the portal and love it.
Maybe a bit early to call it, but I'm hoping for it as well.
I think the hardest battle is going to be with anti cheat. The anti cheat that developers want basically requires dystopian levels of restrictions which are against everything valve has done on SteamOS so far.
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.
Hard agreement from me, but my 16 year old bricked his PC on Sunday trying to enable Valorant’s BS anti-cheat, secure boot required crap. He even knew ahead of time that he couldn’t enable it, but the pull of online gaming turned off his brain. I don’t think we’re gonna win this battle and the war is probably done as well.
If anti-virus software can function in user mode, anti-cheat software can too. https://www.theverge.com/news/692637/microsoft-windows-kerne...
We know, and the game devs know too. But Kernel anti cheat is not a solution but simply a marketing feature to make their users think they try.
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.
That depends on Microsoft.
> I think the hardest battle is going to be with anti cheat. The anti cheat that developers want basically requires dystopian levels of restrictions which are against everything valve has done on SteamOS so far.
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.
What restrictions are you talking about?
It was fine like 10 years ago
Something I haven't seen discussed at all is HDCP compliance.
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] https://help.netflix.com/de/node/23888
[2] https://help.netflix.com/de/node/23889
FWIW, you do not need an unlocked bootloader to root an Android device.
Year of linux desktop..I mean console.. . Confirmed?
Ive used my steamdeck much more than my switch 2, but I still can't play competitive multiplayers on the deck, so it is clearly a console and not a "PC gaming" experience
what I wish this device had:
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
Love the enthusiasm but expensive versions of commodity products with last gen specs are not going to win that generation or the next one.
The largest hurdle that a Steam console will face isn't kernel-level anti-cheats or somesuch. The real problem is far more idiotic: platform exclusives. Console gamers stereotypically care that their platform has a game that others do not, I have no idea how the reasoning works, but exclusives are a major talking point for OEMs and gamers alike.
While PC likely has the most exclusives by a ridiculously large margin, it probably has the fewest AAA exclusives.
> I have no idea how the reasoning works
The reasoning works like this: I want to play that game.
hth
That does not, in fact, help. Exclusives not releases. Why care that a game is not accessible on a different platform.
This is another status quo improvement from Valve. Great job!
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.
Releasing a box that cannot play any multiplayer or sports games is so silly.
So this will only play pc games?
Yeah, only millions of them
by not making a console
> Valve does nothing and still wins.
Who would have thought that not actively engaging in enshittification can be a secret winning recipe!
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SteamOS is handheld only right? What they need is a Xbox/PS alternative, you can plug in to a screen (tv/monitor) and optionally use a mouse/keyboard (valve has some huge FPS titles, like counter strike) for games that you cant play with a controller (usually competitive fps titles).
One thing that came out of the HTPC “wars” of the 2000s and 2010s was that mobile/handheld UI were more suited for the 10-foot interface, versus full-blown computers like Windows MCE.
They just announced exactly what you are asking for https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45903404
SteamOS is not a handheld. It is an OS. And did you even open the link?