Valve is about to win the console generation

Post by Mistletoe » Thu, Nov 13, 2025, 4:55 AM UTC

tombert wrote: post #105

Normal_gaussian wrote: post #46

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 o…

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…

Post by bsder » Thu, Nov 13, 2025, 5:05 AM UTC

ethmarks wrote: post #87

skissane wrote: post #42

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…

Post by xena » Thu, Nov 13, 2025, 5:09 AM UTC

intexpress wrote: post #94

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

Post by bsder » Thu, Nov 13, 2025, 5:17 AM UTC

thrownawaysz wrote: post #6

>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.

Post by altairprime » Thu, Nov 13, 2025, 5:28 AM UTC

altairprime wrote: post #68

killingtime74 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!