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Valve is about to win the console generation

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Re: Valve is about to win the console generation

#251

Post by mhitza »

acdbddh wrote: post #216

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…

> 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.

Re: Valve is about to win the console generation

#252

Post by hananova »

_carbyau_ wrote: post #82
evo_9 wrote: post #58

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.

Re: Valve is about to win the console generation

#253

Post by plodman »

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.

Re: Valve is about to win the console generation

#255

Post by James_K »

TheRoque wrote: post #51

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 (AK…

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.

Re: Valve is about to win the console generation

#256

Post by whywhywhywhy »

nodja wrote: post #73
NelsonMinar wrote: post #22

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.

>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.

Re: Valve is about to win the console generation

#257

Post by slightwinder »

wraptile wrote: post #141
robomc wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I mean... can I play Fortnite, BF6 or the upcoming GTA on steamOS?

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.

That's a misconception. Majority of players are with the big Franchises, and they stay with them. The variety-gamers who are playing multiple different games are a minority, though they are a big crowd, loud and have for obvious reasons more attention, leading to this misconception. For example, Escape from Duckov, which you are speaking about, had at it's peak "just" roughly as many players as Battlefield 6 has on average every day. And Battlefield is the smaller one of the big games.

Re: Valve is about to win the console generation

#258

Post by whywhywhywhy »

aa-jv wrote: post #234

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.

Re: Valve is about to win the console generation

#259

Post by refulgentis »

Ferret7446 wrote: post #202
refulgentis wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About $1B/year. CS:GO is the highest grossing game on Steam, according to some sources, all agree its top 5. Why is that irrelevant?

Raid shadow legends is also estimated to make around $1B/year, and there are many such mobile games. Roblox made $3.6B in 2024. Fornite makes $3-5B/year for the past ~decade. Genshin Impact is estimated to make ~$10B this year. Not only in revenue, but all of the above have way more cultural impact/awareness too. The pond is very big, but it's easy to miss that if you're in a bubble in that pond.

You didn't know what you were talking about and got caught in it.

That's fine! I was surprised too.

Something I've learned with age is it's better to have a laugh together than throw out more cover.

Re: Valve is about to win the console generation

#260

Post by swiftcoder »

wraptile wrote: post #167
SkiFire13 wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have a bunch of friends that have battlefield/cod/fortnite and want to play them, they will still do so without you, or at least heavily pressure you into getting them.

I'm not sure what could that even mean from consumer pov - I'm not going to buy a platform because some of my friends might want me to play a specific game with me? The pressure to get more games on your platform has never been as low as it is today and has never been this low on Steam itself. You could spend a lifetime with the current Steam library and never feel bored. From product pov Valve feels very comfortable…

> I'm not sure what could that even mean from consumer pov - I'm not going to buy a platform because some of my friends might want me to play a specific game with me?

That's exactly how console sales worked in the past. I bought an Xbox because all my friends were playing Halo, and I wanted to join in...

The recent phenomenon of games supporting cross-play out of the gate is probably eating into this, but exclusives were a hell of a moat back in the day.

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