Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Steam Machine launches today

store.steampowered.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

281–290 of 1001 posts

Re: Steam Machine launches today

#281

Post by ranger207 »

baggy_trough wrote: post #169
tmoertel wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, this is a promising solution to scalping. Previously, if you had only small numbers of consoles available at launch, scalpers and their bots would claim a large share of them. With Valve's new policy, that share is reduced to s/g , where s is the number of verified Steam accounts controlled by scalpers and g is the number of legit gamer accounts. Since s is likely to be much less than g , s/g is close to zero,…

Scalping is a good thing, because it gets consoles in the hands of those who want them the most, as evidenced by willingness to pay.

If you can't see the human effects scalping has on the market, then, well, you might be a microeconomist

Re: Steam Machine launches today

#282

Post by willis936 »

Forgeties79 wrote: post #148
raincole wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what you mean by 'killed.' It'd be sold out faster than hot cakes.

No way. $1100+ to play games with medium/high settings at 1080p? You can probably buy a prebuilt tower that does better than that at that price.

You could have done that 12 months ago.

Re: Steam Machine launches today

#284

Post by postepowanieadm »

andruby wrote: post #76
vondur wrote: post #47

Interesting with the memory. It is 16GB plus an additional 8GB for graphics, or is it just 16GB with 8GB reserved for graphics?

It is 16GB plus an additional 8GB for graphics.

It's GPU's VRAM or some sort of shared memory? I have never seen mixed ram before.

Re: Steam Machine launches today

#285

Post by MrDrone »

boca_honey wrote: post #236
redox99 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you sampled 100 steam players at random, it would look nothing like that.

Yeah those people are definetly not a realistic sample of the average Steam user. I wonder why they chose them in particular.

What leads you to that conclusion? What do you think the average Steam user looks like? What about them doesn't fit your idea of this?

Re: Steam Machine launches today

#286

Post by punpunia »

alexashka wrote: post #187

For comparison - cloud gaming such as Nvidia's Geforce NOW is at ~20$/mo for 4k resolution with a monthly subscription one can cancel anytime. That's what, ~4-5 years of gaming on a superior GPU without the headaches of hardware failures or upfront cost of 1000$? Yikes Valve. The only folks buying gaming PCs these days are people eeking out an advantage in competitive 3D shooters or folks unaware of how far cloud gam…

Cloud gaming is nowhere near the same experience as playing locally. There are a lot of games where milliseconds matter; it's big enough for me and my friends to try Geforce NOW and say, "No, this isn't good enough for a lot of games." You are kind of saying, "the bus only costs $4 a day, that's 30 years of using a car."

Re: Steam Machine launches today

#287

Post by xboxnolifes »

alexashka wrote: post #187

For comparison - cloud gaming such as Nvidia's Geforce NOW is at ~20$/mo for 4k resolution with a monthly subscription one can cancel anytime. That's what, ~4-5 years of gaming on a superior GPU without the headaches of hardware failures or upfront cost of 1000$? Yikes Valve. The only folks buying gaming PCs these days are people eeking out an advantage in competitive 3D shooters or folks unaware of how far cloud gam…

No matter how superior the GPU, the latency from streaming will never be able to compete if you're outside of a major hub.

I couldn't imagine playing a game by streaming inputs to a server 30ms away, which then streams those inputs another 30ms to the game server, and then having that round trip.

60ms screen delay and 120ms total delay.

Re: Steam Machine launches today

#288

Post by koolala »

pseudosavant wrote: post #72

I know the price for PC parts is terrible these days, but $1049 for a 6-core 16GB RAM, with a 512GB SSD, and no controller, is a terrible value. For reference, the PS5 Pro has more than twice the number GPU CUs, an 8-core CPU, a 2TB SSD, a controller, and costs $899.

For reference compare it to a PC.

Re: Steam Machine launches today

#289

Post by korse »

baggy_trough wrote: post #169
tmoertel wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, this is a promising solution to scalping. Previously, if you had only small numbers of consoles available at launch, scalpers and their bots would claim a large share of them. With Valve's new policy, that share is reduced to s/g , where s is the number of verified Steam accounts controlled by scalpers and g is the number of legit gamer accounts. Since s is likely to be much less than g , s/g is close to zero,…

Scalping is a good thing, because it gets consoles in the hands of those who want them the most, as evidenced by willingness to pay.

You are right. Basic economic theory says nothing about distribution of value, only about creation of the most value. I don't know why your comment is grey.

But... perhaps these guys are playing a longer game? Reputation has value as well and from other comments this move seems to boost reputation significantly.

Re: Steam Machine launches today

#290

Post by buellerbueller »

saltamimi wrote: post #266

It's just dead-on-arrival. I'm not convinced this hardware is "an extension of PC gaming, not a console" when the hardware is generations out of date. To credit Microsoft, Sony, and other players, the reality is that unless you are "in the game" for decades, you HAVE to provide a convincing differentiator from the other console markets. Steam had this with the Steam Deck and personally, I see the world moving to thin…

>It's just dead-on-arrival...the hardware is generations out of date

Some people say this same thing about the Nintendo Switch and its successor, but here we are, with the former closing in on highest selling console of all time, and the latter tracking above that.

Post reply on HN