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

331–340 of 1001 posts

Re: Steam Machine launches today

#331

Post by dummydummy1234 »

tuna74 wrote: post #297
asattarmd wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They need to do that because, in some sense, they're competing with Gaming PCs, not really with Gaming consoles. Gaming consoles sell their consoles at a discounted price because they can recoup a lot of it when selling games. Steam can't have a markup on games because they share their marketplace with other PCs.

Steam has a very high markup compared to its competitors like Epic Games Store.

But if they subsidize the hardware, non game users will purchase the hardware and use it for non game use-cases, where valve cannot recoupe the costs.

A interesting scenario would be to sell the hardware at cost, but include a 30% off ticket to the steam store (up to a few hundred dollars, in savings).

Re: Steam Machine launches today

#333

Post by tuyiown »

sudobash1 wrote: post #103

I am pleased to see hardware not being locked down as a selling point: > 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? It feels very commonsense that you should be able to run whatever you want on the computer that you have purchased, but it is surprisingly uncommon.

I like that we can write the story that Microsoft sold their software with the home computer on the idea of productivity at home while the actual incentive was entertainment, and valve ends up justifying buying gaming hardware with the incentive that it can do productivity.

Re: Steam Machine launches today

#334

Post by mariusor »

__natty__ wrote: post #274

The biggest win for me from this product is pushing developers to release on Linux.

Sadly I don't see that happening. Game devs have gotten used to having their cake and eating it too by developing for Windows and using Proton as a crutch to get the the Steam OS certification too. flibitijibibo was right: linux porters have probably gone out of business.

Re: Steam Machine launches today

#335

Post by pelotron »

tonymet wrote: post #170

A question for both developers & gamers – why are we continuing to push hardware capacity upward to untenable costs? 2013 games are awesome, I still play them. Why not continue targeting that capability and sell $250 consoles instead of $1250 consoles?

A question for the ages.

indie games community has joined the chat

Re: Steam Machine launches today

#336

Post by krabizzwainch »

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.

Something that only benefits people with the most disposable income is a bad thing. I will preach from any platform that I have that scalpers are shit people.

Re: Steam Machine launches today

#337

Post by tuvix »

inigyou wrote: post #226
prhn wrote: post #96

I want to buy one just to raise the signal that Linux support is important. When these machines were announced I switched to Fedora as a daily driver on my high end gaming rig. It’s been awesome. I still have to go back to Windows for music production unfortunately. I may switch to Mac for that so I can completely abandon Windows. I run an optical HDMI cable from my office to my TV and get to play games and use Linux…

Let me guess, DAWs? Have you tried Reaper (FOSS) or Bitwig Studio (commercial)?

Seconding Reaper, great software. Renoise is also extremely fun to use if you’re comfortable with trackers (for midi input not that they track you) and you make electronic music

Re: Steam Machine launches today

#338

Post by nomel »

retired wrote: post #163
himata4113 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am more surprised there's people lining up to buy this when it's genuinely cheaper to get a used PC off a local marketplace. I feel like this is unnecessary as I am pretty sure they'll be able to fill it in one shipment.

For €1039 you can even get a mini-ITX PC that fits nicely in your living room. Install SteamOS to get a similar experience. Only thing you will not get is the HDMI CEC functionality.

Interesting claim. Complete parts list please!

Every time I've seen a comment like this, the eventual parts list is about the same price, has large deviations, or re-uses existing hardware (or used hardware). Looking at all the subreddits, the general consensus seems to be the price is fine for the components, and (if you care) it's impossible to build anything with that form factor.

Re: Steam Machine launches today

#339

Post by skupig »

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.

Maybe you're out of touch, they pretty much look like the typical young nerd from Seattle.

Re: Steam Machine launches today

#340

Post by [deleted] »

sailingparrot wrote: post #38

> Why a randomized reservation order? [...] we wanted to create a system that would be less frustrating and more fair for everyone. A launch that starts at a specific day and time tends to reward bots, people with fast internet connections, talented gaming fingers for quick F5/refresh reactions, and those who can schedule their life around that moment. By accepting reservation signups over the course of a few days, w…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN