441–450 of 1001 posts
Hope the Frame is available for pre-order soon as well! I know I’m going to pay more than the HW was worth a year ago because of “AI”, but I’m really looking forward to that one.
Indeed, thankful for that.
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.
For reference, a PlayStation 5 is $600-650 for the base models (lower performance than Steam Machine) and $900 for the Pro model (likely higher performance). I know this is a PC and thus an open platform, but for most buyers in living room gaming, that's the competition. I don't think this will reach mass market success, but I'm not sure that was the goal. Who are they selling to? Note: I ask as someone with a Steamd…
For comparison - cloud gaming such as Nvidia's Geforce NOW is at ~20$/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$? Yikes Valve. The only folks buying gaming PCs these days are people eeking out an advantage in competitive 3D shooters or folks unaware of how far cloud gam…
No matter how superior the GPU, the latency from streaming will never be able to compete if you're outside of a major hub. I couldn't imagine playing a game by streaming inputs to a server 30ms away, which then streams those inputs another 30ms to the game server, and then having that round trip. 60ms screen delay and 120ms total delay.
One more data point - you're getting 1080p medium settings (for latest games) with a Steam Machine at ~1000$ upfront vs 4k max settings but 20-50ms added latency (for most people) for ~20$/mo without any longterm commitment.
That's where we're at. I'm in the 2000$ upfront to get max settings, minimal latency camp myself but I consider that to be a niche, luxury purchase category.
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.
Valve gets it. I very much want to support them and vote with my wallet. Unfortunately the Steam machine isn't a good fit for me. I will buy the frame in a heartbeat though. HMD with a FOSS OS? That's in its own class.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't get why companies don't take advantage of the demand. For example: Start the bidding at BASE_PRICE (BP) + 2400. Then reduce the price by $1 every 3mins over the course of 5 days. Until the BP is met and then just carry on queuing. You could buy it early if you want it that much or just wait an extra couple of days and end up in the queue at the BP. I don't know if it would create pressure on that second it ti…
Because it damages the brand and many people will remember the product as being heavily overpriced and never come back.