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Steam Machine launches today

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Re: Steam Machine launches today

#571

Post by OkayPhysicist »

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?

The problem is that the market has basically bifurcated. In the Indie space, people want novelty, and that's too risky for AAA (even 10 year old AAA) scale games. Over in the modern AAA space, you've got a more reliable user base (in that they're more eager to buy slight changes to the same game over and over), but you're competing more on "Wow" factor. And ever-better graphics have been a pretty easy way to convert investment into "wow", without much risk (compared to changing game mechanics more, which might kill your golden goose).

I find it far more plausible that AI-assisted game dev will help indies catch up in scale to 10 year old AAA than the modern AAA studios deciding to throw in the towel on the graphics arms race.

Re: Steam Machine launches today

#572

Post by Melonai »

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)?

As a sibling comment pointed out, Reaper is not FOSS, it's fully proprietary. What makes it stand out is its great Linux support, and very generous licensing.

If you want to venture into the FOSS DAW realm on Linux you have to go to LMMS and Ardour. I've played around with them, they're a little bare-bones, but they do work. Issue is I haven't been able to use them properly, because I just can't stand to look at them, they are afflicted with the medium-size open-source project curse of looking particularly horrid. I hope this isn't taken as an affront to any of the developers behind these projects, a DAW is a hard task, but I keep asking myself, out of the set of developers who work on these projects, is there really no one who feels the same way as me? Am I just afflicted with some weird pixel-peeping autism-esque disorder that makes me stare at the constantly-reocurring-throughout-all-FOSS-applications clump of jarringly gradient-ed grey buttons with white icons on them, their round corners contrasting with each other because they're clearly placed way too close together than they were meant to be? (I swear I see this in every mid-scale project using QT and older GTK!)

And I also need to confirm, this isn't just a "slight annoyance" for me, I have genuine issues when I have to concentrate on a project within some application that is suffering from the FOSS UI affliction, my mind wanders to looking at those buttons again, or those #00FF00 greens, or at some label that has clearly seeped a few pixels downwards out-of-alignment with the button it was placed in...

Ugh, I know I have some issues for sure, but I know someone else has to care about this too? It's the main reason why I fail at using non-textual FOSS software, and have to resort to Logic Pro or Ableton!

Sorry for the rant, I had to get it out of me. I wish I had more time in a day, then perhaps I could go to these projects and help out with UI, but I have a feeling my proposals will be rejected, even if I had the time to make them, I have found most FOSS developers are quite happy with how their UI usually looks like, including many people here on this forum.

Re: Steam Machine launches today

#573

Post by TiredOfLife »

mrec wrote: post #83
robmccoll wrote: post #32

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…

I'm sure they were originally hoping for mass-market success, but given the RAM drought and ensuing pricing, I'm guessing the best possible outcome at this point would be to break roughly even and learn, so that they can put out a more competitive revision if and when prices ever return to Earth. With Windows becoming increasingly hostile, I do think there's room for a hardware/software integrated "just works" offeri…

The only thing about price mentioned during announcement, before rampocalypse, was that it would cost much more than a console.

Re: Steam Machine launches today

#574

Post by racl101 »

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…

That's pretty cool!

Re: Steam Machine launches today

#575

Post by TiredOfLife »

YuechenLi wrote: post #89

Surprised that they have 4 USB-A and only 1 USB-C. With their power profile, Steam Machine should be powerable by a single USB-C cable on extended power range which should reduce the need for the power supply altogether and greatly simplify mechanical as well as thermal design, although the power electronic design would be more complex as a result. I would also be expecting Wifi 7 support as well as unified memory co…

Steam machine uses about 200W. Can you even buy any 240W pd power bricks. Quick search on amazon shows that all that advertise 240w can only output 140w max on single cable

Re: Steam Machine launches today

#576

Post by TiredOfLife »

mort96 wrote: post #207
YuechenLi wrote: post #89

Surprised that they have 4 USB-A and only 1 USB-C. With their power profile, Steam Machine should be powerable by a single USB-C cable on extended power range which should reduce the need for the power supply altogether and greatly simplify mechanical as well as thermal design, although the power electronic design would be more complex as a result. I would also be expecting Wifi 7 support as well as unified memory co…

A USB-C PD power supply which supports 130W is probably gonna be more expensive than whatever power supply they're using now...

And steam machine uses almost double that.

Re: Steam Machine launches today

#577

Post by SoMomentary »

panicinducer wrote: post #567

You could build the equivalent PC for quite a bit cheaper or a PS5 and 7 full price AAA games for the same price. No way this is a console-killer, but will be a nice novelty for Gaben fans for whom $1049 is not a significant amount of money.

Just today I was thinking about threading the needle on that and making my own Steam Machine with an AMD BC-250 board. Maybe I still will, it'd be a 10th the price and I do love to tinker.

Re: Steam Machine launches today

#578

Post by TiredOfLife »

baby wrote: post #559

The deck is such a good console compared to the switch and switch 2 that I can’t be stop being happy that they released this now. How is Valve, a tiny company, doing so much better than Nintendo?

Switch 2 is faster, lighter and cheaper than Steam Deck.

Re: Steam Machine launches today

#579

Post by Narishma »

izacus wrote: post #247
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, the PS5 Pro has more than twice the number GPU CUs, an 8-core CPU, a 2TB SSD, a controller, and costs $899. Will it run my Steam library of games or do I need to also pay 5000$ again with inflated prices?

It will run your PS4 and PS5 libraries.

Re: Steam Machine launches today

#580

Post by Atotalnoob »

dijit wrote: post #461
gonzalohm wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are lucky. A lot of the games I play with friends use kernel level anticheat crap that doesn't work on Linux

I work in AAA; more people using Linux means we'll actually get buy-in for working with Linux as a platform. Right now Producers and HQ don't want to support it because "theres no money there" and they're bolstered by a crew of developers who have only ever touched Windows who will reinforce the notion that Windows is all you need (because they've sunk their entire career into the platform). I remember bringing this…

Even if AAA supports Linux, it’s got to be without kernel anticheat. That’s a non starter for myself and many others
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