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I am a person who will look at the Steam Machine and cry

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Re: I am a person who will look at the Steam Machine and cry

#91

Post by Fire-Dragon-DoL »

I am flabbergasted by the negativity. It is more expensive of what we hoped for.

Is it overpriced? I tried to calculate what a PC would cost NOW and it's exactly the same cost.

I have a big Steam Library, a Steam Deck (actually 2), a desktop PC, a very old desktop pc.

We are also a family of 4 and both my kids enjoy gaming (they are my kids after all), recently they started showing a lot of interest for games I play rather than Nintendo games, so I am getting one, here is what I see as positive that others don't:

    - I'm buying a console for which I have to buy zero games for. That's probably saving me more than 3k right out of the gate.
    - if I buy a game for such console  I can play it on a flight, on the go, at my tv, at my desk
    - if I want to mod it, I can
    - I can finally give a computer to my kid that's not severely outdated, and it has linux, so they learn freedom and power before anything 
    - I can finally play Nightreign with my wife without using Nucleus Coop (2 instances on the same pc), which makes my PC a furnace
    - Buying it puts me in the camp of "I have more linux gaming devices than windows gaming devices"
Yeah there are some of us in the market for it!

Re: I am a person who will look at the Steam Machine and cry

#92

Post by apple4ever »

smcg wrote: post #29

The Steam Machine was $250 less before all of the price increases from hardware buyouts. Go complain to Big Tech. You can install Steam on almost any Linux device. The Steam Machine is great for those who want a portable console-like device. Have you ever tried to build and maintain a shuttle PC yourself? It's obnoxious. This makes the goal of high quality portable gaming much easier.

Exactly. This is going to be perfect for my kid as he enters his teenage years. I dont want to mess with building one for him.

Re: I am a person who will look at the Steam Machine and cry

#93

Post by St_Alfonzo »

apple4ever wrote: post #92
smcg wrote: post #29

The Steam Machine was $250 less before all of the price increases from hardware buyouts. Go complain to Big Tech. You can install Steam on almost any Linux device. The Steam Machine is great for those who want a portable console-like device. Have you ever tried to build and maintain a shuttle PC yourself? It's obnoxious. This makes the goal of high quality portable gaming much easier.

Exactly. This is going to be perfect for my kid as he enters his teenage years. I dont want to mess with building one for him.

Let's hope his friends don't try to drag him into any competitive mainstream games. Valorant, Call of Duty, Battlefield, EA Sports FC, … Kernel-level anti-cheat usually doesn't work on Linux.

Re: I am a person who will look at the Steam Machine and cry

#94

Post by foo12bar »

esseph wrote: post #82
foo12bar wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're too cloae to take any criticism. Any result seems like it'd be a success to you.

Valve has been working toward this ecosystem for over a decade. This is a single product offering among a growing product line that provides access to their store. To be clear, their competitors are pretty pathetic. > I think you're too cloae to take any criticism I'm not even their target market, nor would I buy one when I can roll my own on my own hardware - even using SteamOS if I wanted. https://www.theverge.com/…

Their competitors are xbox and playstation and the cost is way more than each of these. You admit you won't even buy it because I guess you are too technologically inclined. And yet it's not a flop to you. Why?

The fact they've worked on running games on linux for over a decade and still only have a 5% market cap does not bode well for them.

This was supposed to be their great moment, and they ruined it with an expensive box with subpar performance. They should have waited. Now after the hype dies down and it doesn't sell, they'll just have another black eye they have to recover from.

Look, I run linux and have for 30 years. I run games on linux and have steam on linux installed myself. But I'm not trying to fool myself and others that it's some great success story. It isn't.

Re: I am a person who will look at the Steam Machine and cry

#95

Post by libertine »

Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote: post #91

I am flabbergasted by the negativity. It is more expensive of what we hoped for. Is it overpriced? I tried to calculate what a PC would cost NOW and it's exactly the same cost. I have a big Steam Library, a Steam Deck (actually 2), a desktop PC, a very old desktop pc. We are also a family of 4 and both my kids enjoy gaming (they are my kids after all), recently they started showing a lot of interest for games I play…

I don't think the problem is that there aren't people in the market for it, but more that increasingly products that used to be meant for the average middle class are now perks for wealthier individuals - to the point where I think if there's a collapse of the AAA gaming industry is because there's not enough wealthy people time to accommodate for all the titles.

Like GTA VI is speculated to release at around 90$, and any AAA game that will drop around that time will probably have a bad release.

But regarding the steam machine, it's just yet another example that this product isn't at the reach of "the people", it's yet another luxury item.

Not because Valve wanted to, but because this new standard of scalping, hoarding and squeezing the most out of the market is having repercussions across industries.

The sad thing is that Valve used to be on the other side of the fence, at least for some products, it seemed like it was aimed to be accessible for gamers in a pro-consumer way (not all of course, that would be impossible).

In the end even Valve had to fall in line with the rest, and it's just sad to witness it.

So let people grief, they're not just grieving Valve, but also the last hope of a group that still thought there was a counter culture company in the current state of a greedy world, where shared holders value is more important than customers.

Re: I am a person who will look at the Steam Machine and cry

#96

Post by rjh29 »

yathern wrote: post #34

I have a desktop with a relatively powerful 5070 (I think) GPU for playing VR games. But my priorities for couch & controller games is not really around super high graphics performance. Lately I find myself playing classic games on emulator, or generally games without huge graphics demands (been playing that climbing game PEAK a lot lately). For me, getting a random no-name-brand Mini PC is such a fantastic deal thes…

You can also stream games from your powerful PC to the mini PC using Steam, so specs are not as important.

Re: I am a person who will look at the Steam Machine and cry

#97

Post by rjh29 »

smcg wrote: post #29

The Steam Machine was $250 less before all of the price increases from hardware buyouts. Go complain to Big Tech. You can install Steam on almost any Linux device. The Steam Machine is great for those who want a portable console-like device. Have you ever tried to build and maintain a shuttle PC yourself? It's obnoxious. This makes the goal of high quality portable gaming much easier.

If you want to maintain the PC (replace or upgrade parts) the Steam Machine seems like a worse choice over a mini-ITX build. The price for the two is comparable.

If you want a console I agree, it's expensive but you can leverage your existing library and use sales, so not too bad if you buy a lot of games.

Re: I am a person who will look at the Steam Machine and cry

#98

Post by rjh29 »

foo12bar wrote: post #59
Aurornis wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Everywhere I see reviews of it on the internet, Gaming reviews have diverged from reality. Everything is about finding controversy and something to be angry about. Gaming journalism and social media are extremely toxic, but not really indicative of average gamers or consumers any more. > The writing is on the wall. This thing is going to flop. I would bet that it's going to be oversubscribed and sell out.

I bet it sells out, too. But selling out a heavily limited release doesn't mean they are going to make a profit.

The Steam Deck also sells out but the overall userbase is a drop in the ocean compared to the Switch.

Re: I am a person who will look at the Steam Machine and cry

#99

Post by rjh29 »

jrm4 wrote: post #13

Person has a Steam Deck that they don't use? The only thing that keeps me from being genuinely baffled by this person taking the time to write this is the fact that I'm seeing similar takes elsewhere, which also baffle me to no end. Are people really this enamored by "the thought of buying new thing," as opposed to, like, thinking about whether they'll use it? Anyway, the Steam Machine seems like an extremely solid d…

> Are people really this enamored by "the thought of buying new thing," as opposed to, like, thinking about whether they'll use it?

Yes. I know rationally it's overpriced and underpowered but a tiny part of me still wants to own it, just because. It's a shiny black box.

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