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I don’t need a Steam Machine

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Re: I don’t need a Steam Machine

#181

Post by 59nadir »

baq wrote: post #86
tatjam wrote: post #3

I'm looking for it as a general development machine, sometimes I do stuff that requires GPUs so if they can get a competitive price wrt. building a custom PC then I'm all in for the convenient form factor!

The steam machine as they’re marketing it doesn’t have enough RAM to be a proper development box once you start running IDEs, language servers and debuggers. They’d need to release a 64 or 128 gig sku, unless RAM is easily upgradable.

> [...] proper development box [...]

"Proper" is very subjective here. My entire workflow for developing 3D engines is covered a couple of times over with the announced Steam Machine specs. In fact, even when I was working in web backend development it would've covered it as a dedicated development machine and that was with some pretty pathological dev setups, language servers that ate up way too much memory, etc..

Re: I don’t need a Steam Machine

#182

Post by wat10000 »

torginus wrote: post #27

When I first saw the Arduino I didn't see the point - after all there were boards that cost less, did more, and the Arduino IDE seemed very barebones compared to what you could do with GCC and a custom toolchain. Then eventually I saw how much community support, ready made hardware emerged around it, to the point that after a while, not going the Arduino route was a decision you needed to justify heavily. Same thing…

Experts tend to greatly underestimate the importance of friction.

By the time you’ve finished saying “gcc and a custom toolchain” you’ve lost most of your potential audience. If you’re a professional or even an experienced hobbyist, it’s no big deal. But if the idea of programming embedded systems is new to you, it’s a lot of effort. And it’s not clear how much effort it will be, or if you’ll even be capable of it. It’s not fun to be knee deep in a complicated install and have no idea if you’ll ever be able to get it working. Lots of people will find something else to occupy their time rather than attempt it.

That then leads to community and better tools, and maybe it becomes a good choice even for experts. And even if it never does, it provides a great stepping stone, since trying and failing to set up the more complicated tools is a lot more tolerable if you can fall back to the simple IDE you’ve been using.

Re: I don’t need a Steam Machine

#184

Post by MegaDeKay »

ajvs wrote: post #81
tormeh wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a comparable desktop experience to the commercial OSes Isn't it alteady comparable? My Linux desktop has almost the same game compatibility that Windows has, and none of the advertising and jank. Gone are the legendary days of xorg.conf. Linux has less problems than Windows now. Support from professional software vendors (Dassault, Autodesk, et al) and Nvidia could be better, admittedly, but these restrictions aren…

And this is due to Valve's big investments in Proton, Steam Deck and the new Steam hardware to get game compatibility working from both the Linux/Wine side as well as making game developers aim for compatibility.

They've been supporting KDE as well for years now.

Re: I don’t need a Steam Machine

#185

Post by cubefox »

Yokolos wrote: post #166
cubefox wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently they don't, this says 12% to 15%: https://www.techradar.com/pro/microsoft-just-dropped-its-sto... That's still higher than what seems reasonable for a simple store front, but they aren't as bad as Valve or Apple. Note that Valve is a relatively small company with only a few hundred employees, but with one of the most extreme revenue-per-employee ratios in the world, estimated at $19 million per employee: h…

> That's still higher than what seems reasonable Based on what? Your arbitrary standards. I still don't understand what's wrong with 30% for everything Steam provides as a platform. It's perfectly acceptable. It's not making indie developers poorer. It helping to ensure Valve can focus on the things that matter to them and do things like invest in Steam Input, Proton, SteamOS, and Steam Deck/Machine/Controller/Frame/…

> Based on what? Your arbitrary standards.

Based on a strongly and persistently imbalanced ratio of revenue to expenses, which indicates a form of market inefficiency.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_rent#Monopoly_rent (the mentioned network effects are basically what drives Steam rents)

> I still don't understand what's wrong with 30% for everything Steam provides as a platform. It's perfectly acceptable. It's not making indie developers poorer.

Of course it makes them poorer if a big chunk of what you pay for their games goes to Valve.

> It helping to ensure Valve can focus on the things that matter to them and do things like invest

But they basically aren't doing that. If a company has an extreme revenue-to-expense ratio, it means they are hardly investing any of their revenue. They only have a few hundred employees while making around 6.5 billion per year.

> Every other digital storefront does far less and still takes 15-30%. Why is Valve the big boogey man

Well, Microsoft seems to do 12-15% in the Microsoft Store. And I fully agree Apple is significantly worse than Valve with iOS, because there is no way to circumvent the 30% fee in iOS; indeed, it wouldn't even be possible to offer a software like Steam on iOS. (But it should also be noted that Apple has a much lower revenue-per-employee ratio than Valve, indicating that they reinvest a lot more of their revenue.)

Re: I don’t need a Steam Machine

#186

Post by maeln »

Arch-TK wrote: post #110
mariopt wrote: post #12

Steam Machines can become an existencial crisis for PlayStation and Xbox. A “console” that I can use as a PC? I am in 100%. You’ll get the world biggest game library at a discount, this is why I sold my PlayStation after spending 200 euros and watching it becoming useless. I also suspect a lot of game devs will optimize for steam machine and finally we’ll get a console like experience on PC. Don’t let the “low specs”…

Valve isn't likely to make SteamOS the kind of platform that facilitates intrusive* anti-cheat** or which is locked down in a way to prevent cheating at the client side. This means that a number of competitive multiplayer games will never run on it. I think in this regard, consoles still have an advantage*** if you're into those kinds of games. * I don't care what the intention is, they are _objectively_ intrusive. *…

> Valve isn't likely to make SteamOS the kind of platform that facilitates intrusive* anti-cheat* or which is locked down in a way to prevent cheating at the client side. This means that a number of competitive multiplayer games will never run on it. I think in this regard, consoles still have an advantage** if you're into those kinds of games.

Depends on just how successful SteamOS gets. If it start to have a significant market share, competitive multiplayer games might start to find it hard to ignore it. Though how they decide to deal with that, I have no idea.

I think Valve see a future for anti-cheat where most of it is behavioral analysis. Client-side anti-cheat is a big game of cat and mouse. It does make cheat harder to develop, but to a point where the customer is impacted. Post game analysis cannot be countered "technically". Cheat would need to mimic a real player behavior, which at the end is a success. If you can't tell if a player is cheating or not, does it matter that they are ? Although for things like wallhacks, it might be harder to detect.

Re: I don’t need a Steam Machine

#187

Post by MegaDeKay »

tapoxi wrote: post #139
deng wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Arduino was 30$ when it came out. The Raspberry was 35$. I'd be astonished if they manage to get the Steam Machine down to 800$ (bundled with a controller). Knowing how Valve loves their margins, it's probably closer to 1000$ or even more. This is not something you spontaneously buy to play around with.

Moore's Law is Dead (chip analyst YouTuber) believes a $300 bill of materials and $600, maybe even $450 for the lower SKU. The CPU and GPU in this are last generation, and he believes Valve got a bulk discount on unsold RDNA3 mobile GPUs. They did something similar with the Steam Deck riding off a Magic Leap custom design. People predicted that would be pricey too but launched with (and still has) a $399 model.

You have to take MLID with a several large grains of salt. He gets a lot wrong, and when he does, he deletes the corresponding videos. There are Reddit subs that won't allow links to his videos for that reason. Valve has also said that it won't be console-type pricing, more like the pricing of a decent SFF PC.

Having said that, it would be great to see the GabeCube come in around the prices he's guesstimating. I hope it finds great success.

Re: I don’t need a Steam Machine

#188

Post by harvey9 »

pwdisswordfishs wrote: post #171
deng wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

300$ BOM sounds incredibly low to me, especially now with the exploding prices for storage and RAM. Maybe they have already stocked up on it, but I doubt it. The huge heat sink also cannot be cheap. Then of course there's the whole tariff uncertainty. The lower SKUs for Steam Deck are sold pretty much with zero margin or even at a loss, as Newell said this was a strategic decision to enter the mobile gaming market. H…

The hardware does not compare favorably to a 2024 (current, in other words) Mac Mini. Consider what the Steam Machine requires sacrificing: - fewer USB-C connectors - larger physical footprint - can't buy and take it home today It's hard to do an apples-to-apples comparison between the chips, but where one is better than the other on some dimension, it's offset by some other. They're approximately comparable. Now, wh…

Depends what people are buying a steam machine for and what are the alternatives. Can you use a Mac mini for pretty much the same purpose? Genuine question since I'm not a gamer nor a Mac user.

Re: I don’t need a Steam Machine

#189

Post by dminik »

cubefox wrote: post #78
Aeolun wrote: post #2

All of this is true, but Valve is one of the best companies I know and for now, I’ll happily give them money. It’s not about the fact that I’m actually going to use it. It’s about the fact that I want people to keep making things like this. It’s about the fact I want to reward them for not locking it down completely.

You wouldn't like Valve so much if you explicitly saw the 30% Steam tax, I mean fee, declared every time you bought a PC game on Steam. Imagine if Microsoft did that. +30% for every Windows software. Like iOS. Then Steam games would be +60% rather than +30%.

It's not really a tax though. Other platforms offer a lower percentage (Epic: 0% up to 1000000 copies sold and 12% above) and yet the prices on Epic aren't cheaper than on steam.

If the final price doesn't change based on the storefront cut, then as a consumer, I don't care.

Re: I don’t need a Steam Machine

#190

Post by gruez »

pbronez wrote: post #169
speed_spread wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a real need for anti cheat / certified hardware. Valve is uniquely be positioned to address it because they have trust from the gaming community. Ideally a single anti cheat mechanism would be shared by all software vendors. Online games could request "console mode" involving hardware key exchange. Done right this wouldn't have to be invasive like current anti cheat.

I wonder if it’s possible to implement anti-cheat as a USB stick. Your GabeCube or gaming PC would stay open by default, but you could buy an anti-cheat accessory that plugs into a free USB port. Connecting that device grants access to match making with other people who have the device. There are several products that rely on a USB device like this for DRM solutions. It’s probably much easier to unlock static assets…

>I wonder if it’s possible to implement anti-cheat as a USB stick. Your GabeCube or gaming PC would stay open by default, but you could buy an anti-cheat accessory that plugs into a free USB port. Connecting that device grants access to match making with other people who have the device.

What does the USB stick actually do? The hard part of implementing the anti-cheat (ie. either invasive scanning or attestation with hardware root of trust) is entirely unaddressed, so your description is as helpful as "would it be possible to implement a quantum computer as a USB stick?"

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