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I don’t need a Steam Machine

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Re: I don’t need a Steam Machine

#271

Post by vablings »

cubefox wrote: post #266
vablings wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft takes 30%, Sony takes 30% so that argument is out of the window. Let's break down what you actually get for that 30% with Microsoft/Sony - $120/yr (xbox) or $80/yr (ps) subscription fee - Price subsidized console - Friends system, voice chat/messages - Online store/publishing regional pricing and associated locks - Store for MTX - Cloud based game saves - Trophies/achivements and other player related goal s…

There are only a few hundred people working at Valve, with 79 working on Steam, but they are making 6.5 billion USD yearly. That's extreme. One of the highest revenue per employee ratios in the world. They are spending almost nothing. The 30% are almost pure profit. Since PC is an open platform, the proper comparison would be other PC store fronts which are substantially cheaper than Steam. Unfortunately there is no…

"Valve apparently contractually forbids games to be sold at a lower price outside Steam." This quote is based on one email from a valve employee circa 2017.

Furthermore, is it not Valves right to say if you wish to offer the same product at a lower price, we reserve the right not to sell your product anymore. Keep in mind in most cases when a game is not freely purchased through steam anymore you can still download the game from the CDN, you can also still use all of the online features for the game. You just cannot purchase a new copy

I really don't understand why price parity requirement is a bad thing. If you want to take a bigger slice of the pie you can eat up the infrastructure costs yourself or take your business elsewhere, EOS, Xbox, PlayStation store ect

"There are only a few hundred people working at Valve, with 79 working on Steam, but they are making 6.5 billion USD yearly. That's extreme. One of the highest revenues per employee ratios in the world. They are spending almost nothing. The 30% are almost pure profit."

You are absolutely right. that is far too much money and to which I simply ask the question why no other serious competition? Companies have poured millions into this and always miss the first stop gap of consumer rights first meaning any attempt they have to eat away at the market share fails so hard its actually embarrassing. Anyone arguing against the current system is just arguing against capitalism.

Out of all the companies in the gamer space hardware/software Valve are the only one who actually care for their customers and have regularly extended rights that go well beyond the legal minimum requirement, this is just a fraction of a reason why they have been and will continue to be first class in the gaming space

Re: I don’t need a Steam Machine

#272

Post by vablings »

cubefox wrote: post #216
crowbahr wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a reason everyone else who comes to take on this "market inefficiency" fails. Amazon threw billions at it. So did Google. So has Epic. And Microsoft. None of them dethroned steam, so 30% is still the cost to access the steam user base. If tens of billions can't overcome this "inefficiency" then it sure seems like there might be more to the story than economics 101. The fact is that Steam has an incredibly loy…

> There's a reason everyone else who comes to take on this "market inefficiency" fails. Yes, network effects, as discussed in the Wikipedia article linked above. It's the reason why Facebook or Twitter are so hard to replace, or eBay, or Amazon. In these cases larger platforms benefit from the fact that everyone else is already there, which makes switching hard. That doesn't mean they are inherently better though. Th…

Part of the reason why these companies are still around and strong is because they continue to innovate. Facebook spun up Instagram for younger folk, Amazon has some of the best shipping/warehousing/distribution in the world. eBay has slowly become less relevant for local p2p purchase because its market share got eaten up by Facebook Marketplace.... Twitter had a big chunk of its userbase eaten up by Threads, hey I'm seeing a pattern here?

Re: I don’t need a Steam Machine

#273

Post by lanfeust6 »

Yoric wrote: post #235
lanfeust6 wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't "need" most of what you own, conditioned upon mere survival. Liberal democracy allows people to improve their lives and pursue what makes them happy. Degrowth as a cure is worse than what it is purported to treat. Itwould hurt people. Developing countries improve their standard of living by exporting stuff to us, by consuming resources, etc. The poorest countries trade the least and its not an enviable life…

I'm not going to discuss the details, because we obviously draw different conclusions from the same numbers. For me, the answer is going to be "I'm not going to buy a Steam Machine, not because it's a bad tech, but because it doesn't make my life better, and it uses resources that I'm not sure we can afford." (Nice nickname, btw. French or Belgian?)

French adjacent.

I don't think it will make my life better today. One day though I will be in the market for a modern console to play next-gen, because that's fun.

Re: I don’t need a Steam Machine

#274

Post by socalgal2 »

graemep wrote: post #179
socalgal2 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me, PC = Windows = Microsoft's Spyware and every other game company's anti-cheat root kits Someone might say I can install Linux on my PC but then I have to deal with maintaining it. So, what I hope the Steam Machine is, is effectively PC based console with no Microsoft, no root kits, and no maintainence.

> Someone might say I can install Linux on my PC but then I have to deal with maintaining it. What maintenance do you mean? I do not know of an OS that does not require allowing updates to keep secure. It definitely meets the other criteria you want.

I don't know what Linux you're on. On mine I have to actively maintain it. I have to run something `sudo apt update` `sudo apt upgrade` every week or so and then deal with whatever breaks. Conversely, on my Switch and PS5 it does this automatically. I expect the Steam Machine will also update itself automatically. They have an incentive not to break things since it will cost them money to fix all the device they break. Linux on the other hand (not complaining) basically says "not our fault if it breaks". So, I'd prefer the Steam Machine where, I believe, it is their fault if it breaks and they will fix it.

Re: I don’t need a Steam Machine

#275

Post by oliwarner »

rgreekguy wrote: post #210
oliwarner wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can? What am I looking for? I've tried to hit the $600 mark and in the past few years it's gotten harder and harder. The GPU invariably ruins things. And normal APUs are too asthmatic to really game on.

Good, the Steam Machine won't be 600$ most likely, either. Also you don't necessarily need a dedicated GPU, unless you go with Intel.

> You can already get equivalent specs for cheap.

This is the context. A Steam Deck is bizarrely great value compared to anything you can buy, even without a screen, controller and battery.

Again if you know otherwise, please share.

Re: I don’t need a Steam Machine

#276

Post by theshrike79 »

yreg wrote: post #257
theshrike79 wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't :) I have an M1 Macbook, no gaming for me. So the Steam Machine is perfect for me. I can just tap a button, it'll turn on and I can be gaming on my main monitor before I have time to grab a controller.

Yeah that's true. But I suppose you could just as well buy any other windows/linux PC. (I did so after finally ditching the playing-games-in-bootcamp-on-an-imac life.) I realize the same could be said about the "a box under the living room tv" use case, but I feel like to a lesser degree?

My main issue is that I don't want or have space for a massive PC tower. And building a small form factor PC is both very expensive and very difficult.

All the components come at a premium price and you also get to spend hours finding obscure forums with exact measurements of cases and components to see if the GPU fits lengthwise or whether a specific CPU + cooler is too tall for the case =)

And even if you make it, you're easily way over 1k€ before get to even picking the M.2 drive and RAM.

Thus: Steam Machine. I click "buy" on Steam, it appears on my doorstep, I plug it in and it'll start working.

Re: I don’t need a Steam Machine

#277

Post by SergeAx »

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”…

> and finally we’ll get a console like experience on PC

What do you mean by that? The PC experience with adequate hardware is almost universally better than the console experience.

Re: I don’t need a Steam Machine

#278

Post by crowbahr »

cubefox wrote: post #216
crowbahr wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a reason everyone else who comes to take on this "market inefficiency" fails. Amazon threw billions at it. So did Google. So has Epic. And Microsoft. None of them dethroned steam, so 30% is still the cost to access the steam user base. If tens of billions can't overcome this "inefficiency" then it sure seems like there might be more to the story than economics 101. The fact is that Steam has an incredibly loy…

> There's a reason everyone else who comes to take on this "market inefficiency" fails. Yes, network effects, as discussed in the Wikipedia article linked above. It's the reason why Facebook or Twitter are so hard to replace, or eBay, or Amazon. In these cases larger platforms benefit from the fact that everyone else is already there, which makes switching hard. That doesn't mean they are inherently better though. Th…

Ascribing my entire comment to network effect makes me wonder if you even read it.

Re: I don’t need a Steam Machine

#279

Post by mariopt »

SergeAx wrote: post #277
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”…

> and finally we’ll get a console like experience on PC What do you mean by that? The PC experience with adequate hardware is almost universally better than the console experience.

Games being optimised for specific hardware.

Some games just run better on the PS when compared to the PC version, regardless of you having the latest and best PC. You can see this fairly well on the Nintendo Switch, which is a low spec tablet but the games run very well and the experience is great.

PC Games, generally speaking, tend to favor keyboard and mouse not controllers.

This is why I suspect game devs will start optimising for the Steam Machine, provided it sells well.

Re: I don’t need a Steam Machine

#280

Post by yreg »

theshrike79 wrote: post #276
yreg wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah that's true. But I suppose you could just as well buy any other windows/linux PC. (I did so after finally ditching the playing-games-in-bootcamp-on-an-imac life.) I realize the same could be said about the "a box under the living room tv" use case, but I feel like to a lesser degree?

My main issue is that I don't want or have space for a massive PC tower. And building a small form factor PC is both very expensive and very difficult. All the components come at a premium price and you also get to spend hours finding obscure forums with exact measurements of cases and components to see if the GPU fits lengthwise or whether a specific CPU + cooler is too tall for the case =) And even if you make it,…

Nice, then it sounds like a good fit for you. Basically a Mac mini for gaming :)
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