Valve is making a Switch-like portable gaming PC • Hacker News Board

Re: Valve is making a Switch-like portable gaming PC

#31

Post by kogepathic » Wed, May 26, 2021, 1:18 PM UTC

Valve's track record with non-VR hardware is, to put it politely, not good.

Seven years after launching the Steam machine (2014) initiative, there are no Steam machines available for sale. [1]

Both the Steam Controller (2015-2019) and Steam Link (2015-2018) are discontinued and cannot be purchased, despite consistently positive reviews from users. [2]

As other commenters have noted there are already numerous "Switch-like, but x86" products that exist, and it's unclear to me what innovation Valve can bring to the space.

IMHO if Valve wants to be taken seriously in the hardware market, they need to stop pulling a Google and actually support/iterate/not discontinue their existing hardware products (before someone adds that they did support these through firmware updates, I mean updating the hardware to keep up with the times, Steam Link with apps or 4K, etc).

[1] https://store.steampowered.com/sale/steam_machines

[2] https://store.steampowered.com/search/?category1=993

Re: Valve is making a Switch-like portable gaming PC

#32

Post by libertine » Wed, May 26, 2021, 1:23 PM UTC

aranelsurion wrote: post #20

libertine wrote: post #3

I wonder who will be the target for these devices, because a great part of portable consoles strategy was: to be a gateway for kids to buy into the "big-boy" consoles down the line. Basically win their hearts and trust early, so they can become loyal throughout their life. So these devices had to check some boxes, one of the main factors being the price. These devices had to be cheaper then regular consoles (among ot…

> yet they are failing in what I believe is crucial for these devices: price. IMO Before coming to price, none of the Switch-likes are good products for the broader market. They lack the UX, polish, brand, games, and pretty much everything that makes Nintendo consoles such a big success. I wouldn't compare the experience of playing Super Mario Odyssey on Switch and some old game on a janky emulator or some AA game on…

Actually I wasn't mentioning the android devices, or the ones dedicated to be emulation machines, but kind of a "newish" win10 machines where you can install pretty much what ever you want (from PC games to emulators), but come at a high price tag (600€++).

Everyone has to start somewhere, and history has shown that pricing was a major factor for the success of consoles (besides ofc IP, distribution, branding).

You have great examples, like Gameboy VS Gamegear or Playstation VS Sega Saturn.

Re: Valve is making a Switch-like portable gaming PC

#33

Post by SirLotsaLocks » Wed, May 26, 2021, 1:25 PM UTC

A lot of consoles are sold at a loss, where costs are made up by people buying games through the console on the makers store, I wonder how valve will go about this because I don't see a lot of people getting this that didn't already have steam on another device.

Re: Valve is making a Switch-like portable gaming PC

#34

Post by libertine » Wed, May 26, 2021, 1:26 PM UTC

jsnell wrote: post #24

libertine wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I agree with you pretty much on everything. >But nobody is making a dedicated portable streaming device as far as I know, and it seems like something that'd fit really well with a streaming service. NVIDIA kind of did it with the NVIDIA Shield some years ago, and I think they're still supporting it.

My recollection is that the original Shield was marketed as much for playing (Android) games locally as for streaming, and had a much more powerful GPU and CPU than contemporary mobile phones did. That's kind of losing the advantage of it being dedicated to streaming, which is that you could really cut down on the BOM.

Streaming is still in a awkward position, both user experience wise, the cost of the streaming games (with data caps), and the competitive aspect of some games.

People get blown away by the amount of data used by NVIDIA solution, Google Stadia is pretty much dead...

It's hard to say if streaming would be the win condition.

Re: Valve is making a Switch-like portable gaming PC

#35

Post by texaswhizzle » Wed, May 26, 2021, 1:27 PM UTC

zwirbl wrote: post #25

texaswhizzle wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not just buy a solid controller for your phone or tablet? How could this hypothetical device possibly be better than an iPhone 12 Pro Max, Note, Galaxy S, etc?

by having access to the steam pc game library, which is huge

Both major mobile OS platforms support steam link.

Re: Valve is making a Switch-like portable gaming PC

#36

Post by ArkanExplorer » Wed, May 26, 2021, 1:29 PM UTC

awakeasleep wrote: post #30

ArkanExplorer wrote: post #28

A portable gaming PC means optimization - in terms of performance and interface - is going to be critically important. But knowing Valve, they will keep the same old exorbitant 30% commission which makes it uneconomical to actually launch great titles targeted at this device, same as for the Index VR device. By the way, on Switch the effective commission is 25%, given that customers are rebated 5% of their eshop spen…

Good analysis, but you harm your credibility by saying Nintendo curates eshop titles. This is only technically true, and no layperson would be able to tell. 99% of the eshop is ports of shovelware android ‘games’ that consist of little more than cover art.

I have two titles on Switch and Steam. What you are saying is incorrect. The process to get approved and launch on Switch is substantially more difficult than Steam, and the quality of titles is as a result much higher.

Because of the lack of curation and quality control, I make a lot more revenue for the same product on Switch than on Steam.

Re: Valve is making a Switch-like portable gaming PC

#37

Post by wpdev_63 » Wed, May 26, 2021, 1:30 PM UTC

Just picked up the new macbook air m1 and I am staggered to find that I can play starcraft 2 and bioshock decently on a laptop that draws 30watts and is capacitivily cooled... Really just unbelievable.

So if valve could someone get ahold of some cutting edge arm processors in the next few years then this could be very viable(though I doubt they will get it out before the next version of the nintendo switch).

Re: Valve is making a Switch-like portable gaming PC

#38

Post by moron4hire » Wed, May 26, 2021, 1:31 PM UTC

SirLotsaLocks wrote: post #33

A lot of consoles are sold at a loss, where costs are made up by people buying games through the console on the makers store, I wonder how valve will go about this because I don't see a lot of people getting this that didn't already have steam on another device.

It also really doesn't seem like they have anyone with the skills in their wheelhouse to do good by this.

A big part of differentiating a console from a PC is building an operating system that prioritizes the game process uber alles. It's not just a fancy window manager slapped onto a commodity PC. Even the original Xbox had a lot of custom OS work done to it, stuff that would eventually serve as the test bed for developments in DirectX.

Does Valve even have any operating system developers? I thought their core dev body was mainly focused on screwing modders and getting kids addicted to slot machines.

Re: Valve is making a Switch-like portable gaming PC

#39

Post by libertine » Wed, May 26, 2021, 1:35 PM UTC

easton wrote: post #21

libertine wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the tricky part, if these devices aren't locked to a proprietary OS/marketplace, users can shop around and you're basically helping your competitors while taking all the losses.

If it's running SteamOS (and it will be, even if there's Windows compatibility Valve probably doesn't want to pay for licenses), it might as well be locked to Steam for 90% of people. Epic's launcher doesn't have a Linux version (since they've claimed as have many other developers that the Linux community is 1% of users and 90% of complaints due to distro differences), nor does EA, Ubisoft, etc. They could port it, b…

Let's assume the SteamOS would make this device 100% locked to Valve's ecosystem, which would give Valve the ability to sell these devices at cost (by charging fee's on games sold). Let's set the price on the same ballpark of the current consoles prices.

What would make people choose this platform over Windows, PlayStation, Xbox, or Nintendo?

This is where IP comes to play, and why Valve shouldn't have dropped the ball with their game development investments, and they would have exclusive games to get the ball rolling.

Re: Valve is making a Switch-like portable gaming PC

#40

Post by schmorptron » Wed, May 26, 2021, 1:36 PM UTC

kogepathic wrote: post #31

Valve's track record with non-VR hardware is, to put it politely, not good. Seven years after launching the Steam machine (2014) initiative, there are no Steam machines available for sale. [1] Both the Steam Controller (2015-2019) and Steam Link (2015-2018) are discontinued and cannot be purchased, despite consistently positive reviews from users. [2] As other commenters have noted there are already numerous "Switch-…

That being said, they did support both the Steam Controller and Link for a very long time, and the Steam Controller continues to be used by many (The configurator and services for sharing the configurations work all the same today). Steam Link has mostly been replaced by software solutions like an Android App, or it being straight up built into some TVs.