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Valve is about to win the console generation

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Re: Valve is about to win the console generation

#321

Post by jojomodding »

hnlmorg wrote: post #219
acdbddh wrote: post #216

As much as I love hacking with various things, there are reasons why I buy "closed products" for myself and for my family. I like to do hacking when I want it (with ESP32, rpi etc). I don't want to be forced to serve as a free IT support guy anytime someone presses a wrong button. When it comes to gaming consoles, I want them to serve reliably to my family. The game console must be fun, optimized for best experience…

Unfortunately buying closed systems hasn’t stopped me from being IT support: - “why can’t I play online with EA Sports?” - “I can’t log into Roblox!” - “why can’t I see my sisters world in Minecraft?” - “I’ve lost my Fortnight skins!” - “why does Roblox keep disconnecting me on my phone [when Roblox servers go down]?” - “Why can’t I play this game [without updating it]?” - “this game update takes too long to download…

The constant in life is that there are some people for whom you do things without expecting financial gain.

Re: Valve is about to win the console generation

#322

Post by acdbddh »

squigz wrote: post #302
acdbddh wrote: post #216

As much as I love hacking with various things, there are reasons why I buy "closed products" for myself and for my family. I like to do hacking when I want it (with ESP32, rpi etc). I don't want to be forced to serve as a free IT support guy anytime someone presses a wrong button. When it comes to gaming consoles, I want them to serve reliably to my family. The game console must be fun, optimized for best experience…

> I don't want to be forced to serve as a free IT support guy anytime someone presses a wrong button. In my experience this doesn't really end whether it's a closed product or not. If you're wiling to give free IT support, people will take it, as it's likely way faster/better than calling whatever support may or may not be offered by the company. > Will that be possible with an open platform where anyone can install…

I want a console that is brother-proof. He should not be able to break it by just pressing buttons

Re: Valve is about to win the console generation

#323

Post by bryanlarsen »

tinybear1 wrote: post #111
bryanlarsen wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very few consoles were sold at a loss. Some certainly were, like the fat PS3. But that was the exception, not the rule. More relevantly, none of the current generation (ps5, xbox series, switch 2) are sold at a loss. They don't have large margins, but they are sold above cost. The Taiwanese computer manufacturers won't be phased by thin margins; that's their modus operandi.

Microsoft testified under oath in court that they lost money on every Xbox sold prior to the current generation. Sega lost money on every console prior to exiting the market. Nintendo sold various consoles at a loss (Wii U). The PlayStation 1 through 4 sold either at a loss or break even.

You're listing the losers in the market, the ones that had to drop prices to make sales. The real volume sellers weren't generally sold at a loss. Most Nintendo consoles were never sold at a loss. Sony often sold at a loss in the first year or so, but their redesigns made them profitable, and the vast majority of sales happened after redesigns. Moore's law was responsible for a large portion of the profits from hardware sales.

Re: Valve is about to win the console generation

#324

Post by lanfeust6 »

jsheard wrote: post #83
lanfeust6 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fortnite came out in '17, at some point it's no longer going to be relevant.

Counter Strike came out in '99 and it's more relevant than ever. Some games just keep going and going.

Its not the same game today as it was '99. You could try to make the argument for Fortnite but the differences are not substantial.

Point being that if changes are a given, then it's possible for it to run on Linux in the future.

Re: Valve is about to win the console generation

#325

Post by bitmasher9 »

theshrike79 wrote: post #232
AceJohnny2 wrote: post #71

I don't really understand the early enthusiasm about the Steam Machine, and I happily own a Steam Deck. "It's on par with a PS5!" You mean the thing that was launched over 5 years ago (exactly!) ? We don't know its price yet, which is the most crucial detail.

If it can play all games on Steam _today_ at 4k60fps (even with FSR) it means I have about 570 games on my Steam library it can play in perpetuity. Even if I play 2 hours of each game, it's still a bargain =) And because this is Valve and I've had a stellar experience with my Steam Deck, I'm pretty confident that future games will run on it too. Most likely gamedevs will add special "Steam Machine" performance profil…

> I have about 570 games on my Steam library it can play in perpetuity.

You presumably have other hardware that can also play the 570 games too? You’re spending more money on hardware that can do the same job your current hardware can do.

Re: Valve is about to win the console generation

#326

Post by slightwinder »

wraptile wrote: post #286
slightwinder wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a misconception. Majority of players are with the big Franchises, and they stay with them. The variety-gamers who are playing multiple different games are a minority, though they are a big crowd, loud and have for obvious reasons more attention, leading to this misconception. For example, Escape from Duckov, which you are speaking about, had at it's peak "just" roughly as many players as Battlefield 6 has on a…

That's a lot of guesswork for such a strong claim as yours. You can actually see gaming distribution on open steamdb[1] stats and every year the amount of games avg player plays grows higher and higher. A linux native game called Banana got almost a million concurrent player peak (compared to #1 CS2 having only 1.8M). This didn't exist 10 years ago - the gaming landscape is entirely different in 2025. This call that…

> That's a lot of guesswork

It's not guesswork, it's reading the statistics. Gaming Reports are regularly showing that the majority of gamers and income is with only a handful of games/franchises.

> You can actually see gaming distribution on open steamdb[1] stats and every year the amount of games avg player plays grows higher and higher.

Yes, because the market grows. But look at the numbers, the top is always with the same games, with the same numbers, which are usually in a complete different league then the rest. The Top 5 Games have usually 10-20 times as many players as every other games. And, be aware that this is only Steam. The gaming market is much, much bigger than just steam. Steam is kinda its own bubble with a skewed view.

I'm not saying steam or indie-market is small, but people looking at PC and Indie-games develop a kind of natural filter for the real behemoths of the market.

> A linux native game called Banana got almost a million concurrent player peak

We have at the moment >3 Billion Players. 1 Million gamers for a shady shortlived hype-game is not bad, but it's not even remotely winning the market, or setting a trend. At best, it's setting a trend in a specific niche. Valve wiped out billions of value in CS-Skins some week ago. That's more market-influence than a free game with shady skin-business will ever gain.

Re: Valve is about to win the console generation

#328

Post by estimator7292 »

crote wrote: post #209
SchemaLoad wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main problem I see is that if this is any cheaper than it's hardware, people will buy 100s of them and stack them in server racks for CI runners or whatever. Generating only losses for Valve and making the hardware unavailable to gamers. It needs to either be at market rate or locked down to only be useful for gaming.

I don't think they could possibly make it cheap enough for that - especially once you consider all the money being wasted on RGB/Bluetooth/a GPU you won't use. Messing around with weird consumer hardware in a datacenter context isn't exactly attractive. If all you need is some x86 cores, an off-the-shelf blade server approach gets you far more compute in the same space with far less hassle. Even if the purchase cost…

It happened to the PS3

Re: Valve is about to win the console generation

#329

Post by bitmasher9 »

isoprophlex wrote: post #304

But what about the price?! 15 year old kids are never gonna drop 800+ on this nerd box if they can play fifa for, what, 400-500? And THAT'S the demographic to win if you want to break up Big Game.

The demographics of gaming is shifting older. Valve is clearly running towards where the ball will be.

The steam deck is also available for that 400-500 price point.

Re: Valve is about to win the console generation

#330

Post by [deleted] »

wraptile wrote: post #167
SkiFire13 wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have a bunch of friends that have battlefield/cod/fortnite and want to play them, they will still do so without you, or at least heavily pressure you into getting them.

I'm not sure what could that even mean from consumer pov - I'm not going to buy a platform because some of my friends might want me to play a specific game with me? The pressure to get more games on your platform has never been as low as it is today and has never been this low on Steam itself. You could spend a lifetime with the current Steam library and never feel bored. From product pov Valve feels very comfortable…

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