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Valve is running Apple's playbook in reverse

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Re: Valve is running Apple's playbook in reverse

#41

Post by mschuster91 »

> Competition is difficult once a big aggregator has emerged, even for deep-pocketed incumbents.

And sometimes, the competition is just plain brain dead. Just take EA Origin, which my wife sadly requires because her entire Sims 4 library has been purchased through that and its predecessor.

With Steam, she can easily have the Steam Client open on both her laptop and her user account on my gaming rig simultaneously. No big deal, in fact it is required for Steam Remote Play - the only thing that keeps annoying us is that you can only have one Steam client open on one machine which is annoying on a multi-user machine.

But Origin? That piece of shit software doesn't just log you out on one machine when you log in on another - no, it opens a fucking modal window telling you "you're in offline mode". Yeah no shit, my wife knows that, she just turned on the other machine!

That's utterly fucking basic user experience stuff and yet EA doesn't seem to be able to fathom that people might want to own more than one machine. As long as they can be sold FIFA lootboxes, eh?!

Re: Valve is running Apple's playbook in reverse

#42

Post by bryanlarsen »

> with current-gen consoles (which are sold at a loss, and so would be expected to be cheaper)

This is not true. It was true in 2019 when the PS5 was initially announced, but PS5 has been sold at a (slim) profit since 2021. Xbox probably sold at a loss for longer, but it definitely isn't sold at a loss in 2025.

The Switch & Switch 2 have always been profitable.

The BOM cost of the Steam Machine has been estimated at $450. They could sell for $500 and still be nominally profitable and still undercut XBox & PS5.

(That BOM cost estimate was before RAM price silliness so you have to adjust upwards a little bit).

Re: Valve is running Apple's playbook in reverse

#43

Post by bigyabai »

entropicdrifter wrote: post #40
bigyabai wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> since it would be a linux phone It doesn't have to be. Proton runs fine on Android.

On the other hand, Valve has built a compatibility layer for ARM Linux to run Android APKs, so if anyone could make a jank-free Linux phone it would be them

Sure, but so did Jolla and Waydroid. I think the consensus is that AOSP > Linux for the average Joe's mobile handset.

Re: Valve is running Apple's playbook in reverse

#44

Post by mschuster91 »

npinsker wrote: post #17
mrec wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They will not outcompete Sony/MS/Nintendo in consoles because price is king for the mass market I don't follow the console market at all, but don't its players subsidize their hardware by keeping software (game) costs high? I didn't think they had anything like Steam's level of regular discounted sales. "Price is king" can cut both ways.

"Steam" doesn't decide to have discounted sales -- games are heavily discounted because developers compete against one another for attention. Nintendo and Sony generally have less need to do this.

> Nintendo and Sony generally have less need to do this.

The prime Nintendo games (i.e. Animal Crossing, Pokemon and anything Mario related) are rarely discounted, yes - and Nintendo can do this because these games have borderline drooling fanbases and the games aren't available anywhere else.

But everything else? There's constantly something on sale on the Switch store.

Re: Valve is running Apple's playbook in reverse

#45

Post by [deleted] »

echelon wrote: post #12
modeless wrote: post #4

Valve's hardware products will be successful but remain niche. And that's ok. They are unwilling to pursue business models that require locking down hardware in order to subsidize it with software purchases, and I love that about them. As a result their hardware will always be more expensive. They will not outcompete Meta in VR or Sony/MS/Nintendo in consoles because price is king for the mass market. Valve's hardwar…

Valve's products are 100% designed to punch a hole through Windows Store monopolization. It encourages developers to write for Linux. Microsoft has been trying to corner Valve. Valve is finding clever ways out by getting developers to finally make their games Linux compatible. If Valve's consoles become broadly successful, that's an added bonus. The real win is to outflank Microsoft. One of Microsoft's biggest mistak…

[deleted]

Re: Valve is running Apple's playbook in reverse

#47

Post by yrtrrbl »

phantasmish wrote: post #13
kemayo wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure they've got Apple targeted so much, because Apple has been so thoroughly not-invested in gaming. The place they're closest to colliding is VR, but Apple's Vision headset is doing something really different from Valve's VR products, which are far more directly lined up against Meta's Oculus. Valve could branch into Apple's areas, but they don't seem particularly interested in doing so yet. EDIT: rather, A…

They’d need to improve desktop Linux a lot to threaten Apple. It’s far more tolerable on their relatively tightly-controlled and stable hardware platforms than it is elsewhere, but it’s still a features-weak jankfest compared to macOS. I mean user facing features relevant to any desktop user, not “docker is native on it” or other developer-only stuff—and for the record Linux was my main desktop OS for about a decade,…

[dead]

Re: Valve is running Apple's playbook in reverse

#48

Post by littlecranky67 »

PeterHolzwarth wrote: post #9

It will be interesting to see if they can answer a question better now than with the original Steam Machines ten years ago: what problem do consumers have that Steam Machines solve? Their original answer was a resounding "nothing" - Steam Machines solved a problem for Valve (fear of an impending "Windows Store" being added by Microsoft that would steal the battlefield from Valve), but very little for the customer. I…

> what problem do consumers have that Steam Machines solve?

It fixes a lot of issues for me (I will buy a steam machine upon release):

I used to prefer consoles for the living room - put the disk in, and go. But nowadays consoles have the same issues: Giant downloads, patches, tweaking GUI settings and fear of not getting the best performance (PS5 Pro variants, Xbox S/X etc., performance vs. quality mode settings). PC games are now not only more price competetive through the sales, but consoles use now downloads at high prices to undermine the second hand market, or account-lock your game even when purchased as disk. Plus, I need a subscription to play online.

Game controller support has become superb on ALL OSes (I use a PS5 controller on macOS as well as Linux, and it is pretty much flawless.

Windows is annoying. I used Windows 10 for a long time as a glorified bootloader into Steam (on a dualboot Linux machine), but it become full annoyances and win11 worsens that ("You need a Onedrive account" - "oh, did you try Edge yet?" - "Your computer is at risk" - "We installed copilot for you!" etc.). I basically want a computer that boots into steam BigPicture and is quiet the rest of the time.

Can I build my own living room PC? Yes, but then without proper SteamOS installation, or finicky linux setups. With the Steam Machine I just buy the package, put it next to my TV and lets go. I will re-use my PS5 dualshock controller and be done with it.

Re: Valve is running Apple's playbook in reverse

#49

Post by bryanlarsen »

modeless wrote: post #4

Valve's hardware products will be successful but remain niche. And that's ok. They are unwilling to pursue business models that require locking down hardware in order to subsidize it with software purchases, and I love that about them. As a result their hardware will always be more expensive. They will not outcompete Meta in VR or Sony/MS/Nintendo in consoles because price is king for the mass market. Valve's hardwar…

In 2025 none of Sony, Microsoft or Nintendo sell their consoles at a loss. They're sold for very slim margins, which is what I assume Valve will do with the Steam machine. I expect the Steam Machine to be price competitive.

ish. Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo likely have contracts locking down RAM prices whereas Valve will have to negotiate theirs based on current prices.

Re: Valve is running Apple's playbook in reverse

#50

Post by mschuster91 »

echelon wrote: post #12
modeless wrote: post #4

Valve's hardware products will be successful but remain niche. And that's ok. They are unwilling to pursue business models that require locking down hardware in order to subsidize it with software purchases, and I love that about them. As a result their hardware will always be more expensive. They will not outcompete Meta in VR or Sony/MS/Nintendo in consoles because price is king for the mass market. Valve's hardwar…

Valve's products are 100% designed to punch a hole through Windows Store monopolization. It encourages developers to write for Linux. Microsoft has been trying to corner Valve. Valve is finding clever ways out by getting developers to finally make their games Linux compatible. If Valve's consoles become broadly successful, that's an added bonus. The real win is to outflank Microsoft. One of Microsoft's biggest mistak…

> One of Microsoft's biggest mistakes was to give up on Windows Phone.

They had no other choice.

The technical foundation of the prior WP versions (aka, Windows CE) was just too dated and they didn't have a Windows kernel / userland capable of performantly dealing on ARM, x86 performance was and still is utter dogshit on battery powered devices, they didn't have a Windows userland actually usable on anything touch based, and most importantly they did not have developer tooling even close to usable.

At the same time, Apple had a stranglehold over the upper price class devices, Android ate up the low and mid range class - and unlike the old Ballmer "DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS" days, Microsoft didn't have tooling that enticed developers, while Apple had Xcode with emulators that people had been used to for years, and Android had a fully functioning Eclipse based toolchain.

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