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Steam Machine

store.steampowered.com

521–530 of 1001 posts

Re: Steam Machine

#521

Will it be able to play AAA games with shitty DRM such as Battlefield 6? Not being able to play these huge titles on Linux really sucks!

Look at it this way: Not having to play those money suckers leaves you more time for all the awesome indies out there!

Well that’s one of the big reasons why PC gaming on Windows will remain dominant for a very very long time and Linux-based PCs for gaming will always remain behind.

Majority of gamers really don’t care about indie games. (unless they are exceptional)

Re: Steam Machine

#522

In this big hardware refresh, honestly most excited about finally getting a new steam controller [1], which feels like it might finally give us a better, more extensible standard than the extremely outdated XInput protocol (which still doesn't even support motion controls) [1] https://store.steampowered.com/sale/steamcontroller

I wonder how this will compare to the Dual Sense; the haptics on that would be tough to give up!

Re: Steam Machine

#523

Cool but I wish it had a single big APU chip like the consoles and Strix Halo - and unified memory. PCs are long overdue for adopting this change, and the only reason it makes sense to keep the separate is to make graphics cards swappable. Considering how big GPU silicon is, when you have both integrated and custom, it'd have made sense to integrate them.

I'm thinking they considered this strongly, since that's what they did with the steam deck.

We don't know price yet, but if it's like the deck they'll be trying to keep it as cheap as possible. The deck supposedly was so off-the-shelf that it re-used a design for another AMD customer, leftover elements and all - https://boilingsteam.com/an-in-depth-look-at-the-steam-deck-...

Unless Valve took a big risky bet, the Steam deck is going to be again re-using existing hardware and excess hardware. I'm presuming there are leftover unsold Zen 4 and RDNA 3 dies - and nothing competitive that AMD could offer from Valves perspective, at least when they locked the design some months ago.

Re: Steam Machine

#524
post #449

I find it weird that a new device in 2025 still comes with only one USB-C port and otherwise only USB-A. Is USB-C that much more expensive? Is it about power delivery?

USB-C is still not widely adopted for many specific uses, in particular peripherals (keyboard/mouse dongles) Logitech finally got their USB-C dongle out last year I think ? Keychron only offers USB-A as far as I know. And many other keyboard and mouse brands are in the same boat. Depending on your setup that's already 2 USB-A ports needed. You can put an adapter, but you're then dongling a dongle. PS: just realized V…

> [...] only offers USB-A as far as I know. And many other keyboard and mouse brands are in the same boat.

Many new computers (including this Steam Machine) have exactly two USB-2-only USB-A ports (the rest of the USB ports being more capable). It's not hard to guess what they're for: the keyboard and the mouse.

Re: Steam Machine

#525

Cool but I wish it had a single big APU chip like the consoles and Strix Halo - and unified memory. PCs are long overdue for adopting this change, and the only reason it makes sense to keep the separate is to make graphics cards swappable. Considering how big GPU silicon is, when you have both integrated and custom, it'd have made sense to integrate them.

The problem with those Halo chips are they are really expensive. Steam is aiming for the masses so above 1k for this device is a no-go.

Re: Steam Machine

#527

> you can wake your Steam Machine without leaving your couch. [using the built in steam controller wireless adapter]. This one simple thing is the only thing that makes my SteamDeck+Dock feel like a second class console. So far they only claim it's for the Steam Controller, but I'd be great if it worked with the handful of 8bitdo or Switch controllers I've been using.

You can also wake up your steam deck with the steam controller 1 :)

This makes me wonder if they're still using the same protocol.

Re: Steam Machine

#528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you expect to do with the steam machine that will take more than a gigabit? I mean, it's cool when things are faster, but if you can saturate the link, downloads are still bottlenecked by the drives. And even 4k streaming is under 100Mbit normally.

> And even 4k streaming is under 100Mbit normally Are you talking "4k streaming" as the current streaming providers do it, with trash bitrate, or "4k streaming" as you would do it if you had ripped your own blu-ray disks and you want to stream it from a NAS somewhere else in your house to your living room?

Even on the high seas the large Blu-ray releases require only about 40-50Mbit, maybe you can get even larger releases (requiring ~100Mbit for streaming) but then a single movie would take up 100GB+ of space and it is such an overkill, no one really needs it.

Re: Steam Machine

#529

> Install your own apps, or even another operating system. Who are we to tell you how to use your computer? From your mouth to Tim Cook's ear, friend.

Will it be possible to play retroarch games too? (i.e. the old SNES/NES games) etc. ?

I sure have installed a bunch of emulators on my Deck. It’s not too hard to get individual games to show up in the main Steam menu, iirc. Haven’t really fiddled with them since initial setup though.

Re: Steam Machine

#530
post #62

Arch-based? KDE Plasma? There might happen a real "year of desktop Linux", in a way. That is, a Linux desktop that sneaks in as a side dish, but maybe gains some non-zero traction, and bringing FOSS to more people who are not engineers.

I've been using Linux instead of Windows for over a decade now. If Linux exploded in popularity I would be afraid enshitification and monetization would kick in super quickly. FOSS can't dominate the market. The market won't allow it. They will find a way to exploit it. This is just a fear based on generalizations. Perhaps it is misguided.
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