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Steam Machine

store.steampowered.com

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Re: Steam Machine

#941

Post by fulafel »

spookie wrote: post #888
DiskoHexyl wrote: post #769

SteamOS has way more appeal to gamers in 2025 than it could have had in, say, 2004. On the surface the lack of popular multiplayer titles that require a kernel-level anti-cheat is a heavy downside, but gaming is extremely fragmented these days. In 2004 everyone, save for the casual players, at least tried DOOM3 and Half-Life 2. In 2025 Fortnight has an all-time peak of 12M players, but at the same time there are many…

Eh multiplayer games are doomed. Computer vision based cheats using an external machine that records the game's final rendered frames, process them with specialized YOLO models, and control "mices" and "controllers" to aim for you already exist. If the aim for kernel level anti-cheats was to combat cheating, they have failed and are completely worthless.

You don't need an external machine. Since games are set up to allow twitch etc streaming, it's easy for apps on the same machine to get access to the video.

Re: Steam Machine

#942

Post by iso1631 »

xeonmc wrote: post #863
MetaWhirledPeas wrote: post #849

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> maybe other vendors will come out with similar products that come with SteamOS by default It's already happening. Lenovo released a SteamOS variant of the The Lenovo Legion Go S.

I for one eagerly awaits Lenovo to release SteamOS versions of their ThinkPads

This t470 on ubuntu 2404 runs steam just fine.

The main issue with modern games is the lack of gpu, but gpus in laptops are never great.

Re: Steam Machine

#943

Post by Cyphase »

ShakataGaNai wrote: post #897
Ey7NFZ3P0nzAe wrote: post #621

> Install your own apps, or even another operating system. Who are we to tell you how to use your computer? I'm so happy to read this

Their "launch trailer" shows the Steam Machine running Windows.

Do you mean this (~3m04s)? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmKrKTwtukE&t=184s

That was the desktop mode, showing KDE Plasma (a linux desktop environment).

Also, Blender on the left screen and Godot on the right screen!

Re: Steam Machine

#944

Post by icemelt8 »

frakkingcylons wrote: post #867
cjbgkagh wrote: post #855

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gabe is a former MSFTy, left in 1996 to found Valve, he saw games as more popular than Windows. It wouldn’t surprise me if he got into games in order to compete against his former employer which would suggest to me that this plan has been in motion since before 1996, almost 30 years. At least from my point of view, if I wanted to take on Microsoft, doing what he did for the past 30 years is how I would go about doing…

Gabe gave a talk at my college like 12 or 13 years ago. He explicitly called out the unbelievable number of downloads for Doom as a sign that games were going to be huge. Fun non-sequitur: the other speaker at that talk went on to become the finance minister of Greece.

but games are a niche, nobody in my circle or extended circle plays video games.

Re: Steam Machine

#945

Post by aniviacat »

sylware wrote: post #673

Huge streamers/youtubers were already listing games to test on the steam machine... which I already know they do not work on valve proton... (and the lack of official and legally required technical support will show on the medium/long run since proton/wine is not reliable in time). This may backfire if valve does not come clean with this technical support.

> We are expanding our Verified program to include ratings for Steam Machine, so customers can understand how their games will run.

They are very upfront about it.

Re: Steam Machine

#946

Post by Shorel »

rkangel wrote: post #940
BlindEyeHalo wrote: post #933

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Turns out that a company that is not publicly traded and run by people that only care about stock prices, can actually care about their customers.

There's all sorts of things you can do if you don't care about money. The more interesting point is that if you aren't driven by investors to care about short term financial stuff (stock prices) then you can make long term decisions. Caring about your customers is a classic one for this - costs you money in the short term, but in the long term gets you a great customer base.

They care about money. They definitely care about money. They have achieved a steady cash flow that can sustain their business forever, unless something really bad happens.

What they don't care is the endless growth that MBA guys always try to achieve, and the quarterly profit driven decision making that ultimately destroys their customers loyalty, for short term profit.

A business can be very profitable without being exploitative. It's the people in Wall Street who can't seem to understand this. For them a hundred million dollars of profit is good if last year it was only fifty million dollars, and a dying business if last year it was also a hundred million dollars. It really makes no sense.

Re: Steam Machine

#947

Post by squigz »

okayjustonemore wrote: post #893

This seems to have been targeted especially at someone like me: I don’t like to play on PC, have no interest in building a gaming PC and I only reluctantly buy consoles because of their (kind of) plug-n-play experience. If this thing can get me a console-like experience and allow me to play my extensive library of games (most of them classic/vintage games you can’t get on modern consoles) hassle-free, then I’m (proba…

This was shared the other day and sounds exactly like what you want. Throw in Steam cloud syncing (although I'm not certain RetroArch supports that) and I imagine it's about as hassle-free as can be. Possibly even more hassle-free than the original consoles - no blowing into cartridges here!

https://www.retroarch.com/

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1118310/RetroArch/

Re: Steam Machine

#949

Post by wiseowise »

aboringusername wrote: post #141
Ekaros wrote: post #6

>RAM 16GB DDR5 + 8GB GDDR6 VRAM Hmm. Not that it is big deal, but I would be somewhat worried about true longevity with the VRAM. Not sure if SteamOS helps there, but on PC some new titles are going over the 8GB VRAM.

Games publishers/developers are going to have to wind in their necks a little. Whilst memory is abundant it's also still quite expensive. We should still be aiming for efficiency and the chances are 16gb+ are in the minority here. Fact is, the more VRAM and compute you demand the smaller your customer-base becomes. I've played many games with 8GB VRAM* and will do so for the forseeable. If that's not enough, I am not…

This. Absolutely this. It is complete bonkers to suggest that game devs dictate consumer hardware, insane to run the asylum.

All game development should follow Nintendo model: there’s a fixed hardware and game devs should go out of their way to optimize to the spec, not consumer shelling out thousands every years because someone can’t be bothered to optimize their cashgrab.

Re: Steam Machine

#950

Post by ekianjo »

MetaWhirledPeas wrote: post #849
saghm wrote: post #823

My theory for a bit now has been that Valve is playing the long game in trying to make SteamOS a mainstay gaming platform as an alternative to Windows, and that the hardware products are essentially a way of breaking into that market. Even a few years ago, the idea of a custom Linux distro based on Arch Linux with both a built-in full desktop mode and a lower-powered gaming mode that you could switch between on a han…

> maybe other vendors will come out with similar products that come with SteamOS by default It's already happening. Lenovo released a SteamOS variant of the The Lenovo Legion Go S.

And the legion go 2 is windows 11 only so they did not learn anything
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