by Normal_gaussian
14 subcomments
- Valve certainly won't win it, but they're bringing the heat where it wasn't before.
SteamOS is the important part here - if it is proven to be a good console experience (which the deck has basically proven already) then licensing of the OS to other manufacturers will put a lot of pressure on integrated h/w s/w manufacturers.
Unlike the handheld format, the tvbox console is fairly easy to manufacture and is tolerant of a lot of spec and price variety. Any slip up by Sony and Microsoft in specs and price will result in steam machine variants carving away market share, which could force more frequent console releases.
The steam machine will almost certainly come in at a higher price point than the PS5, but with no 'online' subscription charge and reasonably priced storage upgrades we may see these revenue streams disappear from the next console generation in order to compete.
SteamOS isn't perfect, and the variety inherent in the platform that is a strength is also a weakness. The core markets for Nintendo and for Sony aren't going anywhere.
by TheRoque
12 subcomments
- I hardly understand the headline. Steam machine is just a computer, and since it can be used for other stuff than playing games, then it can't have the cheap pricing of a console. Most consoles are sold at a loss, and the benefits are made when selling console-exclusive games. If you sell something at a loss, but users aren't forced to buy your games, then you're not gonna make any money. Hence, the Steam Machine (AKA GabeCube) is gonna be as expensive as a laptop (or slightly less expensive because of the bigger form factor and lack of portability).
On top of that, the base OS can't run a ton of games that run on console, because it runs in the way of kernel anti cheats (think: battlefield, call of duty, valorant, league of legends... the biggest games basically), while consoles are guaranteed to run most AAA games.
So with all that in mind - while I appreciate what Valve is doing a lot - I don't think it'll win the "console generation". I hardly see how it can even be called a console. It's just a PC, and that's how they call it themselves.
- For me, the big killer feature would be if this device is approved for modern media DRM. As much as I'm tired of streaming and its level of control over how I watch TV, it's still a decent part of my media consumption, but any Linux mini-PC I connect to the TV can only do low-resolution streaming from most providers. If the steam machine is approved for high-resolution streaming, it could totally replace the smart TV stack in most homes.
- > Yes, Steam Machine is optimized for gaming, but it's still your PC. Install your own apps, or even another operating system. Who are we to tell you how to use your computer?
That makes me very happy.
by intexpress
5 subcomments
- To win this console generation and outsell the PS5, Valve would have to sell 85 million Steam Machines (as of today, and likely need to sell 120 million by the end of the generation). About a 0% chance of that happening.
Looks cool, though
by starkparker
0 subcomment
- > The only possible flaw I can see is that the strap it ships with doesn't go over the top of your head. If this ends up being an issue in practice, somebody is going to make a third party strap that just fixes this problem
Not even a third party: https://youtu.be/b7q2CS8HDHU?t=380
> the option of an ergonomic strap that you can hook onto the top, hook onto the back, to take more weight off the front of your head.
https://www.pcgamer.com/hardware/vr-hardware/steam-frame-spe...
> There's an optional ergonomic accessories kit for the Steam Frame that adds an extra strap for your head and a pair of straps, one for each controller. These added controller straps are reminiscent of those found on the Index and seem like a reasonable investment, if the price is right.
by NelsonMinar
8 subcomments
- As the article says, "The only way that they could mess this up is with the pricing. ... I'd expect the pricing to be super aggressive." The price to beat is the $400-$500 price point of PS5 and XBox. I'm guessing Valve is going to have a very hard time matching that. We'll know soon enough.
- > The big thing I want to see in practice is their implementation of foveated rendering. This beautiful hack abuses the fact that human eyes have the most sharpness and fidelity at the exact centre of your field of vision, whereas your peripheral vision is abysmal at it. This means that on average you only have to render about 10% of the frame at maximum quality for it to feel like it's running at full resolution all over the screen.
> This should make the fact that the Frame is using a "weaker" CPU/GPU irrelevant. Games should look fine as long as they render the slice that needs to be in full quality fast enough.
It's not foveated rendering, it's foveated streaming. The CPU/GPU should easily be able to handle decoding video, whether foveated or not.
by AceJohnny2
3 subcomments
- 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.
by theoldgreybeard
3 subcomments
- They announced 3 products guys. The first time Valve has counted to 3.
Half Life 3 is coming.
by noobermin
1 subcomments
- I generally like the OP's posts, but I really don't buy their argument. If anything, the nintendo switch winning the last generation is a great example of how hardware isn't always that important, the game library essentially is what makes a console win, and in as much as the hardware enables the breadth of the library, that's all that matters.
Like the steam deck, I don't know who other than power users who will buy it. I love the openness they will bring to the market, but that doesn't mean they will win.
by Snowfield9571
1 subcomments
- I think this article makes one assumption that isn't correct.
"This means that even though Valve will be selling this hardware at a loss..."
From the reviews I have read, Valve is not planning on doing this. They are not doing an Xbox type of deal where games are overpriced and console is cheap. If I am not mistaken, I got this information from the LTT review where they talked with Valve about this directly.
- 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 and should not break. Will that be possible with an open platform where anyone can install anything?
- One other semi-unrecognized advantage Valve has over consoles is their generous return policy. I’ve bought many games on a whim knowing if I don’t jive with it I can safely get a full refund. Contrast that with my Ps5 where my 2 year old managed to smash buttons while I was tied up on a work call and bought COD for $69 bucks… no way to refund it and I’m not a fan of shooters. Basically Fd on that one.
- So, Steam is planning to sell these at a loss, but isn’t planning to lock out third party OS?
What’s to stop people buying them to use for completely unrelated use cases?
I guess it depends on how big the loss is… if it is small, it might not be really worth it for most people; but any larger, I wonder how sustainable this will be.
- They are not going to win the console generation by releasing a machine that cannot play Call of Duty, Battlefield, Valorant, Fortnite, PUBG, Apex Legends, FIFA, Madden, League of Legends, Destiny, Genshin Impact, Forza.
- Maybe this is less of an issue now we’re in the digital era of console games but one of the biggest aspects for me is that if I buy one of these new machines, my existing library is just there. No starting from scratch or worrying about backwards compatibility. It’s a PC that has everything I need from the get go.
The story was the same with the Deck. Granted it took a little while for many games to be fully supported but the transparency from Valve on the store pages about compatibility was great and is in a far better state now.
- i see a lot of complaints about certain games (windows / kernel-anti-cheat) not working. Consoles have always had exclusive titles. Windows also has them now via this anti-cheat stuff. This changes litterally nothing.
Also, you can even install windows on the box. it's one of its selling points actually... if you really want to...
kernel level anti-cheat is generally not even needed, so perhaps those companies will now consider rolling proper anti-cheat themselves rather than third-party rubbish that no one asked for.
What i also like about this console development is that it might open the door to other smaller players creating consoles in the form of mini-PC with linux and a gaming layer on there. maybe there will be (oem?)partner for valve that make more beefy machines, machines with alternate OSes (windows + skin) etc.
its a different angle that will open up many things hopefully. make it less exclusive market between essentially 3 parties.
- Related ongoing threads:
Steam Controller - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45905703
Steam Machine - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45903404
Steam Frame - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45903325
- Personally, I am very much over paying Sony and X-Box a monthly fee to "play games online" in 2025. I bowed out of the last console generation, but I would be up for a small form factor multimedia PC that made may Steam library accessible on my TV.
by asadotzler
0 subcomment
- It won't outsell Quest 2, much less the real consoles, not in the next half decade anyway.
- Isn't Steam Machine just a glorified PC? What am I missing? Can't I just plug my PC on the TV and install SteamOS on it?
by isoprophlex
1 subcomments
- 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.
- I just hope a 10' user-interface for the popular streaming services for Linux might come out of this. I switched away from Kodi as my STB exclusively because of how much a PITA it was to use streaming services from it.
by thordenmark
1 subcomments
- Attached my old gaming rig to the TV to run Steam on it and it is a better experience than any consoles I have (being a gaming nerd I have everything from my old Atari 2600 and most mainstreams systems since then up to PS5).
This is good news to hear Valve going in strong for the console market.
- This is really cool. I still play my series X on occasion but tend to prefer the experience I get from my Saturn and Dreamcast when I load a game and it plays without needing to update. Every time I turn on my Xbox or PC with steam/GOG I have to wait for an update of some kind.
- Not a chance. As much as I respect all the work Valve has done for gaming...this doesn't understand the market.
PC gamers will play on their PC. Couch gamers will have a PS5 or an XBox. So who is this for, couch gamers that don't have one of those? Or PC players tired of playing on a monitor?
Don't get me wrong, it's cool, and I'm definitely the target market but feel like that's pretty tiny.
Most couch gamers want their GTA or Call of Duty, which, if I read correctly, this will not run.
by unpopularopp
0 subcomment
- If they want to capture the console audience its better be priced like one too and not prevent me from playing multiplayer games due to Linux and anti cheat software not playing nice
Anything above $600 is DOA and that's with accepting the fact that the most popular games will be not available on the platform
- So no Half Life 3? (':
- I’m not a gamer and not into consoles, but I’m watching Valve and SteamOS from the sidelines with a lot of goodwill. It’s great to see more people buying hardware that runs on Arch — that alone is a good thing. Still, something about this feels a bit too good to be true.
- Anyone familiar with how they're running x86 on a snapdragon? I'm more interested in that hitting your regular android phone .. think retroarch but you can play hades 2.
by oliwarner
1 subcomments
- It's even worse for their competitors than this acknowledges.
SteamOS on Arm (using FEX) is going to spawn a generation of £100 devices that can play lower end Windows games, stream from PC, and emulate every console from the PS2 back. It's huge.
- > Who are we to tell you how to use your computer?
I'm buying one just for this sentiment alone.
- Random guy excessively overusing mango pics and making bold statements is definitely worth attention
by devinprater
0 subcomment
- Steam has even added accessibility to their machines. Sure it's just Orca and ESpeak TTS, but I mean Steam Big Picture works.
- If it doesn't play GTA 6 or CoD or whatever sports games are cool these days it won't win, but it sure looks interesting.
by thrownawaysz
3 subcomments
- >I think it's safe to say that Valve is about to win the next console generation.
For that they need to outsell the Switch 2. 10m units in 6 months.
Good luck with that.
by viktorcode
0 subcomment
- Consoles win a marketshare by having games ported or developed for their hardware, improving experience.
What Valve offers is just one more PC configuration
- What is the multiplayer cheating situation like on Steam games?
(Technology, demographics, popularity?)
by vintermann
0 subcomment
- Maybe a bit early to call it, but I'm hoping for it as well.
by protocolture
0 subcomment
- Whats the media experience like on SteamOS these days? Does it have built in support for media playback? I used to have Kodi running on PhantomOS but it was janky.
- Putting the steam machine in the same category as a console didn't make sense to me a decade ago and doesn't make much sense to me today.
- Ive used my steamdeck much more than my switch 2, but I still can't play competitive multiplayers on the deck, so it is clearly a console and not a "PC gaming" experience
by phendrenad2
0 subcomment
- This feels like Valve's iPhone, while the original 2012 Steam Machines were the Newton.
by altairprime
2 subcomments
- By making it immutable out of the box, VAC enforcement because vastly easier and third-party multiplayer anti-cheating kernel rootkits are replaced by “attest that you are unmodified”, which Steam Linux and macOS/tvOS/iOS/iPadOS can do — but not Windows 10/11, because sealed boot functionality is behind Microsoft’s enterprise annual subscription fee paywall. This positions Steam Linux as the monopoly provider of console-gaming Linux, since no one else is doing sealed attestation Linux at scale, and opens the door for multiplayer AAA games to target Steam Linux for their day-one releases as a competitive equal to Xbox/PS5/Switch and as a better defended console platform than Windows PCs. The modifications described by OP are still possible, but won’t be compatible with multiplayer anti-cheating enforcement, which is perfectly fine; boot to sealed for competitive gaming, boot to custom for single player, everyone wins except Microsoft’s Windows division. (If Microsoft hadn’t shot off their foot with Windows 10, they could have simply enabled sealed booting for all 10/11 installations and remained competitive as a gaming platform, but I think they’re done with that business.) Nice to see my predictions pan out and I look forward to buying one :)
- what I wish this device had:
1) front speaker instead of this magnetic panel that is only for esthetic
2) wireless charging pad on top
3) home router functionality - just attach 4g modem to usb-a
4) matter hub for smart home
They could advertise you getting 7in1 devices for the same price:
- game console
- smart speaker like alexa
- smart tv (miracast, google cast, airplay)
- smart home hub for matter devices
- home router
- wireless charging pad
- mini home server (private cloud, home backup, vpn, pihole)
Then with software wish it could easily have app store like umbrel:
https://umbrel.com
by tumidpandora
0 subcomment
- "At par with PS5.." comparing hardware specs with a console loved by millions and into year 6 of it's lifecycle. I'd rather play my PS5 titles on a PS5 or a portal than on the steam machine. Steam deck is dated, went with the portal and love it.
- The largest hurdle that a Steam console will face isn't kernel-level anti-cheats or somesuch. The real problem is far more idiotic: platform exclusives. Console gamers stereotypically care that their platform has a game that others do not, I have no idea how the reasoning works, but exclusives are a major talking point for OEMs and gamers alike.
While PC likely has the most exclusives by a ridiculously large margin, it probably has the fewest AAA exclusives.
by pipeline_peak
0 subcomment
- They’re not gonna win the console generation, this marks the end of the console generation.
That and intermediary consoles like the PS5 Pro are blurring the lines and adapting to the popularity of PC gaming.
- Win the console generation in what sense? In outselling the PS5? The Switch 2? I have trouble picturing it being cheaper than either.
- Year of linux desktop..I mean console.. . Confirmed?
by SchemaLoad
5 subcomments
- I think the hardest battle is going to be with anti cheat. The anti cheat that developers want basically requires dystopian levels of restrictions which are against everything valve has done on SteamOS so far.
Personally I'd love if we all just went back to playing on personal servers with your real life friends or people you otherwise trust. But I don't think this is would go over well with the average online gamer.
- The author fundamentally fails to understand the attractions and benefits of console gaming systems in the first place.
- This is another status quo improvement from Valve. Great job!
That said, I feel we're trading evil gaming monopolies for a less evil monopoly. I can only truly support Valve once they start actually selling games rather than game "licenses".
What I want is GOG's transparency and philosophy with Valve's Linux and hardware investments.
by itsdrewmiller
0 subcomment
- Love the enthusiasm but expensive versions of commodity products with last gen specs are not going to win that generation or the next one.
- Releasing a box that cannot play any multiplayer or sports games is so silly.
by 29athrowaway
5 subcomments
- Steam Controller 1 wasn't good IMO and is now accumulating dust.
- Unless it's reasonably priced who is the market for this box? If it's at 499 - 599 then it's probably selling well but at 799-899 I'm not sure who would buy it. If it's your first computer you still need more gear like screen, keyboard and mouse etc.
- I don't think they're even trying to do that. But they will kill Xbox.
- Does anyone know if the foveated rendering feature of the Steam Frame depends on eye-tracking? Is it tracking the iris to determine the center of foveation, or is there some other trick to doing this?
- by not making a console
- > Really, the only thing that can go wrong with any of this hardware is the price.
The chances of any of the Steam Machines taking the market share of any of the current generation consoles is so vanishingly miniscule, that I don't think it can even compete against any of them.
It more or less competes against the Linux ecosystem of System76 machines or the Framework computers.
But against consoles? No dent at all in their market share.
- the problem with valve is that at least in mexico I have never seen a steam deck on display, while xbox, switch, playstation are everywhere and online the markup price from resellers is too high
by ChrisArchitect
0 subcomment
- Related:
Steam Frame https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45903325
Steam Machine https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45903404
by venom2001viper
0 subcomment
- So this will only play pc games?
by BolexNOLA
3 subcomments
- We heard this literally with the previous steam machine lol
There’s no doubt they’re tee’d up to radically alter the landscape. But man they better have a truly plug and play, turnkey system if they want to compete with consoles. The steamdeck even after this many years is absolutely trash at going from handheld to docked (better the other direction at least) and is incredibly hit or miss when it’s plugged into a TV in general. I had to buy a special DP->HDMI cable that forces 1080p @60 to get it to consistently appear on screen docked (LG C1 for reference).
I am excited for the steam machine. But yeah, telling me it’s a more powerful steamdeck is super exciting in some ways and eyebrow raising in others unless they got some big SteamOS overhaul coming.
by mschuster91
0 subcomment
- Something I haven't seen discussed at all is HDCP compliance.
Of course, games don't need that - I'd say that every game studio is aware that without streamers, you don't sell games, and streamers can't stream when HDCP gets in their way.
But for the use case of a home theater? PS4 and 5 as well as some Xbox varieties can do 4K Netflix [1], no issues. Installing Windows, I'd guess that's fine too. But Steam OS? Nope. Anything too "open" gets the boot, including Android if you dare root your device, Widevine L1 refuses to work as the TEE doesn't reveal the keys if it detects an unlocked bootloader.
[1] https://help.netflix.com/de/node/23888
[2] https://help.netflix.com/de/node/23889
- > Valve does nothing and still wins.
Who would have thought that not actively engaging in enshittification can be a secret winning recipe!
by Slava_Propanei
0 subcomment
- [dead]
by junglistguy
0 subcomment
- [dead]
by phplovesong
4 subcomments
- SteamOS is handheld only right? What they need is a Xbox/PS alternative, you can plug in to a screen (tv/monitor) and optionally use a mouse/keyboard (valve has some huge FPS titles, like counter strike) for games that you cant play with a controller (usually competitive fps titles).
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