Steam Hardware
A place to discuss and support all Steam Hardware, including Steam Deck, Steam Machine, Steam Frame, and SteamOS in general.
As Lemmy doesn't have flairs yet, you can use these prefixes to indicate what type of post you have made, eg:
[Flair] My post title
The following is a list of suggested flairs:
[Deck] - Steam Deck related.
[Machine] - Steam Machine related.
[Frame] - Steam Frame related.
[Discussion] - General discussion.
[Help] - A request for help or support.
[News] - News about the deck.
[PSA] - Sharing important information.
[Game] - News / info about a game on the deck.
[Update] - An update to a previous post.
[Meta] - Discussion about this community.
If your post is only relevant to one hardware device (Deck/Machine/Frame/etc) please specify which one as part of the title or by using a device flair.
These are not enforced, but they are encouraged.
Rules:
- Follow the rules of Sopuli
- Posts must be related to Steam Hardware or Steam OS in an obvious way.
- No piracy, there are other communities for that.
- Discussion of emulators are allowed, but no discussion on how to illegally acquire ROMs.
- This is a place of civil discussion, no trolling.
- Have fun.
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So a steam deck without the screen. I’ll take that.
And a Steam console to go with it, please.
100% agree! I know so many nerds rag on this idea of a steam console "well you can just build a PC and install Bazzite on it", yeah tell that to those who don't know anything about building PCs, and just want to buy a console and start playing. So, yeah, a steam console. Give it to me right now.
They had the "Steam Machine", but effectively nobody bought it. Maybe now with the Deck people would be more open to it, who knows.
The Steam machines flopped because of game compatibility, or lack thereof. That can be pretty much considered solved. These days a steam console would be much more attractive.
Steam Machines flopped because everyone with the badge thought it was a licence to print money and marked up mini PCs to the point where it made no sense to not buy a dedicatd gaming laptop instead.
We live in a very different world with 1080p capable mini-pcs abounds and SteamOS/Bazzite showing how a gaming OS should be.
I would love to see them sell the controller and mini PCs through hardware partners that get that this is an opportunity to shift units, not mark up, but I'm not optimistic, and if I save $200 by not having a little steam badge so be it.
It's pretty obviously both things that were a problem. A mediocre prebuilt with a $200 premium over other mediocre prebuilts was unattractive, but plenty of people do buy overpriced mediocre prebuilts. The killer feature being that nearly no games were compatible was going to kill it even if the price was right, though.
Now we're in the era of Proton, and games just work, if the price is fair, it'll sell. If the price is you cannot get anything like this without spending much more like the Deck or how consoles used to be priced when the hardware made a loss and the profits came from games, then it'll sell really well.
And you're right, I want one.
One of the things I like about the Steam Deck, which would carry over to a Steam console, is that it has uniform specifications that every other one has as well as opposed to the hodgepodge of possible combinations of hardware that a regular PC can have. That means that you can find out the best settings and troubleshoot problems with less RNG getting in your way.
Honestly no idea why the Framework Desktop isn't being sold in a SteamOS configuration.
That’s actually a great idea. Maybe suggest it to the framework folks. Maybe they can collaborate with BazziteOS and sell steam machines since SteamOS for PC isn’t official yet.
Current state of the rumor mill is that it'll be a companion device for the stand-alone VR headset where traditional games are supposedly being projected on a virtual giant screen.