I’ll first admit I predicted Valve wasn’t bothering with a Steam Machine again. I was proven wrong.

But I still absolutely don’t see it being more popular than the Steam Deck. They don’t have the production scale to make them at the Xbox / PlayStation hardware-per-dollar values, so they’ll still be an enthusiast item for people aware they’re buying a prebuilt PC.

So yes, you do already see this; indies target the Steam Deck as a supreme metric for Linux compatibility (and if someone complains HDR doesn’t work on his desktop Mint install, well, whatever). Valve even promotes some store presence to indies that do a bit of work to certify this. We’ve seen lots of games get patches mentioning Steam Deck related fixes - even when the game is a windows build using Proton.

I think we should see what it's priced at before we start making proclamations about the Steam Machine being the "standard gaming PC".

I think it's "huge" for Linux gaming in general and for the general health of the gaming industry. It's a Linux PC in disguise as a cool form-factor Steam console. I hope it drives more developers of all types to build Linux support instead of just Windows.

The timing of this is also great, with people getting forcibly dunked into the bullshit that is Windows 11 after the end of Windows 10 support. If all my games worked on Linux, I'd have no use for Windows at all.

Steam has been the primary indie platform for games for like 15 years. Xbox had a moment in the early Xbox love arcade but the time the Xbox One came out, it was Steam and it has been ever since especially after Greenlight and early access

I wish this was a likely outcome but realistically steam hardware is too small a userbase. They are most likely to get performance profiles for their hardware due to the standardization and free steam marketing of compatibility, but windows users are still a supermajority.

Its so easy to develop for the steam deck and steam devices. Just FYI it really is just another machine. Theres no "unlocking" or "side loading" or anything. Its just a computer. Thats it!

I hope we see more 2D pixel art bullet hell Vampire Survivor auto-shooter roguelike cozy games with anime cover art.

I think Steam already presents a large enough market to be enticing for indie devs.

A quick check shows that Steam likely has more monthly active users than Xbox, PS5, or Nintendo. I'm sure a large portion of those groups overlap too. So indie devs are likely to develop for PC first.

While I'm excited for what they just announced, I don't think it will significantly change these numbers.

I believe Valve’s intention is to lay the foundation for third party devices, like how it went with Steam Deck. Their business model is to open up their storefront to more people - not to sell hardware.

If that’s the case, then Steam Machine will have little effect on indie development.

I don’t see how it will have any effect beyond what the Steam store already has on the indie market. Indies already flourish thanks to Steam’s use of discovery algorithms instead of human curation.

The Steam Machine isn’t going to compete with consoles. It’s not a replacement for a console and the target market for this machine is PC users not console users. Console gamers who don’t know what Steam is will not buy this machine like they didn’t buy Steam Decks instead of Nintendo Switches. The goal of Valve’s hardware push is to show that an alternative for Windows is possible. Valve wants to break Microsoft’s monopoly on the PC market. Since Microsoft is the biggest threat for Valve. The more anti-consumer Windows becomes the more it puts Valve’s business in danger, since a shitty Windows experience can push PC gamers towards consoles.

I was gonna say before reading your last sentence, the Steam Deck definitely could have accelerated this. It's extremely accessible while doubling as a computer powerful enough for development. It's pretty great they're offering dev kits for the new Steam Frame, too. It's really going to bust the scene wide open.

I think the new device is good news. I can see what you're saying - the benefit is if Steam Machines expand the PC games market with former console only players. But otherwise the threshold for PC development is already much lower than consoles; there are no dev kit fees, a wide choice of engines to target, relatively greater independence etc.

The steam machine may help somewhat in having a specific hardware profile to target, but the games are still on steam's store so still have to be able to run widely on Windows or Linux. That's always been the complexity of PC development - the steam machine doesn't change that much. Although admittedly the Steam Verified benchmarks are useful for users to simplify understanding what their kit can actually run which will benefit indie devs.

I remember this same discussion point when Valve released the first Steam Machines ten years ago.