1. Be civil
No trolling, bigotry or other insulting / annoying behaviour
2. No politics
This is non-politics community. For political memes please go to !politicalmemes@lemmy.world
3. No recent reposts
Check for reposts when posting a meme, you can only repost after 1 month
4. No bots
No bots without the express approval of the mods or the admins
5. No Spam/Ads/AI Slop
No advertisements or spam. This is an instance rule and the only way to live. We also consider AI slop to be spam in this community and is subject to removal.
A collection of some classic Lemmy memes for your enjoyment
It’s not for people that build their own PCs. It’s for console people that are Steam-curious. People that bought the Steamdeck but don’t have a PC. I know a few of them.
I’m excited to see an expansion away from MS and Sony and see what improvements Steam makes for Linux. Steam (combined with Win 11) is a big reason why Linux is growing in use and development.
I like Steam as a whole but I do wish the PC market was a little more decentralized.
It’s not for people that build their own PCs
Specifically it's designed to be attractive for people that want a bang for buck, console like experience. and not for the PC enthusiast that build their own system. The whole point is precisely not to compete with self built systems. Why would they? These people are already mainly steam users.
I so so so hope steam is gonna stay the Monopoly they are. They are literally the only company imho that have the humanity to keep gaming fun and affordable.
Yes I know how much they charge for developers to be able to sell. But also if you know what that's about in truth it's also not a bad thing.
Hail GabeN
As for Steam staying the monopoly, the biggest thing I worry about is what happens when Gabe dies or retires. I want to believe that the next person will guide them down the same path, but I’ve been burned so many times before.
Bold of you to assume you can build an equivalent PC in terms of price/performance without knowing Steam Machine's price. Good luck with RAM
Valve already announced it will be priced similarly to a PC you build yourself.
specs wise yes but you will not build a PC in the same form factor for anywhere near that price.
Yeah, the form factor, HDMI-CEC support, and integration with other valve hardware are what really sell it. But it's not going to be underpriced for the specs, like consoles tend to be.
Good luck with RAM
RAM costs will likely affect both custom built machines and the steam machine equally.
There's a lot of assumptions going around the internet as fact with valves new devices.
I feel like the biggest thing everyone always overlooks is the amount of researchyou need to do to build a PC. Understanding what motherboard, ram, cpu, and gpu will let you play the games you want is not very clear, especially now we have AMD making good cpus and Intel making Gpus.
The naming conventions are all over the place and the specs on what's best and what's compatible is opaque at times.
Building the PC is easy, but making sure you didn't waste your money by buying a motherboard that won't work on the next generation of chips or you misunderstood the 10+ gpu models distributed by multiple different distributors is also easy.
You're not seeing the big picture. It's not a box. It's much more than that.
It's a cube.
Typical, "it is not for me, therefore I declare it is stupid and not for anyone!"
It's ok to not be marketed to. It's good that a product was not designed for you specifically. "I can build the same PC…" Shhhh, shut up. Go do it, let other people like and enjoy their stuff. You don't have to buy it if you don't like it.
Well first we don't know the price, other than "like a PC" unless I missed something.
Second, sure, someone like me, who already has the background and experience building gaming PCs, maybe (maybe) I could replicate most of the specs at the same cost, possibly even improve them in a few areas. But economies of scale, the labor on my end, shifting market prices... Unless Valve is marking these things up like 50% or more I just don't see how an individual is going to compete on cost once you include labor.
Or the hours to learn what fits in that form factor. You could duplicate someone else's build I guess, but you can't change much without having to learn if it'll fit.
Oh yeah, I was not even considering trying to jam everything in that tiny case and getting the cooling and cabling sorted out. I would for sure skip that and just go with a standard mid-size tower, were I going to try this (I'm not)
It's a matter of price vs convenience. If they keep it under some decent price limit and everything is plug and play, fine. Otherwise you're better with a custom build.
For the average PC user, the (modern) Steam Machine is a mediocre 3rd-party prebuilt system with the interesting quirk of being Linux native with no Microsoft licensing.
For the average gamer, the Steam Machine is a console-like experience to a game library stretching back to nearly the dawn of gaming with little worry that the next release will have you purchasing your favorite titles again.
For the average game developer, the new lineup is excellent reference hardware. Having something real to target helps combat scope creep, whereby a game has fancy features that look nice until you realize the game only runs properly on a $15K machine for example.
For Valve, they are in a life or death battle to sever their dependency on Microsoft. Their hardware is mostly an excuse to build out their platform capabilities
There's a hidden advantage here apart from moving away from Microsoft, or having 1st party controller support.
Game devs will have a precise target to optimize for.
If enough steam machines and steam decks are out there, it simplifies porting software since you have a handful of fixed targets to hit. A studio could easily buy a few of these appliances for testing and development, and know for certain the product will run as intended. It's a luxury currently enjoyed by consoles, and it really does help their dominance in their respective niches.
This also helps smaller studios since the bare minimum means targeting a known steam platform, rather than pulling machine specs out of thin air and taking their best shot. It's a much easier problem to solve and takes a lot less time and money.
I think there will always be room for high-end gaming, but as long as you're "steam machine 2025 compatible" or whatever, you know what you're going to get.