this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2026
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[–] nuko147@lemmy.world 0 points 8 hours ago

Me, playing in my 5 year old 50€ Nintendo switch pro controller in PC because it didn't pay for itself:

Well maybe in 5 years I will buy one.

[–] Mac@mander.xyz 31 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Love how, every year, gaming hardware is getting harder and harder to acquire. 👍

[–] tal@lemmy.today 16 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Well...

https://www.pcgamesn.com/pc-retro-tech/ega-graphics

Pity the poor PC of 1983-1984, before EGA graphics changed everything. It wasn't the graphics powerhouse we know today. IBM's machines, such as the IBM PC 5150, and their clones might have been the talk of the business world, but they were stuck with text-only displays or low-definition bitmap graphics.

The maximum color graphics resolution was 320 x 200 on a CGA graphics card, with colors limited to four from a hard-wired palette of 16. Even at the time, you'd have a hard time convincing someone that this was really the best graphics card you could buy. Worse, three of those colors were cyan, brown, and magenta, and half of them were just lighter variations of the other half.

You can see in the screenshot from The Secret of Monkey Island below that 16 colors make all the difference, with EGA on the left and four-color CGA on the right.

However, EGA had one big problem; it was prohibitively expensive, even in an era when PCs were already astronomically expensive. The basic EGA card price was over $500 (around $1,400 today), and the Memory Expansion Card cost a further $199.

Go for the full 192KB of RAM and you were looking at a total of nearly $1,000 (approximately $2,900 in today's money), making a top-end EGA card way more expensive than the GeForce RTX 4090 today. What's more, the monitor you needed to make the most of it cost a further $850 (approximately $2,500 today). EGA was a rich enthusiast's toy.

[–] Mac@mander.xyz 5 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago)

Yes, pioneering new tech is rough but that's pretty different than where we're at now.

Many people would be ecstatic to build a locost rig that's a couple generations out of date but even THAT hardware is obscenely priced.
Manfs are literally reviving previous-gen hardware and down-speccing their current offerings to try to ease pricing increases—shit's fucked.

Edit: Oh and scalpers. Scalpers too.

[–] Regrettable_incident@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Yeah, but my 386 had a turbo button!

My first computer was a ZX81 with a mighty 1k RAM. Didn't do much with it. Then I got a Sinclair spectrum with 48k, you could do a lot with that. That's when gaming got good for me.

[–] mursejoy@lemmy.zip 8 points 1 day ago

They don’t call it HARDware for nothin!

[–] Amaterasu@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago (4 children)

Just to try to understand how bad this is, I reserved mine on May 8 at 18:48:30 +0000 (UTC) no email so far.

Did someone that reserved received an email? If yes, when did you reserve and when did you receive the email to order your controller?

[–] EveningPancakes@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 10 hours ago

I set an alarm on May 8th the moment they opened reservations. Got an email on June 11th asking for me to confirm my purchase details and submit an order. Submitted that day and then received the controller on June 17th.

[–] teuto@lemmy.teuto.icu 1 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

I believe they're doing separate queues per country, so that matters too

[–] Amaterasu@lemmy.world 1 points 6 hours ago

That is a good point. For privacy reason I don't recommend anyone to share where they are located but yeah that is something to factor.

[–] hardcoreufo@lemmy.world 1 points 9 hours ago

If you check the reserve link it says it expects I'll be able to buy one in September.

Reserved it on the day it restocked. I don't think I got an email after reserving it, but I got one for it being available to buy on the 5.6.

[–] CallMeButtLove@lemmy.world 38 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I'm still extremely sour about having one in my cart within 30 seconds of the page going live but the checkout process just failing.

[–] makyo@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago

Man I even got thru checkout but then discovered on the orders page it was still pending. Ended up getting cancelled so some scalpers probably already got mine.

[–] DarkFuture@lemmy.world 0 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago)

Kind of shocked, tbh. Their last controllers were pretty awful. I have two. I used them maybe 3 times before settling on PS/XBox controllers. And I'm not even a console gamer. I just bought a few PS and Xbox controllers cuz the Steam controller felt cheap and awkward.

[–] Elextra@literature.cafe 5 points 1 day ago

Reserved mine but am not as upset as other people seem. Glad steam is selling well and I just accept its a severe supply issue. I think its as the article says. They didnt anticipate this level of demand and theyre even trying to catch up in 2027.

[–] Coelacanth@feddit.nu 14 points 1 day ago (4 children)

I'm starting to regret not getting one.

[–] dreadbeef@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 16 hours ago

I want one but I will just buy other controllers still until valve does what's necessary

[–] tal@lemmy.today 17 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

I mean, they aren't going to stop making them if there are people buying them. I'm sure that, at some point, there will be enough manufactured to catch up with demand.

2026 has been a pretty exasperating year to try to get ahold of a lot of pieces of hardware, I have to say.

I'm wondering if


assuming Valve still is trying to release the Steam Machine this year, which according to the last news I've seen, they're still saying that they're going to do


this shortage is gonna dick up their Steam Machine sales. I mean, the Steam Controller is a nice-to-have on a regular PC, but for people with a Steam Machine in the living room, they probably are going to want it even more


like, there it's a lot more important to have the touchpads to replace a mouse, remote power-on capability, etc.

[–] IronKrill@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I have been assuming they had stock set aside for some kind of Machine + Controller bundle.

[–] tal@lemmy.today 1 points 19 hours ago

I have been assuming they had stock set aside for some kind of Machine + Controller bundle.

Could be


I haven't seen news along those lines and the Steam Machine description on their website doesn't presently say anything about coming with a Steam Controller


but I suppose that it's not unreasonable. But it's also worth remembering that they're probably aiming for the console market with the Steam Machine, and a lot of people use consoles for local multiplayer games and are probably going to want more than one controller for that.

Now, local multiplayer is less common among PC games than console games. But, especially with console ports, it's definitely out there.

https://store.steampowered.com/search?tags=7368&supportedlang=english&ndl=1

That says that there are 7,933 games currently on the Steam store that support local multiplayer.

[–] mursejoy@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

That is what I’ve been holding out for, but what the heck is that bundle going to cost? Seems like the price will be not worth it if you already have PC and consoles.

[–] IronKrill@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Probably quite a lot lol. But was the Steam Machine going to make senss for pre-existing PC owners at the OG price either? Ever since their announcement I've been convinced that it's targeted towards newbies getting into the scene as a good enough "just buy this one" kinda deal. Or maybe as a TV box for people with a good desktop already.

I was assuming $1000 CAD originally for the Machine, I'm gonna throw out a guess for funsies here of $1600 CAD now. So a bundle might be 1700. Total conjecture but I want it in writing if I'm accurate lol.

[–] mursejoy@lemmy.zip 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It was definitely going to replace my Xbox Series X as my TV box. M$ has shit the bed for the last time and I’m not interested in giving that ecosystem any more of my money.

If the Steam machine really is crazy expensive I’ll likely hold onto my X for years to come and eventually switch to an Apple TV or something.

[–] IronKrill@lemmy.ca 1 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

Unfortunately you may be holding onto that Xbox because I was damn near dead on

[–] mursejoy@lemmy.zip 1 points 2 hours ago

I just can’t see a reason to spend that much on a second PC. My GPU was almost the price of the Steam machine though so it isn’t a terrible value proposition in this current landscape. I just don’t need another machine.

[–] taj@lemmy.world 10 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I just reserved one. It will likely become a Xmas or birthday present.

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[–] andrew0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 day ago (4 children)

I was thinking about getting one, but then I read more about it and realised you can't use it without the Steam client. Kind of put me off since I have a large part of my library on GOG. Maybe this won't be a problem in the future though.

[–] Coelacanth@feddit.nu 8 points 1 day ago (6 children)

Can't you add non-Steam games to Steam?

[–] Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 1 day ago

Yep! You absolutely can.

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[–] GreyEyedGhost@piefed.ca 3 points 1 day ago

There have been a number of posts on Lemmy about how to get it to work with non-Steam games, particularly if you also have Steam installed. This may be easier on Linux than on Windows.

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[–] artyom@piefed.social 6 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I just ordered mine this morning.

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