Debunk from dev Pierre-Loup Griffais @plagman.bsky.social
“we’ve done pre-release Mesa Vulkan work on every AMD architecture since Vega thanks to them kindly providing hardware, so there’s nothing meaningful to read into there.”
Debunk from dev Pierre-Loup Griffais @plagman.bsky.social
“we’ve done pre-release Mesa Vulkan work on every AMD architecture since Vega thanks to them kindly providing hardware, so there’s nothing meaningful to read into there.”
Didnt they already try this and it flopped? Is my memory playing tricks on me?
It would be a pretty dumb business move. It’s going to take a lot to unseat Sony and Microsoft, and the people familiar with Steam likely already have pretty powerful PCs. Case in point, the steam deck. Novelty product, it’s pretty cool, but it’s nowhere even close to unseating Nintendo Switch, let alone PS or Xbox.
So, kinda. “Steam Machines” was the old initiative from 2013(?). The idea was to build a coalition of 3rd party machines with a branding and hardware guidelines for Asus, Acer, etc to build a ton of console-likes. Basically trying to replicate the PC market of diverse hardware from a bunch of OEMs to create a new market segment in the console space.
The difference here is that Valve is allegedly building a console themselves, fully 1st party with their own hardware and software, like they did with the Steam Deck. I imagine if this one has enough market traction (as determined by Valve), they’ll iterate on the software hard for a couple of years (and possibly the controller, too), then expand with guidelines for OEMs to make their own versions of the console using SteamOS. Basically, just follow the Steam Deck playbook and hope it works like last time.
the way I see it, steam machines led to SteamOS, which will lead to a true steam living room console.
They did, and it did.
However, I would suggest with the current gen consoles, the market is different. Also, you don’t need to unseat Sony and Microsoft to be able to turn a buck.
They made the Steam Link, which was a local network game streaming machine, not a full blown console that ran steam games independently.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_Link
The bast majority of steam users have lower end hardware. I could see this being a good companion box for a recent steam deck owner looking for a bit more graphical grunt for their TV set up.
You are not misremembering. It did give us one of the most hilariously awful controller designs (though I applaud them swinging for the fences), and it it was the precursor to the steam deck, so it wasn’t completely worthless.
If they can take the lessons learned from their recent successes with the steam deck, I could see them making something that sticks around for a bit. There’s a market for people that want the steam ecosystem but are intimidated by PC builds or the toxic sub culture that sometimes permeates PC gamers. Having a pre-built PC with proper backing that just works out of the box with minimal tinkering could be an attractive option for some.
I still have 2 Steam Controllers and 3 Steam Links at home, one of the Links and one Controller are for streaming media to my TV from my PC (the rest are spares). I very much like the Controllers for Desktop use, but they aren’t great for classic twin stick games. They excel at stuff like RTS, FPS and Simulations tho!
Steam Machines flopped for a whole bunch of reasons. Many of those have been fixed over the intervening years. Consoles are now all basically PCs, and the market leader runs a variant of BSD (iirc). That makes native Linux gaming a much easier thing to pull off. Then, there’s Proton which is apparently basically some kind of black magic where Windows games can run better under Linux than under Windows. There’s also much better peripheral device support than there used to be. Valve has also created a basically fixed platform with the Steamdeck (and its AMD-basef competition), meaning developers have a defined set of features they can target for a good experience.
I’m here for this. If they can overcome the Nvidia issues, I’ll just stick my gaming rig in my loungeroom and build something smaller and cooler for my main workstation…
I’m here for it too, I mean my PS5 sucks and I’m sick of spending thousands of dollars on my PC. I just have some doubts about the viability, that’s all.