6 ms·

I agree, Valve needs to better support hardware to build trust. But I think some perspective is worth mentioning. Every Valve hardware device has had a longer

I agree, Valve needs to better support hardware to build trust. But I think some perspective is worth mentioning. Every Valve hardware device has had a longer maintenance and support lifecycle than any Google Nexus/Pixel device ever sold. Valve has consistently been better than Google about their hardware + software lifecycles. It's totally fair to compare the two, but that doesn't necessarily make them equivalent. Valve's track record isn't good, but it's not bad either -- it's not like Google's.

TulliusCicero 5y ago
That's silly. The point is that the series of products has been discontinued; if Valve had a v2 version of the Steam Link or Steam Controller, nobody would be talking about this.
- maxsilver 5y ago
  A company is allowed to iterate on products, and yes that sometimes includes discontinuing a specific product, but that's not necessarily the same as abandoning a market. Nintendo has discontinued the GameBoy / DS line. Because they now sell the Switch Lite, which is their new way to solve that problem. You can argue "Nintendo sucks, they discontinued their handhelds, we can't trust them on hardware", and they sort-of have. But they gave that product line 10 years of support, and they haven't abandoned those folks, the Switch Lite exists for them now to bridge over to the new mobile gaming market. Not all "discontinuings" are of equivilant weight as Google's product-killings. Steam doesn't sell a Steam Controller, true. Because much of the Steam Controller stuff now supports nearly any controller (Switch Pro / DualShock 4 / Xbox One XINPUT, including the full accessibility controller / etc). Yeah, it's not quite the same as the Steam Controller (no touchpad joysticks), but they didn't abandon that market. And every Steam Controller ever sold is still fully supported in software, even in new games made this year (6 years after launch). Steam doesn't sell a Steam Link. But they didn't abandon it, they upgraded it. Steam Link now works on Windows, Mac, Linux, Apple iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, Android TV + Android Phones, Samsung Smart TVs, and such. They don't sell you their own box anymore, because that would be super redundant, most of the TV boxes people already own can run Steam Link already, and they continue to support Steam Link on many different clients to this day. Last time I checked, even original v1 Steam Links are still fully supported in all software + service (6+ years after launch). --- In comparison, Google often just hard up kills stuff. Google Reader died, replaced by nothing. Android Things died, replaced by nothing. Google Cloud Print died, replaced by nothing. There's an entire website dedicated to just listing random stuff Google's killed - https://killedbygoogle.com/ https://killedbygoogle.com/ . At least half of those products or services have no graceful fallover or upgrade path to anything else. I get that it's a fair comparison. But I strongly believe it's not an equivalent one. As someone who has bought plenty of Google and Valve hardware over the years, I'd be a lot happier with Google as a company if they put even just half the effort on the support and maintenance lifecycle for their products, that Valve already does for nearly everything they touch.
jsnell 5y ago
Going by the dates on Wikipedia, the 2015 Chromebook Pixel had 6 years and 3 months of updates. The Pixelbook will have 6 years and 6 months, the Pixel Slate 7 years and 9 months, and the Pixelbook Go 6 years and 9 months. 1st gen Chromecast stopped getting feature updates after 6 years, but as far as I can tell is still in scope for security fixes. 2nd gen Chromecast seems to still be fully supported 5.5 years after release with no EOL announced yet. These all seem like very reasonable amounts of time. How long do you think support should actually last?
- toast0 5y ago
  Really, an x86 laptop should get software updates until the wheels fall off, or something actually needs a CPU extension that's not present. If you want to be petty, don't add new quality of life features to devices past the sell by date, like say no Android apps on older Chromebooks, even if they've got the hardware virtualization support needed. But when you kill the existing printer service, it's kind of rude to not push the replacement local printer daemon, or leave a half-ass version that doesn't really work either.

TulliusCicero 5y ago

That's silly. The point is that the series of products has been discontinued; if Valve had a v2 version of the Steam Link or Steam Controller, nobody would be talking about this.

maxsilver 5y ago
A company is allowed to iterate on products, and yes that sometimes includes discontinuing a specific product, but that's not necessarily the same as abandoning a market. Nintendo has discontinued the GameBoy / DS line. Because they now sell the Switch Lite, which is their new way to solve that problem. You can argue "Nintendo sucks, they discontinued their handhelds, we can't trust them on hardware", and they sort-of have. But they gave that product line 10 years of support, and they haven't abandoned those folks, the Switch Lite exists for them now to bridge over to the new mobile gaming market. Not all "discontinuings" are of equivilant weight as Google's product-killings. Steam doesn't sell a Steam Controller, true. Because much of the Steam Controller stuff now supports nearly any controller (Switch Pro / DualShock 4 / Xbox One XINPUT, including the full accessibility controller / etc). Yeah, it's not quite the same as the Steam Controller (no touchpad joysticks), but they didn't abandon that market. And every Steam Controller ever sold is still fully supported in software, even in new games made this year (6 years after launch). Steam doesn't sell a Steam Link. But they didn't abandon it, they upgraded it. Steam Link now works on Windows, Mac, Linux, Apple iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, Android TV + Android Phones, Samsung Smart TVs, and such. They don't sell you their own box anymore, because that would be super redundant, most of the TV boxes people already own can run Steam Link already, and they continue to support Steam Link on many different clients to this day. Last time I checked, even original v1 Steam Links are still fully supported in all software + service (6+ years after launch). --- In comparison, Google often just hard up kills stuff. Google Reader died, replaced by nothing. Android Things died, replaced by nothing. Google Cloud Print died, replaced by nothing. There's an entire website dedicated to just listing random stuff Google's killed - https://killedbygoogle.com/ https://killedbygoogle.com/ . At least half of those products or services have no graceful fallover or upgrade path to anything else. I get that it's a fair comparison. But I strongly believe it's not an equivalent one. As someone who has bought plenty of Google and Valve hardware over the years, I'd be a lot happier with Google as a company if they put even just half the effort on the support and maintenance lifecycle for their products, that Valve already does for nearly everything they touch.

jsnell 5y ago

Going by the dates on Wikipedia, the 2015 Chromebook Pixel had 6 years and 3 months of updates. The Pixelbook will have 6 years and 6 months, the Pixel Slate 7 years and 9 months, and the Pixelbook Go 6 years and 9 months. 1st gen Chromecast stopped getting feature updates after 6 years, but as far as I can tell is still in scope for security fixes. 2nd gen Chromecast seems to still be fully supported 5.5 years after release with no EOL announced yet. These all seem like very reasonable amounts of time. How long do you think support should actually last?

toast0 5y ago
Really, an x86 laptop should get software updates until the wheels fall off, or something actually needs a CPU extension that's not present. If you want to be petty, don't add new quality of life features to devices past the sell by date, like say no Android apps on older Chromebooks, even if they've got the hardware virtualization support needed. But when you kill the existing printer service, it's kind of rude to not push the replacement local printer daemon, or leave a half-ass version that doesn't really work either.