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Valve certainly won't win it, but they're bringing the heat where it wasn't before. SteamOS is the important part here - if it is proven to be a good console e
by Normal_gaussian 11mo ago
Valve certainly won't win it, but they're bringing the heat where it wasn't before.
SteamOS is the important part here - if it is proven to be a good console experience (which the deck has basically proven already) then licensing of the OS to other manufacturers will put a lot of pressure on integrated h/w s/w manufacturers.
Unlike the handheld format, the tvbox console is fairly easy to manufacture and is tolerant of a lot of spec and price variety. Any slip up by Sony and Microsoft in specs and price will result in steam machine variants carving away market share, which could force more frequent console releases.
The steam machine will almost certainly come in at a higher price point than the PS5, but with no 'online' subscription charge and reasonably priced storage upgrades we may see these revenue streams disappear from the next console generation in order to compete.
SteamOS isn't perfect, and the variety inherent in the platform that is a strength is also a weakness. The core markets for Nintendo and for Sony aren't going anywhere.
- robomc 11mo agoYeah I mean... can I play Fortnite, BF6 or the upcoming GTA on steamOS?
- lanfeust6 11mo agoFortnite came out in '17, at some point it's no longer going to be relevant.
- jsheard 11mo agoCounter Strike came out in '99 and it's more relevant than ever. Some games just keep going and going.
- Ferret7446 11mo agoI hate to break it to you, but CS is not relevant. How much money do you think it makes, compared to recent top sellers or live service/mobile games?
- refulgentis 11mo agoAbout $1B/year. CS:GO is the highest grossing game on Steam, according to some sources, all agree its top 5. Why is that irrelevant?
- jsheard 11mo agoAlso consistently the most played game on Steam by a fair margin. That doesn't necessarily make it the most played PC game since some big titles like League and Fortnite aren't on Steam, but it's at least close.
- Ferret7446 11mo agoRaid shadow legends is also estimated to make around $1B/year, and there are many such mobile games. Roblox made $3.6B in 2024. Fornite makes $3-5B/year for the past ~decade. Genshin Impact is estimated to make ~$10B this year. Not only in revenue, but all of the above have way more cultural impact/awareness too. The pond is very big, but it's easy to miss that if you're in a bubble in that pond.
- Yokolos 11mo agoCS is consistently the top played game on Steam every year. Are you saying Steam isn't relevant? That's quite the claim to be making.
- refulgentis 11mo agoYou didn't know what you were talking about and got caught in it. That's fine! I was surprised too. Something I've learned with age is it's better to have a laugh together than throw out more cover.
- bloqs 11mo agoI dont give the slightest of shits about CS but have you seen the figures? It's doing absurdly well. In addition the separate economy for skins peaked at 6 billion recently. thats not irrelevant
- 11mo ago
- lanfeust6 11mo agoIts not the same game today as it was '99. You could try to make the argument for Fortnite but the differences are not substantial. Point being that if changes are a given, then it's possible for it to run on Linux in the future.
- rvz 11mo agoIf any game has DRM or anti-cheat technology which BF6 does and even most AAA games, then it cannot play it at all without it. That is going to be a no go for any SteamOS device when an highly anticipated game gets released on day 1.
- aaomidi 11mo agoMarket pressure can change game studios behavior.
- LexiMax 11mo agoBattlefield 6 might never run on the average Linux desktop, but I could see a future where it would run on Steam hardware in an end-to-end Secure Boot environment. Gamers don't like playing with cheaters.
- aaomidi 11mo agoWe’re going to have to figure out a better way of dealing with cheaters. You could be playing against an AI model specifically trained on that game. No anti cheat is going to detect that.
- cestith 11mo agoA few anti-cheat systems rather than inspecting the local machine look for things like impossibly fast target acquisition in FPS games, or the server noticing when a shot is taken on an opponent who’s supposed to be totally obscured. Those aren’t perfect, but they don’t require kernel-level anticheat.
- rangestransform 11mo agoCheating detection server side is expensive and probabilistic at best, kernel level anti cheat is a purely financial decision
- 11mo ago
- Normal_gaussian 11mo agoProbably not. Kernel level anti cheat is the problem. I know BF6 isn't proton safe. Fortnite is the same. GTA VI will probably run single player on proton fine, GTA V does. Multiplayer will probably not. The multiplayer with kernel level anti cheat will keep Sony safe through at least another generation; Microsoft is less safe as they're so vulnerable this generation anyway.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- eptcyka 11mo agoGTA V multiplayer was working fine on Proton not too long ago. Haven't played in years though.
- pbmonster 11mo agoThere where changes a few months ago. Multiplayer is completely non-viable since then.
- rkangel 11mo agoThere's a circular opportunity though - if the SteamOS market share gets anywhere, then it might become worth it for these developers to support anti-cheat on the that platform. Some systems (notably BattleEye) actually have Linux support, they just need to enable it, but there's no incentive for them to do so.
- Kbelicius 11mo ago> Some systems (notably BattleEye) actually have Linux support, they just need to enable it, but there's no incentive for them to do so. This isn't really true. As GP said, there isn't a kernel level anti cheat for linux. You can switch a flick on BattleEye to run on linux but it wont be a kernel level as it is on windows. So there is an incentive for them to not turn it on because it simply is the worse version than the windows one. As far as I know even on windows you get cheats even if it is kernel level. Meaning, allowing linux you'd probably be flooded with cheaters if you already get them on windows.
- rowanG077 11mo agoThat you are talking about a hypothetical game not running says enough...
- brendoelfrendo 11mo agoNo, and I understand if that's a deal-breaker for you, but for me I refuse avoid kernel level anticheat wherever possible, so I'm none too fussed about it. If a game wants to run malware, it can do it on a console where it's nice and segmented off from my general-purpose computing.
- Hikikomori 11mo agoDo you also game on a separate windows/Linux user?
- cestith 11mo agoI can’t speak for brendo, but I do most of my gaming on a separate PC-class machine from my home workstation, both of which are separate from my work laptop and personal laptop.
- brendoelfrendo 11mo agoI game primarily on my Linux PC, including multiplayer games. I do have a PS5 and other game consoles, though honestly, they see more use as set-top boxes than they do as gaming devices. I have a separate Windows laptop for work.
- Hikikomori 11mo agoBut not with a separate user? As a process running under your normal user can access all your files and even memory of all your running processes by that user. Its not just kernel stuff that is bad.
- robomc 11mo agoIt's not a deal breaker for me, but it doesn't sound like a recipe for "winning the console generation".
- bathtub365 11mo agoIt’s unlikely you’ll be able to play GTA 6 on any PC platform as it’s only coming out on consoles.
- Agentlien 11mo agoAt least to start. Microsoft strongly encourages all Xbox games to also come out on PC, though they sometimes release later. I cannot find any game developed originally for Xbox Series X|S where this hasn't happened eventually (and the developers definitively aren't still working on the PC version).
- pjmlp 11mo agoAnd they might eventually steer all games into XBox store. I am expecting the day Microsoft decides to take all their studios out of Steam, if SteamOS starts to be too much of a pain.
- robomc 11mo agono but the headline is "valve is about to win the console generation"
- wraptile 11mo agoThese are not winner games these days. Gaming trends are so fast that indie games like the one where you play a duck with a gun is what's driving the gaming community these days.
- itsn0tm3 11mo agoI would say that‘s a bit overly simplified, as much as the indie or indie like game scene is thriving, so is the online multiplayer scene. Gaming is huge and just because one thing is big doesn’t mean another is not. Not a zero sum game here.
- wraptile 11mo agoSure but not being able to play 4 games is not an indication of success either way. It's not 2012 when you had to have Call of Duty - you can not have battlefield, cod or fort nite and still never run out of incredible, popular games to play.
- SkiFire13 11mo agoIf you have a bunch of friends that have battlefield/cod/fortnite and want to play them, they will still do so without you, or at least heavily pressure you into getting them.
- wraptile 11mo agoI'm not sure what could that even mean from consumer pov - I'm not going to buy a platform because some of my friends might want me to play a specific game with me? The pressure to get more games on your platform has never been as low as it is today and has never been this low on Steam itself. You could spend a lifetime with the current Steam library and never feel bored. From product pov Valve feels very comfortable and I bet they have the data to back up this move with basically unlimited war chest. If anything I feel like Valve is pressuring game developers of these major games here - not the other way around.
- _ache_ 11mo ago5 years ago, if someone told you about a commercial Linux gaming console. You were right to laugh. Now, with IA cheating being the norm now, I think Valve has a real chance to add a microchip to "certify" its console and so playing Fornite (or over 3A) on it. Will be a added value over a gaming PC, I don't think they will miss this opportunity for too long.
- wiseowise 11mo agoJesus, since when Fortnite and BF6 became gaming benchmark nowadays? There’s Dota 2, CS2, TF2 all of which are much better games that you’ve listed, and thousands games more. And you can absolutely play GTA, thankfully without horrendous online. The only thing steam should do is to ban their shitty launcher for eternity.
- onion2k 11mo agoJesus, since when Fortnite and BF6 became gaming benchmark nowadays? In order to 'win' a console generation there needs to be support for the games people want to play. Capitalism is a literal popularity contest, and any console that doesn't have Fortnite, COD, FIFA, etc won't win, regardless of what you or I might think of the games. The reason why Steam can't win a console generation is simply because Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo have enough sway over publishers (especially ones they own) than they stop popular games being available on a rival platform. They market it as 'exclusives' but really it's just anti-consumer.
- Cthulhu_ 11mo agoI can see developers work on SteamOS anticheat soon, once it gains more traction (chicken / egg problem though). Those games are available on mobile phones and consoles as well, so "windows" is not a requirement.
- kotaKat 11mo agoIf you can’t play Fortnite on it it sounds like a great time to line up a lawsuit against Epic Games for refusing to allow you to play Fortnite on the Steam box.
- StopDisinfo910 11mo agoI think Valve has a fairly good grasp of what they addressable market is at this point with the Steam Deck having been out for so long. The value proposition is basically play your existing Steam library (and emulated games but that will be left unsaid) in 4k on your TV with an interface suited for it. I am not sure they are that dependent of upcoming games. I will probably buy one because I really enjoy my Deck and I would like to play some more taxing games on a large screen from time to time and I’m never going to buy a PS5 because I have no interest in tying myself to Sony and playing exclusively on my TV.
- tombert 11mo agoMy main game console right now is one of those little gaming boxes you can buy on Amazon for about $400, where I have installed NixOS + Jovian to get the "SteamOS" interface. I really like it. It really does feel like a "game console"; usually when I've made my own console using Linux, it always feels kind of janky. For example, RetroPie on the Raspberry Pi is pretty cool, but it doesn't feel like a proper commercial product, it feels like a developer made a GUI to launch games. I have like 750 games on Steam that I have hoarded over the years, in addition to the Epic Games Store and GOG, which can be installed with Heroic, and the fact that I can play them on a "console" instead of a computer makes it much easier to play in my living room or bedroom. It even works fine with the Xbox One controllers; I use the official Microsoft USB dongle to minimize latency, it works great. I think there actually is a chance that Valve could really be a real competitor, if not a winner.
- Mistletoe 11mo agoDo you have link to the little gaming box?
- tombert 11mo agoYep! https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D733JFML?th=1 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D733JFML?th=1 The one I ordered had 32 gigs of memory; this was more than a year ago so I'm sure there are better ones now, but I have to say that I feel like this thing "punches above its weight" in that it does seem to run a lot more stuff than I thought it would at a decent framerate.
- feffe 11mo agoSteam on Linux works really well now. I sort of built my own steam machine a few months back with a framework desktop that now sits in my TV rack. Gaming on it is a really good experience. Had to buy a PS5 controller though because I could not get the XBOX controller to work over bluetooth which was a bit of a bummer. For me the new controller is most interesting as most games have XBOX controller support (with xbox button captions) and the steam controller adopts the button naming.
- zeta0134 11mo agoI just built one of these as well. For your Xbox controller, see if this works: find any Windows PC and download the Xbox Accessories app. Connect the controller (via USB) and update its firmware. Once I did this, I was able to pair it with the framework desktop via bluetooth (under linux) reliably, and it's been rock solid ever since. Apparently some of the models shipped with buggy firmware that linux really doesn't like for whatever reason.
- exitb 11mo agoIf you still have the xbox controller, I'd recommend the dedicated USB wireless adapter. It's reasonably priced and very solid.
- hamdingers 11mo agoEspecially if you ever use more than one controller at a time, a dedicated dongle is essential.
- RobotShooter 11mo agoI tried several solutions, including an old PS3, Xbox One controller (with the official dongle) and I ended up buying an 8bitDo xbox controller. They are well manufactured (better than the xbox controller), has a built in batter (unlike the xbox controller) and has a usb dock for charging. Highly recommend them.
- eptcyka 11mo agoLicensing? What do you mean, licensing? Other manufacturers are free to take it. It's all open source.
- Yokolos 11mo agoYes, you need to license SteamOS to preinstall it on devices you sell: https://store.steampowered.com/steamos/oem https://store.steampowered.com/steamos/oem Why would you not need to license it? Steam isn't open source and Steam, the trademark, is owned by Valve. If we were talking about a standard distro like Fedora, no, I guess they wouldn't have to license it, but we aren't.
- theshrike79 11mo agoIt's also about protecting their brand. If someone starts selling completely shitty "SteamOS PCs" without licensing, it'll hurt Valve more than the no-name Chinese PC manufacturer. Licensing -> Valve can dictate minimum specs and QA requirements -> Good for everyone.
- ashanoko 11mo ago[dead]
- snalty 11mo ago> reasonably priced storage upgrades To be fair to Sony here, the PS5 uses a normal m.2 NVME SSD for storage upgrades.
- extraduder_ire 11mo agoAnd the ps3/ps4 before it used 2.5 inch sata drives.
- testdelacc1 11mo agoCurrent OS split of Steam users - 94.84% windows, 2.11% mac, 3.05% Linux. Valve has fought tooth and nail for a decade to make that 3.05% a reality. Linux means they control their own destiny, instead of being at the mercy of Microsoft. Valve has their eyes on this prize and they’re willing to play the long game. Everyone’s going to talk about “winning” the console generation, but winning could mean an increase of Linux’s share to 5-6%. That would be a massive win, and would be a vindication of Valve’s strategy. Valve could achieve their goals even if Sony and Nintendo sells millions of consoles more.
- nobodyandproud 11mo agoValve’s strategy being that Microsoft will continue down this user-hostile and privacy-hostile experience. Being computer-savvy means I’m still a relative outlier, but given the renewed shift away from Windows and Office; Windows unfortunately may become niche.
- badosu 11mo agoWhy unfortunately? Isn't that a good thing? (Assuming > 0% will switch to Linux instead of iOS)
- cestith 11mo agoHonestly, as much as I prefer Linux for most things Linux staying pat and macOS stealing market share from Windows is almost as good as Linux taking those users. I think we’re currently seeing a trend starting of people leaving Windows for each of them, and some users for both of them.
- spooky_deep 11mo agoI’d bet that most PC Windows gamers care a lot more about Steam than they do about Windows. If Microsoft did anything drastic - like blocking Steam like Apple do on iOS - it would hurt Windows severely.
- 11mo ago
- bloqs 11mo agotheir biggest fight is this: "what, i cant play COD online? Or Battlefield? or fifa? or Rocket League?... but thats all I play, and it costs more than a ps5? ...whats the point?" These games have gigantic followings that ship hardware year after year. People on hackernews are substantially broader-minded than your average console gamer. On the above basis alone, most of the regular gamers I know will not buy one of these.
- blitzar 11mo ago"Will it play GTA6, and play it well, whenever that eventually comes out?" That is the bar (in my opinion) today, you have to take your box over to rockstar and spec for that or you are just selling outdated hardware.
- rs186 11mo agoI assume people who choose a Steam Machine over PS5 know what they are doing. On the other hand, people are probably dumber than I think.
- vintermann 11mo agoThere are presumably mobile games which have even bigger playerbases. Most of the "regular gamers" of this sort I know will probably not buy a console either. Does it matter? It really says most about what people you hang out with.
- wingmanjd 11mo agoFor what it's worth, Rocket League plays just fine on Linux if you use Proton, but your point on the others still stands. I've had to stop playing a few games once I made the switch-over (Destiny, GTA V), but am otherwise very happy with where SteamOS/ Proton is.
- ninetyninenine 11mo agoSteam needs IP. Something as iconic as Kratos or Mario. That's how you go toe to toe with consoles.
- b3lvedere 11mo agoGordon Freeman and Glados should be able to handle that.
- bee_rider 11mo agoProbably not, unless they learn to count to three, those series seem to be over. Valve seems to be more of a platform company these days (a very good one, though).
- paride5745 11mo agoRemember Valve released HL: Alyx to promote their first VR headset. It is not unreasonable to get a pair of titles to promote these two new products. A man can dream, but a new HL for the Steam Machine and a new Portal for the Frame would be great.
- b3lvedere 11mo agoIt would also be the biggest sales pitch in the universe "Buy a Steam Machine and get Half Life 3 for free" "Buy a Steam Frame and get Portal 3 for free" Tech and software support should be absolutely perfect though..
- jonkoops 11mo agoIt doesn't need IP, it is already THE marketplace for PC gaming. People will get a box like this to play the library they already own, or get great deals on new games.
- swiftcoder 11mo ago> it is already THE marketplace for PC gaming Yeah, but console gamers don't necessarily know or care about that. If you want to cut into the console market, you kind of have to meet console gamers halfway
- napolux 11mo agoSteamOS isn't perfect, but it's "open" to mods like a PS5 or XBOX will never be. As an avid console gamer it's time to go back to my roots.
- pjmlp 11mo agoSome PS were open (still have my PS2Linux) and XBoxes have dev mode, even if it is stuck on UWP, and there was XNA as well. Turns out most open consoles are full of either crapware or emulators, which is the reason Sony and Microsoft eventually gave up on some openess.
- theshrike79 11mo agoRandom trivia: The PS2 Linux was purely for tax evasion. EU had a higher tax rate for "gaming computers" than "generic computers" so Sony slapped Linux on the console to get better profits.
- frou_dh 11mo agoGood example of being confidently wrong. You are thinking of the little Basic interpreter that was on the pack-in consumer demo disc. Not the Linux Kit which was a very real initiative and had universities involved. We were using them in a big dedicated lab.
- pjmlp 11mo agoNot at all, you're mixing up with YA BASIC, that came with PS 2 demo disc. People that weren't there keep mixing channels on this one. To acquire PS2 Linux, you had to pay additionally 300 euros for the Linux distribution, the PS2 hard disk, and cables that would only work in monitors using sync on green signal. Initially the price was much higher, and got reduced to around 300 in 2004.
- IncreasePosts 11mo agoActually I think PS2 Linux was made so saddam Hussein could build a Beowulf cluster of PS2s
- jaapz 11mo ago> then licensing of the OS to other manufacturers They already tried that the first way around when they introduced steam machines. That didn't really work. The fact that they now took full control is what's exiting about this steam machine.
- Zhyl 11mo agoThey tried it without a flagship and without a large library of compatible games. They now have a flagship first party Steam Machine and Proton to run games. They are also working with partners to create 3rd party Steam OS handhelds. If steam machines sell well, we will likely see supported 3rd party offerings.
- brookst 11mo agoYes. It’s the Pixel / Surface / strategy: show there is a market for premium, flagship reference devices and let those guide the second tier manufacturers. You don’t even have to be the #1 vendor, the reference implementation does a lot of good for the ecosystem.
- DANmode 11mo agoYou don’t even have to be the #5 vendor!
- AlexandrB 11mo agoThis is only possible due to how the console space has changed over the last 10 years. The killer app for console over PC used to be simplicity - you pop in the disc/cartridge and you just go. This is rarely true anymore. Even Switch 2 games often require waiting to download a bunch of stuff before you can play. Meanwhile the PC experience has generally gotten simpler and most games "just work", in part thanks to Steam itself.
- wmeredith 11mo agoThank you for calling this out. As a long time console gamer, I hadn't noticed this creeping bloat until I started playing games with my young children. My son begged for a new Madden game after playing it at his friend's house. When we got the game, it probably took us an hour of fucking around with downloads and accounts. Off the top of my head, I had to set up a parents EA account and kids account, set permissions, had to make my 7 year old an email address, had to set up two factor authentication, accept crazy terms of use, verify emails, etc.) And then once we got all that done we're dodging ads for in game points, coins, cards, card packs, cosmetics, pre-order bonuses, etc. to get to the actual game. It's so SO bad and just not fun. It completely killed his enthusiasm for the game. My son wandered off multiple times during this process. When I joked with my wife that we could have built a PC in the time it took us to do this bullshit it was an exaggeration, but only a little.
- layla5alive 11mo agoThis is so very sad and so very ripe for disruption. So many of the top players in our modern late stage capitalism economy fit this mold of having a terrible user experience with a large unsatisfied user base. Usually it's not even a monopoly, but all the top players are roughly equally awful to their users. I'm tempted to start some companies to just do the thing in a way that doesn't suck for the actual paying customers. I think just doing a good/competent/user-needs-centric job at the same basic product would be enough to disrupt the market in many cases.
- array_key_first 11mo agoI had this experience playing couch co-op call of duty a few years ago. I had to make a fucking account. It's not even my console. Nintendo has wavered a tad, but they're the closet to the original experience. You pop in a thingy, hook up another controller, or two, or three, and you're off. It just works, maybe you can input a name for your guy, maybe not, maybe you just always play Waluigi so everyone knows who you are.
- brookst 11mo ago100% agree with everything you said, and also Valve is a huge value prop in the cross-platform Steam store. I already prefer Steam because I have both Windows and Mac machines and generally travel with a MacBook. Microsoft has limited Xbox to Windows buy-once, Sony has… nothing. Valve is building an ecosystem that goes from handheld deck to Windows/Mac/Linux to console to VR. It’s been a slow burn but that is a very nice strategy.
- cestith 11mo agoThe x86 running Windows isn’t perfect. The x86 rack system running Linux isn’t perfect. Android isn’t perfect. The Ford F150 isn’t the perfect pickup. Budweiser is far from the perfect beer. The phrase “worse is better” has a lot of historical significance in computing. Long before that, though, Adolphus Busch started his brewing empire. If you take a brewery tour at an Anheuser-Busch brewery, they’ll tell you that the company’s flagship product, the aforementioned Budweiser, was never intended to be anyone’s favorite beer. That’s right. One of the top selling beers in the world was never intended to be a personal favorite of a single buyer or beer drinker. What it was designed to be was unobjectionable, approachable, and good enough to serve your guests when their preferred beer runs out. There are so many varieties of beer that are so different, and they are often loved by some and despised by others. So an intentionally unremarkable but quality beverage was marketed to be a very popular second or third choice. If most households have a Playstation and a Deck or Frame, or have a Switch and a Frame, or have a PC and a Deck then in total numbers the Steam machines just might be the top seller even if it’s not a universal favorite.
- veunes 11mo agoIt doesn't have to dethrone anyone. If SteamOS-powered boxes start eating into the "enthusiast console" nich that alone could force Microsoft and Sony to rethink their current lock-in-heavy strategies
- satvikpendem 11mo agoAh, imagine, every game on PC, on one unified platform (yet with many stores of course).
- senectus1 11mo agothis ALONE is reason for families to buy the valve console https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/593110/view/4149575031735702628 https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/593110/view/41495750... instant, huge parent created backlog of games available for your kids.