I’m very skeptical and think there is a reason that the gameboy/handheld form factor gaming laptop and VR headset are coming first.
As it stands? For 500-ish you can get an AMD NUC to throw under the TV and use to play a lot of games locally and stream the rest. You aren’t vibing to max settings Clair Obscur on that but it is well past a Steam Deck.
But the problem is that people want their consoles to “just work”. It is why the Series S was such a shitshow. And to get that performance? You are looking at a lot closer to a thousand bucks than not. Which is a much easier sell when “you need to buy this to play a remake of a PS3 game” versus “you can buy this to play a lot of the games you are already playing because it is a PC”.
Which ALSO ignores what is… probably the bigger problem. That AMD NUC? Good fucking luck getting VRR AND HDR to work on there. General rule of thumb is you can get one and it isn’t even consistent which one you’ll get. Because TVs (and receivers) run on HDMI, not Display Port. And AMD and HDMI 2.1 is like Open Source Alternatives and Raging Assholes. Can Valve get around that with some fairly hefty tweaks to SteamOS? Yeah. But it is gonna generate massive amounts of ill will when the FOSS community hear.
I have an AMD mini PC in my living room and it has changed how I game. I got it because my Deck was nice but I found I plugged it into my TV most of the time and wanted better quality graphics that would look better on my 4k screen. I now love to sit in front of the TV with a controller and play my games, mostly directly off the device.
Many people have similar experiences with devices like the Switch - if you have a couch and a big screen TV then it makes sense to dock it, and many choose to.
So I think the “steam machines” of old do have potential now. The idea 10 years ago was good but the software and the hardware wasn’t there. Now it is, and steam doesn’t have to even do much to build the things - they’re out in the wild already. They can offer something more powerful than the deck without necessarily cannabilising the market the decks have - it’s expanding to a new user group who are less interested in mobile gaming and more interested in using their big screen TV to pc game.
Plus as a console the game library is massive compared to a PlayStation or Xbox or Switch, and with an OS that allows users to do so much more with their device.
Plus what Steam offers is something Windows can’t offer on handheld and doesn’t offer on a living room TV - a great interface. Steams gamescope and big picture mode are great on a mini PC.
So I think a steam “console” is not unrealistic. They can leverage what they already have with the Steam OS and steam deck with a standard branded hardware model of mini PC from existing OEMs, and allow others to use the OS for their own machines. I suspect if they make steamOS freely available people will also be doing this themselves with their own devices.
As a place for Valve to expand into, it’s reasonably low hanging fruit and relatively low risk as they’re not having to focus on the hardware and they already have the software working.
Oh. I am referencing the AMD NUC because I straight up have one under my TV and it is WONDERFUL. Run Silksong natively, stream Clair Obscur or Dynasty Warriors so that I have my desktop proper driving those.
But if it were my only/strongest gaming device? Okay, if I were smart I would actually do that and save a lot of money and power since the vast majority of what I play is indie or a decade or more old. But I wouldn’t want to.
And that is the problem. It is a lot easier to sell someone on a second device if it is a handheld. But a proper console is going to be very much threading the needle on people who have a gaming PC and want a support device or who don’t want to play “new stuff” on their 4k TVs.
Which… was kind of the problem with Steam Machines a decade ago or whenever Valve tried. Yeah, Proton makes it MUCH more viable but it is still the same problem of “So… I am spending 800 dollars and FInal Fantasy won’t look as good as a 1000 dollar PS6?” and so forth.
I DO think it gets a lot more viable in 2027 when Liberation Day consoles are hitting the 1000 or more price point and normalizing it because… they are already basically just computers anyway. But then you run into the problem that AMD is what keeps that price feasible and… AMD and HDMI 2.1 doesn’t work.
That said: Hey GabeN, I know you are obviously reading this. Dedicate Valve’s might to a Display Port->HDMI dongle that actually works and I will give you a hundred fucking bucks for just that alone. Maybe even 150.
I’m very skeptical and think there is a reason that the gameboy/handheld form factor gaming laptop and VR headset are coming first.
As it stands? For 500-ish you can get an AMD NUC to throw under the TV and use to play a lot of games locally and stream the rest. You aren’t vibing to max settings Clair Obscur on that but it is well past a Steam Deck.
But the problem is that people want their consoles to “just work”. It is why the Series S was such a shitshow. And to get that performance? You are looking at a lot closer to a thousand bucks than not. Which is a much easier sell when “you need to buy this to play a remake of a PS3 game” versus “you can buy this to play a lot of the games you are already playing because it is a PC”.
Which ALSO ignores what is… probably the bigger problem. That AMD NUC? Good fucking luck getting VRR AND HDR to work on there. General rule of thumb is you can get one and it isn’t even consistent which one you’ll get. Because TVs (and receivers) run on HDMI, not Display Port. And AMD and HDMI 2.1 is like Open Source Alternatives and Raging Assholes. Can Valve get around that with some fairly hefty tweaks to SteamOS? Yeah. But it is gonna generate massive amounts of ill will when the FOSS community hear.
I have an AMD mini PC in my living room and it has changed how I game. I got it because my Deck was nice but I found I plugged it into my TV most of the time and wanted better quality graphics that would look better on my 4k screen. I now love to sit in front of the TV with a controller and play my games, mostly directly off the device.
Many people have similar experiences with devices like the Switch - if you have a couch and a big screen TV then it makes sense to dock it, and many choose to.
So I think the “steam machines” of old do have potential now. The idea 10 years ago was good but the software and the hardware wasn’t there. Now it is, and steam doesn’t have to even do much to build the things - they’re out in the wild already. They can offer something more powerful than the deck without necessarily cannabilising the market the decks have - it’s expanding to a new user group who are less interested in mobile gaming and more interested in using their big screen TV to pc game.
Plus as a console the game library is massive compared to a PlayStation or Xbox or Switch, and with an OS that allows users to do so much more with their device.
Plus what Steam offers is something Windows can’t offer on handheld and doesn’t offer on a living room TV - a great interface. Steams gamescope and big picture mode are great on a mini PC.
So I think a steam “console” is not unrealistic. They can leverage what they already have with the Steam OS and steam deck with a standard branded hardware model of mini PC from existing OEMs, and allow others to use the OS for their own machines. I suspect if they make steamOS freely available people will also be doing this themselves with their own devices.
As a place for Valve to expand into, it’s reasonably low hanging fruit and relatively low risk as they’re not having to focus on the hardware and they already have the software working.
Oh. I am referencing the AMD NUC because I straight up have one under my TV and it is WONDERFUL. Run Silksong natively, stream Clair Obscur or Dynasty Warriors so that I have my desktop proper driving those.
But if it were my only/strongest gaming device? Okay, if I were smart I would actually do that and save a lot of money and power since the vast majority of what I play is indie or a decade or more old. But I wouldn’t want to.
And that is the problem. It is a lot easier to sell someone on a second device if it is a handheld. But a proper console is going to be very much threading the needle on people who have a gaming PC and want a support device or who don’t want to play “new stuff” on their 4k TVs.
Which… was kind of the problem with Steam Machines a decade ago or whenever Valve tried. Yeah, Proton makes it MUCH more viable but it is still the same problem of “So… I am spending 800 dollars and FInal Fantasy won’t look as good as a 1000 dollar PS6?” and so forth.
I DO think it gets a lot more viable in 2027 when Liberation Day consoles are hitting the 1000 or more price point and normalizing it because… they are already basically just computers anyway. But then you run into the problem that AMD is what keeps that price feasible and… AMD and HDMI 2.1 doesn’t work.
That said: Hey GabeN, I know you are obviously reading this. Dedicate Valve’s might to a Display Port->HDMI dongle that actually works and I will give you a hundred fucking bucks for just that alone. Maybe even 150.