• Nate Cox@programming.dev
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      7 months ago

      I’ve tried this, and I think it’s worth providing a more powerful console if playing on the tv is your primary use case.

      It works fine but it doesn’t really hold up to the 4k 60fps HDR experience that most people are getting used to from the main console makers.

      • drspod@lemmy.ml
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        7 months ago

        4k 60fps HDR experience that most people are getting used to from the main console makers

        What games are you playing on console where you are actually getting 4k native resolution at 60fps?

            • David_Eight@lemmy.world
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              7 months ago

              Forza Motorsport will do 4k60 on Series X for example. Most Racing and Sports games will do 4k60 on modern consoles since they’re easy to render.

              • drspod@lemmy.ml
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                7 months ago

                No, Forza Motorsport uses dynamic resolution upscaled to 4k in Performance mode, and in Quality mode it also uses dynamic resolution but targets 30fps.

              • Tag365@lemmy.zip
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                7 months ago

                Why are they so easy to render compared to other genres? What makes realism so easy to render like it’s a newer generation than the console it’s on? Like Forza Motorsport 2 on Xbox 360 looks far more detailed than the average Xbox 360 game. What gives?

            • Nate Cox@programming.dev
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              7 months ago

              On the ps5: FF14, borderlands 3, Monster Hunter: World, Destiny 2, Metro Exodus, Far Cry 6, Resident Evil: Village, etc…

              Most of them run dynamic 4k so there is periodic upscaling which is seamless in my experience.

              • drspod@lemmy.ml
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                7 months ago

                I was asking specifically about native 4K games, not dynamic resolution upscaled to 4k.

    • Diplomjodler@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      A steam machine with a Radeon 7600 class GPU sold for under $500 would be a surefire hit and it would blow the deck out of the water in terms of performance.

      • David_Eight@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        I think the biggest thing would be getting a PC with decent specs for $500. Why would anybody buy a Dell desktop or the like ever again? Like even if you don’t game and need to do office work it’d probably be the best option.

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          7 months ago

          You can almost build something like that for this price. Or you can do it if you buy some second hand stuff. But for an OEM building a few million units it would definitely be doable.

          • David_Eight@lemmy.world
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            7 months ago

            Yeah, but I was thinking more parents buying a console for their kids. Like oh little Jimmy can do his homework on this thing too, great I didn’t have to buy him another computer. Or imagine if Microsoft put windows on Xboxes, every office building would be full of them lol.

            • Sprawlie@lemmy.world
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              7 months ago

              And it would be great and would break Microsoft’s hold on the “desktop” for the average user.

              These sorts of computers do already exist though. They’re called NUC’s. Valve could basically just take one fo those, use a custom APU from AMD again, and have their own full fledged console. Heck, the XBOX and PS5 is exactly that. A Custom AMD APU in a small box.

          • 4am@lemm.ee
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            7 months ago

            Especially if they’re going to make their profit in increased game sales.

        • Nate Cox@programming.dev
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          7 months ago

          MiniPCs are surprisingly good at this price point; good enough that I would say for most people’s average use case they would be satisfied.

          I’d like to see them get more popular.

      • fishos@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        They already exist. They’re called mini PCs or NUCs. Just buy one of those and you’re already there. Literally. This whole article and thread is garbage. They already exist. They just aren’t branded Steam.

        • theonyltruemupf@feddit.de
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          7 months ago

          For the average person, that is impossible. Also, you lose a lot of features compared to SteamOS. Also, the controls are (at least to me) a main selling point and there is no controller on the market that comes close to the capabilities of the Deck.

          • foggenbooty@lemmy.world
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            7 months ago

            I recognize thr average person won’t do this, but you can get the same steam deck experience by installing Bazzite.

            Now the controller issue I definitely agree with. They need a second gen Steam Controller pronto!

        • Diplomjodler@lemmy.world
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          Yeah duh. A real gaming PC you’d want to hook up to your 4k TV would need to have a GPU, not just an APU. Also, having to install everything yourself kind of defeats the purpose. Do you think the Steam Deck would have been successful if it had shipped with Windows?

          • fishos@lemmy.world
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            7 months ago

            A lot ship with Linux. And having a full PC you can use is a downside? So you’d rather have a limited box? That’s not even valves philosophy, so I don’t know where you’re getting that BS from.

      • Damage@feddit.it
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        7 months ago

        Problem is, any occasional performance issue with Proton on the Deck can be justified with “it’s an underpowered portable”, if it happens on a powerful PC, people aren’t going to be as forgiving.

    • Plume (She/Her)
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      7 months ago

      My TV is 4k. The Steam UI alone is still a laggy mess at 4K. Setting the Deck at 1080p makes the whole thing really blurry. While upscaling games from 720p or 1080p to 4k looks better. Until they changed something about the FSR settings and it now cripples the performance at 4k as soon as you turn it on.

      A Steam Machine aiming for Xbox Series S type of performance would be sweet.

      • Cethin@lemmy.zip
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        7 months ago

        So a Linux computer that looks like a console? I can see how it’d sell, but it’s already available to anyone who isn’t oblivious. You can even install the SteamOS if you want that particular flavor of Arch.

        • Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de
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          7 months ago

          the point is that you don’t have to fiddle with anything, you can trust the product sold by valve to be good, you have everything preinstalled and configured, and because thousands and thousands of people have the same device it’s easy for developers to target it.

          • VindictiveJudge@lemmy.world
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            7 months ago

            And with the way Xbox has been going, a solid Steam Machine could theoretically replace it in the market. Sure, your old discs wouldn’t work, but it would have all the Microsoft exclusives anyway. Even Sony exclusives are making it to Steam now.

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              7 months ago

              have old xbox discs really not been cracked? would feel very odd if people hadn’t figured out how to run them from regular old CD readers and emulators…

              • VindictiveJudge@lemmy.world
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                7 months ago

                Original Xbox, probably. 360 emulation is still pretty rough. I doubt anyone has a functioning One emulator and definitely not a Series X emulator. Not much interest since almost all of it is on Windows anyway. The only reason I’ve been watching 360 emulation is for Fable 2.

                Also, it’s fairly unlikely that Valve would include an optical drive unless they want to license blu ray stuff from Sony.

        • 0x1C3B00DA@fedia.io
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          7 months ago

          that looks like a console

          Not just looks, but provides the UX of a console. So you buy it, plug it up, log in, and immediately start playing. Even consoles don’t provide that streamlined UX anymore, but ppl want all the benefits console used to provide with all the benefits PC gaming provides now. But the key part is the PC benefits don’t get in the way of the ease of it. You don’t have to install or administer a linux distro, you don’t have to twiddle settings for every game (unless you want to), etc

          • nul9o9@lemmy.world
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            7 months ago

            That’s the big thing. After my postive experience with the Steam Deck, I switched my gaming PC to Linux. There were settings I had to tinker with to get my games running as optimally as they would on the deck, that I assume are set by default on the SteamOS.

            • vividspecter@lemm.ee
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              7 months ago

              I don’t think they have yet, which is a bit of a sore point. Third party alternatives like Bazzite may do the job, though.

        • zalgotext@sh.itjust.works
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          7 months ago

          an evo212 cooler

          So I only bring this up because I had my world shattered like 3 months ago when I built a new PC - the Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo cooler is really expensive these days, like, $80-$90 (there are some models that use the same name but have different heat pipe configurations that drop down into the $50-$60 range, but aren’t the ol tried and true 212 that we all bought in the 2010s), and a complete ripoff, and it’s really sad.

          You can get some Noctua coolers for a few more bucks, or pay a third of that price for a Peerless Assassin, or pay about half again that price for something from ID-cooling, all for similar or better performance to the 212. It’s no longer the automatic choice it once was. The king has been dethroned.

          • SynopsisTantilize@lemm.ee
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            7 months ago

            Dude what!? I bought my 212 for like 35 bucks back in 2014. As far as I know my nephew is still rocking that setup every day since 2019. That’s wild they’re selling them for 80ish…smh my head.

      • Blackmist@feddit.uk
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        7 months ago

        An Xbox Series S (or even X) but not locked down and able to run Steam games would be great. But that’s the kind of price you’d be looking for. Price of a PS5 would be the absolute maximum. Any higher, and mainstream people won’t be interested because they can just buy a PS5 for that.

        I think it’s achievable at scale (millions of units like the PS5), but it’d be a huge gamble.

        • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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          7 months ago

          So a PC in a cool case?

          The problem with going proprietary is that then, well, it’s proprietary. So either they use off the shelf components in which case it’s basically a PC, or they use custom stuff which might improve performance depending on what they do, but will make it difficult to repair and upgrade. Then you rely on Valve producing hardware components, and they’re not really a hardware company, although in fairness they’re also not doing badly at it.

          • Pheonixdown@lemm.ee
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            7 months ago

            It’s more about the hardware/firmware/software uniformity and reliability for some people. My friend is in this camp, he doesn’t want to need to manage a PC, he just wants a box he can reliably turn on and use.

            • BeardedGingerWonder@feddit.uk
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              7 months ago

              And to expand a little on your point, uniformity means devs can target specific optimizations/performance. I.e. this will run like this on a Steam medium system.

          • Schadrach@lemmy.sdf.org
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            7 months ago

            Internally, yes, basically a PC in a smallish form factor case.

            If you’re aiming at the console crowd, upgrades and end-user repairs aren’t a primary concern. But you’re thinking of it like a desktop aimed at the desktop market where those things are more important, and you could hypothetically just do the same thing on the PC you already have, so what’s the point?

            For a console the high priority items are being quiet, able to fit in most TV stands and the like without standing out too much, and having the smoothest possible UX - if it’s more involved than unpacking it, plugging it into power, plugging it into the TV, connecting a controller, turning it on and logging into an account to go from sitting in a box on the floor to ready to play (or at least install) a game then you’ve already lost. If installing a game is more complicated than clicking the install button once and waiting for the process to finish, you’ve already lost. If you are required to fiddle with drivers, settings, tweaks or config files to be able to play, you’ve already lost. If you are required to think about package managers, libraries, or any kind of usual PC management stuff, you’ve already lost.

          • Blackmist@feddit.uk
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            7 months ago

            Not really a PC is it? You can’t even buy an APU of the spec in a PS5/XSX and you certainly can’t run it all from one set of unified GDDR6 (and I know people say you can’t run a CPU from that, but you demonstrably can run it well enough to run modern games).

            Even just buying a GPU on the level of a PS5 (and that’s somewhere on the level of a RX 6700) is going to take nearly all your budget, leaving you maybe £100 to build the rest of the PC.

            I don’t think it’s an impossible problem to solve, but you can’t do it if you’re selling a couple of thousand units.

      • Toribor@corndog.social
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        7 months ago

        Bazzite is basically this with bring-your-own hardware. A first party Valve version doesn’t make as much sense compared to a handheld like the Steam Deck but it would be pretty cool.

    • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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      7 months ago

      Using an ad blocker is basically requirement of browsing the internet at the moment.

        • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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          7 months ago

          I have no idea if this works iPhones because Apple pretty restrictive (Do they allow anyone to use anything other than Safari or are they still on that anti-consumer kick), but on Android you can set the browser engine the in-app browsers use. So you can set it to Firefox and then have plugins.

          I’m using that now.

          Or you can just turn in-app browsers off.

          • Stampela@startrek.website
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            7 months ago

            I have no idea if this works iPhones because Apple pretty restrictive (Do they allow anyone to use anything other than Safari or are they still on that anti-consumer kick)

            In this instance it’s an oddly good thing that in app browser engines are restricted to Safari: because it gets the ad blocking you set up for Safari. I didn’t even know that site had ads!

            That aside, while the in app engine is still locked, Apple has been allowing different browsers (not browser engines, mind you) for many years now and with the eu regulators curiously doing their job lately, they are going to allow different engines too. Although I’ve read that it’s a bit of a trick, because then developers would have to develop and support two different versions of their browsers, one with whatever engine, and one for the rest of the world…

            This comes from a Vivaldi user btw.

        • smeg@feddit.uk
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          7 months ago

          Depends on which browser is the default, I think. Even if that doesn’t work you can set you private DNS and block most things though.

      • SlothMama@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        Gross.

        I think people misunderstood what I meant entirely. I’m saying it’s gross to need an ad blocker just to browse the web, which should be in line with the values of the people here. I got down voted badly and I think it is because there was some possible alternative explanation that I still don’t understand.

      • Gamoc@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        I’m sure there’s more ads further down the page and now I won’t be opening any more links to their site.

  • fishos@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    It’s called a Mini PC or a NUC. They already exist. Go buy one and slap Steam on it. Done.

    The people who actually want this have already done it.

    • cttttt@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      Yah. Makes more sense for Valve to spend their time improving Proton or working on their reference handheld device. A reference desktop device is a solution looking for a problem.

    • Fubarberry@sopuli.xyzM
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      7 months ago

      Valve’s big advantage here is the same as it was with the steam deck: they can sell at a loss and make it back on software sales.

      A lot of the appeal of consoles is a polished experience and that they’re generally less expensive up front compared to a comparable power gaming PC. Many consoles are sold at a loss to hit that price point. Valve could actually make cheap gaming PCs that can compete in price and offer a smooth user experience.

      • fishos@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        Install steam. Run in big picture mode. Done. That’s a steam machine. I don’t get what you think a dedicated machine is going to do any differently. There is a reason Steam abandoned the idea themselves.

        • Install steam. Run in big picture mode. Done. That’s a steam machine. I don’t get what you think a dedicated machine is going to do any differently. There is a reason Steam abandoned the idea themselves.

          Big picture mode on my windows PC and the gamescope-focused UI on the Deck look similar, but offer very different capabilities IME.

          To name a handful: FSR support for all games - including those that don’t support it, per-game hardware performance profiles, excellent hardware integration - not just limited to the instant sleep and instant wake. With the third party Decky Store you can also configure the fan profile to your liking, control music apps running in the background on the Deck, and more. On the PC BPM these sadly do not exist

          I 100% prefer playing on the deck any day of the week - the OS simply makes it so straightforward to jump into a game and forget about needing to also think about maintaining a desktop: no Windows updates, no telemetry service CPU spiking, and no Windows resetting my customized settings or forcing Edge browser defaults after an update.

          That said, I don’t particularly have an interest in a full blown Steam Machine - for me the Deck works just fine when docked.

      • Kadaj21@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        I love the idea of a Steam Deck or the other portable pcs like it, but man I think it would just sit lol. The techie in me just wants it to have. Same with a VR headset. I’d play beatsaber for a bit and it would be dusty.

        • null@slrpnk.net
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          7 months ago

          I don’t use my Deck much outside my home, and I do tend to just sit on the couch most of the time.

          I find I’m way more inclined to pick it up and start gaming that way and I end up using it more than my PC.

        • LucidNightmare@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          I mainly use the Deck to play retro titles, and use my desktop rig to play newer or more demanding games. It was worth every penny, thanks to being so easy to set up for the retro games!

  • 🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 ℹ️@yiffit.net
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    What value do they have? They were just custom prebuilt PCs running a special version of Linux that weren’t that much cheaper than a non-Steam Machine PC. Nothing is stopping you from building a PC and installing the same OS running on the Deck (or the old SteamOS) and then calling it a Steam Machine.

    • Takumidesh@lemmy.world
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      Except knowledge.

      It’s foolish of you to assume that most people want to build a computer.

      And before people respond with ‘its just Legos’

      There is so much more to it for someone with little to no knowledge.

      Bios and firmware updates that require certain CPUs coupled with certain motherboards.

      CPU sockets and inter compatibility.

      The different specs of any given component and the value they provide to someone looking for specific workflows

      Sizing of components and cases

      Knowing where to find parts and what prices are acceptable.

      Etc, etc ,etc.

      Pick something that you know nothing about, let’s say cars just as an example.

      Now imagine, let’s, say want to buy a car but it doesn’t come with wheels, you don’t get a list of 4 wheels to choose from, You get, lug patterns, sizing, and type, offset, wheel diameter, wheel width, bead lockers or no bead lockers, 1 piece, 2 piece or 3 piece, etc.

      Now you have to spend all this time researching just about wheels, and then how they fit with the car you chose specifically earlier in the process, it would be frustrating and incredibly difficult for people who just want a car.

      Go on any thread or forum and ask ‘what GPU should I get’ which is already making assumptions about someones understanding and knowledge (that they even know what a GPU is), and you will get 20 conflicting answers and need to write a paragraph in responses to narrow it down enough.

      Present someone with no knowledge this: ‘DDR3-2666 CL9’ vs ‘DDR3-2000 CL7’. How do you really expect someone who just wants to play a video game to just implicitly know what those numbers mean, how they relate to each other etc.

      Building a computer is an immensely difficult task for someone who doesn’t know much or anything about it, and believe it or not, the reality is not everyone wants to learn, places like lemmy and other tech focused echo chambers seem to forget that.

      • szczuroarturo@programming.dev
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        7 months ago

        Also the scale. With steam scale its likely that they could just buy a massive numbers of gpus and cpus from amd for much cheaper.

        • vividspecter@lemm.ee
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          7 months ago

          Guaranteed good driver support too, since Valve fund devs to work on the AMD GPU drivers on Linux.

      • shneancy@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        i’m perfectly happy with my pre-built machines. I like tech and love learning about it but- I don’t really find value in putting a huge amount of time into building my PC from scratch when someone else can do it, and that person knows way more than me already!

      • Cethin@lemmy.zip
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        7 months ago

        All of your comment is true, although it’s ignoring the fairly sizable pre-built market. You don’t have to do it yourself, although I would say people should so they can diagnose issues themselves.

        Pre-built sellers just need to offer SteamOS, or other Linux distributions, as an option at checkout instead of Windows.

    • AndrasKrigare@beehaw.org
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      7 months ago

      The value isn’t for existing PC gamers. It would be for people who are not tech literate, do not know how to build a PC, install an OS, or even tell if a given computer is powerful enough to run a particular game.

      I think that’s the real strength (and more importantly, intent) of the Steam deck: to get people who aren’t PC gamers to become PC gamers by making it as simple as a traditional console. Steam machines could provide a similar thing if there were a Steam Machine 1 Verified flag next to games.

      • andrew@radiation.party
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        7 months ago

        I think where valve went wrong was not requiring specific minimum specs. It led to a very inconsistent and hard to support platform.

        Steam deck leading to a standard “steam device” hardware platform with consistent OS and hardware is my dream, but I know their goal thus far has been to refine steamos and release it for OEMs to use on their devices.

        • szczuroarturo@programming.dev
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          7 months ago

          It would be really great for oems to be able to use steamos. It really is a superior system for handhelds ( and pcs treated like consoles but thats even more niche market )

    • Blackmist@feddit.uk
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      7 months ago

      Or indeed just buying a gaming PC already running Windows that runs 100% of Steam games with no effort at all.

      What’s holding them back and killing the idea of a Steam Machine PC, is that GPUs are ludicrously expensive.

      Shoehorn Steam into an Xbox Series S/X… Well that might work, but it needs MS to eat some humble pie.

    • shaytan@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      7 months ago

      Is your statement true? Probably

      But if we set our standards to “enough”, there wouldn’t be any progress

      Was the switch enough for couch gamers? Sure. Did valve want to progress further? They did.

  • 𝕨𝕒𝕤𝕒𝕓𝕚@discuss.tchncs.de
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    7 months ago

    I’ve seen these mockups for a steam controller that is essentially a steam deck without a screen multiple times now and it looks like absolute dogshit. This would be far from “the perfect controller”.

    • derpgon@programming.dev
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      7 months ago

      I mean, why not bring back the OG Steam Controller aswell? I still use it and it works great, and it is almost creepy how it handles almost the same as the SD.

    • Cethin@lemmy.zip
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      7 months ago

      Yeah, I don’t know why they’d use that image. It’s so lazy and uncreative. That’s not what it’ll look like. They literally just cut the edges of the Deck and shoved them together. I’ve seen better concepts of how it’ll look.

      As an owner of a Steam Controller, it’s actually pretty nice. It’s probably the most ergonomic controller out there, though for functionality it hits a different niche than the typical controllers you find everywhere. Its better for some games, particularly ones designed for mouse, but worse for others. I’d bet on the Steam Controller 2 being very ergonomic and adding sticks, as well as the track pads, to be quite possibly the best controller available for every game (excluding keyboard and mouse obviously).

        • Cethin@lemmy.zip
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          7 months ago

          Like you said, these are Steam Deck prototypes, not the controller. They made a cheap controller with the same potential profile of the Deck without the screen because it’s cheaper. It was to iterate on the Deck quickly and cheaply. They’d never release a controller like that. They do the same thing for all their products.

          They already tried a ton of designs for the Steam Controller to figure out the ergonomics of that. They’ll likely iterate some more with Version 2, but it’s likely to follow the controller design, not the deck design. It has very different considerations since it doesn’t need to contain a screen.

            • Cethin@lemmy.zip
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              7 months ago

              I would bet on the same hand grip bits and a similar set of back buttons. The touch pads will be revamped and it’ll probably force the shape to change a lot.

              I think the controllers sold relatively well though. Just not Steam Deck well. I know a good number of people who own at least one.

    • Weslee@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      When you say looks like shit, are you referring to the appearance of it or the functionality looks shit?

      Because I don’t really care what it looks like, I care how useable it is.

    • Squirrel@thelemmy.club
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      7 months ago

      I’ve used my Steam Deck as a controller (via remote play) while sitting at my desktop PC. It is by far my favorite of the various controllers I’ve used.

    • CptEnder@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      The steam controller itself is pretty good, especially for like RTSs. But tbh the closest I’ve got to a KB/m is the DS5E. Just so damn expensive.

  • earmuff@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    7 months ago

    I would not even hate this idea. To be honest, I would even think about buying one. I switched to Linux a year ago, while having Windows as dual boot option. I only used Windows for one game, which had a nasty Anti Cheat back then. Nowadays it is working on Linux. So I have no reason to use Windows anymore. And as I love Valve since the early days, I always try to get my hands on their products.

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      I thought I did, but I just couldn’t get on with it. Fucking around with the touchpad was a very poor substitute for a right analogue stick.

      • Cort@lemmy.world
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        Agreed. If they’d just put a right analog stick in there somewhere it would have been awesome. The vibrators just don’t provide the right tactile feedback

  • sunshine@lemmy.ml
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    7 months ago

    I would love to have a Steam Machine. I love my Steam Deck. However… the nature of Steam games, so far, even on the Deck, is that you need to bop “ok” every once in a while, or even enter a username or something for some unwashed-ass game, and that’s a lot harder on a form factor that doesn’t have a touchscreen…

      • Baggie@lemmy.zip
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        Can’t imagine it’d be worth doing considering you could just dock your deck to the tv. I know the deck is a beast at streaming to it though.

    • vanderbilt@lemmy.world
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      The problem is they keep breaking in-home streaming to/from the Deck. My Mac has a significantly more GPU oomph so there are some games I’d like to play streamed, but streaming hasn’t worked in either direction since last year.

      • saintshenanigans@programming.dev
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        I would hope they’d be able to get that working much more reliably when both ends are known to be their hardware…

        But also yeah, IHS is a huge coinflip depending on your home network too

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      It became what it is currently the Steam Deck OS or at least the lessons learned were applied to create it. That being said you have distros like Bazzite and Pop OS focused on gaming, you could try those.

      I recently deleted my Windows partition and went full Linux for my personal devices. I use Windows for work and it reminds me that I made the right decision.

      I use Arch btw

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        Now that TunnelVision has been disclosed to the general public, I’m just trying to finish up my modded games, then I’m going to switch over to Linux and run Windows in a VM as needed.

        Even with my pro license, I’m still at the whims of capitalist decision-making; tired of not really being in control of my own computer.

        • drspod@lemmy.ml
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          Now that TunnelVision has been disclosed to the general public

          That vulnerability affected every OS except Android.

          • Telorand@reddthat.com
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            Yes, but you can relegate your network interface to a namespace in Linux, which is a remedy the researchers recommend. You have to use your internet-facing programs in a VM in Windows to achieve the same effect, and that’s a lot of overhead just to protect yourself.

            Edit: typo

    • MajorHavoc@programming.dev
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      7 months ago

      What ever happened to SteamOS?

      It’s still going strong! https://store.steampowered.com/steamos

      Personally, I just like to install Debian or Ubuntu as the OS, and then install the Steam launcher:

      https://www.linuxcapable.com/how-to-install-steam-on-debian-linux/

      I think the outcomes are pretty similar, for an average user. But I find it a bit easier to search for help about other things I want to do with Debian/Ubuntu.

      I say Debian/Ubuntu a bunch of times here because, while I like Debian a bit better, there’s tons of help articles out there for Ubuntu, and 99% of them work perfectly on Debian.

      • AndrasKrigare@beehaw.org
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        I don’t think it’s still going strong. SteamOS 2.0, the Debian based one that was on the old steam machines has been discontinued and is no longer supported. SteamOS 3.0, on the deck, is Arch based and is not yet officially supported on anything other than a Steam Deck.

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      It went to the Deck. I did read an article from someone who forked SteamOS and customized it for their own hardware, but it isn’t a simple process.

      Bazzite is probably the closest you can get to a Deck-like experience (and it’s supposed to work for HTPCs), but there’s several other distros that are gaming focused as well, such as Nobara, Garuda, and Chimera.

  • crawancon@lemm.ee
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    7 months ago

    or just make the steam deck your primary hardware platform and ensure it can connect to everything and use all peripherals. refine it. make it unbeatable.

    i think going in on more hardware is not wise.

    • Neato@ttrpg.network
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      I could see the new Steam Machine essentially just being a Steam Deck in a box. That’d allow it to have beefier hardware but it could use the same software and interface. Add a new tab for HTPC services and a quicker way to get to desktop mode and you’re done. It would be another hardware platform but there’d be a lot less design if they were similar in architecture.

  • vmaziman@lemm.ee
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    No I want a steam deck and a dock that lets me also slot in a discrete gpu

    The future of pc gaming should be tri upgrade platform

    Regular consumer should really only have to worry about upgrading their deck, their connector dock, and their gpu

    Hobbyists who like to max out may get into the deck and upgrade that should they wish

    I just want to play games on my deck on the go, get home and slot it in so it outputs thru my gpu at 4k60, and literally pick up where I left off when on deck

    A triple upgrade platform will allow more consumers to incrementally increase performance without overloading them with info ala pc building

    So a kid could start out with the deck, and get a dock, then later get the gpu

    During generation upgrades people can decide if they want to get one of the three options for upgrades in the new gen

    • pastel_de_airfryer@lemmy.eco.br
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      There are some modders experimenting with eGPUs on the Deck, but it’s really impractical. The Deck USB-C connector isn’t powerful enough to handle an external GPU and the OS doesn’t support it.

      Valve would need to release new hardware for it to be feasible.

    • GluWu@lemm.ee
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      I’ve been a long time eGPU user so that was probably the biggest thing I wanted from my steamdeck. But years on I’m not really sure how much I would use it. I use my CPU heavy laptop and eGPU when I want to game big. I’m not going to replace my laptop with my steamdeck. If I want more power than what my steamdeck has, but play on it, I just stream from my laptop + eGPU.