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Valve says "the Steam Machine is equal or better than 70% of what people have at home," but I feel like that's missing the point (www.gamesradar.com)
submitted 11 months ago by to c/steamdeck@sopuli.xyz
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Before you start making plans to evict your current rig, I want to explain how the Steam Hardware Survey actually works. Rather than representing every player that uses the storefront, the monthly census instead uses a small percentage of participants who've opted in as a sample. It's anything but representative of all 154 million active users, meaning the statistic above isn't an absolute.

Does the author know how *survey sample sizes work?

Do I?

Is it because it's opt in or opt out?

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[–] 25 points 11 months ago (12 children)

The weird part is I think a lot of the disappointment comes from a lot of people with even high-end gaming systems wanted this to be the thing that replaces it just because they hate windows so much and because it wasn't as powerful they couldn't just buy this box and it would just do it

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  • [–] 17 points 11 months ago (11 children)

    If they have a high end rig, they should be able to install the Steam Machine OS to it though, thus making it a high end Steam Machine?

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  • [–] 11 points 11 months ago (6 children)

    The steam machine is also guaranteed to have official driver support for everything on the board which is definitely not the case if you install steamos on any given gaming pc

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago (3 children)

    What drivers? I didn't know steam made specific drivers for the steam machine? They only have it preconfigured?

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago (2 children)

    I would assume they will for things like the built in steam controller antenna and whatever other custom parts they have but I was more saying that all the drivers for their hardware (and to a lesser degree the other hardware they’re supporting like the rog ally) should be included and maintained as part of steamos.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago (1 child)

    I would assume not. I've never had to install a specific driver for a generic controller. My levered and leverless controllers worked out of the box. It's just plug and play.

    I would assume most controllers follow the usb hid standards and it's support is already built into the kernel. Same with Playstation controllers as well. Sony hid is inbuilt and steam hid is inbuilt. If the new controllers require new drivers it's going to be made a standard and be included in the Linux kernel so the controllers will be plug and play for all distros.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago

    The controller was just an example but whether it’s part of steamos or built into the linux kernel isn’t really relevant as what I was trying to say is that valve has a vested interest in making sure it’s there and maintained, as opposed to your typical windows gaming pc and peripherals which do not have that guarantee as they are sold with an expectation that the users will be running windows.

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  • [–] 5 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    Yep but the common person doesnt want to install anything they juat want to buy sonething and plug it in. Thats why desktop linux wont happen untill they can go into a store and buy it on hardware and stream machine is the closest we have in this day and age for that to happen.

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  • [–] 4 points 11 months ago

    So, I don't know what information this is based on, but I'm questioning it.

    High end gaming rigs come in pre built, for people who want that kind of warranty, or, more often in my experience, the people who own them build them. Which means they're not super fussed about installing a different OS.

    It's more likely that some subset of them play games that require windows (VR, some racing sims, competitive online games that require kernel level anti-cheat etc), and won't switch because of that.

    There may be some subset of the gaming populace who wants that without the fuss, and usually they buy consoles. Computer gaming is what it is because people very often like control.

    I'm a tinkerer at heart, and one of my older brothers used to build custom gaming rigs as part of his business back in the early 2000's. Most of my family and quite a few of my friends have been computer gamers for decades.

    I'd be willing to wager that a fair number of computer gamers aren't bothered about the installation process of steam OS, but might be wary of limiting the games they can play using it.

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