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Valve is about to win the console generation (xeiaso.net)
submitted 11 months ago by to c/steam@lemmy.ml
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Today was a big day for gamers as Valve just introduced three products: the Steam Controller, the Steam Machine, and the Steam Frame. When you add this alongside the Steam Deck, I think it's safe to say that Valve is about to win the next console generation.

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[–] 111 points 11 months ago (30 children)

Premature celebration much? They haven't even announced pricing. Steam Machine could be $1200 and DOA for all we know.

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  • [–] 19 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (11 children)

    I might be way off the mark, but I wouldn't be surprised to see it priced like the OLED Steam Deck. At least at launch.

    With a later price increase due to RAM and SSD shortages.

    Edit (mid-November): watching more videos, could be north of 600.

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  • [–] 19 points 11 months ago (10 children)

    It's smart of them to give it a consumer friendly price and it would track with what they did with the steam deck.

    Just like the other big names, steam can sell it at a very low margin since they make their money with the store. I wouldn't be surprised if they even sell it at a lost to quickly gain market share.

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  • [–] 7 points 11 months ago (9 children)

    Loss-leading with new hardware has been a de facto standard for about as long as consoles have existed, so I'd be shocked if a company as consumer-attuned as Valve somehow missed this and priced themselves out of the market.

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

    Especially because they are literally known for creating things that sell at a loss and learning profound lessons from the thing they sell.

    Also, they're the most progressive group to not engage in Patent warfare since Volvo made the 3-point seatbelt.

    Valve knows how to help an ecosystem grow and pays attention to it's user base.

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  • [–] -2 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    Nobody was talking shit and you still had to come in here and bootlick.

    Steam is the exact same as every other big platform, they grab their 30% like everyone else. Gaben literally has a billion dollars worth of boats. Stop defending billionaires and their money sucking contraptions.

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  • [–] 5 points 11 months ago

    I forgot that Gaben is literally all of Valve.

    I'm not here to lick Gabe's boots, I'm here to point out that sometimes, companies do good things. There are a lot of people making money and doing development at Valve, almost none of them are Gabe, but I guess fuck the laborers because their CEO consolidates money and fucks around on the Stock Market.

    Yes, Gabe is included in Eat the Rich, but the people that work at Valve shouldn't be held accountable to to his faults. Conflating the Labor with the Owner is a take though.

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

    If it's more expensive than a entry-level gaming laptop, then I doubt the average user would buy a Steam Machine, when a laptop is far more flexible.

    It has to be cheaper and more convenient than what's currently available.

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  • [–] 7 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    "Flexible" doesn't sell as much as "Easy"

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago

    I don't doubt that.

    I think familiarity is also important, maybe more so than ease of use.

    A lot of people know Windows and how to use it (at least for the basics.)

    Steam OS is still extremely niche.

    That's why I think the Steam Machine has to have price on its side to push people to consider buying a gaming-focused PC rather than a more general purpose gaming laptop. Particularly when everyone is struggling with rising costs.

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

    I think you're kind of missing the point. This thing is meant to take a bite out of the much larger console market. It doesn't need to compete with a gaming laptop's pricing if the people it's targeting weren't going to buy a gaming laptop.

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 child)

    True, I agree.

    Edit (mid-November): There are rumours that it could be north of 600.

    In my head, unless it's in the 400-600 range, a gaming laptop makes more sense. I suspect generally other prospective buyers would too.

    Steam OS whilst great, still doesn't run as many games as Windows. Particularly certain popular multiplayer ones with kernel-level anti-cheat.

    At the moment all we have is Valve's theory that if the Steam Machine becomes really popular, Devs might update their games to work on Steam OS/linux. But equally they might not.

    In a world where everything is getting more expensive (apart from TVs), I'm not sure the average person has the spare income to buy another single-purpose machine (yes, Steam OS can do more, but it's designed to be used for gaming). A Windows laptop is more flexible.

    I can see this hardware appealing to a lot of people, regardless of price though. Kid's first PC for example.

    I really want this machine to be a success. I would love to ditch Windows completely, as soon as possible.

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  • [–] 9 points 11 months ago (1 child)
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  • [+] 4 points 11 months ago (5 children)
    [deleted]
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  • [–] 6 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    A lot of people are talking about loss-leading

    I don't think it could be a loss-leader for Valve. If the price/performance is good enough, what's stopping companies from buying a lot to use as work stations? No company is going to buy Steam Decks for office software, but they might buy a Steam Machine.

    If that happens and every Steam Machine is actually sold at a loss then it'd be a big problem for Valve

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  • [+] 2 points 11 months ago* (2 children)
    [deleted]
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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago (1 child)

    unless there's a distro designed for office use on the Steam Machine

    It's a PC. You can just put any Linux distro or even Windows on it. Some people even did that with the Steam Deck when it released

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

    It is about as powerful as Minisforum HX100G, except GPU is RDNA3 and CPU is underclocked I guess. Minisforum Neptune series are (were, case try to fucking find a unit now) sold around 800euro. Considering tiny market for miniPCs, price is okay. Valve, on the other hand, will have much bigger market due to brand recognition. And price probably going to be lower since hardware is not exactly fresh new and it going to be mass produced.

    My guess, 600euro for 512GB SSD, 650 for 1TB.

    Edit: 512, not 256

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago

    It's not the latest and greatest PC hardware, which should drive down the price a ton. I bet they looked at the latest consoles and said "We don't have to innovate at all, we just just have to not be assholes"

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

    Premature celebration much?

    Yes, OP is doing this... To begin with, I can go out to my local Walmart and buy an Xbox, a PS5 or a Switch any day... The Steam Deck can't even be shipped to Mexico even to this day lol (and we are quite close to the USA).

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  • [–] 0 points 11 months ago (4 children)

    Lol, "quite close"

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

    What's the matter? English is not my native language, but I think it is clear what I meant.

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

    It was just amusing since we are neighbors. Quite close as in the distance is 0 😁

    Nothing wrong with the English, just a funny phrasing.

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    Well yes, we are neighbors, but the Valve still does not ship here :(

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago*

    That is very dumb. There's got to be a black market of this stuff but honestly you can probably get a comparable mini computer for a similar price off AliExpramazon. Might have to return it a few times but a lot of folks seem to have success with them. Pop Linux* on there and you're basically at parity.

    *Edit: not pop_os Linux although that's fine too, I just meant install

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    • [–] 19 points 11 months ago

    Good fuck ms with a rusty pipe

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    [–] 53 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    Whooaaaa, slow down.

    It’s going to be awesome, but there’s no way Valve and spin up the production volume of a PlayStation or Xbox that fast. It will probably take a few more Steam Machines to get there.

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  • [–] 19 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    Given that their system is open-source, other manufacturers will step in, as they did with Steam Deck-style handhelds, further expanding the Steam platform at the expense of XBox, PlayStation and Nintendo,

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  • [–] 16 points 11 months ago*

    I mean, we already have Gaming PC OEMs and mini PCs. It’d be awesome if they start shipping SteamOS, but they can’t sell hardware at a near loss + make up for it with Steam sales + guarantee hardware support in software like Valve can.

    And most don’t have the volume for “semi custom” AMD SKUs.

    EDIT: The only entity I could see doing this is Intel, selling an Arc Steam Machine. That would be awesome, actually.

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    • [–] 16 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    4K gaming at 60 FPS with FSR, thanks to a discrete semi-custom AMD desktop class CPU and GPU.

    Source: Steam Machine page on Steam

    Maybe I'm expecting too much on a small build PC but I'm not too keen on having to use FSR to get decent performance on higher display resolution than 1080p. But we will see how it performs and when reviews are in. I'm cautiously optimistic otherwise.

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    • [–] 13 points 11 months ago (4 children)

    They’ve entered the ring but we have no idea what pricing will look like and the machine is looking like it will be less powerful than the ps5/xsx, even before console optimizations are taken into account.

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  • [–] 6 points 11 months ago (3 children)

    We do have some idea based upon the price of all the components in the bill of materials, and the expected markup. If the markup is the same as the Steam Deck, which was 34%, then the Steam Machine will be about $570. That makes it very competitive with the current gen consoles.

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

    Awesome, this is exactly the kind of information I was hoping to see. Where have you found an analysis of the component / bill of materials costs? I haven't been able to find that yet.

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago* (1 child)

    I only read about it in a Lemmy comment somewhere, and they mentioned some YouTube channel or something. So, sorry, I don't have a source.

    Oh, I think I just found it. I did a quick search on YT and this was the result. That's the name of the channel the comment mentioned.

    https://youtu.be/sJI3qTb2ze8

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    • [–] 9 points 11 months ago (4 children)

    If it prices comparably to the next Xbox and PlayStation consoles, they may be onto something. I still think it'll just carve Valve a sizeable spot in the market. But who knows, maybe Xbox's business model collapses. There hasn't been much of a reason to buy an Xbox if you already own a PC, and PCs priced like consoles could definitely put a dent in their sales.

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  • [–] 4 points 11 months ago (3 children)

    a sizable spot is a win no?

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

    For sure, but it's not "winning the console generation"

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  • [–] 3 points 11 months ago* (1 child)

    Fair. I am not sure what that means but probably: Valve PC Sales > Each Separate Console Sale

    Yea, that's unlikely but not impossible.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago

    Definitely not impossible. I also think they have a decent chance of killing the Xbox business model, given that there's no real reason to buy an Xbox over a PC other than brand loyalty or wanting a console. The Steam Machine fills that second need, of course.

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    • [–] 9 points 11 months ago

    Unlikely, but they will carve a niche for themselves for people who want more than just a console, perhaps it will win over some people who cross shop consoles and PCs. More importantly it will help grow GNU+Linux.

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    [–] 13 points 11 months ago

    Probably not but surely will leave a dent on console market.

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    [–] 2 points 11 months ago

    Anything cheaper than PS5 pro and is as good or better performance-wise -> market gonna have a fun time! No one can claim after that PCs are expensive to build/buy than a console and consoles are better for gaming. The line is going to be completely blurred.

    Steam Deck made PC handheld gaming possible. I can only imagine what will be possible with a full fledged machine. And if they will release SteamOS for other hardware - that'll be extreme win for PC Gaming in many years.

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    [–] 12 points 11 months ago* (3 children)

    Spoilers: it's not going to

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

    They have already stated that it won't be price competitive with consoles. But hopefully a lot of people will realise they will save money in the long run through steam sails and not being locked into a single store.

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

    Then it's definitely not going to kill the big 3

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  • [–] 3 points 11 months ago

    Yes. LoL.

    But if anyone is going to kill the big three, it will be themselves, with:

    • The "Switch - It's just more expensive now - 2",
    • The "Playstation - by the time you can buy one the hype is over" and the
    • The "X Box Series - Call our 900 number to find out which one you should buy"
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    • [–] 4 points 11 months ago

    lol, wat

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    [–] 2 points 11 months ago

    That would be terrible in the long run, they said it would be competitive with pc pricing, not consoles (it's a pc after all), so it would just be used as precedent to skyrocket console prices

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