Valve Enters the Console Wars (theverge.com)
- Reference: 0180057154
- News link: https://games.slashdot.org/story/25/11/12/2019204/valve-enters-the-console-wars
- Source link: https://www.theverge.com/games/818622/valve-console-wars-price-sony-microsoft-nintendo-windows
Valve spent over a decade working on SteamOS and ways to run Windows games on Linux after the original Steam Machines failed. The device promises six times the performance of the Steam Deck handheld using AMD's 2022-2023 technology. In an interaction with The Verge, Valve demonstrated Cyberpunk 2077 running at settings comparable to PS5 Pro or beyond on a 4K television. The console updates games in the background and includes automatic HDMI television control that Valve tested against a warehouse of home entertainment equipment. The system navigates entirely through gamepad controls and resumes games instantly from sleep mode.
Valve said pricing will be "comparable to a PC with similar specs" rather than subsidized like traditional consoles. PCs with similar GPUs have cost roughly $1,000 or more. Linux currently plays Windows games better than Windows in side-by-side tests.
[1] https://www.theverge.com/games/818622/valve-console-wars-price-sony-microsoft-nintendo-windows
All I can say is... (Score:2)
Shut up and take my money!
Re: (Score:1)
At least wait to see if this is enshitiffied version of Steam. I hope not, but they could easily go Roku way with this.
Re: (Score:2)
Sure it's possible but what in the history of Valve makes you think they might? Besides DRM and licenses vs. ownership, which some object to on principle, Steam is one of the most user-friendly services around.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm sure it will be the exact same experience as a Steam Deck, just slightly cheaper since it doesn't need a display or dock to connect to your TV.
Re: (Score:1)
Valve don't have enough employees to enshitify things. They have to concentrate on making things work.
Re: (Score:2)
Because they've got to please the legions of non-existent shareholders?
Steam is a private company. There's really no push for the kind of moves that lead to service degradation elsewhere- Steam is already the undisputed king of games distribution- so they have no need to artificially lower costs to gain market share.
Stream already commands a 30% cut of game sales and adds so much value that their market-place is a no brainer to publishers.
Enshitification is a thing, but it has specific reasons. Steam checks
Re: (Score:2)
Minor nit to pick.
I'm a shareholder of a private company. Private company does not mean no shareholders- that's a single proprietorship.
In practice, privately held LLCs are beholden to the same kind of shareholder pressure that a publicly traded company is- just without the game of Court Of Public Opinion added in.
*some* games (Score:4, Informative)
> Linux currently plays Windows games better than Windows in side-by-side tests.
I have experienced this myself, but I have also experienced the reverse many times. There are also many games that won't run on Linux at all. Most of these have Windows kernel DRM, so I wouldn't buy them anyway myself, but I'm not the whole market.
Re: *some* games (Score:1)
True, but if enough people buy Steam machines, publishers should want to support it in order to get more sales, even if that means finding another way to handle their DRM.
Re: *some* games (Score:1)
Pretty sure DRM is meant to drive people to warezzzz where the games are free and DRM-less.
It's like the equivalent of the serial killer watching from behind the police tape in Dexter/Other Cop show - they're compelled to do bad things and want to be stopped.
Re: (Score:2)
Oddly enough at least last I heard Marvel rivals is fully supported. It can best be described as playable just because it's a relatively modern game and the steam deck is getting long in the tooth but the company does actually support it and when it's broken they've fixed it.
Let's hope (Score:2)
Let's hope that the second time is a charm. I'm for anything that helps people leave the Windows ecosystem, especially for gaming.
My wishlist for Steam Deck (Score:2)
1. Child controls - allow me to password-restrict store/purchases and limit play time.
2. Easy way to switch accounts.
3. No ads, no tracking, no AI bullshit. Just games.
4. Make it very clear what is and is not compatible. Don't be shy rejecting things that run like shit.
5. Convenient charger and visible battery level for controller. I don't want to police charging controllers and if kids run the battery out, I don't want it to ruin my evening.
6. Let me connect keyboard to it.
Re: (Score:2)
Keyboard works fine. Also parentals controls are [1]already supported [steampowered.com].
[1] https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/054C-3167-DD7F-49D4
Re: (Score:2)
> 1. Child controls - allow me to password-restrict store/purchases and limit play time.
There and functional. I've used them when handing it over to my niece to play with.
> 2. Easy way to switch accounts.
Ya, I'm actually with you there. With standard Steam Big Picture, this isn't hard- on the Steam Deck, it is.
> 3. No ads, no tracking, no AI bullshit. Just games.
I mean, Steam.... is a Store. Advertising is.... part of a digital store.
Really, I feel like it satisfies this requirement just fine.
> 4. Make it very clear what is and is not compatible. Don't be shy rejecting things that run like shit.
It does. Great On Deck is your list. About ~200 of my 1700 games are Great On Deck.
Do other games work? Absolutely. But Great On Deck is their promise that it runs well , including contro
Re: (Score:2)
You can switch accounts pretty easily on the steam deck. It's not as smooth as on the PS5 since it is in a settings menu, and IIRC it does a soft reboot when you do it, but it is functional. I've flipped mine to my sons account and back a few times when we were traveling. Takes about 30s or so assuming you've already provisioned the account onto the device before. It takes a couple of minutes to do the whole Steam Guard song and dance with the authenticator the first time.
The problem is going to be pricing (Score:2)
AI is guzzling down all the RAM and hard drives so it's going to be tough for valve to source hardware at a price that's affordable.
Re: (Score:2)
Tariffs and people cutting luxuries such as games out of their budget in a tight economy are also a big challenge for Valve right now.
Praise Gabe! (Score:2)
Praise Gabe, well have a new Steam Controller!
I've got three Steam Controllers. Two of them were purchased after they were discontinued and cost me $300 a piece.
Not high end (Score:2)
Only Gigagbit Ethernet in 2025 and only 8GB VRAM which was low in 2020.
Re: Not high end (Score:2)
I was going to argue against needing 2.5Gbe or more but then I remembered the size of a lot of Steam games. It will be faster over Wi-Fi in some cases.
Re: (Score:1)
I have four routers and five LAN switches in my house and only one 2.5 Gb port. Which is used to connect the PC to the Wi-Fi 6 router for VR streaming.
Most people will either connect the Stream Machine to their ISP router which likely only has Gigabit, or to a cheap LAN switch which likely only has Gigabit. There's no reason to give people a faster Ethernet port unless you expect 2.5+ Gb fibre to be common for Internet access in the next few years.
Re: (Score:2)
2.5 GbE is cheap and common, you can find it on $100 motherboards. Switches are very cheap, even managed ones. There's simply no good reason not to use 2.5 GbE.
Re: (Score:1)
So how many people do you know who have 2.5 Gb at home?
My fibre is 150Mbps and Starlink is wi-fi so there's no reason for me to need 2.5 Gb other than VR streaming. It's not like I'm copying huge files from machine to machine inside the house.
Re: (Score:2)
1Gbps internet is common, now.
My organization provides 2.5-10Gbps in 4 markets across the US. We are not alone in this space.
Re: (Score:1)
Good for you. Maybe Valve could have provided 2.5 Gb for those four markets across the US.
I can get gigabit here but it's twice the price of what I have and it would mostly be idle. So why pay another $1,000 a year to download Steam games a few minutes faster?
Re: (Score:2)
Most people have 1Gb or less to their ISPs anyway. For those with a faster connection, only a slim minority will ever connect to ethernet.
will they give refunds to people who get anti chea (Score:3)
will they give refunds to people who get anti cheat bans for playing games on this?
Valve is the tech company we deserve (Score:2)
Seriously.
Set aside gaming for a minute, this is a project only Valve could do. Ten years, ridiculously long time to see any results. There's a lot going on here. A lot of open source, a lot of a few individuals sticking to their guns and principles.
The reason Valve gets things like this done, is because they are a private company. We have so few influential tech companies, that aren't out there chasing quarterly reports. Which is why most of them can't do this.
Gabe is one of the only guys around who can ge
Re: Valve is the tech company we deserve (Score:2)
With the number of people who are willing to pay for skins on live service games, I'd say Ubisoft is the tech company we deserve, but by the grace of Him (Gabe) we receive salvation.
Welp... tipping point, gonna install Linux. (Score:2)
Already have a couple of surplus 1TB SSDs laying about from when I decommissioned a server rack, gonna pop the case and swap out my 'Win10OS' drive and 'Games' drive and install the best distro for gaming I can find.
Any suggestions for which distro would be the best one for Steam games?
Re: (Score:2)
If you want Steam support out-of-the-box, your bext bet is Ubuntu or one of the derivatives thereof (Kubuntu, Xubuntu etc).
But realistically, Steam runs fine on basically any modern distribution. Even if not supported by the distribution's own package repo, you can also install it e.g. via flatpak. I personally use a distribution related to Arch, which does not support Steam as-is. But I have flatpak installed, and Steam from Flathub using flatpak. It works perfectly.
Re: (Score:2)
Thanks. I'd done Ubuntu on a couple of old laptops, Macs, and Thinkstations. but hadn't pulled the trigger on my game box; guess I'll stick with what I'm used to so far.
Re: (Score:2)
[1]Bazzite [bazzite.gg] is a gaming-focussed distro that has steam pre-installed as well as controller-friendly launchers for non-steam games.
[1] https://bazzite.gg/
Who asked for this (Score:3, Insightful)
At least with a traditional PC, you can upgrade parts. Selling for the cost of a PC but not upgradeable sounds really bad. The Steam Deck at least offered a form factor that required a unique solution.
This is a world where even Microsoft wants out of the console game. The next generation of consoles will be Windows vs Linux desktops connected to a TV. And most of the Steam games at least run as well on Windows without Proton. And then maybe Sony decides to sell games on Steam and Xbox, so their console is essentially unnecessary. And finally, Nintendo will still be just doing their own thing.
At least they acknowledged how bad HDMI-CEC implementations are. This is probably a bigger deal than most realize considering it could wreck their perceived quality if they get it wrong.
Re: (Score:2)
People like us, that build PCs to game, are dying breed. The real question is for how long would Steam Deck OS be supported and if Steam can resist stuffing it choke-full of spyware and ads.
Re: (Score:2)
If it is going to be a high price I'd want a 4k player in it, too, but I suspect that has become a 'dying breed' feature as well.
Re: (Score:2)
I think Gilgarom means either a uhd bd player, or that said device will be plessed by streaming services to receive 4k streams, or perhaps both. Or I might be wrong they ware a bit unspecific m but there is no need to be agressive about it, that helps no one
Re: (Score:2)
Who asked for a console you can run whatever software you want on it? A lot of people. There's communities built around hacking consoles to run homebrew software.
Re: (Score:2)
Um... People that want to play PC games in the living room that's who.
There are tons of games that never get released on console that people like to play or that have inferior versions on the console.
The biggest issue here I think is going to be that the console only has 16 gigs of main RAM and I think it has 8 GB of video RAM.
It is at least upgradable but I think you really want 32 GB of RAM.
The Xbox and the PS5 for example have several strategy games that basically grind to a halt 2/3 of
Re: Who asked for this (Score:2)
Microsoft is already releasing their next console as a full PC and it will run Steam games. Probably for less than what this will cost.
Re: (Score:3)
It's Microsoft, and they're shoving AI to it too - better run for the hills with your GabeCube instead.
Re: Who asked for this (Score:2)
"they acknowledged how bad HDMI-CEC implementations are"
Can you elaborate or provide a link? The article is pay walled for me.
Re: Who asked for this (Score:2)
It's even in the summary:
> automatic HDMI television control that Valve tested against a warehouse of home entertainment equipment
This is something a Windows PC does not have, but Xbox would.
Me (depending on price) + 2nd machine (Score:2)
Sorry, I tried running a custom PC on a TV, it was a shit experience and my family hated it. I'm a gaming/machine building enthusiast. I've been doing this for 25 years. I know what I am doing...but Windows wasn't meant for being run on a TV. I built a perfect gaming PC with name-brand components during the pandemic when consoles were in impossible to find. I bought XBox controllers. They'd pair fine at first...and disconnect mid-game around 2-3 hours in. It sucked badly. I tried the XBox Series X c
Re: (Score:2)
> Windows wasn't meant for being run on a TV.
Good thing this will be running Linux, then.
Re: (Score:2)
Let me guess, you used Windows, and had a keyboard and mouse attached? There's your issue.
I set up a machine with Bazzite two years ago and dropped it into the living room. People without a clue thought it was a commercial console, and ones with a clue thought I'd hidden a docked Steam Deck somewhere, till they realized it was running games at 4K and max quality, smoothly. I can use any controllers I want, Steam Input and Proton work seamlessly out of the box, and aside from kernel anti-cheat and asshole de
Re: (Score:2)
What do you have against supported HTPCs?
The only difference between this device and a traditional PC is be the form factor. All the hardware will be replaceable. It will run x86 software- including Windows. Just the same as the Steamdeck.
I'm hoping this means an official release of Valves official SteamOS for the legions of PCs that MS just kicked out of the Windows ecosystem.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm a game programmer, 20 years in the industry shipping dozens of games across the entire history of consoles starting from the PS2/GC era up to and including the consoles of today. Take it from me, the fact that console hardware is fixed ensures the experience of running games designed to push hardware to their functional limits is far more stable/hassle free.
If you don't wanna play games that do that, then this might not be as big of an issue. But the fixed hardware of a console simply cannot be discount
Re: (Score:2)
I know counter-examples not welcome, but I think your sig is showing.
Those seem to be the norm, these days.
I do recall a time when it was as you said.
These days, half my console games are broken PC ports.
Re: (Score:2)
Low quality PC to console ports have always existed (and vice versa for that matter.) Define broken - crashing your console?
Re: Who asked for this (Score:2)
It only takes so many photos of melted GPU connectors for some people to get turned off from building their own system.
Re: (Score:2)
> At least with a traditional PC, you can upgrade parts. Selling for the cost of a PC but not upgradeable sounds really bad.
It's a fixed configuration that developers can target and test against. It's within the realm of possibility that major publishers and larger indies will start shipping with a profile optimized to run smoothly on it, just like the Steam Deck. Valve will probably add a new "Runs great on Steam Machine" badge to games with confirmed compatibility just like they do with the steam deck.
In addition, Valve will probably debug HDMI CEC integration with all the major TV manufacturers. Something that is not easy
Steam Deck users (Score:2)
I recently bought a Steam Deck, and I must say this is one of the best gaming devices / consoles I've ever owned. From the ability to switch straight over to a (very nice) Linux desktop, to a refined game store that just works, it seems to do a LOT of things right. The dual touchpads are awesome for mouse navigation in the linux desktop, even if they are hardly used in games.
It's totally unlocked / open platform (which is why I have several thousand games on there from about 20 different consoles - even Ami