- cross-posted to:
- linux_gaming@lemmy.ml
I’d like the Steam Machine to come back with the addition of being an HTPC. Why? Because Valve is big enough to arm wrestle streaming services into releasing an official app.
I basically want a user customizable, privacy respecting Xbox.
I’m not sure what else they would need to do. You can just install Plex or Jellyfin on your Steamdeck right now, and you’ve got yourself an HTPC. It works great!
What are the missing pieces you’re still looking for?
Probably dolby vision support
4K, Dolby Vision, and Dolby Atmos to start with. Then it needs an HDMI 3.x port along with support for a regular TV style Remote.
I meant it when I said I would like a “user customizable, privacy respecting Xbox.”, so basically any capability that an Xbox has (aside from Live obviously) is what I’m looking for and why I want Valve to officially bring back Steam Machines.
What are the missing pieces you’re still looking for?
The addition of JF or Plex, even with a Steam Dock, doesn’t turn a Steam Deck into a user customizable, privacy respecting Xbox.
For starters it needs integrated streaming apps. I don’t WANT to have to use a web browser to access streaming content. Next up those streaming apps need Audio and Video support for 4K resolutions, Dolby Vision / HDR, and Dolby Atmos. My Wife doesn’t want to watch Outlander in 1080p with stereo sound on a 65" 4k television and I don’t want to do it when I’m watching shows on Disney Plus.
How about an HDMI 3.x port? (Steam Dock is only 2.x).
It needs support for a normal tv style remote control. Game controllers are great but I’ve yet to find a half decent one that has volume and mute buttons.
The last time I checked a Steam Deck wouldn’t automatically start in a 10’ interface.
Please understand that I’m not bagging on the Steam Deck with these comments. It’s a damn capable device for mobile gaming but it wasn’t mean to be an HTPC and because of that its never going to function quite right if you try and make it be one.
An Xbox Series X absolutely murders a Steam Deck as an HTPC when used with commercial services but its not user customizable nor privacy respecting. That’s why I want Valve to bring back Steam Machines.
I wouldn’t expect HDMI 3 given the HDMI group are openly hostile to open source implementations of HDMI 2.1.
I wouldn’t expect HDMI 3 given the HDMI group are openly hostile to open source implementations of HDMI 2.1.
It just takes a company with sufficient market power, like Valve, to get involved. For example Android had this same problem in the early days, then Google realized that their OS required it for market adoption and found a way to get it done.
I understand that it may not be possible but that doesn’t stop me from wanting it. :)
Yes! I already have a full gaming desktop attached to my main 4k HDR OLED tv for watching streaming services that don’t have apps on the actual TV (and adblocking). If I could replace that with an HTPC that has gaming capability that’d be great!
They have. It’s called the Steam Deck.
what people want is the internals of a steam deck but beefed up and easier to open up
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.
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
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.
They released the new steam os?
Previously it was only the Debian one available
I have no idea. I assumed they did, but I’m not actually sure.
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.
A steamdeck, no screen, an evo212 cooler, and possibly just loaded with USB ports. Mmmmmm
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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”.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 )
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.
What ever happened to SteamOS? I want to be rid of Microsoft now more than ever.
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.
Personally, I just like to install Debian or Ubuntu as the OS, and then install the Steam launcher:
Then you don’t get Gamescope, which is kind of a big deal.
And less importantly the direct-launch into Big Picture Mode.
@helenslunch @MajorHavoc whats gamescope and how does big picture help on a desktop, at least if i have more than one screen and wanna do desktop stuff on the ones that dont have the game on them?
Gamescope is a graphical compositor. It gives you all those neat side menus on Steam Deck.
SteamOS is not for desktops. It’s intended to make your PC into a controller-friendly console for the couch.
@helenslunch didnt they work on a desktop version for steam os? Wouldnt it help with getting people to switch from windows to linux?
didnt they work on a desktop version for steam os?
Yes they launched SteamOS as a downloadable originally alongside Steam Machines. But alas the current official Steam version is not available for anything other than Steam Deck.
Wouldnt it help with getting people to switch from windows to linux?
I’d certainly think so, much in the way that Android did.
I’m not sure about GameScope,I didn’t even realize I was missing out on it.
Big picture is the full screen controller friendly interface, in case you don’t want to connect a mouse and keyboard.
Good points!
I use my current one as a PC as much as for gaming.
I’ll keep that in mind when I build my next dedicated game rig, though!
The whole point of SteamOS is the controller-first interface. If you’re not interested then it’s not for you.
Yeah. That’s why I run the Steam client on Ubuntu. Which works a treat, thanks to the popularity of the SteamDeck.
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.
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.
While an official release would be appreciated, I’d probably just continue using ChimeraOS/Bazzite/whatever
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
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.
No I want a steam deck and a dock that lets me also slot in a discrete gpu
That GPU would be stupidly expensive and also still hamstrung by the relatively weak AMD APU and associated thermals.
@helenslunch @vmaziman so “active cooling backplate for steam deck” it is then :D
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.
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…
I mean with the fantastic touchpads that steam deck has and the steam machine controller would have it should be possible and quite easy to do.
I wouldn’t hate a non-portable steam deck, especially if they can make in-home streaming between the steam machine and the deck seamless
Steam link on steroids. now that i think about it, would the steam deck stream to a steam link?
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.
That controller has some serious Atari Jaguar vibes.
No it’s not
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.
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.
honestly at this point bundle the dock w rechargeable wireless controllers and let me convert the deck I already love into a pseudoconsole.
Hell yeah brother. Started playing Hades 2 on my custom chimeraOS PC yesterday in the living room. I absolutely love the experience. I’ve been considering getting that Hx100 PC from minisforum and running bazzite on there to replace my custom PC for a smaller console like footprint. The time is nigh!