• this is how I know you’ve never created anything, lol. lots of times, you fail at making something, but you learn from those failures.

          who knows what other projects they threw money at and failed, the only one I can think of rn were the steam machines.

          I’m sure they learned from those mistakes, tried again, and here we are with the steam deck

        • Jrockwar ( Jrockwar@feddit.uk ) 
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          2 years ago

          It’s not a waste of resources if you learn something. Think of this as research rather than product development. You can try many things (from VR, to miniaturised computers, to cloud gaming, controllers with wonky form factors…) to see what results in a good experience. You don’t need to get anywhere near a full fledged product to understand those things, so the waste of resources isn’t massive anyway.

          I’d bet at the moment people decided “this is useful, I even want this for me, so let’s turn it into a product” the steam deck looked more like a screen, a gamepad and a raspberry pi all taped together or jammed into a 3d printed prototype chassis.

          If people have spare capacity to work on these projects, the material cost at such a point can be under <5k which is peanuts for a company like Valve.

        • sp3ctr4l ( sp3tr4l@lemmy.zip ) 
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          2 years ago

          Do you really, truly believe that everything that’s never been done before is a 100% sure bet to invest time and money into?

          Do you really have no idea of how complex, untested, but potentially viable ideas come to fruition, come to be found out as coherent and workable vs incoherent and non workable?

          … You are aware that matchsticks were essentially invented by the scattershot approach of a man who just had the time, funding, and materials to just basically randomly test a whole bunch of chemical compounds, and he just happened to accidentally drag a stick covered in concoction #38 or whatever against a hearth, whereupon it burst into flame?

          … Do you think the Wright Brothers, or any other early experiments of developing flying machines… or all those involved in early rocketry… do you think all of those people were 100% sure that each of their designs would work?

    • sp3ctr4l ( sp3tr4l@lemmy.zip ) 
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      2 years ago

      When you have a stable business with a guaranteed source of huge amounts of revenue, that all you have to do is basically maintain at a very low cost…

      Most other revenue can be thrown at whatever, in a how ever long it takes to do well and properly timeframe.

      Actual innovation requires a series of creative ideas that are explored thoroughly, without overwhelming pressure or influence on decision making, or timetables.

      Valve’s position allows them to do this.

      Lots of those things go no where, but a good number of them work out, and basically revolutionize the industry, more than making up for the projects that do not work out.

      As a certain wise old man once said:

      “These things, they take time.”