Debunk from dev Pierre-Loup Griffais @plagman.bsky.social
“we’ve done pre-release Mesa Vulkan work on every AMD architecture since Vega thanks to them kindly providing hardware, so there’s nothing meaningful to read into there.”
Something something steam link…
This could be nice for folks that want a console-like living room experience that “just works”.
Me? I built a Linux HTPC a dozen years ago and have periodically updated the graphics card (it gets the hand-me-downs from my main gaming PC) so I don’t need this. I’m far more interested in a Steam Controller 2 😄
I built a Linux HTPC like a month ago. I tried a couple of different distros, mainly because the Xbox controller (that I bought new) didn’t work with any distro. The Playstation one works perfectly, but that Xbox mf is a lost cause (I’m going to change it for a tattoo lmao, and save for another Playstation controller).
At the end, I landed on Bazzite distro and is working fine. The KDE plasma interface is really good (after like 10 years with Linux mint cinnamon, the plasma feel like I’m in the future)
On Fedora using a wireless Xbox one controller with absolutely no issues.
Don’t know why it works for some people and others not. If you look around for fixes is just a bunch of people asking for help and others answering that it worked fine for them.
That’s a bummer, because I was considering the same thing and was wondering what Xbox controller support would be on Linux.
I already had a ps4 controller (worked ok on Linux mint and perfectly with Bazzite), but wanted a second one to play with my wife, and I have seen people using Xbox controllers on Linux so I supposed it was “plug and play”, but not! You first need to connect it to an Xbox or a Windows PC to update the controller firmware (I don’t have any of those, had to ask my neighbor to update the controller on his PC). After this, the controller was supposed to work but it didn’t. This is were I learned that xbox controllers don’t use the standard Bluetooth protocol but a proprietary one.
This is were I learned that xbox controllers don’t use the standard Bluetooth protocol but a proprietary one.
Is there a source for this? I play a few time vampire games on my iPad and use my xbox controller BT paired with it just fine. Haven’t had a single issue in a year or so.
I had no problem with the controller on my android phone neither (test it like that to check if wasn’t the controller broke), but couldn’t make it work on any distro (tried an Arch distribution don’t remember the name, linux mint, fedora and bazzite (fedora based)).
Ugh, tell me about it!!!
Those SC2 leaks happened a while ago but we’ve still to hear anything official about it at all, sure hope they haven’t scrapped it…
I’m not sure what would be the point. Isn’t it “just” a PC with Steam OS running on it? Would it be to help people just default to SteamOS?
When the first Steam Machines were announced years ago, I assumed they’d all be running the same hardware like consoles do, and I thought that was actually quite a good idea because it could give game devs a sort of “baseline” set of hardware to aim for, as opposed to the sort of “vaguely make it run on Windows” system we seem to have currently. So if the new ones are all more-or-less the same kit like the Steam Decks are, and they take off well enough, it could be handy in that way I guess.
Plus it’ll presumably run SteamOS so more Linux exposure which I always appreciate.
Press X to doubt.
I run Bazzite HTPC Version on my gaming rig, i would consider this the best console experience nowadays. A huge amount of games, no need to rebuy games i allready owned on a previous PC and most games run out of the box just fine.
A new steam link would have been nice
Do want.
Overall, this makes sense. We’ve kind of acted like console gaming is somehow separate from computer gaming because of consoles exclusive monopolies on various titles, but it’s become much clearer over time that it’s actually PC which has been gather exclusive titles by… just… Being easy to develop for with no requirement to port? It looks more and more like we’re seeing PC taking over the gaming space more and more. Hopefully valve can pull this off right.
There are still advantages to a fixed platform like the Steam Deck. It makes a fixed hardware platform to optimize for. Anything that runs on Deck should also run on another PC.
Likewise, a Steam Box that was popular enough would provide a target hardware platform with higher spec.
Most hardware manufacturers will have too high paced a release schedule, so unlikely to provide a stable hardware spec.
Ok. And how much will it cost?
Likely more than consoles which are usually sold at a loss.
What does Valve actually need: sell a x86 SoC PC for extra-extra cheap… barely capable to run 720p60fpd high quality, and extremely well optimized, videogames such as Resident Evil4 Remake and latest Doom, bundle the SoC with those games to the point it may look as you’re just buying regular bundled games but the PC to run it comes for free.
IE: 140€ to get Resident Evil Remake 2,3 and 4 for +the SoC: You just need to add the disk space (MictoSD/SSD) to download&run OS+games.
Thankfully you don’t work at Valve.
Does it come with a battery that’s not rechargeable and only lasts for exactly one playthrough of the game after which you throw the whole thing in the trash?
The article has been updated, this isn’t true unfortunately.
Didnt they already try this and it flopped? Is my memory playing tricks on me?
It would be a pretty dumb business move. It’s going to take a lot to unseat Sony and Microsoft, and the people familiar with Steam likely already have pretty powerful PCs. Case in point, the steam deck. Novelty product, it’s pretty cool, but it’s nowhere even close to unseating Nintendo Switch, let alone PS or Xbox.
Why is everyone assuming that you can only make a profit if you are the market leader? Even if you have a percent of Sony and Microsofts market share in the console market, you can still make a shit load of money of it.
Their original steam machine failed because Steam OS didn’t have Proton yet back then, so devs had to create dedicated linux versions of their games, drastically reducing steams catalogue. Now that they have perfected proton, they beat PlayStation and Xbox with their massive amount of games across way more niche genres.
It could easily target people that don’t want to tinker with hardware or settings on PC but still want to have all of the games that steam offers.
What a lot of people don’t realize though, is those consoles actually sell for a loss. 2025 is going to bring some crazy shit with it in regards to hardware pricing. Like in one aspect, ok if this thing is a decent price, and has decent performance, then yeah. But that is going to be really really hard to pull off right now. Meaning the thing is either going to be pretty crazy priced or it’s going to have lacklustre performance. In order to have good volumes of sales, you’ve got a very well established dominant two, that’s going to be hard to unseat. I dunno, I’ve been wrong before, and I’m sure I’ll be wrong again, maybe even here. But to me, that’s going to be hard to pull off.
But they don’t have to unseat them. Even if they sell their hardware with a profit for a higher price than the PS5, there are still plenty of people that have a large catalogue of games or people that aren’t willing to pay 60-80€ for two year old games. As long as they don’t sell at a loss, they just have to get back their R&D cost, which are significantly lower than with the steam deck, since they can just scale up their existing mainboard with a better processor and more ram.
I’m sure a stationary console targeting high settings 1080p for current gen games with 4k through FSR could very easily be made for 300-400€ and would fit right in their lineup.
Sure, but then why didn’t the first iteration of these succeed?
I explained this in my first comment above. It failed because it didn’t have any games.
Proton wasn’t a thing back then, so only games that supported Linux worked, which were basically none, especially no AAA games. So having a console with a tiny game catalogue of indie games is bound to fail.
It’s a total different situation to today. Now the vast majority of windows games is supported out of the box and without tinkering. I have a steam deck and apart from two games every game in my library works perfectly fine.
Also, Steam Machines were basically just rebranded mini PCs by different manufacturers.
With the know how and the better hardware they have today, they can make everything inhouse, streamlining optimization of their hardware and software.
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They did, and it did.
However, I would suggest with the current gen consoles, the market is different. Also, you don’t need to unseat Sony and Microsoft to be able to turn a buck.
So, kinda. “Steam Machines” was the old initiative from 2013(?). The idea was to build a coalition of 3rd party machines with a branding and hardware guidelines for Asus, Acer, etc to build a ton of console-likes. Basically trying to replicate the PC market of diverse hardware from a bunch of OEMs to create a new market segment in the console space.
The difference here is that Valve is allegedly building a console themselves, fully 1st party with their own hardware and software, like they did with the Steam Deck. I imagine if this one has enough market traction (as determined by Valve), they’ll iterate on the software hard for a couple of years (and possibly the controller, too), then expand with guidelines for OEMs to make their own versions of the console using SteamOS. Basically, just follow the Steam Deck playbook and hope it works like last time.
Steam Machines flopped for a whole bunch of reasons. Many of those have been fixed over the intervening years. Consoles are now all basically PCs, and the market leader runs a variant of BSD (iirc). That makes native Linux gaming a much easier thing to pull off. Then, there’s Proton which is apparently basically some kind of black magic where Windows games can run better under Linux than under Windows. There’s also much better peripheral device support than there used to be. Valve has also created a basically fixed platform with the Steamdeck (and its AMD-basef competition), meaning developers have a defined set of features they can target for a good experience.
I’m here for this. If they can overcome the Nvidia issues, I’ll just stick my gaming rig in my loungeroom and build something smaller and cooler for my main workstation…
I’m here for it too, I mean my PS5 sucks and I’m sick of spending thousands of dollars on my PC. I just have some doubts about the viability, that’s all.
The bast majority of steam users have lower end hardware. I could see this being a good companion box for a recent steam deck owner looking for a bit more graphical grunt for their TV set up.
We need a steam deck 2 first
Nah I’d wait longer if I was valve so there’s an actual improvement, not just a small upgrade
The steam deck was on zen 2, I feel like we’ve had a lot of improvements since then
Yes but, I feel, not enough to justify a steam deck 2
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Or maybe they could do Half-Life 3 please.
Half-Life 3
Steam Console Exclusive
I don’t care. Gimme.
Huge half life fan here.
I would wait to emulate that shit.
A steam console will likely just be a Linux PC running SteamOS
No need to emulate
