memes

Something like a Steam Deck or Steam Machine that “just works” is definitely worthwhile.

I recently bought a cheap mini PC with a 780M for like $380. It’s 2x the GPU power of a Steam Deck but probably half the GPU power of a Steam Machine (likely half the price too).

Anyhow, it’s running Mint and my XBox controllers randomly disconnect. I’ve spent a few hours troubleshooting with no success so far, and my next steps are buy a USB Bluetooth dongle and see if that works or switch to Bazzite. On the other hand, I never had any problems like this with my Steam Deck. I also don’t use Steam and use Lutris instead, which sometimes requires time spent troubleshooting and jacking around with dependencies / GE Proton versions / etc., whereas Steam games would “just work”.

It’s worth the extra time to me to avoid Steam’s data collection and to be able to run alternative versions of games without DRM that I can run semi-sandboxed in the Flatpak version of Lutris with network permissions revoked so the games can’t collect data either. However, I certainly understand people not giving a shit about any of that and just wanting something that works with no trouble.

I don’t get it. We don’t know how much it will cost so how could anyone claim they can build one cheaper? Have you seen the cost of memory lately?

95% of the time when my best friend and I want to play together (and that's 3-4 times a year these days with him having a family and my starting one), we end up trouble shooting for a decent portion of our gaming time.

I'm not going to fool myself into the steam box never having any issues, as I am truly cursed (so much so that we even have unique problems with our decks), but taking Microsoft issues out of the picture would probably reduce our tech fixing instances by half.

He has the money for a full gaming rig, I don't have the means to get one going (believe me I used to, but I don't any more), this has already been agreed on to be a day 1 purchase in my household, and the wife gets full custody of her monster train 2 machine ("my" deck)

it has some unique console features, such as size (you can build one that size but it'll be pricier for the same specs, see linus's monstrosity), CEC support, and a dedicated internal antenna for lower latency wireless controller support

the pre-built market is still huge actually and this will be a pretty reasonable prebuilt for the majority of households

Look, I'm not going to buy one because I already have a kickass rig running linux, but if I hadn't done my recent upgrade I'd hold out for a steam machine. Everything I care about will run on it just fine, and it's an easy sell for people who want a console but need a pc.

Also fuck microsoft.

Well first we don't know the price, other than "like a PC" unless I missed something.

Second, sure, someone like me, who already has the background and experience building gaming PCs, maybe (maybe) I could replicate most of the specs at the same cost, possibly even improve them in a few areas. But economies of scale, the labor on my end, shifting market prices... Unless Valve is marking these things up like 50% or more I just don't see how an individual is going to compete on cost once you include labor.

Given what's happening to memory and nand pricing it may never come out.

This makes much more sense than the actual conversation tho. It's steam box, you put fish in it and it will be cooked after about 8 minute and it's ready to serve.

Wait, wrong appliance.