Gaming 2023

[Beany]

Thing to remember is that the Steam Machine is specced like a beefed up Steam Deck, not a dialled back PC gaming rig.

Still, as a telly gaming box that you can stream from your main PC on (And play games locally too - it has enough grunt for that, just not the latest AAA stuff) that has a nice design etc ain't to be sniffed at.

Price will matter though. They haven't announced that.

[Matty]

I'll probably get me a controller.

Steam Machine looks good for those who want PC gaming without the hassle. I reckon £500.

[Mito Man]

It doesn’t seem to be upgradable though? I don’t know if it will be in a weird area where you have the limitations of a console in that it’s not upgradable and will really suffer in a few years time, games for it won’t exactly be optimised either and then you’ve got VR for it which could really suffer.

[Beany]

You could say the same about the Steam Deck, the way people have used it is to go through their back catalogue and catch up on their older games, or stream from their main PC.

It's got a lot more GPU grunt than the Ryzen 8945 I've got on my current telly PC, for example.

Looks like storage and RAM (I think) are upgradeable, but nowt else - CPU and GPU and BGA packages.

[Mito Man]

Yeah but steam deck and handheld consoles in general can get away with low specs. You tend to play indie games, 2D stuff, classics on them. When you get on the PC or TV you want the latest and greatest usually.

[Beany]

I don't think that's necessarily true; I'd expect this to very much be a 'secondary' system for most, and a casual gaming system for those who aren't into PC gaming as it stands - IE they might play a bit of age of empires on the work laptop or something. Most people I know literally can't afford to play the latest and greatest because a GPU that can run them costs £500 and most of the people I know are still rocking old 3080s or 4070s, etc.

Anyway, I think what's more interesting is the timing. Microsoft are repeatedly shooting themselves in the foot with Windows 11, and their push to make Everything A Fucking AI Agent, which no-one wants, and I'm seeing more and more relative 'normies' - people who are a bit nerdy, but not full blown nerds, trying out the likes of Linux Mint on old laptops, to see of they can live with Linux on their main PC now that Linux can game well - a Steam Machine might well be a no-brainer for those.

Interesting times, at worst.

[Mito Man]

Microsoft is fucking awful, gets worse every year. I would say the way it tries to sign you up to copilot and 365 is proper malware levels of annoying now.

[Beany]

They're talking about turning the OS into an agentic system - that is, everything is an AI tool. Presumably connected to cloud AI.

Good lucking getting that past Cyber Essentials, ISO 27001, GDPR, Risk Ledger, etc....

[IanF]

I keep seeing the Meta Quest Xbox advert and think it’s a shame they’ve not allowed it to link to the console but only cloud gaming..I’d have been interested otherwise

[RobYob]

The thing that makes me slightly uneasy about Steam Machine 2 is that "4k 60fps" claim which has quite a whiff of marketroid BS.

AMDs FSR scaling needs to take a collosal leap forward from its current ugly state to be acceptable imho.

[Matty]

SteamOS still has the huge hurdle of anti-cheat. If it could overcome that somehow, I reckon many, many people would ditch Windows as an OS and switch. Alas, too many games at the moment rely on it witch cripples its range.

The thing that makes me slightly uneasy about Steam Machine 2 is that "4k 60fps" claim which has quite a whiff of marketroid BS.

AMDs FSR scaling needs to take a collosal leap forward from its current ugly state to be acceptable imho.

I mean, anything can get 4k @60fps if you turn the detail down far enough.

[Beany]

Apparently Valve are 'in talks' with AMD on that subject (FSR4)

[simon_g]

Yeah but steam deck and handheld consoles in general can get away with low specs. You tend to play indie games, 2D stuff, classics on them. When you get on the PC or TV you want the latest and greatest usually.

The PC handheld space is a bit of a silly pissing contest over specs and making the latest AAA stuff playable. I'd actually like a lower spec Steam Deck if could be slimmed down and/or have a bigger battery. Stream anything more demanding off the PC if I'm at home.

Companies like Anbernic doing the retro gameboy-shaped emulator machines have also been putting out out beefier ones using smartphone chipsets and running Android. Do that but SteamOS and I'm in.