The point I think is that a “console” is from a certain PoV a locked down piece of hardware only able to run certain software in certain ways. So eg. Stadia was a console, while AWS virtual desktops are not, despite both being just VMs running on some cloud service.
Point is, it’s the software that makes a console, not the hardware.
A console is a closed off system. The Deck is literally just a Linux PC in handheld format. You can do everything with it, Valve even explicitly encourages you to do that.
The Steam Deck really blurs the lines between PC and console. Modern consoles use AMD64/Radeon hardware and at least the Xbox consoles use a modified Windows OS. The Steam Deck uses AMD64/Radeon hardware and a modified Linux OS. Both feature a controller-focused user interface centered around gaming.
If you exclude the Steam Deck from the definition of “console” then a console is defined by its restrictive nature and limited selection of games.
If you include the Steam Deck in the definition of “console” then a console is defined by its controller-friendly and gaming-first design (as opposed to a general purpose PC).
It really doesn't. Consoles are a completely closed off system, to the point where modifying it can get you banned from online services. The Deck is the complete opposite to that, with Valve even explicitly encouraging you to tinker with it. It always has been advertised as being a full PC, because you can do all the things you can do on a PC. You can literally go into desktop mode and have your regular KDE Plasma screen.
By your definition every gaming PC would count as being a console. That's just nonsense.
I feel like this is a modernized definition of “console”. The earliest consoles distinguished themselves from the computers of the time by being gaming-first, not by being restrictive and closed off. Things that defined a console were not coming with a keyboard or mouse, connecting primarily to a television rather than a monitor, and using a joystick or gamepad for input.
There were a lot of instances of third party published games for consoles in the past, whether officially licensed or unofficial, approved or unapproved. The online service definition ignores half of the console generations in video gaming history. There were a lot of unlicensed/3rd party games published for the 8-bit and 16-bit era consoles (and yes, some of those had to bypass security chips, but I don’t think all of them did).
I think in some ways the Steam Deck is a return to form of these earlier machines, but in a modern way (and handheld). Valve’s openness isn’t a good reason to not consider the Steam Deck a console. I fully agree that it is a PC, but I feel like it fits both definitions in the best way possible.
They weren't gaming first, they were gaming only. You didn't load up an office program on an atari or snes. That didn't really change until they combined them for media purposes, like playing CDs, DVDs & BDs, and even that was extremely limited and without consistency.
No idea what your homebrew / piracy paragraph is supposed to be in regards to this topic though. That's not just not official, but straight up "illegal" in the minds of their creators. As a kid I personally owned one of those SNES adapters where you'd plug in a floppy disk and would rip the game from the cardridge into a rom. If we were caught with that we might've even got into legal trouble. On a Deck you can copy & paste all the files you want. You can download and run all the programs you want, albeit a tiny bit more restricted than your regular desktop distro. But in essence, it's still a full fledged PC, with everything that comes with it, and you could use it just for non gaming purposes if you so wish.
It's simply that. A Linux PC in a handheld format.
This is admittedly REALLY pedantic, but there were some non-game cartridges released for the NES and SNES, such as Taboo: The Sixth Sense (a tarot card reading program), Miracle Piano (a program for teaching how to play the piano), Mario Paint (a basic music composition and drawing program), and a modem add-on for the Famicom that supported banking, stock trading, and horse race betting.
I wasn’t referring to piracy, I was referring to unofficial releases. Think Wisdom Tree and their line of Bible Games for the NES/SNES (these are pretty well covered by YouTube creators which is why I mention them as an example). Also, some of the early consoles did have non-gaming uses. I believe there was a version of BASIC for the Atari 2600. There were several planned online communication systems for various early consoles. There was the “Work Boy” accessory for the Game Boy that turned it into a digital assistant/organizer. There were officially licensed cooking “games” for the Nintendo DS that were more of recipe collections than actual games. And you touched on media, which was another thing consoles did outside of gaming since CD drives became used on consoles. Wii Fit was more of a fitness accessory than it was a game.
Pretty much the only thing that separates PC from console in your definition is whether you can run your own code on it. I don’t disagree that being able to run your own code on a machine is a huge benefit, but do you consider the iPhone a console? What about the Amazon Echo Show? Smart fridge? These have the locked down ecosystems of consoles but aren’t gaming-first. I would say no, they are not consoles and I’m sure you would agree.
Of course yeah. But more often than not PC isn’t factored in when something is called exclusive or not because honestly PC and Consoles aren’t in competition in the same way consoles are with each other.
Ghost of Tsushima is a PlayStation exclusive game (so far at least, fingers crossed it’ll come to PC soon), but God of War 2018 is a PlayStation console exclusive, small but important distinction
I’m playing it on the Steam Deck, but it definitely has issues. Have to occasionally restart the game because it starts lagging or being able to interact.
I have like 70 hours on it only on the deck. Zero issues. I think you need to stop saying it has issues just because you have issues. It seems to just be a you thing.
Shadow dropping isn’t a new thing Bethesda just invented, so I doubt Oblivion would have anything to do with it.
Valve does what Valve wants to do. Always have. And they don’t have a tendency to announce anything years in advance to generate hype, because frankly, I don’t think they care.
They’ve been making people redundant left right and centre for the last few years. They overstretched and overhired after going public and are now being bitten by recession and terrible decisions, of which the recent licence fiasco is just one.
That's it exactly. In addition to over-hiring during COVID, the massive spending spree from a ton of over-inflated, short-sighted acquisitions ever since the IPO absolutely demolished the company's budget. Cutting Weta Digital was only the tip of this latest iceberg.
The geoblocking is in place to prevent people from buying keys in one (cheap) region and activating them in another (more expensive) one. It’s about both, you dolt.
The EU has very clear law on digital ownership. It’s the same reason if you buy a PC with Windows installed in the EU, you have the right to take that Windows install and put it on another PC, regardless of if it’s OEM or not. This hasn’t prevented Microsoft from doing regional pricing for Windows and if this affects Steam’s pricing that’s on Valve.
The original charges centered around activation keys. The commission said Valve and five publishers (Bandai Namco, Capcom, Focus Home, Koch Media and ZeniMax) agreed to use geo-blocking so that activation keys sold in some countries — like Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary and Latvia — would not work in other member states. That would prevent someone in, say, Germany buying a cheaper key in Latvia, where prices are lower.
Valve said that the charges didn't pertain to PC games sold on Steam, but that it was accused of locking keys to particular territories at the request of publishers
It’s not like Valve played no role in this.
Games can be sold on other places besides the Steam store. This still negatively impacts consumers.
That sounds like a separate thing entirely. I could be wrong, but I don’t think Valve has any say in how keys not sold through the Steam storefront are resold, so supposedly the lawsuit should target whoever is distributing keys in that way. AFAIK, Steam only offers two ways to buy a game–buy the game for yourself and buy as a gift–and in neither case does Steam offer the keys directly to users.
And then there’s this from the article:
In a statement back in 2021, Valve said that the charges didn’t pertain to PC games sold on Steam, but that it was accused of locking keys to particular territories at the request of publishers. It added that it turned off region locks for most cases (other than local laws) in 2015 because of the EU’s concerns.
So AFAIK Valve isn’t distributing resellable keys that are region locked, it’s region-locking at the point of purchase and allowing developers to request region-locked keys. So it would be on publishers to abide by EU laws, no?
The again, I don’t live in the EU, nor have I ever bought a physical Steam key (not sure if Valve directly offers that in any way).
And more importantly no business is going to charge everyone the low price instead of charging everyone the high price if forced to pick one or the other.
Sure, in the same way it’s the government’s “fault” for removing your option to, say, run a protection racket, or agree to a contract of indentured servitude, or sell baby formula with melamine in it. There are lots of abusive or exploitative business models that the government removes your option to engage in! And the government is right to do it.
Offering those less capable of paying, a reduced price isn’t abusive or exploitative.
There is a huge difference between the things you’ve mentioned and this. You’re being intentionally dishonest at this point and there’s no further point in this discussion.
The cost of producing something doesn’t change depending on who you sell it to. Charging anything beyond cost + some reasonable profit margin is unethical profiteering.
Seriously, there are games I bought 25 years ago that work on Steam Deck—and they were never meant to work on Steam Deck. But through the power of Proton, they work.
How many original GameCube games work on a Switch 2?
No original ones do considering there’s no disc slot, but you can play whatever they choose to drip-feed you via NSO if you pay for the Expansion Pack subscription.
Or you can play every GameCube game on Steam Deck with improved visuals for free.
And consider this: you can hook up your Steam Deck to a dock – and connect an external DVD drive, which allows you to play decades old titles that aren’t available on any storefronts.
It’s how I was able to play both Black & White as well as Black & White 2 on my Steam Deck.
Compared against a Switch 1, yes, it is a crazy deal, but I’d personally wait for a more powerful handheld, or a successor at least in 2025 (almost 2026) that truly competes against more recent PC handhelds, including the Switch 2.
Yeah, however, leaks around this have been a bit more believable than before. Can’t remember the specifics, but more concrete stuff has been found by datamining (iirc) deadlock and paying attention to steamdb, with less reliable leaks ranging from the game or assets (again, iirc). So, there’s a fair chance this is real.
However, HL3 has been real multiple times before, it has been cancelled many times apparently, only to be taken up again later on.
Fact remains however, that Valve have been working continuously on an appid that isn’t deadlock for some time now, and there’s plenty of noise around them working on a new half life.
Which appid? 'cause one of the unknown appid’s Valve was working on is a Deadlock private testing server (yes, the game in invite-only alpha has a private alpha that is even more restricted.)
This is actually the first time I’ve heard a rumor like this. Usually the rumor is that Valve will start development when they feel like it, not that it has already been made.
The title is misleading and the article even points it out. She is displaying Doom (which is still cool and kinda fucking crazy) on bacteria. It is not being processed by the bacteria.
RIP Unity. First they partnered with Ironsource. Who are the people behind InstallCore it’s a wrapper for bundling software installations. It tricks people into installing enough browser toolbars and other bloat to hurt their PCs. Windows Defender and MalwareBytes blocks it. Now Unity does this shit.
The gist is… streamers are gamer role models. The streamer itself is a drop in the bucket… but either they encourage people that like their behavior to play the game, or they encourage people who play the game to act like them.
I used to play town of salem, the social deduction game… the community was relatively small, but when a mainstream youtube channel like pewdiepie or someoen played the game there’d be a collective groan from the community. As it would always follow up with a huge spike if players who start up the game with zero interest in learning how to play (because the youtuber also didn’t learn how to play)… now in those cases that generally was only a week or 2 of annoyance as the obnoxious players either moved on to the next thing, or started actually trying to learn the game instead of just trolling everyone.
Lol league was extremely toxic in 2010 when streaming wasn’t a thing. I got sucked in and became toxic in 2011-2012 before I quit altogether. Best decision I ever made regarding video games.
It is the player base, not the streamers, that ruin the game.
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