He was the CEO of Electronic Arts when the controversial loot box monetization was added to FIFA 09. He made news when he called developers “fucking idiots” over some developers’ reluctance to introduce monetization schemes earlier in the development process. There’s also the infamous clip of Riccitiello talking during a shareholder call about charging Battlefield players a dollar to reload their guns.
Look at this guy...I couldn't read all of the Bloomberg article due to paywall, so I don't know if this jackass actually provided proof of these "death threats."
While I don't condone them, it seems awfully convenient that an executive who's known to stir controversy with his monetization strategies received "alleged" death threats. I have a hard time believing it without proof because this guy is a sleaze ball greedy mofo.
In any group of people there will always be a tiny subset of the population who will pull this unhinged bullshit. It's unfortunate, but now the CEO gets to play the victim, and anyone who's against his bullshit gets to be painted with the same brush as the unhinged guy.
I never understand freaking out about death threats. If someone actually wanted to murder you, they’d be quiet and methodical about it, not grandiose. To be fair, I’ve never received a death threat so perhaps I’m not theeeeeeeeeeeee
I mean you are assuming the person who is trying to murder you is a rational actor but you can't really be a rational actor if you are threatening death to someone because of their shit monetization policies on your entertainment. Hell some people throw "Death threats" at people because they decide to change a reload speed by a fraction of a second. So yeah "gamers" can be quite unhinged. Hell you had idiots in Jan 6 who loudly stated their intention and beat a cop to death. Hell we have seen situations of weirdos getting close to celebrities (in their heads) then trying to kill them, and I imagine cases like that will only get worse with parasocial relationships getting a bit out of hand with modern influences and streamers.
That's the fallacy of trying to understand criminal acts. For the most part, if someone were as smart, logical, and thoughtful as you are when you imagine the best way to commit murder, the kind of person to actually try and commit the murder would not be as smart, logical, or thoughtful to have gotten into that situation in the first place.
There are exceptions, of course, but it's enough of a possibility that it's probably better to take them seriously than not.
Edit: typed all that, scrolled down, some other dude already said it
For comparison, best I could find is Xbox Series X|S selling 21M units. Link. This means Sony outpacing Xbox by a 2:1 ratio, or market share is 66% vs. 33%.
Does this specify the kinds of AI? Are none of these devs using code completion on their IDEs? Or refactoring tools? Because the bulk of them use AI these says.
Even yesteryear's code completion systems (that didn't rely on LLMs) are technically speaking, AI systems.
While the term "AI" became the next "crypto" or "Blockchain", in reality we've been using various AI products for the better part of the past 30 years.
And honestly lightweight neural nets can make for some interesting enemy behavior as well. I’ve seen a couple games using that and wouldn’t be surprised if it caught on in the future.
You mean code completion that just parses a file into an AST and does fuzzy string matching against tokens used to build that AST? I would not personally classify that as AI. It's code that was written by humans and is perfectly understandable by humans. There is no probabilistic component present, there is no generated matrix, there's no training process, it's just simple parsing and string matching.
It's early and I'm tired and probably in a poor mood and being needlessly fussy, so I apologize if this completely misses the point of your comment. I agree that there's other stuff we've been using for ages which could be reasonably classified as "AI," but I don't feel like traditional code completion systems fit there.
AI doesn’t have to be probabilistic, a classical computer science definition of AI states that it has to be an actor that reacts to some percepts according to some policy
yes we could definitely say that a calculator, technically, is an AI. but we usually don’t think of the calculator as an agent, and it doesn’t really make any decisions, as it just displays the result when prompted
That’s my point. These random definitions of AI that have been come up with by the most pedantic people in existence are not in any way helpful. We should ignore them.
They seek to redefine AI as basically anything that a computer does. This is entirely unhealthful and is only happening because they need to be right on the internet.
These irritating idiots need to go away for they serve no purpose.
but that’s not a redefinition, it was originally defined that way, like back in the 60s, by the people who started this field of research. I think a calculator is a bit of an absurd example, but an NPC that pathfinds towards the player to attack them is still AI, no matter how you look at it
People who lived in the 1960s did not by definition live in the 21st century so their definitions of what things may or may not be is immaterial.
We know what we mean by AI, and attempting to redefine that in the service of some kind of all “sides have a point” fence sitter, is a brainless arguement and is is definitively unhelpful. Defining AI strictly by “a definition of a system that does a thing based on an input”, is both overly broad and demonstrably unhelpful. It’s like arguing that a building that has been reduced to ash by a fire still contains the same constituent elements. Intellectually it’s correct, practically it’s ridiculous.
Broadly, you are attempting to define a eye as anything that any computerised system does. How can you not see that that is an overly broad definition that entirely skirts anything remotely close to the realms of helpfulness.
I would primarily understand it as being free of generative AI (picture and sound), which is what is most obvious when actually playing a game. I’m personally not against using LLMs for coding if you actually know what you’re doing and properly review the output. However at that point most will come to the conclusion that you could write the code manually anyways and probably save time.
But it still removes labor from the working class. My point is that the lines are blurry. You practically cannot draw a useful line based on the tooling used.
The AI label needs to be present if the finished product contains AI generated assets. So AI generated code, or AI generated art.
In the example above you grey boxed in AI but then replaced all the assets with ones that humans made. There is no distinction there between doing that and just having literal grey boxes.
You couldn’t require an AI label in that scenario because it would be utterly unenforceable. How would a developer prove if they did or did not use AI for temporary art?
So yes you can draw a line. Does the finished product contain AI generated assets. You don’t like that definition because you’re being pedantic but your pedantry interpretation isn’t enforceable, so it’s useless.
I feel like you have never actually developed a game. Because what you’re arguing is just weird. It makes no logical sense.
A grey box is the very most basic of what a game will ever be, it never bears any resemblance to the finished product. It is the basis most fundamental interpretation of game mechanics and systems. The gray box has no bearing on the final result of the game.
No grey box contains any aspect of artistic intent, the art team are never even involved in its creation it’s always just developers doing things. Go look up some game blogs.
This is exactly my thoughts. You need to specify. Is a product AI when Windows is used to develop it? Windows is an “AI” product as in assisted to be produced by AI.
Labels are meaningless without sensible rules and enforcement.
Another case of Lemmy users angrily downvoting because they don’t understand how the world works. These are exactly the questions that need to be asked.
Right now, I could slap the label “AI free” on my completely AI generated game and just claim that I interprete it as "the game doesn’t use gen AI while running.
Personally speaking I don’t care at all about dev tools, as they have always been used. Vibe coding does bother me though - if you don’t know HOW to code, you probably shouldn’t be doing it.
The real issue though is using AI generated assets. If you have a game that uses human made art, story, and music, no one is going to complain about you using AI. Even if you somehow managed to get there via vibe coding.
I’m saying that code completion does not constitute AI and certainly isn’t LLMs.
I then provided an example of why that isn’t the case.
You decided to respond to this by pointing out that some LLM may be involved in some code completion. Although you didn’t provide an example, so who knows if that’s actually true, it seems sort of weird to use in LLM for code completion as it’s completely unnecessary and entirely inefficient, so I kind of doubt it.
I just want to point it out for a minute, because it’s sort of feels like you don’t know this, code completion is basically autocomplete for programmers. It’s doing basic string matching, so that if you type fnc it also completes the function(), hardly the stuff of AI
The assertion was that even text completion constitutes AI. Which is a mad claim because if you’re going to say that text completion is AI then basically everything is AI.
I am not talking about what it does, I am talking about what it is.
And all tools do tend to replace human labor. For example, tractors replaced many farmhands.
The thing we face nowadays, and this is by no means limited to things like AI, is that less jobs are created by new tools than old destroyed (in my earlier simile, a tractor needs mechanics and such).
The definition of something is entirely disconnected from its usage (mainly).
And just because everyone calls LLMs now AI, there are plenty of scientific literature and things that have been called AI before. As of now, as it boils down all of these are algorithms.
The thing with machine learning is just that it is an algorithm that fine tunes itself (which is often blackbox-ish btw). And strictly speaking LLMs, commonly refered to as AI, are a subclass of ML with new technology.
I make and did not make any statement of the values of that technology or my stance on it
How so? A Large Language Model is usually a transformer based approach nowadays, right (correct me if outdated)?
AI is artificial intelligence, which has been used and abused for many different things, none of which are intelligent right now (among others used for machine learning).
Machine learning is based on linear algebra like linear regression or other methods depending what you want to do.
An algorithm is by definition anything that follows a recipe so to say.
All of these things, bare transformers and newer in development approaches like spiked neural networks or liquid neural networks are fairly basic, no?
If something uses a lot of if else statements to do stuff like become a “COM” player in a game, it is called an Expert System.
That is what is essentially in game “AI” used to be. That was not an LLM.
Stuff like clazy and clang-tidy are neither ML nor LLM.
They don’t rely on curve fitting or mindless grouping of data-points.
Parameters in them are decided, based on the programming language specification and tokenisation is done directly using the features of the language. How the tokens are used, is also determined by hard logic, rather than fuzzy logic and that is why, the resultant options you get in the completion list, end up being valid syntax for said language.
Now if you are using Cursor for code completion, of course that is AI.
It is not programmed using features of the language, but iterated until it produces output that matches what would match the features of the language.
It is like putting a billion monkeys in front of a typewriter and then selecting one that make something Shakespeare-ish, then killing off all the others. Then cloning the selected one and rinse and repeat.
And that is why it takes a stupendously disproportionate amount of energy, time and money to train something that gives an output that could otherwise be easily done better using a simple bash script.
To be honest, I feel like what you describe in the second part (the monkey analogy) is more of a genetic algorithm than a machine learning one, but I get your point.
Quick side note, I wasn’t at all including a discussion about energy consumption and in that case ML based algorithms, whatever form they take, will mostly consume more energy (assuming not completely inefficient “classical” algorithms). I do admit, I am not sure how much more (especially after training), but at least the LLMs with their large vector/matrix based approaches eat a lot (I mean that in the case for cross-checking tokens in different vectors or such). Non LLM, ML, may be much more power efficient.
My main point, however, was that people only remember AI from ~2022 and forgot about things from before (e.g. non LLM, ML algorithms) that were actively used in code completion. Obviously, there are things like ruff, clang-tidy (as you rightfully mentioned) and more that can work without and machine learning. Although, I didn’t check if there literally is none, though I assume it.
On the point of game “AI”, as in AI opponents, I wasn’t talking of that at all (though since deep mind, they did tend to be a bit more ML based also, and better at games, see Starcraft 2, instead of cheating only to get an advantage)
Yeah, my main point with all those examples was to put the point that “AI” always has been a marketing term.
Curve-fitting and data-point clustering are both pretty efficient if used for the thing they are made for. But if you then start brute-forcing multiple nodes of the same thing just to get a semblance of something else, that is otherwise not what it is made for, of course you will end up using a lot of energy.
We humans have it pretty hard. Our brain is pretty illogical. We then generate multiple layers of abstractions make a world view, trying to match the world we live in. Over those multiple layers, comes a semblance of logic.
Then we make machine.
We make machines to be inherently logical and that makes it better at logical operations than us humans. Hence calculators.
Now someone comes and says - let’s make an abstraction layer on top of the machine to represent illogical behaviour (kinda like our brains).
(┛｀Д´)┛彡┻━┻
And then on top of that, they want that illogical abstract machine to itself create abstractions inside it to be able to first mimic human output and then further to do logical stuff. All of that, just so one can mindlessly feed data into it to “train” it, instead of think themselves and feed it proper logic.
This is like saying they want to install an OS on browser WASM and then install a web browser inside that OS, to do the same thing that they would have otherwise done with the original browser.
In the monkeys analogy, you can add that the monkeys are a simulation on a computer.
Typical marketing approach: “TV says you should hate AI, communism and negros. Buy OUR product – it doesn’t contain AI, communism or negros! Buy now, only $79.99!”
I actually got doxing/threats of physical violence here on lemmy for pushing back on idiots claiming being against AI was like being racist, these people are insufferable and no matter what they think their intentions are, the consequences of their ideology is a sweeping under the rug of actual injustice, systematic prejudice and violence.
“Normies” are idiots. They’re the same people denying the efficacy of vaccines or the veracity of the moon landing. What they do should NOT be used to validate the correctness of something.
That entire statement is a lie. Antivaxers and other conspiracy nuts are just as tiny a minority as the Lemmy bubble. If you want to discredit the “normies”, at least use arguments that are actually true.
I’m not even advocating, I’m just trying to inform you people who are clearly in a bubble thinking everyone hates AI, they don’t and that became crystal clear at my recent family gatherings as the one tech guy.
I think Lemmy in particular has a bad problem of assumed group think, it makes sense since most of us left prior platforms for freedom and decentralization reasons, stuff like boycotting major companies, switching to Linux, etc all of that is much less prevalent then some very vocal people on Lemmy think.
I’m glad you had a different experience, but I see AI use increasing all around me by otherwise nontechy people, whereas I get on Lemmy and you know what the majority of the opinion is here.
The specs do not impress me for a company that prides itself for being technologically creative. The Steam Deck was a massive success for what they were able to do with that. But this? This is like a glorified Raspberry Pi if it was done by Valve.
Even if you could expand the RAM and storage, everything else is just sitting there waiting to be obsolete in a couple years. I just don't get who they're trying to make this for. You can easily build a PC with a reasonable budget that could easily tackle things this cube probably couldn't.
Individuals who game, are more likely going to look at this wanting all of the latest AAA games to work and I don't see this cube doing the workload for long. And for the projected price point, it definitely won't be worth the price.
It’s supposed to be a console. You connect it to your TV and it more or less just works. Like a PS5 or Series X, except it has more games. The entire thing consumes about half the power of just my low-end graphics card from a few years ago (3060 ti). These CPUs also aren’t available as socketed versions, nor would it be a good idea because then a user might use a chip that generates too much heat compared to the design here.
This ISN’T meant to compete with a PC. If you already have a gaming PC, you don’t want a Steam Machine. If you have a current gen console, you probably don’t want a Steam Machine.
There’s a lot of speculation as to the price. If any of the guesses from various outlets end up being true, it could be less than $500 and potentially less than $400, while there have been hints at the next generation of Xbox costing $1000. But this is all speculation.
Basically, it’s a way to get into gaming with a console-like experience, a low price, and the ability to keep your game library when you evolve into a “real” PC gamer. Honestly, if my kid was old enough to get into gaming, I’d consider one. Genius move from Valve targeting specifically a market previously untapped by them - not us folks who already buy our games on Steam.
everything else is just sitting there waiting to be obsolete in a couple years
a bit out from the cutting edge, sure, but obsolete? This aint the 90s or the Aughts any more.
A machine put together 10 years ago will still run most things fine. Not at the fanciest settings, but fine. This is essentially the same criticism PC gaming has been lobbing at consoles for years, and now we have essentially a PC masquerading it’s way into the console wing of the market – of course the same criticism still apply! It’s not incredibly beefy because it doesn’t need to be. Different audience, different requirements.
everything else is just sitting there waiting to be obsolete in a couple years.
That’s what some people said about the Steam Deck. More than a couple of years later, it is still popular; clearly not obsolete.
I just don’t get who they’re trying to make this for. You can easily build a PC with a reasonable budget that could easily tackle things this cube probably couldn’t.
I think you’re overlooking the fact that most gamers have different skills and priorities than yours. Not everyone would find it easy to build a computer at all, let alone build a quiet and compact one with well-matched components, a tuned and convenient OS, and good support.
This device is probably not a good fit for you. It probably is a good fit for many people outside of gaming PC enthusiast circles. Especially now that Valve has established its hardware as a well-defined platform for game developers to support.
I think so. It’s trying to compete with Microsoft and Sony consoles in much the same way that Steam Deck competed with the Switch. Taking on the largest segment of gaming outside mobile is pretty ambitious. It seems to be launching along with a new VR headset and a new controller, so they seem to be targeting high volume sales for the living room gaming market.
The hardware isn’t the ambitious part, the target market is.
Absolutely! The opinions you see on platforms like Lemmy or Reddit don’t necessarily reflect the views of the actual target market. Many of those users are casual gamers. These are people who own a phone and an Xbox, and that’s the extent of their gaming experience.
That market is HUGE. Valve is offering accessibility, convenience, and comparable (to consoles) performance without the complexity of PC gaming. I think it’s a fantastic move, and I’m genuinely excited to see it succeed. I have long wanted to play with more of my work friends who fall into this category.
The hardware is also the ambitious part - if they managed to figure out cooling of that hardware in that form factor, it’s one of the most impressive feats of recent years!
I don’t think that’s all that impressive though. The GPU looks to be a little weaker than the Xbox Series X, one gen newer and just over half the CUs, and the CPU is a gen newer with fewer cores. I’d wager The comparison I’ve seen is the Steam Machine is about the same size as the Series X, but a bit shorter. The Steam Machine doesn’t have a disc drive, so that makes sense.
It looks like the Steam Machine’s cooling is just a big heatsink and a 120mm fan. That’s really not that crazy. It’s basically a mini PC with a custom SOC and a bigger heatsink and fan.
I mean… What is a console, but a prebuilt running custom firmware and manufacturer’s OS? You can literally install Linux on a jailbroken PS5. Old consoles were obviously bespoke pieces of hardware that wouldn’t match any computer OS… But modern consoles are closer to prebuilt PCs than they are to old consoles.
It’s meant to be used with a TV, just like a console is. It’s targeting the console crowd, to try and capture that wing of the market and bring the console players into the PC ecosystem. It’s also trying to give PC players the flexibility to play in their living room, instead of at a computer desk.
That last part is primarily what I use my Steam Deck for right now. And it’s why I’m excited to potentially have something a little more powerful than the Steam Deck for my TV. My partner started to resent my gaming habits. After some discussions, we figured out that it was because they couldn’t cuddle me when I was at my computer desk. They missed the physical snuggle time that we got on the couch. So I got a Steam Deck, and made a point of shifting my gaming habits to be able to play more games on the couch.
Suddenly, the complaints about my gaming dried up. Because they could snuggle up next to me and read a book or scroll on TikTok while I played, which is all they really wanted. I’m still able to play my game to de-stress after work, they get their physical touch time, and we’re both happy. The only real change was in what kinds of games I played, because I had to shift more towards controller-based games instead of Keyboard+Mouse games. So fewer shooters, more hack-n-slash type stuff. But I enjoy playing both, so I just wait until after they go to bed to play the KB+M games at my desk.
And thus far, my only real complaint about the setup has been that the Steam Deck has started to struggle to run newer games. It was never meant to be a super high powered top-of-the-line device. The first consideration was portability, which meant they had to make some concessions on processing power in order to get an acceptable battery life. But with a standalone TV console, that isn’t really a big factor. So the standalone console can be much more powerful, because it’s not needing to take things like battery power consumption into account.
This isn’t going to be a high end machine, it’s probably competitive with the PS5, more or less.
You didn’t mention what you have, but you could probably get a decent upgrade competitive with this for well under $1200. The GPU seems to be about an RX 7600 ($250-260), the CPU is about a 7600 ($190), motherboard is $170, and 16GB RAM is $120. So $700-800 mandatory, plus whatever you need to replace from your current rig, and the result should be a bit faster than the Steam Machine. That’s probably a bit more than the Steam Machine, but it’s upgradeable, whereas the Steam Machine won’t be.
Lol, my dumb computer is running DDR3 / no TPM, it’s super old. I have been waiting for video cards to get better/cheaper. I’m totally down with not the fastest. If it plays 90% of my games, costs less than $600. I just read that it’s six times more powerful than the Steam Deck. The Steam Deck can run Cyberpunk 2077, so this will do just fine. Another thing that I really like is that Valve is verifying games for their hardware. The games it can’t run, I guess I won’t play. I’m sold!
The controller would’ve been an instant buy for me if it had asymmetric sticks but I’ll wait for it to come out and give it a try before I make a decision.
That was my feeling too. That PS/Wii U scheme feels so uncomfortable to me. Like over-extending your left thumb which I use much more than my right thumb on the analog stick.
But I realized I’m semi used to it on my Steam Deck and it feels okay. If I could, I would switch it out, though.
I’m down to buy the new controller. I have a Steam Deck and it’s very comfortable to hold, other than the weight. This thing is basically the Deck controls without the screen and a bunch of the weight.
Plus, I’ve personally found the gyro, trackpads, and back buttons to be extremely useful for games that don’t have controller support, or for simply easier use of existing buttons (like putting L3/R3 on back buttons). I’m really looking forward to this, looks way better than the 2015 Steam Controller.
Lastly, that charging connector / wireless adapter all-in-one combo is just nice.
My only concern would be haptics. This really needs to have good rumble motors, and not just trackpad haptics like the deck. The pad haptics are good for subtle effects, but near useless for conveying actual heavy vibration, explosions, stuff like that. Sounds like they accounted for this though:
High definition rumble
Steam Controller’s powerful motors are capable of handling complex waveforms for immersive, accurate haptics.
That sounds closer to something like the PS5 DualSense enhanced haptics, and if so, I’m here for it.
My experience with the Steam Deck and the Index controllers are the only thing keeping me from writing it off my mind all together. I have faith in Valve’s team when it comes to ergonomics so I hope they surprise me.
That said, I hope they improved on the Steam Deck because the face buttons on the Deck are so close to the edge that it’s challenging to do quick presses for games like rhythm games.
Yeah, Sony really nailed the haptics with the PS5 controller. The high-fidelity motors feel nice while still having punch, and the adaptable triggers give a nice satisfying squeeze when game designers use it properly.
The newer God of War games had a few good examples, with the adaptable triggers getting harder on more “difficult” stuff. If Kratos was using a lot of strength for some quick time event, the triggers got harder to pull. It was a nice touch that helped add immersion and suspense to a game that was already very visceral. When Kratos cleaved into an enemy during a kill animation, feeling the trigger relax afterwards was a nice satisfying capstone to the “you just beat the crap out of this enemy” animation.
No Man’s sky supports the adaptive triggers on PC (Steam) and when they are used, it really does make a little difference! I just always feel like it’s going to break the triggers for some reason. I don’t trust Sony, so that may be why. lol
Exactly. Sony insists on having symmetrical sticks, even though Xbox figured out asymmetric was better back in 2001. Every third party controller has asymmetric switches. Even Nintendo Pro controllers do. Why did Valve choose the objectively worse solution?
Now I understand. But how are symmetrical sticks ojectively worse? Valve’s design team built dozens of prototypes for the first controller, they probably did the same for the second one and still opted for symmetrical sticks.
The outermost spot is easier to reach with the thumbs. The most used elements of the controller are face buttons and the left stick. Having the left stick in the “secondary” position makes no sense.
I’m sure the team gathered some proof in usability and ergonomy tests before deciding on an option. After all, the controller needs to adapt to many possible layouts, not just for right-handed avatar movement.
I have a Steam Controller and could never get used to it. I don’t like the track pad D-pad on the left, since it’s uncomfortable to use for camera control or as a D-pad, it’s just awkward. The right one is okay, but in a weird spot, since it’s annoying to jump all the way down to the buttons.
The new one looks a little better, but I’d still prefer the left stick to be higher (maybe seap with the D-pad?). I love the Steam Deck, so maybe in practice this is fine.
The whole point is the trackpad and gyro. It really does take a lot of getting used to, and that isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, which is fine.
The thing is: if people want a regular controller they can buy a ps 4/5 and Xbox controller and use it. Everything steam has supports that.
Which is consumer friendly as fuck and actually awesome.
But if you don’t want to use the controller as it was designed, or can’t get used to it, then it’s probably not a great choice for you. Which is al totally valid.
The DS4 has a gyro though, so I can do gyro aiming w/ it if I want. Steam Input makes configuring it quite easy.
I thought I was the target for the Steam Controller because configurability sounded fun, so I picked it up w/ the Steam Link in a bundle w/ Rocket League and I ended up not using either (and I bailed on Rocket League after EGS bought them). I think it was a cool idea, but I ended up not liking it as much in practice. I keep trying to give it a second chance, but each time it just feels weird.
That said, I love the Steam Deck, which is a natural evolution of the Steam Controller. It has capacitive joysticks to make the gyro better, the track pads don’t get in the way, and the triggers and shoulder buttons feel better. The main thing I miss from the Steam Controller is the button in the triggers. Everything else on the Steam Deck is a straight upgrade, and the extra back buttons are enough to make me not miss the button in the triggers.
I might end up getting the new Steam Controller, but I wish they would’ve put the left thumbstick a bit higher and the D-pad a little lower. But since I already use a DS4 and have been considering a DS5, this is a natural upgrade for me.
I find asymmetrical sticks more comfortable to use. The natural position of my thumbs is in the top corners of the controller. Since the D-pad is rarely used, the left thumb stays in that sweet spot and the right jumps between the stick and the buttons.
I use a DS4 on my desktop, an Xbox 360 controller on my retropie box, and a Nintendo Pro controller on my Switch, and the DS4 is way less comfy than the other two. I only use the DS4 because it had better compatibility with Linux and other features (mostly gyro) when I shopped for one when I moved the Xbox controller to another room.
I’ve considered buying the DS5, but would much rather wait for something better, like a new Xbox controller with a gyro.
That’s your preference though. I prefer Sony’s symmetrical sticks. It’s ok to have your preference, no need to state that it’s the objectively better one.
I actually prefer Sony’s symmetrical design, but that’s probably because the PS1 was the first console I owned as a kid. I played other consoles like the NES/SNES/N64/Saturn/DreamCast at friends’ houses, but the PS1 was the first console that was truly mine. And I went straight from the PS1 to the PS2 in my early teens. The DualShock controller was the one I grew up playing the most, so it’s the one I’m most familiar with using. The Xbox 360 generation definitely tends to prefer asymmetry though, which is really just a matter of preference.
The Xbox was my first, and I prefer the asymmetric design. However, the controller I use on my PC is a DS4 and it’s fine, and I use it because it had better Linux support at the time.
The only thing ever called a Steam Machine before was the PC architecture they tried to push over a decade ago that was more or less just cheaper PCs of various builds that all ran on the original SteamOS. None of them were made or sold by Valve itself.
The only other steam hardware that was cancelled was the Link; because you can do what it did through an app without the need for specialized hardware now.
Yeah, I really wanted to like my Link, but it was plagued by random FPS lag spikes that made it unplayable. Sometimes a game running at a perfect 60FPS on my PC would just suddenly drop to like 2-3FPS on the Link for a minute or more. Frame times were suddenly measured in hundreds of milliseconds.
In my router and on my PC’s traffic data, I could see my PC was still sending the same amount of data to the Link. And on the Link’s detailed stats, I could see it was receiving the data. So everything was sending and receiving just fine. But the FPS would just suddenly tank for no discernible reason.
It seemed to get worse over time, (maybe as the hardware aged) and it made the Link completely unusable after a while. And the only real response I ever got from Steam about it was “have you tried updating the firmware on your Link? Or try using the app on your TV instead.” Notably, my TV at the time didn’t have the Link app available.
I’ve considered looking into whether or not I can flash something new onto the Link, to at least repurpose it into something else. I have like three of the damned things knocking around in a box, because my first one worked great and I got a few more. Then they slowly started getting those FPS drops, so I quit using them. Maybe a Bluetooth hub for Home Assistant? Or I could try to use it in a project like a Raspberry Pi.
When I listen to my interview audio, I find an additional hint from Griffais: “We intend for it to be positioned closer to the entry level of the PC space, but to be very competitive with a PC you could build yourself from parts.”
Poking around the web, I find I could probably assemble a computer with this performance for $800, not including labor. But it could easily consume half the room under my TV. A compact system with a similar GPU can cost $1,000 without storage, memory, operating system, or a gamepad.
Which makes it reasonable to assume it's gonna be at least within that price range. And that is personally way too much for me.
I would guess lower than 800 for the base model. The steam deck entry price is low and they probably will try to have the machine affordable. They know no PC gamer that can build their own PC will buy it if it’s not competitive.
Since they’re OEM integrating parts, I can guess around 550-650 for the base model but that will also depend on the US tariffs that week.
Well, their customers are PC gamers so it makes sense to target them. Not all gamers build their PC themselves (I’d say most don’t as I have built most of my friends pc). Having a plug and play solution, without risk of hardware/driver/software issues, can be attractive to some. The market for these is not hardcore gamers, but couch gaming.
But if the hardware is more expensive than a pre-built, no one will buy it.
They said in interviews that some steam deck users primarily use it docked to a TV (like I do), and that showed them there is a market for such devices.
It looks cool, but to me, if it’s not being offered for around $500, then it’s just a pc replacement in my eyes. From the questions he asked, it definitely seems like it’s going to cost more than $800.
Good timing though, get your system out first before the next generation starts releasing at the end of next year or 2027. From what I have seen, the first to release generally does the best.
My problem seems to be how much it talks about the ps5. It’s been 5 years, so of course, better hardware can fit into smaller space. My problem with that is generally any hardware that compacts it this much will run into heating issues a few years into owning it so I would absolutely prefer the bigger ps5 anyday which has shown no issues so far. Also, they were comparing it to the ps5 alot which is a 5 year old system. I would hope it does significantly better!
I also would like to know more about the OS. Is it just the steam deck OS slapped on this, or is it customized more? I would want/hope they deliver the things that a console offers and more that make it more convenient than just a PC.
Overall, I am interested in this, but if it really does costs as much as I think it will, I am not sure who this will ultimately be marketed to, and I could be wrong, but I doubt it will sell enough for them to say it was a success lets make more. They do have the money to throw at it though, so I guess that was enough for them to take a stab at it after the success of the steam deck.
While the main cooling system is important, the thermal interface material they pick is also a big deal with systems intended to not be user serviced and with long lasting lifetimes like consoles… It honestly depends a lot on what TIM they decided to go with. Traditional thermal pastes are cheap but almost always dry out after just a few years causing much higher temps. Liquid metal is great, but more expensive and you must design it right, vertical orientation can cause leakage if not properly designed (some laptops end up having issues because of this). Phase change material is probably the optimal middle ground for ease of installation, and simplified design.
Watch the gamer nexus video if you want more info on the cooling. Iirc they use phase change TIM for the CPU and paste for the GPU.
They also talk about how they designed the case to avoid it being choked
It sort of is… I collect consoles, I have everything from the 2600 to PS3/Wii/360. I quit after that because the XBone and PS4 were just horrible shitty PCs that ran games like garbage and had insane load times. I like the newest XBox and PS5, but I’m done collecting consoles forever because they’re just locked down PCs now. The Steam Machine is a console for computer game players with MUCH LESS locked down OS than a PlayStation or XBox and I love that idea very much. I have four high-end computers for games at my house (maybe five, one is old but still works great with linux) and I would still consider a Steam Machine in my house as another first computer… but it does really taste like a console (in a good way)
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