The good: WB development studios have been limited to making games off of only WB properties for so long. Developers would come up with a pitch or a prototype, but it wasn’t allowed to be an original IP, which was bad for them and Warner Bros., since it made it harder to sell off the video game division by itself. Maybe this will give those devs more freedom.
The bad: We’re rapidly approaching that Bojack Horseman joke where there are only four companies with extremely long hyphenated names, and Netflix doesn’t seem to know what they want to do in the video game space or how to do it. They have an incentive to lock games exclusively behind subscriptions, which is what everyone was afraid Game Pass would do but Nintendo and Netflix are doing this already right now.
What games to make would be such an easy decision. They had a plan to make a Magic The Gathering show at one point, right? Make a game instead. Use the Hogwarts Legacy engine as a base, and rebrand spell types as different colors of the color pie. Each NPC has 1-3 colors they are especially adept at. They could even keep the school theme and have Strixhaven be the hub world.
As it says in the article, it’ll be smaller and quieter, so less offensive for most people’s living rooms than a full-size desktop. It’s not meant to replace your existing PC if you have one, unless it was getting old and you were about to replace it anyway. If you don’t have a PC, or don’t have one in the living room, then it might be a better option than anyone else’s prebuilt.
it could become the new standard for industry benchmarking/testing
Exactly. We are already seeing game companies specifically mention the Steam Deck in patch notes. This will give them a standard item to validate compatibility against. Any game company that wants to make sure their game works well will have a Steam Machine on-hand to QA with.
And I fully agree with you on benchmarking. It will be a very standardized system to point to in game reviews.
I mean, it’s fine to do so, as long as you have PC hardware that meets your needs. Valve would be fine with it too. As long as it can run Steam, all good. For Valve, I expect that the Steam Machine is to provide an easy-to-set-up option a la consoles that let them move into the living room for people who have an issue with that. If you can already use/configure a PC and have one, then that option is gonna work too.
The biggest advantages it has over other PCs is CEC and Wake on USB(controller) enabled out of the box. Those are the two features I miss the most on my HTPC.
Standardized design, sure. I would argue you could get something more powerful at a comparable size for not too much more. My HTPC is about the size of a shoe box yet has a R7 7700X and a RX 6900 XT.
That’s a lot for someone who doesn’t understand computers beyond Windows and MacOS. People also don’t realise that since the PS4 and the Xbox One every console is just a X86-64 machine. So, I think it’s a good move from Valve. Also it will be easier to manage and optimise for Valve if all their hardware is the same, a bit like Apple.
There are people who exist between “I build, format and otherwise manage my own gaming rig,” and “I don’t need a PC for games.”
My partner is a perfect example. She has my old PC shell, with some $500 of GPU, internal memory, and accessories, hooked up to the TV. She uses it daily, almost exclusively for Steam games and streaming services that she finds more comfortable to navigate with a keyboard and mouse. A smaller, quieter, streamlined, “this more or less will do the things you want to do straight out of the box” product would have saved both her (and I, because that thing has had some troubleshooting) a lot of headache, while looking far more presentable to boot.
Maybe she’s the odd one out and the target audience is more niche than my bias’ recognize, but I guess we’ll see for sure when this thing releases.
At least for me, a Steam Machine would be the ideal use case for my brother, since the literal ONLY game he plays is CS2. He used to play Fortnite, but he hasn’t done that in years… and even then if he wanted we could just swap places between my current real computer and the Steam Machine. It’s also really small so it wouldn’t occupy much space on the other room of the house.
If its a decent price I’ll want it. I love the freedom PC gaming allows but sometimes I do miss the convenience of a console. It would be great for my kid as well. No fidling with the display, having the PC not wake properly from sleep, controllers not connecting, etc. It would just work. Our current setup inevitably something doesnt work right first try.
“on your machine” requires you to have a machine. This isn’t for people with computers already. This is for people who are already looking for a new machine, and this becomes the “ready out of the box” option.
And why wouldn’t you? Resolution and framerate are the same either way… and I think you can even play with a real Wiimote on Dolphin, instead of the shitty Joy-Con motion controls.
So it’s basically $70 for… what? New pages in Rosalina’s storybook? Lmao no thanks.
Nintendo’s greed is staggering, this generation. I couldn’t believe they announced the Pokémon Legends DLC before the game is even out. “I know you haven’t given us your money yet, but… please can we have some more? 🥺”
I couldn't believe they announced the Pokémon Legends DLC before the game is even out. "I know you haven't given us your money yet, but... please can we have some more? 🥺"
Do it. I have a dedicated Ubuntu server with a bunch of docker instances on it. one of them being Romm. I just upload all my roms to it and I can play any game in any browser on any device connected to the internet. I have NES, SNES, Genesis, Saturn, PSX, PS2, Dreamcast, Saturn, Jaguar, 3DO, N64, Gamecube, Wii, Wii U, Gameboy/Color, GBA, DS, etc, etc, etc all ready to go.
Don't shell out $70 again to play these. they're already available free o charge online. Just set up dolphin and have at it.
Looks awesome. Every platform you say? reads more Ah shit, looks like they’re gonna make me learn Docker… Someday
They also say game progress sync is coming. My iPhone does that in Delta. It’s awesome. I can show someone a game I’m playing. Doesn’t matter what. I save with a save state. Give it a minute. Uninstall the app. It’s gone. All the games, gone. Reinstall the app. Empty library. Go into Settings. Connect my Google Drive. Wait a minute. Games sync. Open same game, load the state. Right where I left off. That shit is awesome. And it being Apple, I can AirDrop the game to another iPhone user, and they can add it right to their own library. Sadly, it’s iOS only — the emulator itself runs on a Mac, but it doesn’t run very well. Mac actually has a great emulator too, but it doesn’t sync with anything. If only I could get it to sync with my MacBook.
Something that syncs across all the platforms would be, like, the Holy Grail. (Actually you can kinda rig it with SyncThing, as like a proof of concept, I linked two Macs running the Switch emulator and they were able to play the same Animal Crossing island. Not at the same time, of course, but when one saves, it syncs, and the other can open it… due to the way Switches save, this is not very reliable at all!)
docker is painfully easy to learn...hell you really don't need to even "learn" anything. think of a docker compose.yml as very basic instructions on what you want the thing to install and what you want it to do. save it. and then run docker compose up -d on your server and you're done. that's it.
for example the docker-compose.yml for Romm is like 10 lines and you just tell it what version to download and run, what API to use to get the meta info for your games, user name and pw for romm and that's it really. Most cases whatever you want to use in a docker will have a yml file for you anyways to copy and paste. you can have it up and running in less than 10 minutes.
The beauty of Romm also is if you have A LOT of roms you can upload them all in one go, then let it scrap the meta data and walk away, turn off your browser, check it in the morning or whatever. It's a pretty good setup. all the emulators and what have you run off your server and are installed automatically via Romm depending on what roms you upload to it.
Here’s hoping Pokemon and Nintendo see disappointing sales. Everytime someone brings up Pokemon, bring up Palworld and how massive of a dick the Pokemon Company/Nintendo was. When people talk about the Switch 2, they bring up all the lawsuits Nintendo brought up on fans, all the YouTubers that dealt with issues because suing people, I’d assume, is Nintendo’s main income source at this point…
Worthy cause but a slim hope. Everyone who’s been planning to continue supporting Nintendo, and who I have talked about these issues with, most of them echo the sentiments and agree that Nintendo is bad, but go on to say ‘…but in the end, my favorite franchises are exclusive to Nintendo so…’. I fear nothing can make a dent in the nostalgia abuser that is Nintendo, not like this.
i doubt it, 10s millions still are pokemon fans, majority are children + they also have the TRADING card game which i heard they are making bank on that too, and then the extra side games like GO, and pocket, only boosts pokemons popularity.
they dint fall in sales when they enshittified sword and shield and beyond. they rightfully sued some research instituition, because naming some of thier stuff after oncogene is bad press.
Others answered but it’s easier/cheaper for them to use a vendor’s engine. It makes sense.
What sucks is that UE seems to almost have a monopoly on engine leasing. I wish there were more options. Having all games use the same engine is putting too many eggs in the same basket.
They claimed that it was expensive and was part of the reason for cyberpunk’s turbulent launch.
It’s a real shame though, most UE5 runs awful it seems, and are still limited by single thread performance, unlike RED Engine which scales far better with more CPU cores.
Tbh RED engine also has its plethora of problems, missing features, and makes it harder to onboard new team members (need to train on new engine instead of basically every single dev having experience with unity or unreal).
Aside from doing the work to maintain and update your own engine, there is also the problem of onboarding new hires. If you use a standard you can go out and hire people already experienced with working on the engine. If you use your own, you have to teach a new hire to use it before they can be any help.
I read that this caused a lot of development woes on Halo Infinite for example.
I feel like I’m in the minority when I’m looking forward to Nintendo making a high-powered console for once. The last time their hardware was on par with or better than the rest of the industry was the Gamecube, which was an amazing little system.
I dont think itll be high powered, thats just the reporter adding something for clickbait.
Im one to believe in Bobby Kottick mentioning that the Switch 2 is roughly the power of a PS4 as he was in contempt of the court when his leak of its performance was discussed. the handheld likely has better cpu performance though vs ps4, as its basically in the same playing field as the steam deck is, both companies who can sit and make thir 30% cut from developer games.
Tldr, dont expect Series S perf, expect steam deck performance with better battery and DLSS support to 4k (i personally believe itll target 1080p60, and use DLSS Performamce preset to upscale to 4k, as 1440p tvs arent common)
You’re not. I’ve been wanting this since the GameCube, the last Nintendo system that was built with performance in mind and advertised as such. The Wii was a step in the wrong direction, and it was all downhill from there as far as my head canon is concerned. I’m glad that Nintendo is finally catering to fans like us again after waiting patiently for 22 years.
There is no need to breakup Netflix and Disney. This was solved 80 some years ago with legislation that didn’t allow studios to control movie theatres. It was no coincidence that Disney+ launched a month after that law was rolled back.
Everything today ignores all laws by saying, “Yes the law says it’s illegal but it doesn’t specifically mention using an App so we can do the illegal thing with an App.”
That’s why you should learn to sail the virtual seas early, lad. Why worry about the corpo fleet when you got your own vessel filled with treasure to float on with :)
Yeah, since thr Gabecube is just a PC then a company could just buy the valve subsidized machine, wipe it, and use it for business stuff and never buy a game. Valve can’t risk that.
This is the key thing that everyone comparing it directly to consoles seems to be completely missing. Even if you’re only buying new steam games the costs are going to be way lower, but you could buy this and just play free giveaways or emulate your own old console games, and suddenly it’s a bargain (like any PC).
I hope they put out the last FF VII remake part before that, so i can finally start playing them all! I don’t care what they want to waste their money on afterwards lol
I wouldn’t be shy about getting into Remake or Rebirth now. They both stand up as their own games (concise start/ending, somewhat distinct mechanics, each one is easily 40+ hours of gameplay). And with Part 3 targeted for 2027 release, I suspect this kind of overhaul would be outside their dev cycle to implement.
Part 2 is already using the engine from Part 1 with minor adjustments. I suspect most of Part 3 development is cinematics and world building.
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