My theory for a bit now has been that Valve is playing the long game in trying to make SteamOS a mainstay gaming platform as an alternative to Windows, and that the hardware products are essentially a way of breaking into that market. Even a few years ago, the idea of a custom Linux distro based on Arch Linux with both a built-in full desktop mode and a lower-powered gaming mode that you could switch between on a handheld device would have sounded kind of crazy, but now we're at the point where it's fully supported on more than one vendor's hardware. This seems like it could be a similar play in the traditional desktop space; if they can prove that the concept is viable, maybe other vendors will come out with similar products that come with SteamOS by default. All of this insulates them from having to worry about the long-term sustainability of making money from game sales on Windows, and if it works out, they wouldn't even necessarily have to continue making hardware indefinitely.
I don't pretend to have any insight into whether this theory is correct beyond that it seems to track with what they've been doing lately, or any expertise to make claims about whether it will work or not. In a lot of ways, this might just be a projection of my desires as a gamer who enjoys not having had to boot into Windows to play something for quite a few years at this point. I do hope that maybe they're just crazy enough to not only try this, but pull it off though!
I don't think this needs to be a theory. Valve regards Microsoft's flirtations with walled gardens (MS Store) as an existential threat. They see their investment into linux gaming as a hedge against future locked down windows OS, which is at this point probably inevitable.
Gabe is a former MSFTy, left in 1996 to found Valve, he saw games as more popular than Windows. It wouldn’t surprise me if he got into games in order to compete against his former employer which would suggest to me that this plan has been in motion since before 1996, almost 30 years. At least from my point of view, if I wanted to take on Microsoft, doing what he did for the past 30 years is how I would go about doing that.
I still remember when Valve first showed an early alpha unreleased version of Steam running natively in Ubuntu for the first time in the early 2010s. It blew my mind that a major company, especially an entertainment company, was targeting Linux at this scale.
Of course, Wine was very lackluster in those days, and for a while I was worried they'd eventually give up with the monumental effort that would be involved in getting it up to snuff.
It's now over a decade later and they're still at it and have made monumental leaps. Valve truly was and still is playing the long game here.
Imagine if Microsoft had never threatened their business with the Windows 8 store and the anxiety of Microsoft locking down their platform.
> "All of this insulates them from having to worry about the long-term sustainability of making money from game sales on Windows..."
The weak link in your theory is that Microsoft is in control of the future of the DirectX API, not Valve, and it is Microsoft who is working with nVidia and AMD and game studios to evolve DirectX to take advantage of the latest GPU features. SteamOS can at best follow closely behind but can never take the lead without Valve developing their own games API that games developers an GPU makers are willing to target.
Nice theory and it would make sense with how unstable Microsoft has been in their all encompassing quest to make AI a thing people use by cramming it into everything (along with their other shitty practices)
Though not necessarily the case since selling steam devices also will make steam the default even more which could also be a primary reason it could also be both, who knows.
there is a lot of evidence for this. this isn't a hypothesis, this is what's going on.
why else would Valve spend so much time and money on Proton? To eliminate the dependency on Windows. Windows is still the OS for gaming. Valve doesn't like that and they are successfully slowly changing that.
Now, if they would just build their 1st party titles for arm64 macOS. I would love to play Portal 1, Portal 2, and Half-Life 2 et al on my decked out MacBook Pro, but I can't. Why can't I? Well, MacBooks are such a slim slice of the market. Yeah well it would be slightly more of the market if I could play Team Fortress 2 on this thing.
> Steam Frame is a PC, and runs SteamOS powered by a Snapdragon® 8 Series Processor. With 16GB of RAM, Steam Frame supports stand-alone play on a growing number of both VR and non-VR games without needing to stream from your PC.
So Steam + Proton works on aarch64? Is this something already available/supported, or is this an announcement?
Pretty much the only reason I boot to Windows anymore is to play games with my kids and family. The direction of this thing is dangerously close to being all I'd care about from a desktop computer.
If Valve pivoted into making a well-supported laptop with good hardware that ran Linux and played games...
In this big hardware refresh, honestly most excited about finally getting a new steam controller [1], which feels like it might finally give us a better, more extensible standard than the extremely outdated XInput protocol (which still doesn't even support motion controls)
SteamOS has way more appeal to gamers in 2025 than it could have had in, say, 2004.
On the surface the lack of popular multiplayer titles that require a kernel-level anti-cheat is a heavy downside, but gaming is extremely fragmented these days.
In 2004 everyone, save for the casual players, at least tried DOOM3 and Half-Life 2.
In 2025 Fortnight has an all-time peak of 12M players, but at the same time there are many millions of Minecraft players who never even launched Fortnight. And DOTA2/LOL players who've never launched either of those 2. And then you see a bunch of indie titles selling tens of millions of copies, and their player base is completely unrelated to those above.
The days of the gaming mono-culture are long gone, and inability to play a limited number of Game As A Service titles is not as severe of a handicap anymore, especially since people who play those kinds of games aren't typically as interested in any other titles.
For better or worse, peer pressure doesn't work as heavy these days, as it used to
I was a heavy gamer in 2004 and never played HL2 or DOOM3. I know many such people. I think games like Mario party, smash, and Mario kart were far more ubiquitous.
What made you go with comparing things to 2004? Seems random, there is so much that is different in the Linux ecosystem generally, Valve just put the situation on a rocket and shot it into space.
Point taken, it really is marvelous! When I was running Gentoo Linux, and Windows 2000 back then I never thought things would be so portable and simple!
> the lack of popular multiplayer titles that require a kernel-level anti-cheat is a heavy downside
It's a downside if all you want to do is play those games. But it's an upside if you're hoping they someday ditch all that nonsense. This puts more pressure on those publishers.
True. Things were better the old way with so many kids at least having a video game like Melee or CoD or Halo in common. I would've liked those to run on Linux, but that doesn't matter so much.
Computer vision based cheats using an external machine that records the game's final rendered frames, process them with specialized YOLO models, and control "mices" and "controllers" to aim for you already exist.
If the aim for kernel level anti-cheats was to combat cheating, they have failed and are completely worthless.
If you want to plug an external USB hard drive or SSD at full speed, you'll need to plug it at the front? Or use up the only USB-C port...
I suspect most joysticks sold today come with a USB-C to USB-C cable, so if you want to charge your controller you either need to plug on the back, use an adapter, or get a USB-A to USB-C cable?
Also the single USB-C port isn't Thunderbolt/USB4, and they're only including gigabit ethernet, which is disappointing but perhaps understandable if they're trying to keep it at a low price.
Very interesting! The one killer issue that jumps to mind is anti-cheat. I switched away from gaming on Linux via Proton to gaming on Windows because Battlefield 6's anti-cheat won't work under Proton. Many games are like this, particularly some of the most popular (Rainbow 6 Siege for instance). And BF6 made this decision only recently despite the growing number of Steam Deck players (and other players on linux - in fairness I don't think there would have been that many BF6 players on a handheld).
Edit: I specifically use a gaming-only PC. The hardware is used for nothing else. Hence, discussions of rootkits don't really bother me personally much and on balance I'd really rather see fewer cheaters in my games. I think it would be the same with any of these machines - anything Steam-branded is likely to be a 99% gaming machine and their users will only care that their games work, not about the mechanisms of the anti-cheat software.
> "No indication for whether the CPU/GPU/RAM/SSD are upgradable or all soldered together on the board"
With 99.9% certainty this box is carrying on the legacy of the Deck and the Deck OLED, which means that it has a 100% custom crafted SoC with soldered components. Which also means they also could perform some trickery not found in "normal" PCs, like UDMA and custom interface.
> "but doesn't mention what kind of games it can run at that quality."
According to the specs it has a custom RDNA 3 chip w/ 28 CUs and boost clock at 2.45Ghz. The Playstation 5 has a custom RDNA 2 chip w/ 36 CUs @ 2.23 GHz and the Xbox Series X has a custom RDNA2 2 chip w/ 52 CUs @ 1.83Ghz.
Given the optimizations AMD made in RDNA 3 (the "budget" 9070XT can easily keep up with the prev gen "enthousiast" 9700XTX) I could make a safe bet it's on the same level of performance as a Playstation 5
> "No performance benchmarks, or mention of what the equivalent retail CPU/GPU to their custom one is."
~7600X, ~RX7700, but like I noted earlier that's meaningless because the overall architecture of the hardware in this box is likely completely incomparable with a generic PC (just like with XBX and PS5, by the way)
There are some early previews where people ran some actual games at it[0].
Here are some of their results:
> In Cyberpunk 2077, running at 4K, it’s a surprisingly stable 60fps, albeit with the caveat of that using FSR 3 upscaling on Performance mode with Medium quality settings. But, also: basic ray tracing, something the Deck can’t even think about enabling outside of very specific games.
> The next game I tested, Black Myth: Wukong, is best run with its own RT effects switched off. Still, it also averaged around 60fps on otherwise similar settings: Performance-level FSR 3 upscaling to 4K, plus the Medium quality preset. And, in an almost unnerving repeat performance, Silent Hill f ran close enough to a solid 60fps (with most drops owed to Unreal Engine 5’s signature stuttering) on the Performance-level graphics settings and, once again, FSR 3 running on Performance mode.
It's basically a more powerful Steam Deck that's connected to a TV. The games will be "verified" and the settings pre-tuned for ideal performance just like the Steam Deck. They did a good job making the most of mediocre hardware in the Deck.
My initial thoughts were that this thing would cost considerably more, but I'm looking at the specs and it might not be too bad. Maybe it'll start at $499 or $599 and go up $749 or $849. I'm guessing SoC and not easily upgraded. It says Zen4 so it won't be Strix Point/Halo, but maybe some bastard variation with a Zen4 core and newer GPU than the Deck.
All my friends have moved on to PC, and I don't really want to build a $1000 minimum computer with crazy LEDs that takes up a ton of space with a monitor at this point in my life. And SteamDeck doesn't support KB+M well.
I have no qualms about couch gaming with a KB+M if I can do it with my friends and my already extensive Steam library. Unless they completely drop the ball on this, I'm in.
> No indication for whether the CPU/GPU/RAM/SSD are upgradable or all soldered together on the board.
Almost certainly. This is the direction the industry is heading, and the perverse unavailability of high-end discrete graphics cards is the nail in the coffin.
> - No indication for whether the CPU/GPU/RAM/SSD are upgradable or all soldered together on the board.
According to a video by Digital Foundry, the main limitation will be the 8 GB of VRAM (some new games may require more), which definitely can't be upgraded.
Yeah, gemini gives $649 - $699 for BOM, $749+ if they want some margin from the hardware.
Which is cheaper than most "Gaming PC", but still more expensive than Switch/PS5, and lack the expandability of PC.
I wish they could sell at $300-$500, that's really going to make this a must have for this year.
Hmm. Not that it is big deal, but I would be somewhat worried about true longevity with the VRAM. Not sure if SteamOS helps there, but on PC some new titles are going over the 8GB VRAM.
Steam is the only reason I have a Windows desktop, I'll probably just get one of these next time I want a hardware refresh (which admittedly will probably be many years).
Interesting that it uses KDE Plasma for the desktop
I wonder if Steam will finally implement multi-user sign on for local multiplayer games (like all true consoles).
It's something that doesn't get headlines, but a real barrier for enjoyment for a console-like PC. Hate being stuck with 'guest 1' and 'guest 2' or whatever. Many games want each player to progress and without true multi sign on, it just doesn't work. Hence games dropping local multiplayer on PC.
Arch-based? KDE Plasma? There might happen a real "year of desktop Linux", in a way. That is, a Linux desktop that sneaks in as a side dish, but maybe gains some non-zero traction, and bringing FOSS to more people who are not engineers.
Huh, I had just been trying to look into whether there existed a "mini PC but with a GPU in it that's at least as good as the ones in game consoles."
(Or, to put that another way: fundamentally, I want a game console — a piece of well-integrated consumer electronics that lives unobtrusively in my entertainment center, hooked up to my TV, requiring no maintenance, controlled entirely with a Bluetooth gamepad. But I want it to enable me to run both 1. current-gen games at at-least-equivalent fidelity to the console ports of those games; and also 2. "all the games a Windows PC can run." So, anything on Steam, yes; but also, all the weird little indie games on itch.io that never make it to Steam; and old DOS/Win31/Win95 games (either as polished ports from GOG, or through various forms of virtualization/emulation I'd set up myself); and even the little freeware games floating about on the "old internet", that someone made in Game Maker or RPG Maker 2000 or even as a standalone Flash projector executable, way back when.)
The closest thing I had found to that description so far, that even might work for the use-case, was the ROG NUC.
>Yes, Steam Machine is optimized for gaming, but it's still your PC. Install your own apps, or even another operating system. Who are we to tell you how to use your computer?
In a world of locked bootloaders and ever more locked down device, valve is pushing the envolope with a linux based gaming console.
> you can wake your Steam Machine without leaving your couch. [using the built in steam controller wireless adapter].
This one simple thing is the only thing that makes my SteamDeck+Dock feel like a second class console. So far they only claim it's for the Steam Controller, but I'd be great if it worked with the handful of 8bitdo or Switch controllers I've been using.
> Who are we to tell you how to use your computer?
i'm having a hard time describing the feelings this makes me feel. like i've been stressed, bedraggled and worn down, and suddenly there's a moment where i can just rest
it's nice to be excited about something for once instead of the baseline expectation of a horrible adversarial experience, which is the case for most tech in 2025
it is somewhat depressing that it's this novel to expect a piece of hardware to actually exist to make my life nicer vs the default of being an abomination that tries constantly to extract money and information from me like a fucking vampire
(and i guess, not having used this yet, this also speaks to valve being one of the last companies that i have any trust in to be capable of making a business decision that makes them less money in the short run in order to deliver a better product)
[+] [-] saghm|3 months ago|reply
I don't pretend to have any insight into whether this theory is correct beyond that it seems to track with what they've been doing lately, or any expertise to make claims about whether it will work or not. In a lot of ways, this might just be a projection of my desires as a gamer who enjoys not having had to boot into Windows to play something for quite a few years at this point. I do hope that maybe they're just crazy enough to not only try this, but pull it off though!
[+] [-] beAbU|3 months ago|reply
[+] [-] cjbgkagh|3 months ago|reply
[+] [-] ajam1507|3 months ago|reply
[+] [-] BlueTemplar|3 months ago|reply
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-18996377
[+] [-] MetaWhirledPeas|3 months ago|reply
It's already happening. Lenovo released a SteamOS variant of the The Lenovo Legion Go S.
[+] [-] CupricTea|3 months ago|reply
Of course, Wine was very lackluster in those days, and for a while I was worried they'd eventually give up with the monumental effort that would be involved in getting it up to snuff.
It's now over a decade later and they're still at it and have made monumental leaps. Valve truly was and still is playing the long game here.
Imagine if Microsoft had never threatened their business with the Windows 8 store and the anxiety of Microsoft locking down their platform.
[+] [-] ThrowawayB7|3 months ago|reply
The weak link in your theory is that Microsoft is in control of the future of the DirectX API, not Valve, and it is Microsoft who is working with nVidia and AMD and game studios to evolve DirectX to take advantage of the latest GPU features. SteamOS can at best follow closely behind but can never take the lead without Valve developing their own games API that games developers an GPU makers are willing to target.
[+] [-] m463|3 months ago|reply
[+] [-] yapyap|3 months ago|reply
Though not necessarily the case since selling steam devices also will make steam the default even more which could also be a primary reason it could also be both, who knows.
[+] [-] naikrovek|3 months ago|reply
why else would Valve spend so much time and money on Proton? To eliminate the dependency on Windows. Windows is still the OS for gaming. Valve doesn't like that and they are successfully slowly changing that.
Now, if they would just build their 1st party titles for arm64 macOS. I would love to play Portal 1, Portal 2, and Half-Life 2 et al on my decked out MacBook Pro, but I can't. Why can't I? Well, MacBooks are such a slim slice of the market. Yeah well it would be slightly more of the market if I could play Team Fortress 2 on this thing.
[+] [-] Ey7NFZ3P0nzAe|3 months ago|reply
I'm so happy to read this
[+] [-] teroshan|3 months ago|reply
> Steam Frame is a PC, and runs SteamOS powered by a Snapdragon® 8 Series Processor. With 16GB of RAM, Steam Frame supports stand-alone play on a growing number of both VR and non-VR games without needing to stream from your PC.
So Steam + Proton works on aarch64? Is this something already available/supported, or is this an announcement?
[1] Steam Frame, which is the VR Headset releasing alongside the Steam Machine. Dedicated discussion here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45903325
[+] [-] thadt|3 months ago|reply
If Valve pivoted into making a well-supported laptop with good hardware that ran Linux and played games...
[+] [-] 12_throw_away|3 months ago|reply
[1] https://store.steampowered.com/sale/steamcontroller
[+] [-] DiskoHexyl|3 months ago|reply
On the surface the lack of popular multiplayer titles that require a kernel-level anti-cheat is a heavy downside, but gaming is extremely fragmented these days. In 2004 everyone, save for the casual players, at least tried DOOM3 and Half-Life 2. In 2025 Fortnight has an all-time peak of 12M players, but at the same time there are many millions of Minecraft players who never even launched Fortnight. And DOTA2/LOL players who've never launched either of those 2. And then you see a bunch of indie titles selling tens of millions of copies, and their player base is completely unrelated to those above.
The days of the gaming mono-culture are long gone, and inability to play a limited number of Game As A Service titles is not as severe of a handicap anymore, especially since people who play those kinds of games aren't typically as interested in any other titles. For better or worse, peer pressure doesn't work as heavy these days, as it used to
[+] [-] surajrmal|3 months ago|reply
[+] [-] lazyfanatic42|3 months ago|reply
Point taken, it really is marvelous! When I was running Gentoo Linux, and Windows 2000 back then I never thought things would be so portable and simple!
[+] [-] MetaWhirledPeas|3 months ago|reply
It's a downside if all you want to do is play those games. But it's an upside if you're hoping they someday ditch all that nonsense. This puts more pressure on those publishers.
[+] [-] BlueTemplar|3 months ago|reply
"Casual player" is very poorly defined.
You are comparing concurrent players with unique players (IIRC half a billion for Fortnite ?)
"Many millions" hardly means anything when you use it to cover 3 orders of magnitude.
And so on and so forth...
[+] [-] morshu9001|3 months ago|reply
[+] [-] spookie|3 months ago|reply
Computer vision based cheats using an external machine that records the game's final rendered frames, process them with specialized YOLO models, and control "mices" and "controllers" to aim for you already exist.
If the aim for kernel level anti-cheats was to combat cheating, they have failed and are completely worthless.
[+] [-] haunter|3 months ago|reply
It has to be no more than 800€ then if it also wants to compete against the console market.
Even 800€ is too much imo because looking at the specs it's already not a "future proof" build, more like a previous gen gaming laptop
0, https://www.theverge.com/tech/818111/valve-steam-machine-han...
[+] [-] TheCoreh|3 months ago|reply
- 2 USB3-A on the front
- 2 USB2-A on the back
- 1 USB-C on the back
If you want to plug an external USB hard drive or SSD at full speed, you'll need to plug it at the front? Or use up the only USB-C port...
I suspect most joysticks sold today come with a USB-C to USB-C cable, so if you want to charge your controller you either need to plug on the back, use an adapter, or get a USB-A to USB-C cable?
Also the single USB-C port isn't Thunderbolt/USB4, and they're only including gigabit ethernet, which is disappointing but perhaps understandable if they're trying to keep it at a low price.
[+] [-] redfloatplane|3 months ago|reply
Edit: I specifically use a gaming-only PC. The hardware is used for nothing else. Hence, discussions of rootkits don't really bother me personally much and on balance I'd really rather see fewer cheaters in my games. I think it would be the same with any of these machines - anything Steam-branded is likely to be a 99% gaming machine and their users will only care that their games work, not about the mechanisms of the anti-cheat software.
[+] [-] paxys|3 months ago|reply
- No price
- No indication for whether the CPU/GPU/RAM/SSD are upgradable or all soldered together on the board.
- "4K gaming at 60 FPS with FSR" but doesn't mention what kind of games it can run at that quality.
- No performance benchmarks, or mention of what the equivalent retail CPU/GPU to their custom one is.
At face value this seems like a $500-600 PC, and that's also the price it would be able to compete with consoles at.
[+] [-] mindcrash|3 months ago|reply
With 99.9% certainty this box is carrying on the legacy of the Deck and the Deck OLED, which means that it has a 100% custom crafted SoC with soldered components. Which also means they also could perform some trickery not found in "normal" PCs, like UDMA and custom interface.
> "but doesn't mention what kind of games it can run at that quality."
According to the specs it has a custom RDNA 3 chip w/ 28 CUs and boost clock at 2.45Ghz. The Playstation 5 has a custom RDNA 2 chip w/ 36 CUs @ 2.23 GHz and the Xbox Series X has a custom RDNA2 2 chip w/ 52 CUs @ 1.83Ghz.
Given the optimizations AMD made in RDNA 3 (the "budget" 9070XT can easily keep up with the prev gen "enthousiast" 9700XTX) I could make a safe bet it's on the same level of performance as a Playstation 5
> "No performance benchmarks, or mention of what the equivalent retail CPU/GPU to their custom one is."
~7600X, ~RX7700, but like I noted earlier that's meaningless because the overall architecture of the hardware in this box is likely completely incomparable with a generic PC (just like with XBX and PS5, by the way)
[+] [-] JeremyNT|3 months ago|reply
Here are some of their results:
> In Cyberpunk 2077, running at 4K, it’s a surprisingly stable 60fps, albeit with the caveat of that using FSR 3 upscaling on Performance mode with Medium quality settings. But, also: basic ray tracing, something the Deck can’t even think about enabling outside of very specific games.
> The next game I tested, Black Myth: Wukong, is best run with its own RT effects switched off. Still, it also averaged around 60fps on otherwise similar settings: Performance-level FSR 3 upscaling to 4K, plus the Medium quality preset. And, in an almost unnerving repeat performance, Silent Hill f ran close enough to a solid 60fps (with most drops owed to Unreal Engine 5’s signature stuttering) on the Performance-level graphics settings and, once again, FSR 3 running on Performance mode.
[0] https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/hands-on-with-the-new-steam...
[+] [-] jm4|3 months ago|reply
My initial thoughts were that this thing would cost considerably more, but I'm looking at the specs and it might not be too bad. Maybe it'll start at $499 or $599 and go up $749 or $849. I'm guessing SoC and not easily upgraded. It says Zen4 so it won't be Strix Point/Halo, but maybe some bastard variation with a Zen4 core and newer GPU than the Deck.
[+] [-] butlike|3 months ago|reply
I have no qualms about couch gaming with a KB+M if I can do it with my friends and my already extensive Steam library. Unless they completely drop the ball on this, I'm in.
[+] [-] haunter|3 months ago|reply
It will all come down to the price.
[+] [-] legitster|3 months ago|reply
Almost certainly. This is the direction the industry is heading, and the perverse unavailability of high-end discrete graphics cards is the nail in the coffin.
See also the Framework PC.
[+] [-] WithinReason|3 months ago|reply
[+] [-] kace91|3 months ago|reply
Frame becoming a mainstream device (compared to any random combination of components) might make a difference that way.
[+] [-] stoobs|3 months ago|reply
SSD and RAM are user replaceable, CPU and GPU are soldered
[+] [-] littlestymaar|3 months ago|reply
SSD and RAM are upgradable, source:
https://www.theverge.com/tech/818111/valve-steam-machine-han...
[+] [-] cubefox|3 months ago|reply
According to a video by Digital Foundry, the main limitation will be the 8 GB of VRAM (some new games may require more), which definitely can't be upgraded.
[+] [-] nalekberov|3 months ago|reply
[+] [-] catlover76|3 months ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] mayli|3 months ago|reply
I wish they could sell at $300-$500, that's really going to make this a must have for this year.
[+] [-] Ekaros|3 months ago|reply
Hmm. Not that it is big deal, but I would be somewhat worried about true longevity with the VRAM. Not sure if SteamOS helps there, but on PC some new titles are going over the 8GB VRAM.
[+] [-] CobrastanJorji|3 months ago|reply
From your mouth to Tim Cook's ear, friend.
[+] [-] mojoe|3 months ago|reply
Interesting that it uses KDE Plasma for the desktop
[+] [-] keoneflick|3 months ago|reply
It's something that doesn't get headlines, but a real barrier for enjoyment for a console-like PC. Hate being stuck with 'guest 1' and 'guest 2' or whatever. Many games want each player to progress and without true multi sign on, it just doesn't work. Hence games dropping local multiplayer on PC.
[+] [-] nine_k|3 months ago|reply
[+] [-] derefr|3 months ago|reply
(Or, to put that another way: fundamentally, I want a game console — a piece of well-integrated consumer electronics that lives unobtrusively in my entertainment center, hooked up to my TV, requiring no maintenance, controlled entirely with a Bluetooth gamepad. But I want it to enable me to run both 1. current-gen games at at-least-equivalent fidelity to the console ports of those games; and also 2. "all the games a Windows PC can run." So, anything on Steam, yes; but also, all the weird little indie games on itch.io that never make it to Steam; and old DOS/Win31/Win95 games (either as polished ports from GOG, or through various forms of virtualization/emulation I'd set up myself); and even the little freeware games floating about on the "old internet", that someone made in Game Maker or RPG Maker 2000 or even as a standalone Flash projector executable, way back when.)
The closest thing I had found to that description so far, that even might work for the use-case, was the ROG NUC.
I wonder how this compares to that?
[+] [-] IlikeKitties|3 months ago|reply
In a world of locked bootloaders and ever more locked down device, valve is pushing the envolope with a linux based gaming console.
[+] [-] mostly_harmless|3 months ago|reply
This one simple thing is the only thing that makes my SteamDeck+Dock feel like a second class console. So far they only claim it's for the Steam Controller, but I'd be great if it worked with the handful of 8bitdo or Switch controllers I've been using.
[+] [-] clvx|3 months ago|reply
[+] [-] thot_experiment|3 months ago|reply
i'm having a hard time describing the feelings this makes me feel. like i've been stressed, bedraggled and worn down, and suddenly there's a moment where i can just rest
it's nice to be excited about something for once instead of the baseline expectation of a horrible adversarial experience, which is the case for most tech in 2025
it is somewhat depressing that it's this novel to expect a piece of hardware to actually exist to make my life nicer vs the default of being an abomination that tries constantly to extract money and information from me like a fucking vampire
(and i guess, not having used this yet, this also speaks to valve being one of the last companies that i have any trust in to be capable of making a business decision that makes them less money in the short run in order to deliver a better product)