>that this is actually Steam Machine 2.0. Valve already tried this a decade ago, and it flopped.
I find this framing to be beyond maddening. Sure, it wasn't an iPod, and if you measure it against that kind of expectation, of course it's a flop, because it wasn't an overnight success.
But I think it's more appropriately understood as a soft launch of an ecosystem, to strategically rebalance Valve away from the potential risk of being locked into Windows. It was also a thoughtful partnering with hardware vendors, so they weren't shipping hundreds of thousands of units to Walmart shelves was just sat there and lost them tens of millions of dollars, which is also what I think of when something's considered a flop.
But it was a thoughtful, intelligent long-term commitment to an ecosystem that bore fruit in large part due to the credible long-term commitment as the library of steamos compatible games grew and set up the Steam Deck for success. And now it looks like the wind is at their back with the new line of hardware, but I think it's best understood as a return on investment that begun those many years ago.
I think it reflects a kind of intelligence and long-term thinking that Google is pathologically incapable of, by contrast.
>> that this is actually Steam Machine 2.0. Valve already tried this a decade ago, and it flopped.
> I find this framing to be beyond maddening [...]
> It was also a thoughtful partnering with hardware vendors
As numerous post-mortems (some of which I quoted in the article) recount, the hardware partners themselves largely consider their experiment back then a flop as well.
> But it was a thoughtful, intelligent long-term commitment to an ecosystem
With respect, I think you're overselling it. It's hard to call a machine that basically didn't play any of the at-the-time hits well "a thoughtful, intelligent" move. If you read some of those linked post-mortems, I think you might agree as well.
> I think it's best understood as a return on investment that begun those many years ago
I think there's nuance here, which is that Valve made lemonade from the lemon that was the flop of the Steam Box. They turned that failed move into an initial investment through diligence and effort. In a sense, that's part of what I'm trying to bring attention to -- Valve didn't just write off the failure and abandon the market, but took signal from it and tried again.
Yeah, it's like the people who say, oh, the iPhone mini was a flop. That was a BILLION DOLLAR product. How many companies would LOVE to have a billion dollar product???
Well, Valve got seriously concerned about the Windows Store, like, a decade ago, since that could have reduced the stranglehold of Steam on the gaming marketplace.
Turns out that the usual Microsoft incompetence-and-ADHD have kind-of eliminated that threat all by itself.
Also: turns out that, if you put enough effort into it, Linux is actually a quite-usable gaming platform.
Still: are consumers better off today than in the PS2 era? I sort-of doubt it, but, yeah, alternate universes and everything...
I believe Valve's concerns went(or maybe go?) beyond just the Windows Store, and into "We believe Microsoft may become unable to ship a good Operating System in the future".
In a 2013 interview with Gabe Newell: "Windows 8 was like this giant sadness. It just hurts everybody in the PC business. Rather than everybody being all excited to go buy a new PC, buying new software to run on it, we’ve had a 20+ percent decline in PC sales — it’s like 'holy cow that’s not what the new generation of the operating system is supposed to do.' There’s supposed to be a 40 percent uptake, not a 20 percent decline, so that’s what really scares me. When I started using it I was like 'oh my god...' I find [Windows 8] unusable." [0]
The Windows Store probably was a part of it, sure, but looking at that quote from 2025, after having your SSD broken, your recovery unusable and your explorer laggy? It's quite bitter-sweet.
Outside of XBox, Minecraft, and journalists trying it out, I don't think I've heard of anyone using the Microsoft store.
The Wikipedia page has quite the description of the view from within Microsoft:
> Phil Spencer, head of Microsoft's gaming division, has also opined that Microsoft Store "sucks". As a result, Office was removed as an installable app from the store, and made to redirect to its website.
I tried to use Microsoft's Game Pass and the Xbox store on a Windows machine with multiple users.
It was astoundingly unusable for sharing Microsoft's own game within my own household with my own family members. Completely broken user experience.
It's not hard to believe that Steam was able to thrive because Microsoft has just done an amazingly bad job with this. I've been in software dev for 20 years and it still baffles me that companies with tens of thousands of engineers can produce such shitty software experiences.
> "Also: turns out that, if you put enough effort into it, Linux is actually a quite-usable gaming platform."
Valve is the one putting in the effort and paying for it at their own expense. If they ever lose interest in paying for it, like GabeN retiring and Ebenezer Scrooge replacing him, then it's game over for Linux gaming (literally).
> Well, Valve got seriously concerned about the Windows Store, like, a decade ago, since that could have reduced the stranglehold of Steam on the gaming marketplace
Microsoft telegraphed its intention to kill Steam. The plan was a hermetically sealed ecosystem where only cryptographically signed code could run on Windows computers, from UEFI boot to application launch. This meant users would only run software Microsoft let them, and there was no room for the Steam store in Microsoft's vision of the future then.
I'm all for MS bashing and laughing at their incompetence, but was there really any threat there? I don't know anyone on PC who was interested in buying a game anywhere other than Steam in 2015.
> Well, Valve got seriously concerned about the Windows Store, like, a decade ago...
Yeah, I briefly addressed that concern in the article as a comparison to Facebook; probably could've expanded on it, but it was already quite long and didn't feel like it fit naturally into the topic at hand
I'm impressed they even managed to create a game subscription that works on both PC and Xbox. It felt too much like Xbox was made by a different company than Windows for a long time. Remember Games for Windows Live?
"ProtonDB tracks compatibility, and counts 7000+ games that are verified to work as well or almost as well as on Windows" - I always laugh when a media outlet uses ProtonDB as an example as the reality is something different. I have a ~1500 games big Steam Library and I'm also a Linux User for 20+ years - yes, I do use Windows only for gaming and on my work pc.
When I fire up my linux workstation or steam deck and browse my library, there are countless games, marked as "platinum" in ProtonDB, but do not work OOTB. Sometimes it's a later Proton version that broke the compatibility, sometimes you still need to tinker in the settings in addition to choose the correct proton version. All in all, I've spent quite some time getting games to run I just wanted to play a single afternoon as nostaliga hitted hard.
As long as issues like this are not resolved, I don't believe in Steam Machines as alternatives for consoles in the living room space.
And yes, I'm still considering a steam machine for my living room, even though I will need to support my wife and kids in getting games to run on the TV.
> I always laugh when a media outlet uses ProtonDB as an example
I'm not a media outlet! Just some dope who noticed a thing and wanted to get the thought that wouldn't leave out into the world so I could use my brain for other things.
> as the reality is something different
That's fair. My anecdotal experience (as outlined in another comment) is that platinum has generally just worked for me. That's probably because I'm on Steam Deck rather than a "generic" Linux install (I also use Windows for my desktop gaming).
That said, do you think a parenthetical note is necessary for accuracy? I figured it might be getting too into the weeds since the article is primarily about the platform/ecosystem/hardware comparison between Apple and Valve...
gamer!==gamer. These are your own choices. For me Assetto Corsa + other racing games + CS2 work perfectly. And with sway/i3, unlike in Windows, I can throw the game around in whichever way I wish. No laggy alt-tab or random crashes that my Windows user friends often have.
To be honest, I've never had any issues with 'Platinum' games on Proton. But I somewhat agree, starting with 'Gold' and below, it was a hit-or-miss situation.
ProtonDB is a great resource for tweaks like you suggested and I find proton works OOTB quite often. But I agree, they seem to be operating under an alternate definition of what "platinum" means which is setting everyone's expectations to high.
Valve's hardware products will be successful but remain niche. And that's ok. They are unwilling to pursue business models that require locking down hardware in order to subsidize it with software purchases, and I love that about them. As a result their hardware will always be more expensive. They will not outcompete Meta in VR or Sony/MS/Nintendo in consoles because price is king for the mass market.
Valve's hardware products, aside from being awesome and setting a standard that others have to match, are really an insurance policy. They ensure Valve cannot be locked out of their own market by platform owners like Microsoft or Meta using their leverage to either take a cut of their revenue or outright ban Steam in favor of their own stores (as it looked like MS might try to do in the Win8 days). By owning a platform of their own Valve always has a fallback option.
In 2025 none of Sony, Microsoft or Nintendo sell their consoles at a loss. They're sold for very slim margins, which is what I assume Valve will do with the Steam machine. I expect the Steam Machine to be price competitive.
ish. Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo likely have contracts locking down RAM prices whereas Valve will have to negotiate theirs based on current prices.
> They will not outcompete Sony/MS/Nintendo in consoles because price is king for the mass market
I don't follow the console market at all, but don't its players subsidize their hardware by keeping software (game) costs high? I didn't think they had anything like Steam's level of regular discounted sales. "Price is king" can cut both ways.
Steam doesn't need to lock down the Steam Machine to subsidize it with store purchases. The casual user could theoretically install another OS, but that doesn't matter because they won't (because they're casual users), and the dedicated user buys most of their games on Steam anyways because it's the dominant distribution platform.
Valve's products are 100% designed to punch a hole through Windows Store monopolization. It encourages developers to write for Linux.
Microsoft has been trying to corner Valve. Valve is finding clever ways out by getting developers to finally make their games Linux compatible.
If Valve's consoles become broadly successful, that's an added bonus. The real win is to outflank Microsoft.
One of Microsoft's biggest mistakes was to give up on Windows Phone. One of Meta's biggest mistakes was to give up on their phone (they gave in early due to technical choices, not just lack of user demand).
Owning a "pane of glass" lets you tax and control everything. Apple and Google have unprecedented leverage in two of the biggest markets in the world. Microsoft wants that for gaming, and since most gaming is on Windows, they have a shot at it.
Valve is doing everything they can to make sure developers start targeting other platforms so PC games remain multi-platform. It's healthy for the entire ecosystem.
If we had strong antitrust enforcement (which we haven't had in over 25 years), Apple and Google wouldn't have a stranglehold on mobile, and Microsoft would get real scrutiny for all of their stunts they've pulled with gaming, studio acquisitions, etc.
Antitrust enforcement is good for capitalism. It ensures that stupid at-scale hacks don't let the largest players become gluttons and take over the entire ecosystem. It keeps capitalism fiercely competitive and makes all players nimble.
The government's antitrust actions against Microsoft in the 1990s-2000s was what paved the way for Apple to become what it is today. If we had more of it, one wonders what other magnificent companies and products we might have.
Valve has a spear lined up at so much of big tech right now it's honestly impressive they've done it in stealth for so long. Google, Microsoft and Apple are all in the crosshairs in a big way, and I don't think they can avoid the blow that's coming without cannibalizing their margins.
I'm not sure they've got Apple targeted so much, because Apple has been so thoroughly not-invested in gaming. The place they're closest to colliding is VR, but Apple's Vision headset is doing something really different from Valve's VR products, which are far more directly lined up against Meta's Oculus.
Valve could branch into Apple's areas, but they don't seem particularly interested in doing so yet.
EDIT: rather, Apple cares a lot about phone gaming, but that's an area that Valve has shown few signs of moving in on.
The work on Proton ends up in wine which is available for macOS and is part of Apples game porting toolkit. So part of the work Valve is doing to make games run on Linux helps games run better on macOS.
How are Google and Apple in its crosshairs (article's framing notwithstanding)?
From what I see, Microsoft is the only one they have been gunning for, and even that behemoth is looking to get out of the way. Their Xbox platform has practically imploded, and they have specifically designed Windows 11 to be less of a PC operating system and more of an ads platform and a cross-selling channel for their AI/cloud offerings indicating that they've lost interest in the consumer market as a whole.
> Steam came in 2003, created for easy management of updates for their games over the Internet (what today would be called a “proprietary launcher”).
I call it that today and I also called it one in 2003, when it suddenly demanded to be installed and kept running to continue playing Half-Life (what today would be called "vendor lock-in").
> with current-gen consoles (which are sold at a loss, and so would be expected to be cheaper)
This is not true. It was true in 2019 when the PS5 was initially announced, but PS5 has been sold at a (slim) profit since 2021. Xbox probably sold at a loss for longer, but it definitely isn't sold at a loss in 2025.
The Switch & Switch 2 have always been profitable.
The BOM cost of the Steam Machine has been estimated at $450. They could sell for $500 and still be nominally profitable and still undercut XBox & PS5.
(That BOM cost estimate was before RAM price silliness so you have to adjust upwards a little bit).
1. Do you think that inaccuracy undercuts the point? If so, I'll correct the article; if not, I'll include it as a note in my planned follow-up.
2. Do you have the link(s) handy for those figures? If not, I can try to find them myself, but I figured it would be easier to ask first.
It will be interesting to see if they can answer a question better now than with the original Steam Machines ten years ago: what problem do consumers have that Steam Machines solve?
Their original answer was a resounding "nothing" - Steam Machines solved a problem for Valve (fear of an impending "Windows Store" being added by Microsoft that would steal the battlefield from Valve), but very little for the customer.
I guess that same question needs to be asked again here: are there sufficient problems that the average game-player at home has that are better answered by a Steam Machine than a Windows 11 box? Are those real problems experienced by the broader market of people, or are those just
tangential issues cared about by a more vocal few?
> what problem do consumers have that Steam Machines solve?
It fixes a lot of issues for me (I will buy a steam machine upon release):
I used to prefer consoles for the living room - put the disk in, and go. But nowadays consoles have the same issues: Giant downloads, patches, tweaking GUI settings and fear of not getting the best performance (PS5 Pro variants, Xbox S/X etc., performance vs. quality mode settings). PC games are now not only more price competetive through the sales, but consoles use now downloads at high prices to undermine the second hand market, or account-lock your game even when purchased as disk. Plus, I need a subscription to play online.
Game controller support has become superb on ALL OSes (I use a PS5 controller on macOS as well as Linux, and it is pretty much flawless.
Windows is annoying. I used Windows 10 for a long time as a glorified bootloader into Steam (on a dualboot Linux machine), but it become full annoyances and win11 worsens that ("You need a Onedrive account" - "oh, did you try Edge yet?" - "Your computer is at risk" - "We installed copilot for you!" etc.). I basically want a computer that boots into steam BigPicture and is quiet the rest of the time.
Can I build my own living room PC? Yes, but then without proper SteamOS installation, or finicky linux setups. With the Steam Machine I just buy the package, put it next to my TV and lets go. I will re-use my PS5 dualshock controller and be done with it.
Speaking only for myself, I'm very excited for the Steam Machine. A console I can plug into my TV and it just works and gives me access to all* of the Steam library is an amazing proposition. A Windows 11 box doesn't do that**.
* Almost. Anti-cheat remains a big hole.
** No, I'm not going to use a keyboard or do Windows admin crap from my couch.
Convienence. Consoles are popular because you just plop down, hit the on button and play (in theory).
And while people don't care how much spy/adware their computer is, they do care when frequent notifications, popups and updates interfere with what you're doing. Nothing more annoying that having a windows notif steal focus from a game you're playing through steam link in the other room (personal experience).
I'm so glad that they've improved steam and link on linux so much, having to run it on my s/o windows computer was a pain.
A system that plays the vast majority of the Steam library with an operating system that isn't full of ad/spy/bloatware out of the box would be a good one. I think mass awareness of Win11 shittiness does exist.
> Competition is difficult once a big aggregator has emerged, even for deep-pocketed incumbents.
And sometimes, the competition is just plain brain dead. Just take EA Origin, which my wife sadly requires because her entire Sims 4 library has been purchased through that and its predecessor.
With Steam, she can easily have the Steam Client open on both her laptop and her user account on my gaming rig simultaneously. No big deal, in fact it is required for Steam Remote Play - the only thing that keeps annoying us is that you can only have one Steam client open on one machine which is annoying on a multi-user machine.
But Origin? That piece of shit software doesn't just log you out on one machine when you log in on another - no, it opens a fucking modal window telling you "you're in offline mode". Yeah no shit, my wife knows that, she just turned on the other machine!
That's utterly fucking basic user experience stuff and yet EA doesn't seem to be able to fathom that people might want to own more than one machine. As long as they can be sold FIFA lootboxes, eh?!
> (2011, proxied quote from The Cambridge Student via The Escapist; the link in that article is dead, and a search on the site for “Newell” turns up no results)
Here’s the latest copy of the original article in The Cambridge Student:
If they used the learning of the Steam Machines ARM translation layer to ship a Steam Phone, I’d jump on it day one even if all it had was basic phone apps and games.
It has always been curious to me that Apple hasn’t put more effort into gaming. The AppleTV could easily be positioned as a game console if they put more effort into supporting developers and providing more dedicated infrastructure for games.
Contrary to what the article claims, the market being open and sloppy isn't enshittification. Jacking up prices and removing features users were using in the name of extracting profit is. But what I strongly agree with the author about is the uncertainty of Valve's fate after GabeN. Any company is able to enshittify, we are just one change of owners away. It's almost like potential energy vs kinetic energy - a company like Valve has saved up a _lot_ of enshittification potential waiting for the "right" condition to be realized.
I'd love to believe Steam will keep being the market leader because they haven't really enshittified yet. I'd love to believe that Tim Sweeney and Epic games are so unable to read the room and so blinded by being a public company that consumers just aren't interested. But considering their biggest game is Fortnite, they are practically selling to kids, who lack any sort of market opinion of that regard. Regardless, consumers don't really buy with their wallet unless there are immediate, solvable problems in front of them.
Regarding metaverse, I believe anyone who has been on VRChat instinctively understands why metaverse was doomed to fail from the get-go. I wrote some notes about my experiences which I released while doing winter-cleaning of my notes recently: https://petterroea.com/blogs/2025/living-a-second-life-in-vr.... There just simply isn't a market for what Meta are trying to sell.
> Unlike Apple hardware, the Steam Deck does not need to be jailbroken in any way, and Valve explicitly provides a guide for how to go outside their ecosystem
And this is why I'll always trust and prefer Valve over Apple.
Valve will not do this. First off, there's zero value proposition. Steam Deck, Frame and Machine all make sense as complimentary products to the Steam Storefront. Smartphones are not complimentary to Steam, Steam is complimentary to smartphones.
Secondly, the AOSP already ticks all these boxes while also supporting the apps users expect. Valve is not going to waste money tailoring SteamOS to fill a gap that an APK file could do equally as well. I understand the general disappointment with Google and Apple as smartphone vendors, but you're ignoring Valve's strategy if you're convinced that a Steam Phone is in the cards.
I don't see this happening in the foreseeable future.
Making competitive phones is even harder than making a desktop, and they aren't investing in Linux desktop itself either, just the components they need. SteamOS works by not running a desktop in its default mode.
Are they actually running the Apple playbook in reverse? It seems to me that they're actually running Apple's playbook pretty squarely, just in another domain.
First-gen product that seemed to not know where it's going? Check.
Continued quiet iteration behind closed doors despite first-gen being a flop? Check.
Sticking with the product line over many years, where most other companies would have written off and thrown in the towel? Check.
Multi-pronged GTM strategy where other products prove out key bits of next product? Check. (see: SteamOS and Proton setting the stage for Steam Deck, which in turn sets the stage for Steam Machine 2)
Deep software-hardware integration in ways that are highly salient to users? Check (see: foviated streaming for Steam Frame, Steam Deck "just works")
The "in reverse" framing was largely in reference to the fact that Apple built the software ecosystem after getting loyal hardware consumers, whereas Valve got loyal software users first and is now selling hardware to them.
Otherwise, I do think a lot of what you say is true, and some of it is in the article (e.g. the software "just works").
IMO Apple and Valve are taking the opposite approaches but on a different axis than the article discusses: Apple is continuing to increase their lock in and remove choice, while Valve continues to add choice. You can argue that Steam being a nigh-monopoly means there isn't a lot of choice, but I'd argue that's not correct. For one, Steam rarely censors games (it does happen! A notable case happened this month! But it happens rarely) and doesn't have requirements for games to use Steam's platform technology to be on the market. In fact, you're allowed to offer direct competitors to Steam features in your game without penalty (some games I play have both Steam Workshop support and the game dev's own mod platform support). For another Steam doesn't try to nudge you towards their solutions constantly either (eg like in the recent article on passkeys where the user had to click half a dozen times to not use Touch ID with the Touch ID option being on every page of those clicks). And of course, there's the "Add a non-Steam game or app" button in Steam that just asks you "where's the executable" and then it gets all the non-platform features Steam offers, like the overlay, screenshots, Steam Input (I think it even supports community input profiles for non-Steam games; I'm pretty sure I've seen community profiles for Primehack on my Steam Deck), etc. Of course the Steam Deck (and now Steam Machine and Steam Frame) are constantly advertised as "it's just a PC and you can do whatever you want with it". There's no lock in; you can install competitors' stores on those devices easily.
The reverse playbook then is that Apple is trying to make every option other than staying in the Apple ecosystem a bad choice, while Valve is trying to make Steam the best option in every scenario. The difference in base philosophy is the important part.
(Of course as a profit-seeking corporation there's no guarantee they'll stay this way, particularly after gaben leaves, but I'll appreciate it while it's here at least.)
glenstein|2 months ago
I find this framing to be beyond maddening. Sure, it wasn't an iPod, and if you measure it against that kind of expectation, of course it's a flop, because it wasn't an overnight success.
But I think it's more appropriately understood as a soft launch of an ecosystem, to strategically rebalance Valve away from the potential risk of being locked into Windows. It was also a thoughtful partnering with hardware vendors, so they weren't shipping hundreds of thousands of units to Walmart shelves was just sat there and lost them tens of millions of dollars, which is also what I think of when something's considered a flop.
But it was a thoughtful, intelligent long-term commitment to an ecosystem that bore fruit in large part due to the credible long-term commitment as the library of steamos compatible games grew and set up the Steam Deck for success. And now it looks like the wind is at their back with the new line of hardware, but I think it's best understood as a return on investment that begun those many years ago.
I think it reflects a kind of intelligence and long-term thinking that Google is pathologically incapable of, by contrast.
ee64a4a|2 months ago
> I find this framing to be beyond maddening [...]
> It was also a thoughtful partnering with hardware vendors
As numerous post-mortems (some of which I quoted in the article) recount, the hardware partners themselves largely consider their experiment back then a flop as well.
> But it was a thoughtful, intelligent long-term commitment to an ecosystem
With respect, I think you're overselling it. It's hard to call a machine that basically didn't play any of the at-the-time hits well "a thoughtful, intelligent" move. If you read some of those linked post-mortems, I think you might agree as well.
> I think it's best understood as a return on investment that begun those many years ago
I think there's nuance here, which is that Valve made lemonade from the lemon that was the flop of the Steam Box. They turned that failed move into an initial investment through diligence and effort. In a sense, that's part of what I'm trying to bring attention to -- Valve didn't just write off the failure and abandon the market, but took signal from it and tried again.
HumblyTossed|2 months ago
Yeah, it's like the people who say, oh, the iPhone mini was a flop. That was a BILLION DOLLAR product. How many companies would LOVE to have a billion dollar product???
ZeroConcerns|2 months ago
Turns out that the usual Microsoft incompetence-and-ADHD have kind-of eliminated that threat all by itself.
Also: turns out that, if you put enough effort into it, Linux is actually a quite-usable gaming platform.
Still: are consumers better off today than in the PS2 era? I sort-of doubt it, but, yeah, alternate universes and everything...
quadruple|2 months ago
In a 2013 interview with Gabe Newell: "Windows 8 was like this giant sadness. It just hurts everybody in the PC business. Rather than everybody being all excited to go buy a new PC, buying new software to run on it, we’ve had a 20+ percent decline in PC sales — it’s like 'holy cow that’s not what the new generation of the operating system is supposed to do.' There’s supposed to be a 40 percent uptake, not a 20 percent decline, so that’s what really scares me. When I started using it I was like 'oh my god...' I find [Windows 8] unusable." [0]
The Windows Store probably was a part of it, sure, but looking at that quote from 2025, after having your SSD broken, your recovery unusable and your explorer laggy? It's quite bitter-sweet.
[0] https://archive.is/eBP6q#selection-3645.0-3645.729
nitwit005|2 months ago
The Wikipedia page has quite the description of the view from within Microsoft:
> Phil Spencer, head of Microsoft's gaming division, has also opined that Microsoft Store "sucks". As a result, Office was removed as an installable app from the store, and made to redirect to its website.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Store
ryandvm|2 months ago
It was astoundingly unusable for sharing Microsoft's own game within my own household with my own family members. Completely broken user experience.
It's not hard to believe that Steam was able to thrive because Microsoft has just done an amazingly bad job with this. I've been in software dev for 20 years and it still baffles me that companies with tens of thousands of engineers can produce such shitty software experiences.
ThrowawayB7|2 months ago
Valve is the one putting in the effort and paying for it at their own expense. If they ever lose interest in paying for it, like GabeN retiring and Ebenezer Scrooge replacing him, then it's game over for Linux gaming (literally).
overfeed|2 months ago
Microsoft telegraphed its intention to kill Steam. The plan was a hermetically sealed ecosystem where only cryptographically signed code could run on Windows computers, from UEFI boot to application launch. This meant users would only run software Microsoft let them, and there was no room for the Steam store in Microsoft's vision of the future then.
sand500|2 months ago
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2025/06/games-run-faster-on-s...
hbn|2 months ago
ee64a4a|2 months ago
Yeah, I briefly addressed that concern in the article as a comparison to Facebook; probably could've expanded on it, but it was already quite long and didn't feel like it fit naturally into the topic at hand
pjmlp|2 months ago
It is like arguing Windows is a quite-usable UNIX platform thanks to WSL 2.0.
The right way to push for Linux gaming is how Loki Entertainment was doing it.
hnuser123456|2 months ago
NuclearPM|2 months ago
cHaOs667|2 months ago
When I fire up my linux workstation or steam deck and browse my library, there are countless games, marked as "platinum" in ProtonDB, but do not work OOTB. Sometimes it's a later Proton version that broke the compatibility, sometimes you still need to tinker in the settings in addition to choose the correct proton version. All in all, I've spent quite some time getting games to run I just wanted to play a single afternoon as nostaliga hitted hard.
As long as issues like this are not resolved, I don't believe in Steam Machines as alternatives for consoles in the living room space.
And yes, I'm still considering a steam machine for my living room, even though I will need to support my wife and kids in getting games to run on the TV.
ee64a4a|2 months ago
I'm not a media outlet! Just some dope who noticed a thing and wanted to get the thought that wouldn't leave out into the world so I could use my brain for other things.
> as the reality is something different
That's fair. My anecdotal experience (as outlined in another comment) is that platinum has generally just worked for me. That's probably because I'm on Steam Deck rather than a "generic" Linux install (I also use Windows for my desktop gaming).
That said, do you think a parenthetical note is necessary for accuracy? I figured it might be getting too into the weeds since the article is primarily about the platform/ecosystem/hardware comparison between Apple and Valve...
k4rli|2 months ago
attendant3446|2 months ago
deltoidmaximus|2 months ago
graynk|2 months ago
in my experience the older games are more of a pain to get running, as a lot more tweaks are needed
it's the case on Windows too, but on Linux there's an additional need to mess with DLL overrides DXVK settings and the like
wetpaws|2 months ago
[deleted]
modeless|2 months ago
Valve's hardware products, aside from being awesome and setting a standard that others have to match, are really an insurance policy. They ensure Valve cannot be locked out of their own market by platform owners like Microsoft or Meta using their leverage to either take a cut of their revenue or outright ban Steam in favor of their own stores (as it looked like MS might try to do in the Win8 days). By owning a platform of their own Valve always has a fallback option.
bryanlarsen|2 months ago
ish. Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo likely have contracts locking down RAM prices whereas Valve will have to negotiate theirs based on current prices.
mrec|2 months ago
I don't follow the console market at all, but don't its players subsidize their hardware by keeping software (game) costs high? I didn't think they had anything like Steam's level of regular discounted sales. "Price is king" can cut both ways.
a_shovel|2 months ago
dartharva|2 months ago
I mean.. it's pretty obvious such a thing would be immediately suicidal for them. If Steam stops being an open platform, it stops being a PC platform.
haunter|2 months ago
echelon|2 months ago
Microsoft has been trying to corner Valve. Valve is finding clever ways out by getting developers to finally make their games Linux compatible.
If Valve's consoles become broadly successful, that's an added bonus. The real win is to outflank Microsoft.
One of Microsoft's biggest mistakes was to give up on Windows Phone. One of Meta's biggest mistakes was to give up on their phone (they gave in early due to technical choices, not just lack of user demand).
Owning a "pane of glass" lets you tax and control everything. Apple and Google have unprecedented leverage in two of the biggest markets in the world. Microsoft wants that for gaming, and since most gaming is on Windows, they have a shot at it.
Valve is doing everything they can to make sure developers start targeting other platforms so PC games remain multi-platform. It's healthy for the entire ecosystem.
If we had strong antitrust enforcement (which we haven't had in over 25 years), Apple and Google wouldn't have a stranglehold on mobile, and Microsoft would get real scrutiny for all of their stunts they've pulled with gaming, studio acquisitions, etc.
Antitrust enforcement is good for capitalism. It ensures that stupid at-scale hacks don't let the largest players become gluttons and take over the entire ecosystem. It keeps capitalism fiercely competitive and makes all players nimble.
The government's antitrust actions against Microsoft in the 1990s-2000s was what paved the way for Apple to become what it is today. If we had more of it, one wonders what other magnificent companies and products we might have.
CuriouslyC|2 months ago
kemayo|2 months ago
Valve could branch into Apple's areas, but they don't seem particularly interested in doing so yet.
EDIT: rather, Apple cares a lot about phone gaming, but that's an area that Valve has shown few signs of moving in on.
lwkl|2 months ago
dartharva|2 months ago
From what I see, Microsoft is the only one they have been gunning for, and even that behemoth is looking to get out of the way. Their Xbox platform has practically imploded, and they have specifically designed Windows 11 to be less of a PC operating system and more of an ads platform and a cross-selling channel for their AI/cloud offerings indicating that they've lost interest in the consumer market as a whole.
RunSet|2 months ago
I call it that today and I also called it one in 2003, when it suddenly demanded to be installed and kept running to continue playing Half-Life (what today would be called "vendor lock-in").
vablings|2 months ago
Launch a steam game to open another game launcher platform that you then create an account for and play on that game. A launcher launcher!
denimnerd42|2 months ago
bryanlarsen|2 months ago
This is not true. It was true in 2019 when the PS5 was initially announced, but PS5 has been sold at a (slim) profit since 2021. Xbox probably sold at a loss for longer, but it definitely isn't sold at a loss in 2025.
The Switch & Switch 2 have always been profitable.
The BOM cost of the Steam Machine has been estimated at $450. They could sell for $500 and still be nominally profitable and still undercut XBox & PS5.
(That BOM cost estimate was before RAM price silliness so you have to adjust upwards a little bit).
ee64a4a|2 months ago
1. Do you think that inaccuracy undercuts the point? If so, I'll correct the article; if not, I'll include it as a note in my planned follow-up. 2. Do you have the link(s) handy for those figures? If not, I can try to find them myself, but I figured it would be easier to ask first.
PeterHolzwarth|2 months ago
Their original answer was a resounding "nothing" - Steam Machines solved a problem for Valve (fear of an impending "Windows Store" being added by Microsoft that would steal the battlefield from Valve), but very little for the customer.
I guess that same question needs to be asked again here: are there sufficient problems that the average game-player at home has that are better answered by a Steam Machine than a Windows 11 box? Are those real problems experienced by the broader market of people, or are those just tangential issues cared about by a more vocal few?
littlecranky67|2 months ago
It fixes a lot of issues for me (I will buy a steam machine upon release):
I used to prefer consoles for the living room - put the disk in, and go. But nowadays consoles have the same issues: Giant downloads, patches, tweaking GUI settings and fear of not getting the best performance (PS5 Pro variants, Xbox S/X etc., performance vs. quality mode settings). PC games are now not only more price competetive through the sales, but consoles use now downloads at high prices to undermine the second hand market, or account-lock your game even when purchased as disk. Plus, I need a subscription to play online.
Game controller support has become superb on ALL OSes (I use a PS5 controller on macOS as well as Linux, and it is pretty much flawless.
Windows is annoying. I used Windows 10 for a long time as a glorified bootloader into Steam (on a dualboot Linux machine), but it become full annoyances and win11 worsens that ("You need a Onedrive account" - "oh, did you try Edge yet?" - "Your computer is at risk" - "We installed copilot for you!" etc.). I basically want a computer that boots into steam BigPicture and is quiet the rest of the time.
Can I build my own living room PC? Yes, but then without proper SteamOS installation, or finicky linux setups. With the Steam Machine I just buy the package, put it next to my TV and lets go. I will re-use my PS5 dualshock controller and be done with it.
coldpie|2 months ago
* Almost. Anti-cheat remains a big hole.
** No, I'm not going to use a keyboard or do Windows admin crap from my couch.
atrus|2 months ago
And while people don't care how much spy/adware their computer is, they do care when frequent notifications, popups and updates interfere with what you're doing. Nothing more annoying that having a windows notif steal focus from a game you're playing through steam link in the other room (personal experience).
I'm so glad that they've improved steam and link on linux so much, having to run it on my s/o windows computer was a pain.
pelotron|2 months ago
happymellon|2 months ago
Absolutely. The UI on Windows 11 is not designed for couch gaming, and Microsoft licencing rules mean that you are not allowed to hide Windows.
AndrewDucker|2 months ago
I want a new computer that just works, and plays my games. This looks like it will be designed to do exactly that.
mschuster91|2 months ago
And sometimes, the competition is just plain brain dead. Just take EA Origin, which my wife sadly requires because her entire Sims 4 library has been purchased through that and its predecessor.
With Steam, she can easily have the Steam Client open on both her laptop and her user account on my gaming rig simultaneously. No big deal, in fact it is required for Steam Remote Play - the only thing that keeps annoying us is that you can only have one Steam client open on one machine which is annoying on a multi-user machine.
But Origin? That piece of shit software doesn't just log you out on one machine when you log in on another - no, it opens a fucking modal window telling you "you're in offline mode". Yeah no shit, my wife knows that, she just turned on the other machine!
That's utterly fucking basic user experience stuff and yet EA doesn't seem to be able to fathom that people might want to own more than one machine. As long as they can be sold FIFA lootboxes, eh?!
throwaway314155|2 months ago
teddyh|2 months ago
Here’s the latest copy of the original article in The Cambridge Student:
<https://web.archive.org/web/20220924191721/https://www.tcs.c...>
ee64a4a|2 months ago
bargainbin|2 months ago
bigyabai|2 months ago
etempleton|2 months ago
petterroea|2 months ago
I'd love to believe Steam will keep being the market leader because they haven't really enshittified yet. I'd love to believe that Tim Sweeney and Epic games are so unable to read the room and so blinded by being a public company that consumers just aren't interested. But considering their biggest game is Fortnite, they are practically selling to kids, who lack any sort of market opinion of that regard. Regardless, consumers don't really buy with their wallet unless there are immediate, solvable problems in front of them.
Regarding metaverse, I believe anyone who has been on VRChat instinctively understands why metaverse was doomed to fail from the get-go. I wrote some notes about my experiences which I released while doing winter-cleaning of my notes recently: https://petterroea.com/blogs/2025/living-a-second-life-in-vr.... There just simply isn't a market for what Meta are trying to sell.
mrandish|2 months ago
And this is why I'll always trust and prefer Valve over Apple.
MassEffect5784|2 months ago
gorfian_robot|2 months ago
deadbabe|2 months ago
No iOS, no Android, just raw SteamOS with gaming and privacy focus, and fully customizable by users if they want.
Make it look really sleek and cool, and dockable.
bigyabai|2 months ago
Secondly, the AOSP already ticks all these boxes while also supporting the apps users expect. Valve is not going to waste money tailoring SteamOS to fill a gap that an APK file could do equally as well. I understand the general disappointment with Google and Apple as smartphone vendors, but you're ignoring Valve's strategy if you're convinced that a Steam Phone is in the cards.
lunar_rover|2 months ago
Making competitive phones is even harder than making a desktop, and they aren't investing in Linux desktop itself either, just the components they need. SteamOS works by not running a desktop in its default mode.
potatolicious|2 months ago
First-gen product that seemed to not know where it's going? Check.
Continued quiet iteration behind closed doors despite first-gen being a flop? Check.
Sticking with the product line over many years, where most other companies would have written off and thrown in the towel? Check.
Multi-pronged GTM strategy where other products prove out key bits of next product? Check. (see: SteamOS and Proton setting the stage for Steam Deck, which in turn sets the stage for Steam Machine 2)
Deep software-hardware integration in ways that are highly salient to users? Check (see: foviated streaming for Steam Frame, Steam Deck "just works")
ee64a4a|2 months ago
Otherwise, I do think a lot of what you say is true, and some of it is in the article (e.g. the software "just works").
deafpolygon|2 months ago
ranger207|2 months ago
The reverse playbook then is that Apple is trying to make every option other than staying in the Apple ecosystem a bad choice, while Valve is trying to make Steam the best option in every scenario. The difference in base philosophy is the important part.
(Of course as a profit-seeking corporation there's no guarantee they'll stay this way, particularly after gaben leaves, but I'll appreciate it while it's here at least.)
johndoh42|2 months ago
Bluescreenbuddy|2 months ago
dzonga|2 months ago
they could've totally owned the casual gaming market -- but if all you're used to is ads / engagement. you miss the rest.