[ibaikov]

I agree and already got two minipcs I selfhost a lot of stuff now. I just now realized it is basically the future Gabe Newell predicted and wanted to make with Steam Machines [1], but he was wrong by targeting gamers and a little too early (perhaps?). Maybe they will succeed precisely because of this revolution.

I got soooo tired setting up a gaming system for parties on my projector. There are so many various problems and tweaks, gamepads disconnecting if you put a hand between the gamepad and the pc/playstation etc. BSODs on windows, driver problems and stupid obscure things varying from pc to pc. I want plug and play, but consoles have their own problems and limitations. I am too old to debug this stuff to play a game for so little time, I would rather not. I didn't really believe in steam machines at the time, but now I sort of do, especially with game streaming and local LLMs that might be hosted there now.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_Machine_(computer)

[jsheard]

Valves big misstep with the Steam Machines was that they expected developers to port their games over to Linux natively, on their own dime. Needless to say that didn't end up happening at any significant scale, so when they resurrected SteamOS they refocused on Windows binary compatibility through Proton instead.

[StopDisinfo910]

It’s an iterative process.

Valve launched Steam Machines with their own OS and started shipping a version of Steam on Linux with predictable library versions. At the same time, they started working with the Wine project and shipping things which is now called Proton but is actually the cumulative results of their own patches.

This paved the way for the success of the Steam Deck when adequate material became available.

I don’t think it makes sense to call the Steam Machine a misstep because there was no Proton. There would be no Proton nor Steam Deck without the ground work started with the Steam Machines.

[filmgirlcw]

>I don’t think it makes sense to call the Steam Machine a misstep because there was no Proton. There would be no Proton nor Steam Deck without the ground work started with the Steam Machines.

I’ve written before about how I think the Steam Deck is one of the best v1 products in recent memory, in large part because Valve learned so much (and so well) from the failures of the Steam Machines.

I don’t know if I would call it a misstep, but it was absolutely a failure. And a brutal one. Valve should be lauded for taking the right lessons from that failure and investing in Proton and doing the compatibility work themselves rather than expecting devs to do it (Apple is the only company that consistently gets developers to rebuild for their platform, and even game developers won’t do that), but we shouldn’t let the fact that it wound up on the right path years later diminish the fact that the original strategy —- if not the devices or idea itself —- was hugely flawed.

[giantrobot]

I have a Steam Machine, one of the Alienware ones. You're completely correct. SteamOS as shipped on those machines sucked. The controllers sucked. The PC hardware wasn't bad and could play games alright but the experience sucked. I made it into a Linux desktop I used for years and it worked much better for that than as a dedicated games console. But the SteamDeck very plainly incorporated lessons learned from Steam Machines.

[StopDisinfo910]

But all the update you like in your SteamDeck also came to the Steam Machines plus nice remote play on your local network. You couldn’t see because you stopped using it as an actual Steam Machine. I personally deeply disagree about the controller too.

Personally, for such an early and unlikely product, I don’t view it as a failure at all. They ironed everything they had to using the platform as a stepping stone.

[pjmlp]

And this will hit them very hard, the day Microsoft decides they had enough of Proton, they are already slowly waking up for it.

[ndsipa_pomu]

What do you think Microsoft will/can do to sabotage Proton?

[pjmlp]

First of all they can make it easier option for OEMs go for Windows/XBox handhelds and thus push SteamDeck out of market, by making it a niche device only a minority cares about, netbooks attack plan style, which they are starting now.

They can also introduce Windows/DirectX APIs that Proton will have a hard time copying, by requiring additional hardware or subsystem features not easily copyable.

They can let their legal team have some fun.

Finally, companies don't last forever, and I am betting as the 2nd most valuable company in the planet, Microsoft will outlive Steam's current management and eventually deal with the problem in another way.

[slightwinder]

> First of all they can make it easier option for OEMs go for Windows/XBox handhelds and thus push SteamDeck out of market, by making it a niche device only a minority cares about, netbooks attack plan style, which they are starting now.

Steamdeck is already a niche device, and they have direct competition since years now. Optimizing the software and interface won't probably make it much worse for Valve.

> They can also introduce Windows/DirectX APIs that Proton will have a hard time copying, by requiring additional hardware or subsystem features not easily copyable.

Seems unrealistic that games will adapt a new restricted API, which at the same will be a longterm hazzle for Wine/Proton, and will survive that court-battles. At best, it's just some annoying money-sink, with Microsoft playing on time to make it worse for everyone without gaining any real advantage.

> Finally, companies don't last forever, and I am betting as the 2nd most valuable company in the planet, Microsoft will outlive Steam's current management and eventually deal with the problem in another way.

That's actually realistic, but there is also the chance that valve will be outliving Windows and has to battle with whatever will follow.

[ndsipa_pomu]

I don't think reducing the price of Windows for OEMs will do much as the SteamDeck uses Arch Linux specifically for better control of the software/updates than relying on Microsoft.

They can try making Proton's job more difficult, but I'd expect that major changes to the APIs would prevent a lot of existing games from working on Windows.

Legally, I don't think they've got a leg to stand on.

[pjmlp]

I am not speaking about reducing the price of Windows.

[Sammi]

Basically Valve are doing with Steam OS and Proton against Windows, the same thing that Google did with Chrome against Internet Explorer. Microsoft's usual tactic with Embrace Extend Extinguish isn't working with Edge, as Chrome just has great development velocity and market entrenchment and distribution. Crossing my fingers that Valve will pull off the same thing. In the gaming market Valve have great distribution and they are strong developers, so maybe.

[wishfish]

Looks like they'll be trying out the console / small box form factor again.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Valve-Fremont-Upcoming-console...

I'm glad they are. There's probably a sizeable market for a console that runs PC games smoothly at 1080. And could double as a PC. If they get it to the size of an XBox Series S or smaller, I would probably get one.

[slipperydippery]

That's a dream come true... provided they fix multi-accounts and game visibility/accessibility in the Steam UI.

I already have a Steam Deck that I can't let my kids touch, which is stupid. I can't hook something like this up in a shared space of any kind without improved parental controls, including ability to toggle visibility of game library entries, and (ideally, but not strictly necessary) the ability to say "do not show this user's entire library to anyone else on this machine, or on the network, nobody with a different login"

[wishfish]

I had never thought of multiuser (or the lack of) with SteamOS and the Deck. That would be quite the problem with kids.

I wonder if a stopgap solution would be something like Bazzite on the Deck. Then you could have true multiuser while retaining the Deck's ease of use. But I could see other problems.

I'm sure you've probably already tried this or something similar. I just couldn't resist thinking out loud. It's an interesting problem.

[ibaikov]

Wow that's cool, Gabe is an underrated CEO. Thanks for posting this since I do not follow anything gaming anymore.

I hope they'll fix their rumored team wars inside the company.

[laidoffamazon]

I’m honestly skeptical of the utility of the Fremont as the specs currently appear. Seems like not enough horsepower compared to the competitor consoles - the Steam Deck was so good because price to performance to battery life is still hard to beat and only now encroached by the Switch 2, it simply didn’t have a console like competitor.

[dgfitz]

> I want plug and play, but consoles have their own problems and limitations.

How so? A console is literally a gaming PC.

I can see the point of “need multiple consoles because game X isn’t on console Y” or “I’d like to play an RTS/MMO that isn’t on a console” but since you mentioned gamepads that point mostly dies.

I also haven’t ever had a PS5 or Switch controller lose link from a console because someone walks or stands between myself and the console.

[slightwinder]

> How so? A console is literally a gaming PC.

Consoles are walled gardens, while PC is an open park. On a proper PC, you can choose anything from everything, while consoles are very restricted in terms of software and ability. I mean, think about modding, running other software besides the game (browser, (voice-)chat, etc.), having special hardware like a mouse, keyboard, capture-card, a second screen... Consoles are again slowly those things, but it's still not the same as a proper Gaming-PC.

[slipperydippery]

PCs are different for a few reasons, for me.

One big part's the library. I can still play Steam games I bought when the Gamecube was current. My Gamecube games do not work on the Switch. My Dreamcast games certainly don't! The library for the PC is enormous and generally you don't have to re-buy old games to keep playing them, even after major hardware upgrades. Hell I got like a few hundred games on Itch.io years ago for so little money they may as well have been free, and sure they're mostly short "jank" games and art games and stuff, but that's still games and I like them! You can't get that kind of thing (with that kind of "OMG I may never even get through all these..." magnitude, I don't mean jank or art games, both exist on consoles, even if they're not well represented) on a console.

To do anything similar with consoles, you need, like... a dozen consoles, or more, with keeping that number down requiring putting a lot of money and time into careful curation and selection. A single PC does the trick, though.

Another's longevity & archiving (not unrelated to the library thing, but not exactly the same thing). The PC is my platform of last resort for console game archiving. Consoles don't really fill this role at all. Even a "hacked" console (if it's hackable) is on borrowed time. The hardware dies, and eventually the only ones left are in museums or crazy-expensive private collections. Meanwhile I play freeware PC games I downloaded in the 1990s, sometimes, like the exact same binary (to the degree it's "the same", which it isn't, but I just mean I didn't have to go download it again) that's been shuffled from one disk to another ever since. They're not gone. And thanks to PCs, neither are old console games (this is a state of affairs that's on life support, for newer consoles, but not quite dead yet)

Another's the controls. I don't really want a console at my desk (and there's gonna be a PC regardless, so that's nothing extra) because I definitely want one on my TV, and I don't want two of the same console. I don't really want to use a mouse & keyboard on my couch, I've done it, the best solutions I've found take up a bunch of space, look bad, and are still a worse experience than a desk. Some games that I love, I have no interest in playing them if it's not with a mouse and keyboard (and for plenty of others, a controller is better! I like tons of games that are best played with a controller, but for some, it's mouse & keyboard or I'll simply not play them).

Another factor's modding. I've gotten hundreds of extra hours out of games I've bought, thanks to mods. 50+% of my time in the Half Life and Source engines has been in total conversion mods. I'd probably only have put about a quarter as many hours into Morrowind or Skyrim as I have, without mods. I never touched the base game of Rome: Total War again after I discovered the Europa Barbarorum mod, which I sunk probably a hundred or more hours into. All for free, and you don't get that on consoles, the closest you get are things like level designers, sometimes, in LittleBigPlanet or what have you... and those all die when the game servers die.

FWIW I have... a lot of consoles, I don't hate them or anything, and these days most (90%?) of my gaming is on consoles. But they're not a gaming PC.

(Really, if gaming PCs were more-stable, less-janky, and didn't have such a hard time consistently pairing with and juggling multiple BlueTooth controllers [even the SteamDeck fails to live up to "real" consoles, on any of those fronts] I'd probably not bother with consoles at all, but that's such a crippling issue for PC hardware that instead I have a bunch of consoles, and have even re-bought games 3 or 4 times just for the convenience of being able to play them on one of the small set of real consoles currently connected to my TV)

[j45]

Self-hosting has become orders of magnitude easier and simpler over the past 5-10 years.

[afroboy]

I just set up mine in one day, setting *arrs and Jellyfin and voila i got streaming service better than all payed streaming services combined and no ads.

[slipperydippery]

Video drivers & hardware are a plague on both Windows and Linux. Hell, adding a discrete video card to the config was even a way to increase your odds of serious problems with a Mac by a large multiple, back in the Intel Mac days. Any complaint-session online by Mac owners tended to be dominated by folks rocking non-Intel video chips in their MacBook.

[kogasa240p]

The biggest problem with making a "gaming" miniPC is new games being very unotpomized, but other than that the hardware is already there, I'd wager that we'll probably see a new Steam Machine within the next 3-5 years.

[zem]

I would honestly love a steam machine like thing that I could just plug into my laptop. I'm carrying my laptop around anyway, if I could plug in a small gaming system and have the laptop act as the input/output that would be ideal.

[ibaikov]

I liked the idea of type-c GPUs but there are so many problems again that it's just useless. It also should be something better than just a GPU tho, have HDMI eARC etc.

[mycall]

OCuLink is superior for external GPUs and is basically the standard with PCIe 4.0 bandwidth. It works well given a good enough eGPU and power supply.

[zem]

yeah I don't want an egpu, I want a complete gaming device that I can use my laptop as a peripheral for