Published on 1602 words, 6 minutes to read
Valve does nothing and still wins
Today was a big day for gamers as Valve introduced three products: the Steam Controller, Steam Machine, and Steam Frame. When you combine this with Steam Deck, I think it’s safe to say that Valve is going to win the next console generation.
steam controller
I have basically nothing to say about the Steam Controller. This is the input of the Steam Deck but in a controller. There’s no way they could actually mess it up in a way that can’t be recovered.
What else is there to say?
steam machine
The Steam Machine of yesteryear was one of the biggest technological failures in history and changed a lot of what made Valve hardware so great. Based on what they’ve announced, the software ecosystem I know and love on SteamOS, and the feedback from developers I talk to, there’s a fair chance that this new Steam Machine is going to be the most attractive console on the market.
TL;DR: Steam Machine features are on par or better than the PS5. It has 16GB of RAM, a dedicated GPU with 8GB of video RAM, and is about the size of three M1 Mac Minis stacked on top of each other, with a slightly larger footprint than the Nintendo GameCube.
I don’t see any real way that it could fail like the previous Steam Machine. If they don’t fuck it up, I can say with full confidence that Valve is going to win this console generation.
Looking back, I think the failure of the first Steam Machine was probably one of the best things that ever happened to Valve. Proton, Steam Play, and Steam Deck are proof that Valve has learned all the lessons needed to make the next-generation Steam Machine a viable console.
The biggest difference between SteamOS and other console operating systems is that SteamOS is an immutable image-based fork of Arch Linux with a skin on top. If you can do it with a normal PC, you can do it on SteamOS too.
Wait, you said you could Anything You can do this on a normal PC, but you also said it’s running an unchangeable OS. What if my definition of “anything” includes “install system packages”?
Well, I’m not worried about it for two main reasons: developers have already found ways to use things like Distrobox to give you islands of mutation in an otherwise unchangeable system on the Steam deck, and you can just blow up the OS and install whatever you want (like Baseite) or any normal Linux distribution. You can also install windows on it if you need to for some reason.
This means that even though Valve may be selling this hardware at a loss, you can still buy one and never buy anything else from them. You can install any compatible game from any market. In his own words:
Yes, the 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 a computer?
I can’t imagine other console makers saying this.
I can easily imagine it having free reign over the majority of the Steam library. Based on game count alone, this would make it one of the largest console launch libraries on the market. This is not even counting the fact that you can install alternative marketplaces such as itch.io, GOG, or anything Lutris supports (EG: Epic Games).
Valve does nothing and still wins.
One of the big things that I don’t think people really appreciate about the Steam Machine (or the Steam Deck for that matter) is that the freedom to install whatever program, framework, background service or OS you want means that every Steam Machine can be used to create games. Some of their promotional images show the Steam Machine split between Blender and Godot in a dual-monitor setup.
I don’t think you realize how big of a deal this is. By making each Steam Machine powerful enough to perform full game development, Valve is making it that much easier to become an independent game developer. Just add ideas, skills and time.
Ridiculously, this means that the Steam Machine is possibly the only console on the market that is fully compliant with the EU’s Digital Markets Act. It would be absolutely ridiculous if the EU used this as an argument for Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony to open up their consoles to third-party developers.
Oh and what’s more, the internal storage is upgradeable and can take full-size NVMe drives. If you take your microSD card out of your Steam Deck, you can insert it into your Steam Machine and have all your games instantly. The RAM is reportedly user-upgradeable as well.
The only way they can mess with this is pricing. The price will determine whether this is a PS5 killer or a mid-range home theater PC that can play games well. Given the fact that Steam prints a lot of money, I expect the pricing to be extremely aggressive.
At worst, it would be a great home theater PC. I’ll be rocking it in my media center. It will run Plex, Twitch, and Youtube properly.
steam frame
Valve also today announced its successor to the Valve Index, the Steam Frame, a standalone VR headset. It’s basically a Meta Quest headset, but also a Steam deck. They promote it as being able to play VR and 2D games seamlessly. The strangest thing about it is that it’s running a 64bit ARM CPU instead of a traditional AMD APU like the Steam Deck and Steam Machine. This means that SteamOS is going to be cross-architecture for the first time and they are going to use FEX to bridge the gap.
The big thing I’d like to see in practice is implementation of their preferred rendition. This beautiful hack exploits the fact that the human eye has the greatest acuity and fidelity at the exact center of your field of vision, while your peripheral vision is very poor at this. This means that on average you only need to render 10% of the frames at maximum quality. feel As if it were running at full screen resolution.
This would make irrelevant the fact that the frame is using a “weak” CPU/GPU. Games should look good as long as they render the slice that’s needed fast enough at full quality.
What’s even more interesting is that they take advantage of the same tricks behind rendering preferred for streaming games from a PC or Steam Machine. This means you get the same optically perfect quality but with even lower latency because less data has to be transferred to reach your eyes.
I’d really like to see how it turns out in practice. There is reportedly no perceptual difference between this setup and rendering the game at 100% full quality.
The Steam Frame comes with a USB dongle that lets you harness the power of your gaming tower for low latency VR gaming. I’ll have to see it in action to have an opinion. I think in the worst case it can’t be much worse than streaming a VR game on my Quest 2 over Wi-Fi. This was tolerable and feasible for a mid-level Beat Saber. I’m confident that this will be enough for at least high level Beat Saber gameplay.
Remember how I said this headset has a Steam Deck? The Steam Frame runs full SteamOS. You can boot it into the full KDE desktop and use it as a normal computer. I have no reason to doubt that each Steam Frame is also a development kit in the same way that the Steam Machine is also a development kit.
They also claim that you can load arbitrary Android apps into the Steam frame. I need to see it in action before I have an opinion about it. This would be exceptionally fun if it meant you could take apps/games made for Meta Quest and put them on the Steam Frame without any modifications. I’m not holding my breath, but it will be fun.
The only possible drawback I can see is that the strap it comes with doesn’t go over your head. If this becomes an issue in practice, someone is going to make a third party strap that will fix this problem. I am not worried.
In fact, the only thing that can go wrong with this hardware is the price. I would still be happy if the price were the worst part of this lineup. It would be really nice if there was a bundle.
I plan to pick up and review the Steam Machine for at least the first day. What would you like to see in it? Let me know on BlueSky.
Facts and circumstances may have changed since publication. If something seems wrong or unclear please contact me before jumping to conclusions.
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