this post was submitted on 07 Jan 2025
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While I like the concept... isn't that a bit of what killed the initial steam machines. IE they basically encouraged everyone and their grandmother to release one... and the end result was the name was dilluted down so badly that no one knew what a steam machine was.
I think the messaging is clear this time: Steam Deck is the defacto and flagship SteamOS device that represents the platform, and it has a strong established mindshare already, while other options are now available as well. It had a headstart of three years that gave it plenty of time to shine, and the handheld form-factor still stands out as something the competition (Windows) treats as an afterthought at best with poor UX.
The Steam Machines effort tried to position Alienware Alpha as its focus but the press coverage including all of the other options at the same time confused people. Steam Machines also had awful timing and pricing, with the Alienware being outdated hardware whose Windows version had already been out for a year for the same price or lower by the time the SteamOS version released, and the SteamOS version offering absolutely no advantage in pricing, power, features, or UX for most gamers. All of those factors are different this time. Plus game compatibility was much worse than it is now.
I think it's fine.
The first party device has existed over a year now, proved its worth, and become more widely understood by gamers.
Android suffers from fragmentation, sure, but it being used by a variety of manufacturers hasn't stopped people from understanding that android is android, and can do similar things whether you buy a phone/tablet for 200 bucks, or 2000.
The problem then was the immaturity of Linux for gaming. Valve has done a shit ton of work to make that possible and focused on a specific experience with the steam deck for several years. Now they're just expanding and building on that success, which is awesome to see.
I fully agree that was "a problem". but I fully hold to the fragmented hardware also being a significant problem. IMO the steam deck still significantly makes gains from being a consistant hardware target for dev's to base things on, in addition to basically having little to no consumer confusion, if a game says "will run on steam deck", it's safe to assume, it will run on a steam deck. This time around valve specifically hasn't released a steam deck 2, because they want to avoid any hardware confusion.
The key problem why "Runs on SteamDeck" exists is not the raw power of the SteamDeck (or lack thereof) but the compatibility with Linux. Unless someone decides to utterly cripple a handheld for the sake of battery efficiency any game labeled with SteamDeck support will also run on any other handheld running SteamOS.
The problem with the SteamMachines ultimately was the lack of game support. The hardware confusion was just the cherry on top. You could even argue that the lack of supported games back then meant a limited number of customers would be interested which in turn led to companies releasing underpowered hardware. By that logic one can even claim the failure of SteamMachines is entirely down to the piss poor Linux support then.
I don't think hardware vendors will use chips or parts that lack decent working linux drivers, which would make the "too many hardware variants" point moot.
Then again, higher ups are known for taking stupid decisions.
I'm not even talking linux incompatibility... but lets just say they use a super underpowered graphics card. or very little ram, or hard drives too small to install most games on etc...
Fact is manufacturers have made comperably stupid decisions. I've seen a lot of laptops for sale with windows 10, and 32 GB hard drives that can't even be updated simply because even with nothing on them windows can't fit both itself and an update. Generally speaking... when allowed to, manufacturers can release some pretty damn stupid builds that often aren't designed to run what they are marketed to run.
That's why PC games have always had minimum hardware specs listed. Potential buyers will have to keep that in mind if the device they're getting happens to be too weak to run something like CP2077 or Horizon Zero Dawn.
While I find it unlikely to happen, I can totally see an OEM doing that, the "absolute bare minimum SteamOS" (AMD A6-7000, 2GB RAM, 16GB HD), but the bang for the buck might make it a total sales failure, because unlike a general use computer (such as those walmart cheapo win10 with no usable disk space), buyers of any steamdeck-like devices have a very focused use case of games, so the minimum acceptable specs will probably always be halfway decent
I... think we are saying the same thing with different words and emphasis.
All these handhelds have decent AMD hardware, I would bet money that absolutely any new steamOS handheld will have similar or more powerful hardware than the OG deck. This new Lenovo device specifically is more powerful than the OG deck as well.
And with steamOS being Linux, a free and open source system, hardware fragmentation wont really be a thing. With Android hardware fragmentation was bad because many devices would never get updated after a year or so, but this is true Linux and valve is a consumer friendly company so I don't really know what you mean talking about hardware fragmentation.
This is great for valve, and great for gamers. There is no down side to this.
The problem with Steam Machines was that they were nothing but overpriced pre built PCs. And they usually shipped with Windows because only a handful of Steam games ran on Linux out of the box. That's basically what birthed Valve's investments into Proton.