Valve Introduces Steam Machine, Steam Frame, Steam Controller - Gabe Cube

[PyrrhicRustle]

PC due for upgrade, if the pricing is okay and the performance is good I’m tempted.

 

[Buttigieg2020]

Gayben slay!


The price will make or break this. I’m thinking it’s $600. I have zero evidence for that, I just believe it.

 

[Judge Dredd]

The price will make or break this

I was going to make a post about how you can already buy mini PCs with a similar form factor that do a decent enough jobs of running games, but this product isn't aimed at me. This is aimed at people who want to be able to pick something off the shelf and have it just work, not people who want to dick around with installing Batocera.

That why I'm waiting on price and availability. If it's cheap and widely available, it might be my go-to fuck around box. Raspberry Pis have ballooned in cost, chinese mini PCs are arguably a fire hazard and soldered on parts make maintenance difficult, and the old "get an elitedesk/think centre" advice fails where I live as such systems are scalped. That leaves gambling with online retailers.

 

[#FF0000]

Calling it the Steam Machine is absolutely brilliant. I want a limited time steampunk themed Steam Machine now

 

[Buttigieg2020]

That why I'm waiting on price and availability.

Yeah, it’s probably not going to be sold at retail. Probably going to be scarce the first year, like the steam deck.

 

[DOORSTUCK]

For everyone's information and from my own personal account, the Steam Deck when first opened for reservation order was 5 USD, and the site crashed almost the minute of opening.
Just for the sake of precaution and from the limited amount of information, preload your Steam wallet and be ready to jump if you are an hour 0 buyer.

 

[Asian tech support]

gabecube. making it a fucking cube was brilliant. this is the kind of memetics no amount of sony or microsoft money could ever hope to replicate.

 

[Andy Soying Out]

I was excited until I went on the store page and this is what they're using in their promo vid.

Reminder that Valve is an SBI client, its just that nobody pays it any attention because they barely make games

 

[Irrational Bounty Hunter]

The only way the Steam Machine won't kick ass is if it has an outrageous price. An affordably priced mini computer that exists just to boot Steam games at a good frame rate (but is also just a little computer you can use for whatever else too) would be insane.

 

[Slav Power]

>muh SBI
>muh lesbos in ads
I genuinely think you should kill yourselves if that's all you can contribute to the discussion. The world will be better off with one soul vacuum less. All of you idpol obsessed faggots will burn in the same vat of shit as all the SJW's from a decade ago you despise so much. And just like them, you don't actually play games you bitch about so the world would be better off with that oxygen you waste being repurposed for the local fauna.

With that out of the way, Valve definitely learned a lot from their initial hardware endeavors that were the original Steam Machine, Steam Controller and Steam Link from 2015. I'll definitely keep an eye on the controller, but if the VR headset ends up being reasonably priced as well then I don't know, feels like the ultimate way to dip your toes into VR. No base stations, can run some stuff on it's own, controllers with finger tracking, fully wireless with it's own dongle. Again, the make or break of all of this is the pricing. If it's not asinine then these will be some banger products.

The thing I like about the Steam Controller is that it has just about everything. The Steam Deck-esque layout where the sticks are right next to the D-pad/action buttons instead of aping the same legacy PSX analog gamepad or the Xbox gamepad location, it has the touchpads, as well as all of the fancy backside inputs, all fully configurable of course, has the magnetic sticks, but most importantly: gyroscope. Wouldn't be surprised if we'll see RPCS3 and any of the currently alive Switch emulator forks implementing some sort of native support for it, and when they do you basically have the ultimate PC controller that'll handle anything you throw at it.

And personally I don't care about the Steam Machine. I have a beefy PC and I'm not a braindead mongoloid that needs a corporation to tailor a Linux distro for me so that I don't have to spend even a single second thinking about how to make Windows more usable or how to setup Linux myself. If I want the Linux CBT, I can handle it, but at the same time I'm not so braindead to not be able to make Windows nice, and it really doesn't take much to bring it to the point of it not being annoying despite how much the Internet bitches and moans about it. It takes so little to take either Windows and Linux and turn it into something workable but the average consumer is so brain damaged they can't fathom the idea that you could toggle the weather widget on the Windows taskbar and just live with this learned helplessness like some sort of plankton at the bottom of the sea. That's who's the target audience of SteamOS, entities that barely register as human that should never have any access to an x86 machine ever.

Just remember: SteamOS won't save you. Either move your ass and learn something new now or forever bitch and moan about how bad your Windows experience is while refusing to do anything about it.

 

[Slamerella]

Calling it the Steam Machine feels like a backwards move. It'd be like if Nintendo called the next console after the Switch 2 Wii U.

And I say this as someone who saw more value out of their Wii U over their Steam Machine.

 

[Exterminate Leftists]

I'm excited to see what the headset can do, I use a Q3 to drive drunk in racing games currently. Not having to be tied into Meta's shitty software/data stealing app that phones home every five seconds even when you're not using the headset is a big deal, they actively hate PCVR. It's also looking like it will work with Linux, which is an even bigger deal. Also it's going to have access to the entirety of Steam games, which will blow away Meta's shitty store and UI. This is a big move because according to forum posts it's going to be cheaper than the Index, something to get people's feet wet in VR maybe for the first time. I'm predicting $699, which isn't a deal compared to the Quest 3, but all of the other features may even out the playing field. It's a shot across the bow for Zuckerberg either way, the Quest 4 is going to need to seriously step it up. I don't know how Valve's customer service is, but it has to be better than what Facebook offers.

I forgot to add: Inside out tracking like the Quest (no more lighthouses) and IR illuminators so you can play in the dark, unlike the Quest. No color passthrough, which is useless for anyone but coomers currently.

 

[Cryogonal2]

dunno why they bothered with another generation vr headset though.

Tapping into the market for those who want VR without wanting to set up a bunch of bullshit while also not wanting to give "Meta" any money and free data

 

[Slav Power]

Calling it the Steam Machine feels like a backwards move.

To be fair, the 2015 Steam Machine was such a failure that no one remembers it today. Same with the Controller. The name recycling here won't have the same issue that the Wii/Wii U debacle had, that's a completely different caliber of a naming fuck-up, let's be real.

It's also looking like it will work with Linux

Steam Frame is a Linux gaming ARM computer integrated into a headset. So "looking like it will work with Linux" is a teensy tiny understatement.

Tapping into the market for those who want VR without wanting to set up a bunch of bullshit while also not wanting to give "Meta" any money and free data

Basically. Quest is the only option on the market for a VR headset without base stations and it's a data privacy nightmare. Plus, Frame's controllers have the individual finger tracking of the Index. A whole bunch of people were waiting for something like this from Valve.

 

[SCV]

Price is everything. The system is not as powerful as a PS5 so it should not be as expensive as well. Doesn't matter that it's also a PC.

I'm not sure this is true. The PS5 has 16gb of shared memory, an 8c/16t zen 2 cpu, and a 36CU RDNA2 gpu. The GabenCube has 16gb of system memory + 8gb of dedicated video memory, a 6c/12t zen 4 cpu, and a 28CU RDNA3 gpu. Essentially the PS5 is a beefed up APU where as the GabenCube is a "proper" (for lack of a better word) computer with a dedicated graphics card and I think it will outperform the PS5 all else being equal.

The zen 2 -> zen 4 generational improvements for the cpu probably outweigh the two extra cores (ex) but critically most games can only really use 6-8 threads due to boring computer science reasons so for actual gaming performance it is an even larger gap than it might seem. The gpu compute wise is probably a wash but given that GabenCube has a dedicated gpu with 8gb of GDDR6 vs. shared system memory I would expect the GabenCube gpu to come out ahead here as well. And while ps5 does have 16gb of memory being that it's shared the actual memory available to the system will be less.

Finally, as we've seen with the steam deck valve has put in a lot of effort into steam OS with focus on actual user experience rather than marketing numbers (like frame pacing vs. FPS). The hardware choices have the same wisdom again like the steam deck. Whereas the deck has a 720p screen vs. competitors with a 1080p screen, 1080p is a bigger number but at that screen size the difference is negligible except that rendering at 1080p uses/wastes way more power hampering battery life. In the same way the GabenCube has a cheaper 6c cpu that wouldn't change much vs. an 8c cpu and has instead used that savings to get dedicated gpu.

All that said you're right about the price. If this is $900 it's DOA. At retail a ryzen 7600, 16gb of ram, a 512gb ssd, and radeon rtx 7600 are about $575. That doesn't include the mobo/case/psu/fans/other bullshit but it's also the retail cost which valve is most certianly not paying. They are also probably okay selling it as a loss leader in order to sell games and get that sweet, sweet 30% cut. That's why I'm guessing around $550 for the cheaper version. Thank you for coming to my ted talk.

 

[Biker]

 

[john5433]

if it's not like a Steam Deck where trying to install anything that isn't goyming OS with Steam shitware installed on top then it might be a good idea for (somewhat cheap, assuming it's gonna be like the Steam Deck) then I might buy one later, but still it's a shitty company that I'll never touch again and haven't touched in months.

 

[foam rolla]

I'm interested to see what kind of emulation it can do. I think the Steam Deck caps out at PS3 emulation. If this could do PS3/PS4 and Switch, then it be great.

I don't really need one as already having a PC and a Deck. But something you could just plug into a big living room TV and play Steam and Emulation would be good. I know you can plug a deck into a TV, but if this is powerful enough and a decent price, I could see getting it.

 

[The Last Stand]

This would be an excellent opportunity to take up the void that xbox and playstation are currently hard at work producing. But again I see some of the faults of "just another crippled pc for your living room" design and although better, the new gamepad gives me little hope in terms of usability.

Remember that the next Xbox is rumored to be a PC/console hybrid so already Microsoft has competition while they're slowly transitioning out of the console space.

 

[Darth Insanius]

Just wanna post this, I always like the Coachella version of Steam Machine mixed with Too Long:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=l4SFUztLWOA

That whole album is fucking amazing