The elephant in the room: "will this game run on my Steam Machine?"

This is really the part a lot of people don't understand and not a qestion you even have to ask when you buy/download a game for a console.

Some of the biggest games right now like BF6, COD, or Fortnite, League of Legends, chinese gacha games won't run on this. That excludes a massive part of the market, many of whom would be the exact audience for a simpler, more console-like PC experience. There's also no guarantee that future AAA games will be compatible with this day one (8GB VRAM is very limiting already).

Yeah yeah indies but if people want to play X then offering them Z is not an option.

This will be DOA anything over $500

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Otek 10 hours ago | parent | next [-]

This is true also for steam deck but it’s a success anyway. COD, Fortnite, LoL players can stay on windows. I’m happy to play newest indie game on my Linux machine

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thrownawaysz 10 hours ago | parent [-]

>but it’s a success anyway

That's also debatable. Switch 2 sold 10m units in 6 months compared to the Steam Deck's 4 million in 3 years ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The Steam Deck is niche even among the gaming crowd.

>COD, Fortnite, LoL players can stay on windows. I’m happy to play newest indie game on my Linux machine

This is the mindset that makes the Steam Machine DOA if not priced correctly. No one will pay $800 just to play Hollow Knight in 4k

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arvinsim 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Good thing Valve is not a publicly traded company unlike Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft.

> This is the mindset that makes the Steam Machine DOA if not priced correctly. No one will pay $800 just to play Hollow Knight in 4k

I will pay that money to finish up my backlog of games on Steam. I already pay that much for Steam Deck anyway.

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TheAngush 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Success is relative. The Steam Deck is only unsuccessful if you consider the goal of the device to be "outsell Nintendo". I would argue 4 million units is not merely a success, but a massive success.

	▲	ThatPlayer 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		For an interesting comparison, the PS Vita did about 4 million in the first year.

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galleywest200 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Worth considering that Nintendo has a massive library of proprietary games they themselves produce (Mario, Pokemon, etc) that Steam does not have.

People buy Nintendo products to play Nintendo games.

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SchemaLoad 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The Steam Deck also had no marketing and is not sold in retail stores. It's also been a success in kicking off a whole product category of handheld PCs, of which most games will be bought on Steam.

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porphyra 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

You can likely install Windows on Steam Machine if you so wish, and then it would actually be a fairly competent mini PC while having great and silent cooling. However, I suppose most casual gamers aren't savvy enough to tinker and install their own OS.