and all of those obvious counterpoints is still not enough to justify the price difference between a current gen console and this Steam Machine when an old sub $99 mobile device can power three generation old games as well, and connect to a monitor for those inclined to go out of their way for that user experience

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amlib a day ago | parent [-]

> when an old sub $99 mobile device can power three generation old games as well, and connect to a monitor

Running an outdated, out of support version of android with limited app availability and a crappy selection of poorly maintained emulation forks... with a buggy GPU driver that causes so many visual and performance issues on a digital platform that does everything they can keep you from installing your choice of OS, let alone the lack of usual niceties that desktop operating systems get you. It will do in a pinch but I don't think anyone who likes emulating stuff enjoys using a system like this. Even a new flagship phone will share some of these issues and if you have an iphone you will pay to have an still inferior solution that can vanish at moments notice if apple decides the emulator your purchased isn't compliant to their draconian guidelines or isn't compatible with newer apis. I guess at least the UI/UX will be nice.

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yieldcrv 21 hours ago | parent [-]

Alright, so at what price does your opinion stop being true, because there will certainly be consumer hardware price hikes again in 6 months, due to further RAM demand

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amlib 21 hours ago | parent [-]

I just think that phones and specially old ones are quite bad at being repurposed, its hard to work with them when they were purposely engineered that way. You will have much better results with an old pc desktops or pc notebook. Some may even be as performant as the steam machine, just don't expect low power usage and something small and good looking for the living room, a sore point in pc desktops that the steam machine tries to address.

	▲	yieldcrv 19 hours ago \| parent [-]
		We got that part, they’re good points At what point does the value proposition go back, for the target audience you are fond of and can imagine to be disinterested in both consoles and enthusiasts uses of old phones That was the premise of this thread, the price point of consoles and a generally antiquated understanding of current gen console indie gaming libraries