PC gaming boom: Steam sets new record with 41.6 million concurrent players
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Another day, another record for Steam.
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Console gaming is so anti-consumer. Who would prefer to use a console if they are even the slightest bit savvy with a computer?
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This next Steam console will be interesting. With all the success they’ve had from the Steam Deck it might stand a chance this time around.
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This next Steam console will be interesting. With all the success they’ve had from the Steam Deck it might stand a chance this time around.
I’m very skeptical and think there is a reason that the gameboy/handheld form factor gaming laptop and VR headset are coming first.
As it stands? For 500-ish you can get an AMD NUC to throw under the TV and use to play a lot of games locally and stream the rest. You aren’t vibing to max settings Clair Obscur on that but it is well past a Steam Deck.
But the problem is that people want their consoles to “just work”. It is why the Series S was such a shitshow. And to get that performance? You are looking at a lot closer to a thousand bucks than not. Which is a much easier sell when “you need to buy this to play a remake of a PS3 game” versus “you can buy this to play a lot of the games you are already playing because it is a PC”.
Which ALSO ignores what is… probably the bigger problem. That AMD NUC? Good fucking luck getting VRR AND HDR to work on there. General rule of thumb is you can get one and it isn’t even consistent which one you’ll get. Because TVs (and receivers) run on HDMI, not Display Port. And AMD and HDMI 2.1 is like Open Source Alternatives and Raging Assholes. Can Valve get around that with some fairly hefty tweaks to SteamOS? Yeah. But it is gonna generate massive amounts of ill will when the FOSS community hear.
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This next Steam console will be interesting. With all the success they’ve had from the Steam Deck it might stand a chance this time around.
Imagine buying a new console that you can play games you got over a decade ago. And then play on your PC same save files. Then move to your portable device and play your game there too. Crazy.
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This next Steam console will be interesting. With all the success they’ve had from the Steam Deck it might stand a chance this time around.
One of the main failures of the Steam Machine was that there was no baseline “steam machine.” They were just a myriad of prebuilt machines running a specific OS, and was especially confusing to people not already into PC gaming.
The Steam Deck fixed that by being just one thing (pedants fuck off, you know what I mean). If their next console like offering is indeed console like and not just a rebranded PC ecosystem, it probably will see more success than their first venture in Steam Machines.
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Console gaming is so anti-consumer. Who would prefer to use a console if they are even the slightest bit savvy with a computer?
Console gaming is also easy for casual gamers and people who don’t want to fiddle with tech.
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I’m very skeptical and think there is a reason that the gameboy/handheld form factor gaming laptop and VR headset are coming first.
As it stands? For 500-ish you can get an AMD NUC to throw under the TV and use to play a lot of games locally and stream the rest. You aren’t vibing to max settings Clair Obscur on that but it is well past a Steam Deck.
But the problem is that people want their consoles to “just work”. It is why the Series S was such a shitshow. And to get that performance? You are looking at a lot closer to a thousand bucks than not. Which is a much easier sell when “you need to buy this to play a remake of a PS3 game” versus “you can buy this to play a lot of the games you are already playing because it is a PC”.
Which ALSO ignores what is… probably the bigger problem. That AMD NUC? Good fucking luck getting VRR AND HDR to work on there. General rule of thumb is you can get one and it isn’t even consistent which one you’ll get. Because TVs (and receivers) run on HDMI, not Display Port. And AMD and HDMI 2.1 is like Open Source Alternatives and Raging Assholes. Can Valve get around that with some fairly hefty tweaks to SteamOS? Yeah. But it is gonna generate massive amounts of ill will when the FOSS community hear.
I have an AMD mini PC in my living room and it has changed how I game. I got it because my Deck was nice but I found I plugged it into my TV most of the time and wanted better quality graphics that would look better on my 4k screen. I now love to sit in front of the TV with a controller and play my games, mostly directly off the device.
Many people have similar experiences with devices like the Switch - if you have a couch and a big screen TV then it makes sense to dock it, and many choose to.
So I think the “steam machines” of old do have potential now. The idea 10 years ago was good but the software and the hardware wasn’t there. Now it is, and steam doesn’t have to even do much to build the things - they’re out in the wild already. They can offer something more powerful than the deck without necessarily cannabilising the market the decks have - it’s expanding to a new user group who are less interested in mobile gaming and more interested in using their big screen TV to pc game.
Plus as a console the game library is massive compared to a PlayStation or Xbox or Switch, and with an OS that allows users to do so much more with their device.
Plus what Steam offers is something Windows can’t offer on handheld and doesn’t offer on a living room TV - a great interface. Steams gamescope and big picture mode are great on a mini PC.
So I think a steam “console” is not unrealistic. They can leverage what they already have with the Steam OS and steam deck with a standard branded hardware model of mini PC from existing OEMs, and allow others to use the OS for their own machines. I suspect if they make steamOS freely available people will also be doing this themselves with their own devices.
As a place for Valve to expand into, it’s reasonably low hanging fruit and relatively low risk as they’re not having to focus on the hardware and they already have the software working.
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I don’t think there is really much fiddling these days. It’s probably about as much as setting up a console.
If you build your own, then sure that’s more work. But people can buy prebuilt, laptops, or handhelds.
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I have an AMD mini PC in my living room and it has changed how I game. I got it because my Deck was nice but I found I plugged it into my TV most of the time and wanted better quality graphics that would look better on my 4k screen. I now love to sit in front of the TV with a controller and play my games, mostly directly off the device.
Many people have similar experiences with devices like the Switch - if you have a couch and a big screen TV then it makes sense to dock it, and many choose to.
So I think the “steam machines” of old do have potential now. The idea 10 years ago was good but the software and the hardware wasn’t there. Now it is, and steam doesn’t have to even do much to build the things - they’re out in the wild already. They can offer something more powerful than the deck without necessarily cannabilising the market the decks have - it’s expanding to a new user group who are less interested in mobile gaming and more interested in using their big screen TV to pc game.
Plus as a console the game library is massive compared to a PlayStation or Xbox or Switch, and with an OS that allows users to do so much more with their device.
Plus what Steam offers is something Windows can’t offer on handheld and doesn’t offer on a living room TV - a great interface. Steams gamescope and big picture mode are great on a mini PC.
So I think a steam “console” is not unrealistic. They can leverage what they already have with the Steam OS and steam deck with a standard branded hardware model of mini PC from existing OEMs, and allow others to use the OS for their own machines. I suspect if they make steamOS freely available people will also be doing this themselves with their own devices.
As a place for Valve to expand into, it’s reasonably low hanging fruit and relatively low risk as they’re not having to focus on the hardware and they already have the software working.
Oh. I am referencing the AMD NUC because I straight up have one under my TV and it is WONDERFUL. Run Silksong natively, stream Clair Obscur or Dynasty Warriors so that I have my desktop proper driving those.
But if it were my only/strongest gaming device? Okay, if I were smart I would actually do that and save a lot of money and power since the vast majority of what I play is indie or a decade or more old. But I wouldn’t want to.
And that is the problem. It is a lot easier to sell someone on a second device if it is a handheld. But a proper console is going to be very much threading the needle on people who have a gaming PC and want a support device or who don’t want to play “new stuff” on their 4k TVs.
Which… was kind of the problem with Steam Machines a decade ago or whenever Valve tried. Yeah, Proton makes it MUCH more viable but it is still the same problem of “So… I am spending 800 dollars and FInal Fantasy won’t look as good as a 1000 dollar PS6?” and so forth.
I DO think it gets a lot more viable in 2027 when Liberation Day consoles are hitting the 1000 or more price point and normalizing it because… they are already basically just computers anyway. But then you run into the problem that AMD is what keeps that price feasible and… AMD and HDMI 2.1 doesn’t work.
That said: Hey GabeN, I know you are obviously reading this. Dedicate Valve’s might to a Display Port->HDMI dongle that actually works and I will give you a hundred fucking bucks for just that alone. Maybe even 150.
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I don’t think there is really much fiddling these days. It’s probably about as much as setting up a console.
If you build your own, then sure that’s more work. But people can buy prebuilt, laptops, or handhelds.
Once you set up a console it’s pretty much hassle free after that, compared to a PC which needs variable amounts of fiddling per game.
On console you simply buy the game, download it and then play. If you must know how it runs you can find that on youtube/forums/reviews etc easily for the vast majority of games.
On PC unless you have the top line specs you need to research how the game will run for your specific hardware. There may not be any public details depending on how common your specific hardware is, how recent the game is, etc. Then you need to understand the spec list, which implies you know about CPU/GPU/RAM/SSD concepts & the hardware generations to know a rough estimate of performance comparing your PC to the spec list (if the developers bothered to put a note with the expected performance of the minimum & recommended tiers, which not many do.)
Let’s say you don’t give a shit about all of the above. You go ahead and just buy and download it. It may come with a stupid launcher that you hate. Especially if it automatically sets itself to run on the startup and/or needs you to have an account. Then you need to also fiddle with the launcher to make it work as you want.
Once you finally start the game you’ll have to tune the settings if you want more FPS, or the game looks bad. There you gotta know about resolutions, vsync, models, shadows, render distance, postprocessing, etc. You may not know what these do since it varies per game and its engine, so it’ll be a bunch of trial and error.
Finally you also need to deal with tweaking the mouse and keybinds (unless you buy separately a console controller).
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Once you set up a console it’s pretty much hassle free after that, compared to a PC which needs variable amounts of fiddling per game.
On console you simply buy the game, download it and then play. If you must know how it runs you can find that on youtube/forums/reviews etc easily for the vast majority of games.
On PC unless you have the top line specs you need to research how the game will run for your specific hardware. There may not be any public details depending on how common your specific hardware is, how recent the game is, etc. Then you need to understand the spec list, which implies you know about CPU/GPU/RAM/SSD concepts & the hardware generations to know a rough estimate of performance comparing your PC to the spec list (if the developers bothered to put a note with the expected performance of the minimum & recommended tiers, which not many do.)
Let’s say you don’t give a shit about all of the above. You go ahead and just buy and download it. It may come with a stupid launcher that you hate. Especially if it automatically sets itself to run on the startup and/or needs you to have an account. Then you need to also fiddle with the launcher to make it work as you want.
Once you finally start the game you’ll have to tune the settings if you want more FPS, or the game looks bad. There you gotta know about resolutions, vsync, models, shadows, render distance, postprocessing, etc. You may not know what these do since it varies per game and its engine, so it’ll be a bunch of trial and error.
Finally you also need to deal with tweaking the mouse and keybinds (unless you buy separately a console controller).
Steam Deck
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I don’t think there is really much fiddling these days. It’s probably about as much as setting up a console.
If you build your own, then sure that’s more work. But people can buy prebuilt, laptops, or handhelds.
Yes there is, you’re just used to it. There’s all the Windows 11 annoyances, anti-virus, fiddling with controller setting and blue tooth, GPU drivers, DirectX crap. It’s easy for you but if your tech experience is basically just turning on your phone then that is a lot.
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Once you set up a console it’s pretty much hassle free after that, compared to a PC which needs variable amounts of fiddling per game.
On console you simply buy the game, download it and then play. If you must know how it runs you can find that on youtube/forums/reviews etc easily for the vast majority of games.
On PC unless you have the top line specs you need to research how the game will run for your specific hardware. There may not be any public details depending on how common your specific hardware is, how recent the game is, etc. Then you need to understand the spec list, which implies you know about CPU/GPU/RAM/SSD concepts & the hardware generations to know a rough estimate of performance comparing your PC to the spec list (if the developers bothered to put a note with the expected performance of the minimum & recommended tiers, which not many do.)
Let’s say you don’t give a shit about all of the above. You go ahead and just buy and download it. It may come with a stupid launcher that you hate. Especially if it automatically sets itself to run on the startup and/or needs you to have an account. Then you need to also fiddle with the launcher to make it work as you want.
Once you finally start the game you’ll have to tune the settings if you want more FPS, or the game looks bad. There you gotta know about resolutions, vsync, models, shadows, render distance, postprocessing, etc. You may not know what these do since it varies per game and its engine, so it’ll be a bunch of trial and error.
Finally you also need to deal with tweaking the mouse and keybinds (unless you buy separately a console controller).
It is way easier than this to game on PC these days than this person is talking about.
Buy a gaming computer that has good recent ratings across a few sites like Google, Amazon, Tom’s hardware.
Thats its! Lower the graphics settings in the game if you are experiencing issues.
Thats it! Play most all games for the next 5 years before worrying about upgrading.
Then when you do upgrade components be fascinated about how easy it is with a tiny bit of googling how to build a computer/upgrade hardware.
Thats it!
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No it is not. Computer gaming is easy peasy these days see my above comment.
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Console gaming is so anti-consumer. Who would prefer to use a console if they are even the slightest bit savvy with a computer?
You can sell it or give it to your kids?
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This next Steam console will be interesting. With all the success they’ve had from the Steam Deck it might stand a chance this time around.
It’s just going to be 1080p and slightly bigger screen.
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None of those are things people have to deal with except in very rare circumstances. All the driers are basically handled by windows update or are already in the kernel.
You do not need to do anything with antivirus these days.
Windows 11 makes you sign into an account, so do the consoles.
Pairing a Bluetooth controller technically is something you need to do, but let’s be honest. Is it really challenging?
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Once you set up a console it’s pretty much hassle free after that, compared to a PC which needs variable amounts of fiddling per game.
On console you simply buy the game, download it and then play. If you must know how it runs you can find that on youtube/forums/reviews etc easily for the vast majority of games.
On PC unless you have the top line specs you need to research how the game will run for your specific hardware. There may not be any public details depending on how common your specific hardware is, how recent the game is, etc. Then you need to understand the spec list, which implies you know about CPU/GPU/RAM/SSD concepts & the hardware generations to know a rough estimate of performance comparing your PC to the spec list (if the developers bothered to put a note with the expected performance of the minimum & recommended tiers, which not many do.)
Let’s say you don’t give a shit about all of the above. You go ahead and just buy and download it. It may come with a stupid launcher that you hate. Especially if it automatically sets itself to run on the startup and/or needs you to have an account. Then you need to also fiddle with the launcher to make it work as you want.
Once you finally start the game you’ll have to tune the settings if you want more FPS, or the game looks bad. There you gotta know about resolutions, vsync, models, shadows, render distance, postprocessing, etc. You may not know what these do since it varies per game and its engine, so it’ll be a bunch of trial and error.
Finally you also need to deal with tweaking the mouse and keybinds (unless you buy separately a console controller).
Before the steamdeck my gpu was an rx 740.
I never needed to tweak settings on a per game basis.
Just go into game options and hit auto detect or select a preset.
It’s really that easy.
