Steam Deck

Htpc?

They are like 1-2 little steps away from a very good HTPC Steam Deck.

Like if they could just take a little time to make Firefox work 100% in game mode (right now it's not quite there, like you can't go full screen with videos) and make controllers just a little more comfortable for browsing and it'd already be there for me.

I’ve tried this, and I think it’s worth providing a more powerful console if playing on the tv is your primary use case.

It works fine but it doesn’t really hold up to the 4k 60fps HDR experience that most people are getting used to from the main console makers.

You could do that, but you could get significantly more performance per dollar by creating a new class of hardware that doesn't have to be concerned with form factor, efficiency or battery, so it can be larger and more performant, and also does not need to include an OLED display or a controller or a battery...

A steam machine with a Radeon 7600 class GPU sold for under $500 would be a surefire hit and it would blow the deck out of the water in terms of performance.

What you, @crawancon@lemm.ee and @mipadaitu@lemmy.world are missing is a TV isn't necessarily a single user item.

Deck hooked to the TV to play a game? Great...now what happens when you leave and someone else wants to play?

The problem gets even more obvious if you use the Deck as an HTPC to stream content. How does anyone watch a show once the deck has gone walkabout?

what people want is the internals of a steam deck but beefed up and easier to open up

Using an ad blocker is basically requirement of browsing the internet at the moment.

Yah. Makes more sense for Valve to spend their time improving Proton or working on their reference handheld device. A reference desktop device is a solution looking for a problem.

Valve's big advantage here is the same as it was with the steam deck: they can sell at a loss and make it back on software sales.

A lot of the appeal of consoles is a polished experience and that they're generally less expensive up front compared to a comparable power gaming PC. Many consoles are sold at a loss to hit that price point. Valve could actually make cheap gaming PCs that can compete in price and offer a smooth user experience.

Except knowledge.

It's foolish of you to assume that most people want to build a computer.

And before people respond with 'its just Legos'

There is so much more to it for someone with little to no knowledge.

Bios and firmware updates that require certain CPUs coupled with certain motherboards.

CPU sockets and inter compatibility.

The different specs of any given component and the value they provide to someone looking for specific workflows

Sizing of components and cases

Knowing where to find parts and what prices are acceptable.

Etc, etc ,etc.

Pick something that you know nothing about, let's say cars just as an example.

Now imagine, let's, say want to buy a car but it doesn't come with wheels, you don't get a list of 4 wheels to choose from, You get, lug patterns, sizing, and type, offset, wheel diameter, wheel width, bead lockers or no bead lockers, 1 piece, 2 piece or 3 piece, etc.

Now you have to spend all this time researching just about wheels, and then how they fit with the car you chose specifically earlier in the process, it would be frustrating and incredibly difficult for people who just want a car.

Go on any thread or forum and ask 'what GPU should I get' which is already making assumptions about someones understanding and knowledge (that they even know what a GPU is), and you will get 20 conflicting answers and need to write a paragraph in responses to narrow it down enough.

Present someone with no knowledge this: 'DDR3-2666 CL9' vs 'DDR3-2000 CL7'. How do you really expect someone who just wants to play a video game to just implicitly know what those numbers mean, how they relate to each other etc.

Building a computer is an immensely difficult task for someone who doesn't know much or anything about it, and believe it or not, the reality is not everyone wants to learn, places like lemmy and other tech focused echo chambers seem to forget that.

The value isn't for existing PC gamers. It would be for people who are not tech literate, do not know how to build a PC, install an OS, or even tell if a given computer is powerful enough to run a particular game.

I think that's the real strength (and more importantly, intent) of the Steam deck: to get people who aren't PC gamers to become PC gamers by making it as simple as a traditional console. Steam machines could provide a similar thing if there were a Steam Machine 1 Verified flag next to games.

The steam controller is amazing for that.

Steamdeck + dock is essentially a Steam machine isn't it?

It became what it is currently the Steam Deck OS or at least the lessons learned were applied to create it. That being said you have distros like Bazzite and Pop OS focused on gaming, you could try those.

I recently deleted my Windows partition and went full Linux for my personal devices. I use Windows for work and it reminds me that I made the right decision.

I use Arch btw

What ever happened to SteamOS?

It's still going strong! https://store.steampowered.com/steamos

Personally, I just like to install Debian or Ubuntu as the OS, and then install the Steam launcher:

https://www.linuxcapable.com/how-to-install-steam-on-debian-linux/

I think the outcomes are pretty similar, for an average user. But I find it a bit easier to search for help about other things I want to do with Debian/Ubuntu.

I say Debian/Ubuntu a bunch of times here because, while I like Debian a bit better, there's tons of help articles out there for Ubuntu, and 99% of them work perfectly on Debian.