I don’t quite understand the criticism. It’s not gonna be top of the line, but it’s more than enough to replace my dying laptop from 2015 that I pretty much only ever use like a desktop anyway. And I can save myself the time and effort of picking parts, building, and dealing with shit not working as expected.
I don’t need it but I want it. The GabeCube has basically the best of both worlds, the ease of use of consoles and the multi purpose usage of a PC. That’s also why it can’t be priced like a console I’m afraid. It has to be sold at least at cost (production+development) and can’t be subsidized by game sales like a PS or Xbox. A console without games is pretty much useless, the Steam Machine without games is still a damn fine PC.
If it was sold at a loss, businesses would scrape the whole supply and pave them for windows desktops.
That just wouldn’t happen unless the steam machine costs less than $300. That’s usually the top a corporation is willing to pay for bulk mini nucs, which is all that they want for clerk desks. Information workers get laptops with dell or HP embossed in the lid. Workstations for top design or video editing require way more juice than the Steam Machine can deliver, those are bought on order to professional boutiques, or they just buy Apple. Also, no administrator will sit on the steam shop page to buy one at a time, they like their bulk purchases and Valve can simple refuse anyone buying hundreds of machines. Then, corporations don’t just want the PC, they want tech support, advanced guarantee schemes, etc. This usually come with a subscription per seat. All things Valve simply won’t provide. It won’t even register as an option for businesses.
This is an unfounded concern.
Lotta small businesses out there.
Not enough to cause a shortage. As I said. No business will pay more than a couple hundred for a PC. If they need more juice, then the steam machine won’t be it. It is more like an enthusiast or a content creator midlevel machine.
I dunno. The Deck is/was sold at a slight loss in the hopes it would drive Steam sales.
Maybe so, but while the Deck has a desktop mode it is primarily still a console and used as such by the vast majority of its users. No-one in their right mind would use it as their main PC unless they absolutely have to.
The Machine on the other hand, I can totally see that happening.
I’m currently using my steamdeck as my main PC, because of my cramped dorm room space at college lol.
It’s kinda neat figuring out what works and what doesn’t. The worst part is the immutable updates removing non-flatpack software.
There’s a project that persists non-flatpack software, though it might screw up if it changes something that Valve updates: https://github.com/Chloe-ko/SteamDeckPersistentRootFs
A more reliable method would be installing them in distrobox. It’s kinda like a VM, but it uses the same kernel so it’s not much slower.
And it worked, anecdotally from my perspective as a Steam Decker. If there are two identical sales on differing platforms (like Ubis🤮ft) I choose the Steam one so I can play it on the Deck.
I think the main problem is since the steam machine is relatively open and, if it is sold at a loss, then companies will bulk buy them to replace their infrastructure. A bit like what happened to one of the PlayStation releases.
The playstation 3 sold like that because of the super powerful (compared to cost of equal pc at the time) cpu. The gabecube isn’t unique hardware wise, so even at cost, or slightly below, I couldn’t see this being a goto machine for infrastructure replacement. Many current sff devices already have more powerful cpu options available.