Long overdue. I'd go as far as to say: too little, too late.

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On the GOG YT channel he's talking how Steam ain't all that great (<cough> Galaxy <cough>) and how it's time to start... nibbling at the competition, primarily Steam. He's not wrong, but if Linux support is supposed to drive said nibbling I envision another failure. Valve is the funding/driving force behind mainstream Linux gaming, GOG can - at best - reach remora status to Valve's shark... ness here. Not that I'd mind solid, actual competition.

That aside... for starters, Galaxy needs a rework. Even with that rework, I don't see how it can touch Steam with these oldies that are hacked together to somewhat function on a modern OS. It's a lot of work to not really get that much closer to the Steam (imperfect, sure) ecosystem in that regard. And that's the spine of GOG's business. Indies, then? They've already tried that.

On a more personal note, the guy strikes me as a poser with a mid-life crisis... and with the ability to secure not insignificant funding, and some contacts in CDPR.

According to an insider from back in the day he wasn't playing that many games during CDP's later publishing times already, then he had a fairly publicised mental breakdown in the CDPR days (which was a tough time, yeah) complete with soul searching in The Ancient Orient etc. Now he's securing (apparently) external funding for some new retro toys and he's wearing retro t-shirts to convince people he is totes of the hood, dawg, yo.

I dunno. It's a fundamentally niche business, so let's see what's next in terms of "competing" with Steam.

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As a... tolerator of VOY who's also aware how unlikely it is for us to get anything close to that level of quality with how Star Trek is being mistreated and mismanaged... I'm reasonably excited for this. I'll give that demo a try.

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I was extremely wrong, looks like. Good for them!

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Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: Eike

Quoting: Tethys84Except nobody will be able to afford the Steam Machine. I would be surprised if Valve didn't indefinitely delay or even eventually cancel it because of the skyrocketing prices on RAM alone.

It depends. If they made a fixed price contract early enough, they might be able to offer their boxes cheap.

Yeah. After all, this is not a cost of production problem, it is a "what the traffic will bear" supply and demand problem. So if some manufacturer has a contract to deliver hardware for $X, they will still make money doing that, just not as much money as they think they can bilk us for.

They need to have at least some RAM stocked up for production, considering they announced it, so the design was finalised etc.

If anyone's familiar with how this works I'd be curious to learn what happens typically (insofar as "typically" can apply here).

I think the issue isn't even the high RAM prices - it's the instability of the market. After they burn through whatever stock they secured they might get more, they might not, at least not immediately. They might get it at this price, or they might get it at that price, or at some different price entirely day to day. I assume they can't sell the Gabecube at what they originally expected to sell it at and then just adjust the pricing as they go along, but the real question is what do you even sell it for when you can't know your costs or plan for stock (I assume). No subsidising complicates this further, I think. The Steam Deck was just a Valve thing, so if they decide to eat the price of the instability of the market here they effectively abandon their entire concept for the Steam Machine (anyone can make one, but not everyone can afford to leverage their empire of a video game distribution platform). It could actually be better to hold off until the market stabilises, whatever that stability entails.

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I'm more interested in the hardware itself, and Valve has proven their support is solid. Plus, they're uniquely positioned to genuinely care, as opposed to Oculus/Meta, Sony etc. If I'm going to be jumping onto anything VR at this point Valve hardware is probably the very top of that potential list.

Very curious about the pricing, though. I'm somewhat excited for some specific games, but not THAT excited about VR in general.

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Quoting: Shiz nit

Quoting: pageroundI, for one, thank the Devs for eliminating a game from the to-buy list. I think I'll limit myself to 'steamdeck compatible' titles (or equivalent) going forward as I am not confident I could replace that super-computer level of hardware if the PC dies and not break the bank. I can play Witcher 3, BG 3, New Vegas, etc ... Should last me a while.
Thanks Liam, spot on reporting.

The Am4 5800x, a 5 year old chip, i bought 12 months ago in the run up to xmas 2024 for 130 pounds. That chip is right now selling on amazon for 200 pounds.

I dotn think i could affored to replace my hardware either as even the last platform Am4 stuff is rising to crazy levels considering it is now old and dead.

It's a perfect storm. I was considering upgrading to the cheaper, but still good enough AM4 and sit out AM5 altogether, but then AMD stopped manufacturing the 5800x3D to push AM5 adoption... and it worked. My entire plan collapsed when the AM4 costs basically rose to meet a vastly superior AM5 build that would last me longer. I was still planning to buy everything slowly, but then the RAM crisis started, the SSDs began increasing and the time to buy a GPU shifted to Now Or Not For A While.

I'm not getting rid of my 2015 build, that's for sure. You're prying that DDR3 from my cold, dead hands.

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Quoting: elmapul

Quoting: suchWell, yeah, which is why I mentioned it. I guess if you really wanted to you could throw in up to 4x6GB if your motherboard is avant enough let you, so 18GB then is also possible. But, that's so far from common even IOI system requirements isn't the place for this level of needless confusion.

afaik they only sell components at multiples of 2 numbers (2,4,8) so you cant purchase an 6GB ram module.

You're right. I Googled something that turns out to be a typo, apparently.

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Quoting: elmapulRam was cheap.

That's the joke :)

Quoting: elmapulyou have a point, but there is also another thing to consider.

you can have 24GB of ram by having 16+8 or 8+8+8...

it makes a difference!
in theory 3 channels of 8GB is faster than 8+16GB but i think there is a trade off for having everything you want to access in the same chip vs spliting it into multiple chips, so im not sure if 3 channels is always better

Well, yeah, which is why I mentioned it. I guess if you really wanted to you could throw in up to 4x6GB if your motherboard is avant enough let you, so 18GB then is also possible. But, that's so far from common even IOI system requirements isn't the place for this level of needless confusion.

Either way, I'd be quite surprised to see 007 chew through 32gb even at such eye-watering frame rates like 60fps in 1080p. You're not making back that licensing money if this is now you optimise your game, RAM crisis or not...

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One possibility regarding RAM is just that outside of the oddball 24GB configuration 32GB is simply the next stop. So, if a game realistically utilises 18ish at the ultra-high end of... 1080p60 (or 360p240, if you're feeling like braving those high frame rates) you slap 32GB on the requirements and you're done with it, no biggie. RAM is cheap, after all.

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