The lack of upscaling aside from DLSS was baffling to say the least.
Here, have this game with mandatory raytracing and most settings only affecting VRAM usage. But offer enough upscaling solutions? Nah.

Also, XESS 1.4? Did I miss something? When did that happen? There isn't even a release on the Github page.

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Microsoft might be the most baffling one out of all of them.
They literally had the opportunity to bundle a store directly into the OS that's synonymous with PC gaming, especially at the time where Proton was many years away. They had the chance to dominate like with Internet Explorer.

And they failed. Badly. Apple and Google enjoy massive profits with their stores. Microsoft's consoles are falling behind.
And aside from Gamepass, their store is probably one of the last places someone would buy games from. Meanwhile, the Steam Deck shows people that PC gaming is getting very good outside of Windows and that it's not a requirement anymore.

It's genuinely fascinating just how much they fumbled in pretty much any aspect possible.

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I view it pretty relaxed. A Steam Machine is not a traditional console. They don't need to sell tens of millions to get developer support and they're not dependent on it to make money.
While all of the areas of improvement will impact sales(especially anti-cheat), I believe that it could still do decent numbers, even in its current state.

I do think that people understand that similar limitations like the Steam Deck apply and base their decision based on that. And as long as it increases marketshare, it's a win in my book.

But given the limitations, I do believe that they might need to focus on the lower end to compete. More in line with a Series S. It's a great little console that was butchered by the lack of RAM. As long as Valve doesn't make the same mistake, I imagine people would be interested.
A PC or PlayStation as the main device and an affordable Steam Machine to bring PC games to the big screen.
That's probably the best they could for a 1st generation device.

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I already got the original version of Sims 2 working on my Steam Deck with Lutris, so I'm not really interested. But I might get it once it's cheap enough for convenience.

I wonder if custom content works with it.

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I understand why this wasn't a thing. It would've been a 720p/30 console in 2022 and even the decade old PS4 has better graphics. But since I've seen a decent number of people using the Deck exclusively docked, I do wonder just how cheap they could've made it.

No screen. No controls. No battery. Throw in a decent bit of storage.
Maybe 200$? Could be genuine competition to those tiny Intel machines but with decent graphic performance on top.
At that price I could see quite a few people just getting one to round out their main console with some PC exclusives. And it could be a new Steam Link alternative as well.

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I've been waiting for crossplay since release because I want to play with a few friends. Glad to see it might finally be here soon.

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If the translation is accurate, it really sounds like they want to use NVK over Nvidia's own drivers. Which is quite interesting. Aside from it's early state, the lack of features like DLSS would be a deal breaker for most. That's one of the main things why you would choose Nvidia over the competition.
Maybe Valve is trying to convince Nvidia to expose DLSS as a proprietary library that could be called from Open Source code? That seems like the best compromise to me.

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Given the pace so far, it's probably still gonna be a few years until we get a proper desktop version of SteamOS. I could see 2025/26 being mainly about supporting all kinds of handhelds and maybe a console somewhere in 2026. That's the main form factor where SteamOS outshines Windows and the ideal chance to increase market share.

And once all that is done, there's still plenty that needs to be done on the desktop front for it to compete. We can't even be sure if they actually want to do a dedicated desktop version. Maybe it's gonna stay a console OS primarily and leave the general desktop space for others.

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From how I understand it, EAC is not just userspace only but is also running the kernel code within the context of Wine pretty much unchanged.
If that's true, I imagine a dedicated Linux anti-cheat would be better than that, even if it's userspace.
I was hoping that Valve made some dedicated anti-cheat SteamWorks API for Linux and expose it to games running in Proton. This wouldn't be enough for the likes of Riot but it might convince enough for less competitive games.

But it's been a few years now. If Valve doesn't give clear directions in that space soon, we might see more weird solutions like in Delta Force. We'll probably have at least a few more chaotic years ahead of us until something gets figured out.

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Next quarter century, ey?
Well, I guess that means that we get Half-Life 3 before 2050 at least :tongue:

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