The future is unknowable, therefore you can never say anything has failed, ever. We may be back to horses and carriages in a few years after civilization collapses.
But this is not a useful way of thinking about the issue, certainly not from the perspective of a Linux enthusiast who is assessing whether Steam Machines have made any real difference to Linux gaming.

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It seems clear that Steam Machines have not sold enough units to budge the overall market share of Linux in the computer gaming world. Games are being released for Linux, not for Steam Machines--the notion that they're even being released for "SteamOS" (as opposed to Ubuntu/Mint/Debian/whatever) is just a polite fiction developers endorse because the platform they sell their games on happens to be behind that minor Linux distribution.
Claiming the Steam Machine is successful because "games are being released for it" is akin to claiming Wine is successful because so many games are "released for it".

One can certainly come up with definitions of "failure" by which Steam Machines haven't failed. But gauged as an attempt to shake up the market for PC gaming and/or consoles, or to take serious steps towards making Linux a major and growing platform for gaming as Gabe Newell seemed from some of his statements to intend, the Steam Machine has not been a success and is not currently on course to ever become a success (although I would argue that in many ways, the Steam Controller on the other hand is a success).
Valve could fix some issues, improve their strategy, and relaunch with a harder push and potentially change all that. But they ain't done it so far and have given no indication that they have any plans to.

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Quoting: ElectricPrism(various snippage)
View video on youtube.com

Edit:
☑ Steam & Linux are going to hit nearly 3,000 games

The thing about this comment is that it is off topic.
ElectricPrism talks about two things: First, what really motivates people. I have for a long time found the presentation linked there very compelling, and for that matter overall I am very much in favour of flatter organizational structures. But that doesn't make the article wrong. The article does not claim that the people at Valve lack motivation or that they are not productive, or even that Valve is not broadly effective at making money (clearly it is). Nor does it claim that flat organizational structures are, overall, rubbish. What he claims is that Valve's specific flat organizational structure, combined with a certain view of the employees as "elite", seems to make Valve much better at doing, basically, new sexy creative stuff, than on following through with boring detail work or other stuff that's more unglamorous slogging. This does not contradict ElectricPrism's views on motivation, nor does it really construe flat non-hierarchical organizations generally as ineffective.

Second, ElectricPrism talks about how awesome Linux is and how well it is moving along as a gaming platform, and like that. Well, Linux is awesome and hopefully it will ultimately conquer. But none of that has anything to do with the article, which is about whether Steam Machines have succeeded. They haven't, and every indication seems to be that Valve's efforts to make them do so have pretty much petered out. Most of the article's take on this seems pretty sound to me.

So yeah, both ElectricPrism's major points aren't really wrong, they just don't represent a critique of the article. They're irrelevant.

Aside from that, I think ElectricPrism's comments, particularly the one with all the digital red crayon, are really bloody rude.

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That sums up a lot of what's been going on, all right.
Personally, if I were Valve, and looking at a re-launch of Steam Machines, I would not do it this year. Maybe next year . . . right now, I would work hard on the infrastructure of drivers, Vulkan, game engines, maybe even Wayland to get definitively past X, so that next time around, SteamOS wouldn't be lagging performance-wise. Poorer performance compared to Windows was a major killer in PR terms, and really Linux should be able to win there.
And I'd feel out those multimedia issues quietly, getting things sorted out so that I had working code in-house and contracts with Netflix etc. ready to go.

When the pieces were in position, I'd go for a major launch that Christmas.

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Quoting: cRaZy-bisCuiTWhy don't you guys just accept a game could possibly have no cloaks?

I'm pretty sure they were about to implement cloaks, but then the dev team took an arrow to the knee.

How can you be properly, dramatically evil without a cloak?

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Quoting: ivantThe biggest inspiration for this game seems to be Monty Python. Here is just one such scene:
View video on youtube.com

Watch the shows and the movies if you haven't already! High recommended!

Yes, the Python is strong in this one. Looking at a "let's play" or two, while the Python references are fun, I think it would profit from a broader base. Take for instance some of the Shakespearean Insult Generators (I knew there was one of these, but when I went looking for it I found it's become an entire category--there's pages of the things on Google); examples:
http://www.pangloss.com/seidel/Shaker/index.html [External Link]
http://www.literarygenius.info/a2-shakespeare-insult-generator.htm [External Link]

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Oh, right, this calls for the ice fishing joke.
OK, so this guy decides to go ice fishing. So he goes out onto the ice with his fishing pole and hatchet and whatnot, and starts chopping a hole in the ice. But then a voice booms out of nowhere, "THERE'S NO FISH DOWN THERE!"
He looks around startled, doesn't see anybody . . . so he moves a little ways off and starts chopping again. But then the voice calls out, "THERE'S NO FISH DOWN THERE, EITHER!"
He looks around, wondering what's going on, eventually shrugs and moves a bit further. This time before he can even start the voice booms out, "THERE'S NO FISH DOWN THERE, EITHER!!"
So he yells back, "WHO ARE YOU?"
And the voice calls out,

Spoiler, click me

"THE ARENA MANAGER!"

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You know, if you had asked me a few years ago whether anyone was ever likely to say about Linux "We have gained a few fishing titles in the last year or so" I would have laughed hysterically. We used to be more like hoping to be able to say "We have gained a few titles in the last year or so."

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How do you even have turn-based MMOs? Wouldn't everyone spend the entire time waiting for other people to take turns?

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Quoting: amonobeax

Quoting: AnxiousInfusion

Quoting: BlackBloodRumMaybe now we will find out just how well Vulkan can really perform on wait hang on what OS? oh yeah. GNU/Linux! :woot:

Hold up, it's still going to be just a port. We will only truly know once a game has been built from the ground up for Vulkan.

Exactly.

I really hope I'm wrong but I doubt that Feral's Vulkan versions will have Doom level performances.

In order to have that kind of an impact Vulkan need to be implemented at the GAME ENGINE level, which Feral can't/won't do AFAIK (would be too costly probably). Almost all their ports currently using wrappers also indicate the same.

In other words the "Vulkan" version of the game will most likely benefit those gamers that have poor OpenGL performance (cough AMD owners) because of subpar drivers.

If I'm right NVIDIA users won't feel much perf difference between OpenGL and Vulkan, sadly

Far as I'm concerned it's not really about any of that. What it's about is:
--Feral showing that Vulkan is real and viable for real games that people really buy commercially and play
--Feral acquiring and demonstrating expertise with Vulkan, such that if anyone out there develops a Vulkan game initially for Windows only, Feral will be able to easily and cheaply tweak it for cross-platform use
--Same to a lesser extent for DX12 games, which by all accounts will be easier/better ports to Vulkan than to OpenGL

Basically, this move helps increase Vulkan's general viability and mindshare and the future efficiency of Linux ports and cross-platform development. It's not about whatever existing games they happen to port using Vulkan instead of or as well as OpenGL.

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