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Latest Comments by elmapul
MSI officially announced the Claw A1M handheld with Intel
10 Jan 2024 at 2:36 pm UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: Purple Library Guy
Quoting: elmapulthat is disapointing, if more vendors keep using windows then soon or later we will strugle to compete.
Not really. That's kind of like saying if we keep on releasing new Linux distros then sooner or later Windows will struggle to compete . . . If none of the Windows clones of Steam Deck actually sell, while the Steam Deck keeps on selling, it's fine.
the issue is that windows is more well know, the other oems might brute force every combination of price /specs/form factors until they manage to grab the atention of the same public that is currently purchasing steamdecks (except for us linux users or super hardcore gamers that actually pay atention to reviewers who said good things about steamOS), and then receive they reward from ms for killing another linux initiative.

or they might harm the reputation of handhelds in general making the public who never had an good experience give up on it and go back to notebooks /nintendo handhelds (that will be a reprise of what happened with netbooks)

valve already said they will lock the hardware specs, having steamOS in different hardware configs but having those made by the other vendors would be the ideal scenario to fight the midlegen competition while steamdeck 2 dont lauch.
alternativelly if valve can keep pushing the price down or the proposal enticing (eg: hall effect sensors for the next steamdeck 1)

i dont know how valve will play this 4D chess against an multi trilion dollar corporation, but i would feel more relief if they werent fighting alone.

Steam Deck officially hits over 13,000 games Playable and Verified
10 Jan 2024 at 12:56 pm UTC

Quoting: RavenWings
Quoting: elmapulthe bad news is the rate of growth of this list vs steam game list...
sure there are a bunch of shovelware on steam but still... the % of compatible games tend to reduce over time.
The percentage of unrated games will propably keep growing against the number of verified/playable games, thats right, but I wouldn´t use the word "compatible", because most of the unrated games are already running perfectly fine and even a huge chunk of the unsupported games can be played with little-to-no effort or drawbacks.
yeah i used the wrong term, counting the ammount of the unreated games is more accurate.

but still, if an game is not feature complete it might as well not exist in my (and many people) books.

MSI officially announced the Claw A1M handheld with Intel
10 Jan 2024 at 12:17 am UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: Relsre
Quoting: elmapuleveryone else will be forced to use windows, unless some companies like system76 or maybe cd project red enter the game
Speaking of, I'd love to see a handheld from System76 / Slimbook / Starlabs / etc. but that's wishful thinking, considering these companies mostly resell rebranded Clevo/Tongfang laptops. Even if they did make their own handheld hardware, they don't have access to SteamOS nor a solid relationship with Valve to even entertain the possibility of future access. 😔
it dont have to be SteamOS, they just have to have an linux distro, especially one focused on gaming (with an big-picture ish interface)
then they wouldnt be competing with valve exactly, but helping the overall ecosystem to grown.
they already have popOS! they just need to make an flavor for an deck-like device.

the issue is that they arent well know among general gamers, just us who already use linux, that is why an company like asus, dell, lenovo, hp etc would be a better deal if we can have then using something like steamOS.

i didnt knew they just rebrand other devices instead of building their own... but in any case, we need an hardware oem, if it isnt going to be one of the linux companies, then peharps some company like CDPR, epic or ubisoft, they dont have experience in the hardware business but neither did valve until a few years ago and they have an brand that gamers recognize, so long as you can install steam on it, gamers might give it a go.

epic is being more agressive in trying to enter the market, but i think CDPR is more likely to relase something like that since they already have an DRM-FREE store , having one client and store for linux seems like the next logical step, but i doubt they will.
those companies are more likely to let valve own the market then complain about monopoly.

speaking of it, i hope in the future console busines become more like mobile and pc, where we have open platforms like android/steamOS and probably we would still have closed ones like ios and something from sony, nintendo and microsoft.
i hope at least one of the big 3 make their console more open, but it probably will be microsoft unfortunatelly.

i think valve foresaw that future, actually we are living it, its just that the big 3 havent changed much , and everyone else is using windows...

MSI officially announced the Claw A1M handheld with Intel
9 Jan 2024 at 6:18 pm UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: CatKiller
Quoting: Mountain ManWhy are these vendors afraid to embrace SteamOS? Windows is an objectively terrible operating system for a handheld device.
Microsoft will give them a big bag of money; Valve will not give them a big bag of money.

(plus they already have a business relationship with Microsoft and they don't with Valve, and they have experience slapping Windows on their hardware and they don't with Linux)
not only that, but microsoft can use the other devices as an leverage.

microsoft used to charge for "computer sold" not for "computer with windows sold", in other words, if you purchase an device from, lets say, Dell computer with windows, you had to pay the windows licence anyway! not to mention, canonical would also want some money, so you ended up paying more for the same device, that is one of the reasons why microsoft keept their dominance.

if you sell 1 million of devices with windows per year (among all desktops and notebooks you sell) then you pay much less for the licence than an brand that ship 10.000 per year, relasing yet another device with windows is just another cheap licence, but if you decide to go with linux, microsoft may charge extra for everything else you are selling. so unless this device alone sell more than evertything else msi sells, its a bad business move for then.

i think that everyone else will be forced to use windows, unless some companies like system76 or maybe cd project red enter the game, or this market grow to the proportions of android and every company that went with windows regret their decision just like they did with windows phone.

MSI officially announced the Claw A1M handheld with Intel
9 Jan 2024 at 5:55 pm UTC Likes: 1

steam machines, big flop, 14 companies tried with steamOS.
steam deck, big success, only one company is using steamOS (valve) everyone else is using windows...
that is disapointing, if more vendors keep using windows then soon or later we will strugle to compete.
valve had the oled screen as an triumph card to give the deck more time to shiny, i wonder what they will do with the steam deck 2, i mean the midle gen upgrade they will do...

OpenAI say it would be 'impossible' to train AI without pinching copyrighted works
9 Jan 2024 at 12:49 pm UTC Likes: 7

i can understand using it for research purposes, but as an commercial product?
if they dont care about copyright from thirdy parties they shouldnt care if an employee leak their training data and/or code.

Steam Deck officially hits over 13,000 games Playable and Verified
6 Jan 2024 at 12:22 pm UTC

Quoting: shotm7
Quoting: elmapul
Quoting: Pengling
Quoting: elmapulthe bad news is the rate of growth of this list vs steam game list...
sure there are a bunch of shovelware on steam but still... the % of compatible games tend to reduce over time.
And that only affects the numbers - you're still free to install and run them and these days they are quite likely to work, there's nothing stopping you. :wink:
that also affect how people perceive the product, there is a reason why asus called their product "rog ally" with the slogam: "play all your games"

Even if all other (offline)games do work, people need to be informed about that fact, not everyone will know about protonDB before they purchase the deck and even if they do and if protonDB people were able to test all the games, not everyone is qualified to make an Q/A, for example, i quoted a lot of times one game missing cutscenes, most people who only played it on linux didnt even knew it supposed to have then because they havent played it in other platforms to compare against.
I think Valve should work on compatibility by asking for a bigger commission from publishers who don't participate in game compatibility. We all know that it's clearly not the small publishers who are obstructing this,and this allows the argument: we work with this money to make your games compatible
if they do an price cut (comission cut) for the ones who help, that would be enough, trying to punish instead, would make then try to leave steam again.
the issue is that trying to to fight with money is a battle they are bound to lose... to microsoft or other companies with tons of money to spend like microsoft.

Steam Deck officially hits over 13,000 games Playable and Verified
6 Jan 2024 at 5:49 am UTC Likes: 2

Quoting: Pengling
Quoting: elmapulthe bad news is the rate of growth of this list vs steam game list...
sure there are a bunch of shovelware on steam but still... the % of compatible games tend to reduce over time.
And that only affects the numbers - you're still free to install and run them and these days they are quite likely to work, there's nothing stopping you. :wink:
that also affect how people perceive the product, there is a reason why asus called their product "rog ally" with the slogam: "play all your games"

Even if all other (offline)games do work, people need to be informed about that fact, not everyone will know about protonDB before they purchase the deck and even if they do and if protonDB people were able to test all the games, not everyone is qualified to make an Q/A, for example, i quoted a lot of times one game missing cutscenes, most people who only played it on linux didnt even knew it supposed to have then because they havent played it in other platforms to compare against.

Steam Deck officially hits over 13,000 games Playable and Verified
5 Jan 2024 at 11:36 pm UTC

the bad news is the rate of growth of this list vs steam game list...
sure there are a bunch of shovelware on steam but still... the % of compatible games tend to reduce over time.

Linux hits nearly 4% desktop user share on Statcounter
5 Jan 2024 at 6:49 am UTC

Quoting: HighballGoogle has also been very careful not to allow hackers to run away with their devices. Any normal dev will just wax ChromeOS and load Ubuntu onto the device without a second of hesitation. Instead they control how you get access to the linux side of things; see Crostini. To me it looks like Google wants to sell devices at a loss so they can saturate the market and out compete on price. Mean while make their money harvesting data and delivering ads. "You're getting a device with security in mind. *wink*"
you cant say "linux is easy to use" and say "it can run this game, just follow this tutorial on wineHQ" at the same sentence.

one of the issues with linux is that we tried to market it as something easy to use, and something that can play games at the same time, but if you wanted to do both, you had to suffer, i remember following some tutorials to play some games, end up in a rabbit hole too big and giving up on the game, normal people would give up on linux instead.
my worst nightmare was tera, 5 days to install (for some reason the installer took forever to download on linux) then, followed all the tutorial right, and... it didnt worked! the worst part was that i was not willing to delete the 50GB files, i had hope to make it work someday to not have wasted 5 days for nothing...
oh, did i mentioned that i had to try 2 because i dared to use the computer at the same time that this 5 days download took place and it crashed the installer and i had to restart?
another nightmare was games that some people were able to install using an combination of gpu vendor (eg: ati) + distro + wine version number+version of the game, but if any of those change then people werent able to run (eg: only run on ati, only run on nvidia, only run on ubuntu, only run on fedora, only run on wine 1.7.53, only run in the version 1.2 of the game)
good luck with that...

i think google was smarther , consoles cant do nearly as much as an linux device like the steamdeck can, but they dont get the bad reputation of linux for being harder to use because they can only do one thing and do it well.
dont get me wrong i dont think steam deck should be closed as an console, the way it is, is perfect, but that was only possible thanks to proton and the valve enormous effort in QA.