what Microsoft does care is that games are bought from them so they get a cut, instead of through Steam

that is precisely why Valve invested in Linux, so that Microsoft couldn't simply pull the rug from under them and make it hard/impossible to sell steam games on windows instead of via Microsoft Store

MS did try this, if you're old enough to remember when Win8 was launched and they tried to make all windows apps into UWP apps instead of .exes

And that was when Gabe went public to criticize them for the attempt, and started investing heavily on linux to build a viable alternative on it

So yeah, even if only 1% of steam users buy one of those, each steam gamer coming from Windows into that new platform is a huge win for (almost) everyone (except microsoft)

It helps put SteamOS / Linux on the map for PC and Console gamers, gaming news, gaming forums, game dev studios, engine devs, etc and thus helps break us free from the Chicken&Egg trap linux gaming has always been under

ps: We do have ballpark figures for Steam Deck units sold up to 2023
https://www.gameslearningsociety.org/how-many-steam-decks-have-been-sold/ [External Link]

We also have a pretty good idea the percentage of custom AMD GPUs of the exact model used in the Steam Deck as they appear in the Steam Survey, how many of those use linux nowadays or were switched to windows, how many of the total linux machines in the survey use that GPU, and how many linux machines are there compared to windows

At the end of 2024, assuming sales per year haven't increased but also haven't decreased from 2022 and 2023 that gives us this ballpark figures:
~5 million steam decks sold
~10 million linux machines/users on steam (because iirc currently around half linux survey responses are decks)
~500 million total steam machines/users worldwide (because iirc currently around 2% are linux on the survey)

if the new steam console tower sells half as much as steam decks it's upwards of 2 million units sold and another 0,5% linux users, a big fat round of news articles, tweaked/optimized/fixed titles, etc

that's all we can hope for, and it's plenty!

other than that, most win10 users will probably buy new hardware or go exclusively mobile, but as the steam deck and steam console hit the news, a small batch of folks bitten by microsoft will at least give something else a go... 0,5% of them is not a lot, but it added to the console itself may well help linux into the 3% zone

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The moment they do this, I’m done buying consoles!

Then again, to be honest, I'm probably done buying consoles anyway. I've bought and used a NES, PS2, WII, PS4 and PS5. I've also played on a few other consoles from friends, like the Atari, MSX, Master System, Mega Drive, N64 and PS1. They were all fun, but I've always also had a thing for PC Games (even from the DOS era), emulators, game modding and more recently Steam.

Given Valve's history, I expect a Steam Console of their design being released this year or the next to check certain boxes that will make it undeniably great (even if not perfect for everyone):

Hardware

• pre-built

i can build my own, but this helps the majority of people who wouldn't even know where to start, not even to order it from a tech store that can build one for them


• compact

more so than a custom-built tower (ballpark PS5-size), probably good-looking design but mainly just more discreet and easier to fit anywhere in vertical and/or horizontal positions


• quiet

not totally silent but really quiet, like the PS5 vs. a traditional PC tower


• cost-effective specs

not the best CPU or GPU there is, but undeniably strong ones at their pricepoint and strong enough for most games in nice image settings with good FPS (likely to be a 60FPS target this time)


• repairable and upgradeable

mostly with standard PC/laptop parts, though i expect not entirely (like pre-built PCs from Dell, HP, etc)... definitely no glued parts, and possibly some open-licensed blueprints

Software

• SteamOS preinstalled

power on, log in, update, play... almost as little fuss as with a traditional console (but there will probably be a couple more papercuts in the UI/UX that will remain in there for a looong time because Valve sure loves some of those)


• Easy OS Unlocking

Same as on the Steam Deck, they're likely to ship a locked system image but with an official, easy and well-documented unlocking path that doesn't void warranty and support... i'd love if they let it follow a traditional linux package updates cycle instead of a monolythic upgrades cycle like android, but pretty sure they'll keed using the current method


• Open Bootloader

Other linux distros and windows 11 will work from day 1, but may be missing OS support for a couple things at that point... these things will eventually find their way into ChimaeraOS and other gaming-oriented distros even before Valve upstreams them (which they will, as they've been doing with the Steam Deck)


• Gaming Mode

available, booting to it by default and delivering a heck of a nice perf boost... this along Steam as a fullscreen-UI is why SteamOS can be seen as a console instead of just a PC in the living-room


• Optimized Perf

better on SteamOS than on windows (and improving over time, as was done with the Steam Deck), not just because of Gaming Mode, but because of their constant thinkering in the Linux Kernel, GPU drivers, shader compilers, Proton, DXVK, etc... it will probably still be better on SteamOS than other linux distros, but not as much a difference as it was with the Deck at launch


• Desktop Mode

same stuff as now, maybe easier to reach and more prominently offered in their default UI, hopefully more complete... it added a WOW factor in the Steam Deck, even though it wasn't easy to navigate with built-in controls in a handheld... and I expect it to make more waves among console gamers who are missing the modding scene from PCs, or want their consoles to double-down as a media center, always-on files/downloads server, etc

ps:
i highly doubt it will sell as much as a PS5 or the newest-gen Xbox... but even 10% of that is already a huge success for linux, for PC gaming, for more open gaming platforms, etc

it will set a second tier of PC-gaming hardware perf targets for most games and will make game devs even more prone to paying attention to linux and SteamOS compatibility, ease of use of PC games with fully-remappable controllers, etc

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Quoting: LoudTechie

Quoting: legluondunetIf only Steam had the courage to force Ubisoft and other video game publishers not to use their own launcher when selling their games on Steam, Steam being the launcher. I don't want a launcher in a launcher in a launcher...#inception It generates potential additional technical problems and it uses resources for nothing.

I'm really happy they don't.
I'm pretty sure that would be anti-competative and monopolistic behavior.
It costs resources, but it comes from a good place.

steam doesn't prevent other stores on the same system (not even on the steam deck)

meanwhile...

all consoles (except the steam deck) are completely locked to a single store and even forbid in-game purchases from being processed outside the console manufacturer's store system

apple store, google play (and afaik even microsoft store) forbid 3rd-party stores in their store

apple and google forbids in-app purchases in apps sold through their app store from working outside their store's framework... apps doing so are booted off their store

not sure what you think will be considered monopolistic in a world where the above practices aren't

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Quoting: ElectricPrism

Quoting: hummer010I'd just like to see Valve move into the 2010's and make the Steam client 64-bit.

I'll second that. I think Steam is probably the only thing keeping 32-bit multilib around for me. It would be nice to see it go for organization and cleanliness.

If the steam client moves entirely to 64-bit, they'll still need 32-bit libs to run old 32-bit games.

Wine/Proton may be able to use 64-bit libs for 32-bit windows games (not yet but working on it afaik). And then there are native linux games, where it's a bit trickier, though most linux native games are 64-bit iirc.

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Quoting: WYWNintendo have become such scum bags, it's unreal.

It's not Unreal, they use their own game engine :tongue:

It's also not ScummVM :tongue::tongue:

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Quoting: nenoroit's kind for them to make steam stable on linoox. (pray to make it native on bsd)

What about the bugs for
- "filter by" in the wishlist who is buggy so you have to pass by the mobile app to make sure it shows the same results on pc ?

- the edit / delete buttons for the posts on steam discussions ? (quote works)

- Filter negative reviews and other filters on the main page for the game

Those bugs are waiting to be fixed

- also another bug, my pfp isn't shown when i'm logged

Those bugs appear on stable version and beta version

if by "what about this other thing" you meant "thanks! while at it, please also remember these!", then yeah, sure, these are pretty annoying (though at least not crashes!)

if you meant it as "why waste time on linux instead of this other thing", then you should understand not all devs work on all issues

most of those you mentioned are probably not under the scope of Valve's linux devs... it's pretty much all web UI design bugs, which is developed once for all systems, probably by some main steam app devs team that actually focuses on windows (and/or the steam deck nowadays) more than anything else

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Quoting: Guest

Quoting: Naibvery nice... but :( starting to get enough points to fit to a sigmoid... if that inflection point is correct, are we looking at like 3% as the settling point
!
[ [External Link]

Out of curiosity, what method did you use to fit that curve?

The current perceived deceleration of growth might be noise (just looking at the graph we can clearly see the graph is quite noisy, especially with the quasi-periodic steam China windows growth spurs).

The graph fits well to a bi-linear (steam deck being the turning point between a previous trend and the current trend).

It might also fit well to an exponential... but only stock exchange economists still try to fit exponentials to product/market growth trends because being blind to market saturation, physical limits of the material world and etc is conducent to better stock trades...

And it might be (and this is my personal bet) a sigmoid but with a higher endpoint, distorted by the noise that's dragging stats down at the moment.

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Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: lucinosActually something is very wrong with the GPUs. They add up to more than 100%.

Argh. I don't expect statistics based on sampling to be a perfect representation of the territory, but it would be nice if they were internally consistent, like they at least represented a possible version of the territory.

You're both forgetting hardware with dual graphics.

The percentages in that graphics mean "10% of sampled machines have this GPU model" which is related but not exactly the same as saying "10% of GPUs used in sampled machines are of this model"

As a simplistic illustration of this distinction, if 20% of machines have dual-graphics, the sum of each GPU's percentage is going to be 120%.

ps: In the real world there might not match perfectly, because there might be a couple multi-graphics machines with more that 2 GPUs, plus rounding errors.

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To date no one have found a shred of evidence that Intel ME or AMD PSP is used as a backdoor for anyone despite having existed for 16 years and it's not that people haven't tried to find any

except this is not a valid argument

i have just posted about the ludicrous huge gaping hole in 1st-gen Intel ME security that could let anyone do anything with vPro machines without the OS even being able to detect the action, so there is a public usable exploit PoC and there is no good way to track if it has actually been used in the wild

the only thing you can argue is that it was not put there on purpose which would make the ordeal amount to an immensely gross incompetence on the part of Intel... not really reassuring wrt later iterations of the same concept

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i'm glad to read Linus Torvalds is on this board

maybe this gives linux a better fighting grounds to prevent the next wave of Microsoft Pluton coprocessors and boot-to-windows-only BIOS defaults from fucking FOSS alternative OSs from booting and running properly in next-gen x86 devices

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