It's Time to Bring Back the Steam Machine
It's Time to Bring Back the Steam Machine
With all the layoffs and industry volatility, I think now is a great time to consider bringing back the Steam Machine, with a few changes.
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Or, you know, just connect the Steam Deck to the television...
I’ve tried this, and I think it’s worth providing a more powerful console if playing on the tv is your primary use case.
It works fine but it doesn’t really hold up to the 4k 60fps HDR experience that most people are getting used to from the main console makers.
4k 60fps HDR experience that most people are getting used to from the main console makers
What games are you playing on console where you are actually getting 4k native resolution at 60fps?
Racing and Sports games for sure.
What game on what console?
Forza Motorsport will do 4k60 on Series X for example. Most Racing and Sports games will do 4k60 on modern consoles since they're easy to render.
No, Forza Motorsport uses dynamic resolution upscaled to 4k in Performance mode, and in Quality mode it also uses dynamic resolution but targets 30fps.
Why are they so easy to render compared to other genres? What makes realism so easy to render like it's a newer generation than the console it's on? Like Forza Motorsport 2 on Xbox 360 looks far more detailed than the average Xbox 360 game. What gives?
On the ps5: FF14, borderlands 3, Monster Hunter: World, Destiny 2, Metro Exodus, Far Cry 6, Resident Evil: Village, etc…
Most of them run dynamic 4k so there is periodic upscaling which is seamless in my experience.
I was asking specifically about native 4K games, not dynamic resolution upscaled to 4k.
Well… you were responding to a post by me… which had no mention of “native” anything.
I agree with your original comment; it's worth using a dedicated PC for gaming on the TV. But I think your second sentence is just parroting current-gen console marketing. It's not actually true that current-gen consoles are providing a 4k@60 HDR experience.
Honestly it sounds like you’re more interested in winning what you think is an argument than the substance of what I was saying.
A PS5 out of the box gives you a 4k picture at 60fps for many games using clever techniques that the average end user doesn’t care about in the slightest. That should be the benchmark.
Rocket league on ps5 is 4k120 or 4k60 with HDR
A PS4 game? Nice.
It’s been rereleased and enhanced for modern consoles, if you wanted an answer why are you arguing? Lmfao.
if you wanted an answer why are you arguing?
It was a rhetorical question. There are no actual current-gen releases running at 4k60 native resolution. They all use dynamic resolution with 1080p-1440p rendering resolution that then upscales to 4k for display.
Factually incorrect.
Iirc there is at least a dozen native 4k games on the PS5.
I wouldn't be surprised if they also held the opinion that all PS3 games ran at 720p/30
A bunch of first party titles like Gran Turismo and Ratchet & Clank push native 1080p/60, and look pretty damn great especially considering the time period and 512MB (256MB VRAM) limitation.
I dont even have a 4k TV.
The community appreciates your input to the discussion.
You could do that, but you could get significantly more performance per dollar by creating a new class of hardware that doesn't have to be concerned with form factor, efficiency or battery, so it can be larger and more performant, and also does not need to include an OLED display or a controller or a battery...
A steam machine with a Radeon 7600 class GPU sold for under $500 would be a surefire hit and it would blow the deck out of the water in terms of performance.
I think the biggest thing would be getting a PC with decent specs for $500. Why would anybody buy a Dell desktop or the like ever again? Like even if you don't game and need to do office work it'd probably be the best option.
You can almost build something like that for this price. Or you can do it if you buy some second hand stuff. But for an OEM building a few million units it would definitely be doable.
Yeah, but I was thinking more parents buying a console for their kids. Like oh little Jimmy can do his homework on this thing too, great I didn't have to buy him another computer. Or imagine if Microsoft put windows on Xboxes, every office building would be full of them lol.
And it would be great and would break Microsoft's hold on the "desktop" for the average user.
These sorts of computers do already exist though. They're called NUC's. Valve could basically just take one fo those, use a custom APU from AMD again, and have their own full fledged console. Heck, the XBOX and PS5 is exactly that. A Custom AMD APU in a small box.
Especially if they’re going to make their profit in increased game sales.
MiniPCs are surprisingly good at this price point; good enough that I would say for most people’s average use case they would be satisfied.
I’d like to see them get more popular.
They already exist. They're called mini PCs or NUCs. Just buy one of those and you're already there. Literally. This whole article and thread is garbage. They already exist. They just aren't branded Steam.
For the average person, that is impossible. Also, you lose a lot of features compared to SteamOS. Also, the controls are (at least to me) a main selling point and there is no controller on the market that comes close to the capabilities of the Deck.
I recognize thr average person won't do this, but you can get the same steam deck experience by installing Bazzite.
Now the controller issue I definitely agree with. They need a second gen Steam Controller pronto!
Yeah duh. A real gaming PC you'd want to hook up to your 4k TV would need to have a GPU, not just an APU. Also, having to install everything yourself kind of defeats the purpose. Do you think the Steam Deck would have been successful if it had shipped with Windows?
A lot ship with Linux. And having a full PC you can use is a downside? So you'd rather have a limited box? That's not even valves philosophy, so I don't know where you're getting that BS from.
I didn't say anything of the kind.
Problem is, any occasional performance issue with Proton on the Deck can be justified with "it's an underpowered portable", if it happens on a powerful PC, people aren't going to be as forgiving.
It would perform as well or better than any equivalent Windows PC. I'm not sure what you're trying to say here.
What's with the hostility?
What you, @crawancon@lemm.ee and @mipadaitu@lemmy.world are missing is a TV isn't necessarily a single user item.
Deck hooked to the TV to play a game? Great...now what happens when you leave and someone else wants to play?
The problem gets even more obvious if you use the Deck as an HTPC to stream content. How does anyone watch a show once the deck has gone walkabout?
The inverse is also true though, someone else is watching, I dunno, "The Crown", pick up the Steam Deck and walk away. ;)
I know you are making a funny comment but my Wife would be exceptionally displeased if I did that while she was watching "Outlander". People who live alone don't have this concern but for the rest of us a TV and it's attached streaming box are not single user devices. :)
My TV is 4k. The Steam UI alone is still a laggy mess at 4K. Setting the Deck at 1080p makes the whole thing really blurry. While upscaling games from 720p or 1080p to 4k looks better. Until they changed something about the FSR settings and it now cripples the performance at 4k as soon as you turn it on.
A Steam Machine aiming for Xbox Series S type of performance would be sweet.