I don’t quite understand the criticism. It’s not gonna be top of the line, but it’s more than enough to replace my dying laptop from 2015 that I pretty much only ever use like a desktop anyway. And I can save myself the time and effort of picking parts, building, and dealing with shit not working as expected.
I see this as an absolute win.
Fewer choices is a drawback, and it will limit the market share, but I think most people who would be interested in a Steam Machine probably don’t care that much about the kinds of games that utilize kernel anti cheat. Some buyers might just be displaying sour grapes, and some console CoD-like players might be looking to make the switch to PC but this is a nonstarter for them. I do truly feel bad that they won’t get a welcome mat through this path, but it’s neither their fault nor Valve’s fault.
I’m not naive enough to think there could be a change to how these companies do anti cheat, but if Steam Machine sells really well, it’d be cool to see these companies at least start developing with Linux in mind. Microsoft fucked up with 11, doubled down with terminating support for 10, and now Linux distros are blowing up; then Valve comes in with this? Idk what % of market share Linux would need to hit for EA to start giving a shit about potential revenue that they’re just declining to chase, but I think we’re about to see unprecedented numbers that could tempt them. If nothing else, maybe a separate Linux release that isn’t cross platform, but is a sort of compilation game. CoD BlOps Linux: whatever the latest one’s campaign is, plus its multiplayer, and like top 10 maps from the past few games or something. Idk. Do a Linux release less often but still capture those customers.
sure, but we need to acknowledge that some blue-pills are happy and content with their OS of choice. You can try and convince them that they can run their favourite games with Linux, they simply do not care.
Yeah, and when it comes to my phone, I’m the same way. Sure, I could get Graphene OS, but I just don’t see enough benefit to go through the headache of making the change and probably finding issues to troubleshoot. I’m not disliking my current experience, so why look for a fix? These people feel this way about Windows. They’re not giving Steam Machine a chance unless there’s an incentive, and it’s not gonna be significantly cheaper, so they’ll skip it.
But I think there will be enough people buying this that the industry will feel a shift. Enough people are pissed at Microsoft and/or modern console experiences and/or need to upgrade their system.