41 of Steam's most played games in 2018 are supported on Linux

Quoting: Purple Library GuyMinor pet peeve . . . none of the games literally flew off the digital shelves. You're thinking of games that figuratively flew off the digital shelves. :P

Maybe they literally teleported off the digital shelves straight to the computers. :P

Quoting: kuhpunktWhat would be the point of that?

I think its pretty obvious. If Linux wants ANY meaningful marketshare then there needs to be an affordable, marketable item that can be bought by grandmas at Walmart for their grandkids. Otherwise the future of Linux marketshare would closely resemble someone trying to collect pennies in order to buy a supercar.

Coming in as a VR console would be interesting. I personally dont believe that VR is the future, but gimmicks sell. You would need to time the market well though. If your console was $1000 then youre dead in the water. You would NEED to hit the $400 price point for the base system and offer an affordable VR package thats no more than $400. Valve could do this, but they would have to risk a loss in subsidizing hardware.

I'll say it again Valve:

1. Subsidize hardware
2. Prepare exclusives
3. E3 DAMMIT

I know that they have been against exclusives fundamentally, and I commend them for their principles, but man are we gonna have to chug along for the next 10 years before anything substantial happens. Here's to hoping for some kind of breakthough!

Quoting: jardon

Quoting: kuhpunktWhat would be the point of that?

I think its pretty obvious. If Linux wants ANY meaningful marketshare then there needs to be an affordable, marketable item that can be bought by grandmas at Walmart for their grandkids. Otherwise the future of Linux marketshare would closely resemble someone trying to collect pennies in order to buy a supercar.

But your argument is about an operating system that is literally free. Selling hardware for that... what's the incentive here? I already got a good computer. Many other people do. And they don't need to buy a new one just to use Linux.

Quoting: jardonComing in as a VR console would be interesting. I personally dont believe that VR is the future, but gimmicks sell. You would need to time the market well though.

VR is not THE future, but A future.

Quoting: jardonIf your console was $1000 then youre dead in the water. You would NEED to hit the $400 price point for the base system and offer an affordable VR package thats no more than $400. Valve could do this, but they would have to risk a loss in subsidizing hardware.

But what would the point be? What's the difference to a normal computer now? Consoles are made so that you use their OS/store. Again, what would be the incentive? What could you do with it that you can't do with a PC right now? Exclusivity would be silly and pretty much impossible.

Quoting: jardonI know that they have been against exclusives fundamentally, and I commend them for their principles, but man are we gonna have to chug along for the next 10 years before anything substantial happens. Here's to hoping for some kind of breakthough!

How would that even work? It would run Steam... and then what? Would they lock everybody, who's already using Steam for years, suddenly out to force them to buy a silly "console" when Steam is the console already?

Quoting: kuhpunktBut your argument is about an operating system that is literally free. Selling hardware for that... what's the incentive here? I already got a good computer. Many other people do. And they don't need to buy a new one just to use Linux.

I think you underestimate the power of preloaded software. You wanna know one of the main reasons Linux desktop marketshare sucks? You can't really buy it on anything. You pretty much have to install it yourself unless you wanna pay a premium for something like a system76 machine. You need to have the off of the shelf experience. That is the incentive.

But when it comes to the exclusivity I was talking about, no, I do not believe that means you lock everyone out nor did I imply that in any way. I wasnt even talking about exclusivity to a specific box. That wouldn't be an effective strategy at all. You'd just make everyone mad. Clearly I mean't exclusivity to the Linux platform that the preconfigured hardware would run. I mean steam supports multiple platforms so clearly I meant platform exclusivity. Clearly.

Quoting: jardonYou can't really buy it on anything. You pretty much have to install it yourself unless you wanna pay a premium for something like a system76 machine. You need to have the off of the shelf experience. That is the incentive.

But you brought up the example with grandma, who buys a PC. Why should she buy one? That's been the issue with pre-built PCs forever. Of course they are sold and there's a market... but a Steam Machine wouldn't change that.

Quoting: jardonBut when it comes to the exclusivity I was talking about, no, I do not believe that means you lock everyone out nor did I imply that in any way. I wasnt even talking about exclusivity to a specific box. That wouldn't be an effective strategy at all. You'd just make everyone mad. Clearly I mean't exclusivity to the Linux platform that the preconfigured hardware would run. I mean steam supports multiple platforms so clearly I meant platform exclusivity. Clearly.

Then what kind of exclusivity? Can you please elaborate on this? And what would be the benefit?

Quoting: jardonYou wanna know one of the main reasons Linux desktop marketshare sucks? You can't really buy it on anything. You pretty much have to install it yourself unless you wanna pay a premium for something like a system76 machine. You need to have the off of the shelf experience. That is the incentive.

I don't know if they are still doing this, but years ago, Walmart in the US sold desktops with Linux installed. That said, you think a floor sales person is going to tell Grandma to buy that one?

Selling a new product or repackaging an existing product is often done in a pilot program on a small scale. If it is successful, then the production chain expands. Perhaps it's time for a retailer like Best Buy to give it another shot, but it wouldn't be the first time.

Regarding giving things another chance, think of these two things that weren't adopted very well early on but "sold like hot cakes" in later iterations:
- Container run times. They've been around forever but they didn't explode until Docker created an easy way to build, distribute, and use them.
- Pocket computers. The early ones weren't powerful enough and the Internet was too young. Eventually, iPhone and Android released when technology and development knowledge could support them.

So, it certainly is worth retrying some things.


Last edited by 14 on 28 December 2018 at 11:45 pm UTC

Quoting: HoriValve should invest in *proper* VR games, and then release a new console focused on VR, *made by Valve* not third parties, and based on SteamOS. They should, this way, be able to "annex" the VR gaming market while it's young and easy to do so.
Obviously that console would also be able to play regular games as well - kinda like a Steam machine but it would be focused on VR.

And let me say this again: It should be made by Valve. If other manufacturers also want to make one, fine. But there should always be the option of buying an official, Valve-made unit - which should be used as a reference by the other manufacturers, by defining a standard. Kinda like how we have official Nvidia (Founder's Edition) cards, and we also have ASUS, MSI, etc cards based on it.

Indeed, kind of like how back in the day, there were "IBM PCs" and there were clones. That worked out pretty well for the PC architecture (not sure how well IBM made out from it; I hear they let some young shark named Gates make all the software profit).

Quoting: stretch611

Quoting: Purple Library GuyMinor pet peeve . . . none of the games literally flew off the digital shelves. You're thinking of games that figuratively flew off the digital shelves. :P

Maybe they literally teleported off the digital shelves straight to the computers. :P

I believe they literally replicated, then teleported the clones.

Quoting: kuhpunktBut what would the point be? What's the difference to a normal computer now? Consoles are made so that you use their OS/store. Again, what would be the incentive? What could you do with it that you can't do with a PC right now? Exclusivity would be silly and pretty much impossible.

Hmmm, well, presumably it would be a computer, running SteamOS, with all VR-oriented software installed and running smoothly, using components (particularly but not only the graphics card) that were known to be capable of handling VR stuff, and drivers vetted to not be glitchy with VR thingies. When you fired up Steam, it would default to showing VR things first. It might have a few of the most popular VR titles pre-installed. It would come with relevant hardware for VR things--headset, glove-y things and whatever--again, already with drivers, ready to work out of the box, and with user-friendly configuration software installed and easily discoverable.

The result wouldn't technically be any different from buying a PC and VR hardware and installing all the stuff and maybe fighting with the drivers and glitches and whatever, and then realizing you had to upgrade something because your PC wasn't really ready for VR. But the experience could be significantly different. Consoles are technically just a locked-down form of personal computer which you get for cheap and then pay a bit extra for every time you buy a game. Kind of a lousy deal, and yet there they are making a killing.

The point of a console is that it works. It may sound strange, but as long as you have a well defined set of titles/offerings, people will buy it, even if it doesn't have the hottest new AAAAAAA stuff, or if it just runs on 25-30 fps. For many people, even self-professed "gaming-youtubers", the minimal pc maintanence to play video games (on windows) is a lot.

For the average consumer they would really need some exlusive titles, even if they are only that for a time (kinda like GTA games that always come out 1-2 years later on pc than consoles lately). Right now Valve has a lot of games that do not really fit consoles (virtually all of their online games), and a handful of old or old-ish titles (HL 1-2, Portals).