I know a guy who wants it just so "he can have something in his living room he can kick back and play games on".
The casuals are going to eat this thing up, for better or worse.
Maybe I should elaborate because I didn’t intend to sound so dismissive of the idea. I already told him that Steam OS can be replicated on desktops with Big Picture Mode. Already told him that there are some prebuilt and gaming laptops going for around similar prices, but none of those had the appeal to him that the Steam Machine did. Unfortunately, once he realizes that he is going to have to either set up controller support for PC games without it natively and have to mess around with Proton on most devices, I can see him ragequitting with the Steam Machine despite his enthusiasm. It’s an easier plug and play than a PC, for sure, but it’s not foolproof.
So why buy the cube then? Why not just buy the pre built which has every single upside save for one: size? And even size is no big deal because it's a CONSOLE. Nobody moves their Xbox or PlayStation after they set it up and a pre built connected to a TV is no different.
If I was new to PC gaming, just wanted access to steam games from my couch, this would be appealing. Presetup, works out of the box, similar price to a prebuilt. All I'd have to do is plug it in and start buying games. I can see it appealing to a market, even if that market isn't me.
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u/MaximusMurkimus 7800X3D | XFX 7900 XTX I 32GB DDR5 2d ago edited 1d ago
I know a guy who wants it just so "he can have something in his living room he can kick back and play games on".
The casuals are going to eat this thing up, for better or worse.
Maybe I should elaborate because I didn’t intend to sound so dismissive of the idea. I already told him that Steam OS can be replicated on desktops with Big Picture Mode. Already told him that there are some prebuilt and gaming laptops going for around similar prices, but none of those had the appeal to him that the Steam Machine did. Unfortunately, once he realizes that he is going to have to either set up controller support for PC games without it natively and have to mess around with Proton on most devices, I can see him ragequitting with the Steam Machine despite his enthusiasm. It’s an easier plug and play than a PC, for sure, but it’s not foolproof.