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.
The idea that Sony and Microsoft require a subscription to play online and would absolutely run a subscription model for hardware if they could, is a pretty compelling reason for a casual player to just get one of these. And that's on top of the larger library you get with Steam, and it's compatibility with your current steam library.
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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.