Microsoft recently announced a handheld for Xbox. They’re going to half ass this they way they did with windows phone.
this post was submitted on 08 Jan 2025
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If it ran SteamOS, I'd have died laughing.
They are always late to the party and they have an image problem
And they haven't managed to come up with a decent product in decades.
I like some of their developer products that said... Wtf is with their marketing department? I'm a techy and play some games but if someone asked me to buy them a Xbox I honestly don't know which one is best... Xbox one series S? I think??
Now atleast on Playstation I know it's ps5 as it's the biggest number.
You want Nintendo... Switch as it's a different enough name to make it stick.
Imagine going to but a truck... Do you want a Ford f150, a Ford f150 series x or a ford f150 series s? Now keep in mind a Ford f150 can't go on any roads built in last 5 years and if you pick the wrong series letter your speed is capped at 30mph....
Don't get me started on visual studio vs visual studio code....
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Hey! I use bing sometimes, just to keep things a bit spicy.
Edit: oh, nevermind. Bing is 15 years old. I should probably look into retirement homes..
Yeah, I don't think Microsoft has ever understood or cared how much pc gaming has added value to windows.
Which makes the strategic defeat here of failing to understand they are fucked longterm all the more satisfying.
Microsoft understood in the 90s.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2V9TFrmQ_Q
St. John recognized the resistances for game development under Windows would be a limitation, and recruited two additional engineers, Craig Eisler and Eric Engstrom, to develop a better solution to get more programmers to develop games for Windows. The project was codenamed the Manhattan Project, like the World War II project of the same name, and the idea was to displace the Japanese-developed video game consoles with personal computers running Microsoft's operating system.
To get more developers on board DirectX, Microsoft approached id Software's John Carmack and offered to port Doom and Doom 2 from MS-DOS to DirectX, free of charge, with id retaining all publishing rights to the game. Carmack agreed, and Microsoft's Gabe Newell led the porting project. The first game was released as Doom 95 in August 1996, the first published DirectX game. Microsoft promoted the game heavily with Bill Gates appearing in ads for the title.
It's kind of wild how much Microsoft failed to capitalize on PC gaming over the last 20 years. Arguably PC Gaming has thrived in spite of them, not because of them.
Valve was smart to understand how Microsoft could threaten their business model but it barely mattered considering how many rakes Microsoft stepped on over the years. Don't even get me started on Games For Windows Live.
Microsoft prevented PC gaming from dying and moved the industry from "sometimes there are pc games" to "occasionally there is a platform exclusive other than Nintendo". That was all Xbox. Valve did a much better job of sitting back and raking in 30% for their glorified downloader, but the games existed because of the compatibility efforts of Xbox.
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Unrelated tidbit gleaned from reading the entry:
the name "DirectX" came from one journalist that had mocked the naming scheme of the various libraries. The team opted to continue to use that naming scheme and call the project DirectX.
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I hope that SteamOS finds more of its way into desktop computers. Sure, I don't trust Valve; just like I don't trust any other corporation. But it's like fighting a big cancer with a smaller meta-cancer, if they hurt Windows/Microsoft I'm happy.
Plus its current relationship with GNU/Linux is symbiotic.
Valve is the chemotherapy/radiation to Microsoft. Not quite a cure but both are still deadly.
Why is steam/valve bad?
They are a privately owned company with 100% focus on customer service and sustainably.
Yeah they charge like 10% of profit for the games on there, and more if you make it big. To be on the only platform where people actually shop for PC games...
Nobody has ever given me a real problem with Steam where some other company isn't already doing significantly worse shit in comparison.
The way I see it, they are the lesser of two evils. Just because someone isn't as bad a Microsoft, doesn't mean that they are forgiven for their sins.
Predatory lootboxes, and not cracking down on CSGO Gambling site are the biggest sins which Valve has committed.
Going beyond that, no clear path forward for when the Steam DRM Client goes offline. I personally have games which I bought on legacy hardware, that no longer runs on that hardware since Steam discontinued support for it. I don't expect Valve to support all hardware indefinitely, however I can buy the same game from GOG, and install it on my XP and Win 7 machines without issue.
I am certain that there are other issues, and compared to MS they look like a saint. But for me I diversify my game library and get as much of my games DRM Free or on a platform which has a proven track record for supporting not just their current purchases but also legacy ones.
Beat Sony with a stick all you want. Despite the PSP being 21 years old this year, if I can connect my PSP to the internet, I can still download my digital PSP PSM and PS1 games.
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They charge 30%, and only goes down after making $10 million in sales.
But Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft charge just as much.
Every other game storefront has been like "But Valve doesn't even do anything! We'll cut them out and then we'll make so much more money!" And then they force you over to their own garbage storefront that has none of the features of Steam, has a smaller selection of games and demands equal space in your system tray at all times.
They're only undercutting Valve cause they wish they could be the monopoly taking 30%
Don't get me wrong I think 30% is bullshit, but it's an industry thing not especially a Valve thing
Remember when Google's motto was "don't be evil"? Remember when Facebook was innovative? Remember when [insert any post-IPO platform] was privately owned?
Look at the past and future, not just the present. Corporations eventually go sour, and fight against the very users that they were supposed to serve. Give Steam/Valve enough power and it'll do the same. We don't need corporations serving us software; we need open systems.
That said Valve is situationally useful here because it's eroding Microsoft's power.
That's how publicly traded companies work, profits above all else.
Good thing Valve isn't publicly traded!
Give Steam/Valve enough power and it'll do the same.
Valve has tons of power. Like, a lot. They seem to (for the most part) wield it responsibly. They're certainly not perfect but time and time again, given the choice, they choose to do the right thing. Look no further than the Steam Deck.
Imagine how easy it would have been to ship it with Windows. But they went through the pain-staking and expensive process of creating Proton and making everything work super smoothly on a completely open-source OS, and even funding the developers of said OS. Sure, they needed something to distance themselves from Microsoft but imagine how easy it would be for them to lock down the OS so that you could never leave Steam or install any competing stores or make any modifications. Or they could even create their own OS/ecosystem like XBOX and PS do.
Imagine how easy it would have been to be like every other OEM and glue it together and solder everything to the mobo and make it completely unrepairable/unupgradeable. Instead they gave it a removable back and updated it to use torx screws and partnered with iFixIt to ensure longevity out of respect for their consumers.
Imagine how easy it would be to just ignore Denuvo and EULAs and 3rd party accounts, but they force publishers to list them.
They also have an excellent track record for customer support.
They also have an excellent track record for customer support.
Their customer support actually used to really suck. They made a concerted effort to improve it.
More like the EU made them.
Australia made them offer refunds thanks to our consumer law.
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Post-IPO? Valve is privately held. Which is why they make strategic decisions that stakeholders would never approve of.
I mentioned IPOs as an example of things making a company take a 180°, from "we luuuv customers!" to "customers are things to be milked, not humans to care about". There are a thousand other possibilities - being bought by another (and more abusive) corporation, being inherited by arseholes and/or fools, or even a change in the mindset of its current owners.
There's absolutely nothing preventing all those shitty outcomes. Nothing. And when one of them happens, the suckers who "buy" games through the platform - including myself, and probably you - will be shown a middle finger, and hear a moronic "ackshyually u didn't buy the games lol you licensed them lmao".
You can't trust it.
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I'm generally a fan of Valve (at least historically), but at least recently some stuff has come out about them propping up a billion dollar gambling industry via CounterStrike skins. It's full of legal loopholes to avoid being classified as actual gambling, thus allowing underage users to get addicted to casino mechanics. This might actually be Valve's current biggest profit center in recent years.
30%
Not the only platform
Glorified downloader with DRM
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Steam needs to drop a whole OS for PC.
https://store.steampowered.com/steamos/buildyourown
You can install it yourself on PC.
~~Note that the SteamOS download on that page is NOT the current version of SteamOS used on the Steam Deck, it's the 2-3 year old version that Valve released a while back and doesn't have most any of the actual improvements to SteamOS that make it worthwhile. The only way to get the current SteamOS is to download the recovery image for the Steam Deck at https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/1B71-EDF2-EB6D-2BB3 and install from there.~~
Linus from LTT did a video about getting it up and running here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdR-bxvQKN8
EDIT: As per usual, Linus didn't do good research and was incorrect about the SteamOS version available at that link, updated to strike the incorrect info.
Yeah, Linus didn't actually bother clicking the links. The old OS download links redirect to the arch based steam deck os
Yeah, Linus didn’t actually bother clicking the links.
Ya know, somehow I'm not surprised to hear LTT didn't do their research
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Seems like the instructions are still for SteamOS 2, they mention a file named “SteamOS.zip” while you get a file bzip archive of an img file
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It's in the works. Valve is working to develop SteamOS for other devices, including PC.
https://www.theverge.com/2024/12/6/24315098/valve-steam-machines-steamos-steam-deck-vr
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