memes

I don’t get it. We don’t know how much it will cost so how could anyone claim they can build one cheaper? Have you seen the cost of memory lately?

I can build a better PC for less money

Maybe we should wait until we know the price before making memes about this?

Especially with how RAM and SSD prices are increasing. A huge part of the Steam Deck's success was because they partnered with AMD to get a great price-to-performance APU in a market where GPU prices were inflated by crypto, and now AI.

Of course if RAM and SSD prices get too high these machines might get bought up and scrapped for parts anyways, but let's at least see if that happens first.

Well first we don't know the price, other than "like a PC" unless I missed something.

Second, sure, someone like me, who already has the background and experience building gaming PCs, maybe (maybe) I could replicate most of the specs at the same cost, possibly even improve them in a few areas. But economies of scale, the labor on my end, shifting market prices... Unless Valve is marking these things up like 50% or more I just don't see how an individual is going to compete on cost once you include labor.

What you are paying for is a standardised experience.

There is a reason people visit Rome or Vietnam and still go to McDonalds: predictable, reliable experience.

Something like a Steam Deck or Steam Machine that “just works” is definitely worthwhile.

I recently bought a cheap mini PC with a 780M for like $380. It’s 2x the GPU power of a Steam Deck but probably half the GPU power of a Steam Machine (likely half the price too).

Anyhow, it’s running Mint and my XBox controllers randomly disconnect. I’ve spent a few hours troubleshooting with no success so far, and my next steps are buy a USB Bluetooth dongle and see if that works or switch to Bazzite. On the other hand, I never had any problems like this with my Steam Deck. I also don’t use Steam and use Lutris instead, which sometimes requires time spent troubleshooting and jacking around with dependencies / GE Proton versions / etc., whereas Steam games would “just work”.

It’s worth the extra time to me to avoid Steam’s data collection and to be able to run alternative versions of games without DRM that I can run semi-sandboxed in the Flatpak version of Lutris with network permissions revoked so the games can’t collect data either. However, I certainly understand people not giving a shit about any of that and just wanting something that works with no trouble.

"Its got what gamers need..."

I'm not the target audience for this, but I'm still happy to see GNU/Linux installation numbers getting pumped up in the near future. That's why I like it.

I want an unmolested computing experience, and the more people use said unmolested computing experience, the better for the entire platform.

Honestly, I'm not the target audience for it, but like what steam is doing. It's giving me confidence to plan my next build as a linux pc.