Steam Machine

Valve has been quietly working on integrating the FEX x86 emulator into Proton for a while, and it's official now.

https://www.tomshardware.com/peripherals/gaming-headsets/han...

Just to clarify that's for the Steam Frame VR Headset. The Steam Machine PC uses an AMD Zen 4 x86 CPU.

Wow this looks great. Foveated streaming, great resolution, wireless, 144hz, looks much more comfortable... As much as I want this, I feel like it'll end up being a really cool thing that just sits on the shelf.

Edit: foveated streaming, not rendering

When's the preorders happening?

I'm more confused that it's running SteamOS which is supposedly Arch based, but arch doesn't officially support ARM. You have to use the ArchLinuxARM distro for that, which is less maintained. They got to be doing something off label for that.

I think this is a form of an announcement but without many details. I'm curious to see how well it works

Most controller/headphone dongles come with USB-A, so 2.0 in the back makes sense. Radio for new steam controller is integrated.

I have a Y-splitter for my PS5 controllers and if I didn't, I would have had some sort of controller dock. I assume I would do the same for this. Either way, TV is too far from my couch for a cable, so I wanted to keep playing and charging I'd use a powerbank from my coffee table.

Gigabit Ethernet...that's sad, I'd take 2.5G, so I can better stream my legally ripped Blu-rays. I assume most people don't care because they would use Wi-Fi or their switch only goes to 1G. Better than JBL making android TV sound bar with 100mpbs.

I think it purposely designed, so you don't try to build a NAS on it.

What do you expect to do with the steam machine that will take more than a gigabit? I mean, it's cool when things are faster, but if you can saturate the link, downloads are still bottlenecked by the drives. And even 4k streaming is under 100Mbit normally.

Valve / Steam presumably has good data on what controllers and peripherals people are using, so I'd imagine their port choices are based around that. Here's a June 2024 post talking about Steam Input and controller market share: https://steamcommunity.com/games/593110/announcements/detail... . At the time of the post they say "59% of sessions are using Xbox controllers, 26% are using PlayStation controllers, 10% are on Steam Decks"

A lot of devices that you commonly plug and unplug like flash drives and passkeys still make sense as USB-A for a lot of people because of the specifics of the USB spec.

C to A converters for devices are technically verboten since they would allow an enduser to make a A to A cable, which can fry hosts if you plug them into eachother if they don't support USB OTG. You can lose certification if you try to ship a device with a C to A converter.

Because of that, USB-A devices with an optional A to C converter (or neater devices that have both plugs on them natively) are what makes a lot of sense for a lot of people for the kinds of devices that live on a key chain. So it makes sense for that to be the default on the front of a desktop, IMO.

You'd be wrong C to A is still pretty standard for controllers in my experience.

As for gigabit fewer and fewer people have ethernet routed to their office/TV area much less >1gig networking to take advantage of anything better than a 1 gig.

Most gaming peripherals still seem to use USB-A on the computer end for cables and dongles.

Current Xbox and PS5 controllers charge with a USB-C port on the controller end but a USB-A port where the plug into the console.

I suspect it'll be like the Mac mini situation, and the after-market USB hubs that fit the form factor will expand rapidly ..

most of the usecase is going to be keyboard, mouse, and bluetooth headset dongles. All three of mine attached to my Steam Deck dock are USB-A.

although I own a bunch of those usb-a->c attachments you plug on the end, so it wouldnt make much difference

It looks way too chunky, just like the original Steam Controller or the Steam Deck. Not everyone has the hands of a 6'4 man.

In my dream world, hardware enthusiasts would be constantly creating absolutely crazy game controllers with bizarre combinations of inputs that look nothing like an xbox 360 controller. There'd be a universal input protocol that would allow for self-describing gamepads with arbitrary numbers of digital buttons, analog sticks and triggers, touchpads, mouse inputs, haptics, gyro sensors, levers, sliders, wheels, etc. etc.

I realize this may not be practical, but it's kind of weird that PCs have been more or less stuck with a protocol designed for XBox 360 controllers for 2 decades now, while the locked-down console space is seeing much more experimentation and innovation around input. The original steam controller at least hinted at being sort of an open platform for this sort of thing, although it didn't really take off. Fingers crossed for the new version.

I love my OG steam controller still. I can't tell if this new one has the dual stage triggers like the og (like if there's an additional click on full trigger pull).

I used that to set things like boost in rocket League and it felt super intuitive.

No mention of dual stage trigger though, which was my cheat code in rocket league to have one button for accelerate and boost

SInput recently released and got supported by SDL, which plenty of games, but also Steam Input uses. So you can already use SInput in Steam Input. Better than XInput for sure.

https://docs.handheldlegend.com/s/sinput/doc/sinput-hid-prot...

I don't think Steam has ever published specs for their protocol. And without Steam, their old controller would fallback to a mouse/keyboard mode. The Linux kernel drivers (that didn't require Steam) were reverse engineered. Hori released a Steam Controller recently. Even that still had an XInput fallback switch.

I'm just hoping it has a standalone "pretend it is an xbox/generic controller" mode that doesn't rely on steam, so I can bring it to friends easily.

The trackpads are a deal breaker for me

They should have put them just above the joysticks, like the PS5 controller

Better, they should have made them detachable with a magnet, similar to the Switch JoyCon's system, what a missed opportunity

Isn't the lack of extensibility kind of the point?

It forces everyone to make the same controller, so the developer knows what the user will have.

Just wondering, what games are you playing that dont run on Linux yet? I can't think of games I'd play much with family that dont work well

I was in the same shoes, then one day I decided to give a shot to Bazzite. To my surprise the installation was extremely smooth, and everything worked right away. Now I’m playing almost everything on it (Arc Raiders, EU V, HLL and Horizon FW recently). If you want to _try_ all you need is 15 minutes, some HDD space and an empty USB. You don’t have to give up Windows at all, dual booting is also pretty smooth.

I used to also have a dedicated Windows machine just for gaming, but two years ago I formatted the Windows drive and put SteamOS (via ChimeraOS) instead. I can legitimately say that it has been more stable than running the same games on Windows. Just flawless.

I've been using Pop_OS, buggy as hell but steam games work great!

Everything is kinda a dumpster fire, but they nailed steam games.

Wow, the heat sink takes up most of the internal space!

thanks for that. The internals photos were what I was really wanting to see!

One of the things I've noted for a while is that PC gaming as a platform seems to be polarizing between high and low spec, especially if you look outside of North America/Western Europe to places like South America or SE Asia. The steam deck and now this seem to be a reference/target platform for the low spec group. It might not be able to play the prestigious high spec titles well if at all, but so long as "your mileage may vary" is messaged well I can't see it being a problem, it hasn't so far.

Not sure how heavy SteamOS is, but wouldn't modern games actually prefer a flipped memory configuration? So, 8 GB RAM and 16 GB VRAM would make this a more 'balanced' gaming appliance. But it is advertised as a general purpose PC, so 8 GB RAM wouldn't be enough.

It's a very low end Radeon 7000 series. It's absolutely incapable of the highest texture quality and rendering resolutions that need more than 8GB of VRAM. You'll likely never go above 1080p on this card (1440p is going to be rough based on benchmarks of the existing low end 7000 series).

There's absolutely no reasonable way to use more than 8GB of VRAM on this card.

it meets or exceeds the ps5 and xbox series x, so it might not be top tier, but it'll be fine. I have a plenty good time on my series x, cant think of any stutters.

Games publishers/developers are going to have to wind in their necks a little. Whilst memory is abundant it's also still quite expensive. We should still be aiming for efficiency and the chances are 16gb+ are in the minority here. Fact is, the more VRAM and compute you demand the smaller your customer-base becomes.

I've played many games with 8GB VRAM* and will do so for the forseeable. If that's not enough, I am not a customer. Simple as.

The truth is, there is going to be a massive motivation with the likes of Steam Deck/Machine to actually make titles that are optimised and perform well within their hardware parameters. It's money you won't want to ignore.

*One example was Silent Hill remake on PC, which used the unreal engine. It was optimised beautifully and ran without visual glitches and stutters even with the highest graphic demands on a 8GB RTX

This is a issue of critical mass. With the continued growth of steamos, steamdeck, and linux as a game platform, eventually it will pull over support.

It's worse than that, BF6's anticheat is kernel level and requires the Windows-only version secure boot to be enabled, at least on my motherboard. There is no way I'm going to faff about with my BIOS when rebooting just to play this game.

All Valve has to do is say “Your software cannot deliberately exclude linux support including kernel anti-cheat to be listed on Steam.” And that would be that, the few devs big enough to make it on their own would leave, and everyone else would adapt.

It doesn't boot into the desktop by default — it uses its own session with the Gamescope compositor. The desktop is easily accessible through the power menu though.

I like SteamOS a great deal, though it's not my daily driver (yet). I'm curious if people will begin to use it as a daily driver and thus expect Valve to be an OS developer on top of creating software for their gaming hardware. That's a different set of expectations and I wonder how they'll navigate it.

Weird to show something in a marketing photo and then go "you actually have to build the whole thing yourself".

I have a 1st gen Steam Deck (256gb), and it has supported wake from bluetooth peripherals for a while. I've only tested it with a PS5 controller, but it works. [EDIT: btw I use the official dock. Idk if it'll work with others]

I use my SteamDeck as a streaming device too, and since my TV is connected via HDMI, waking the console also wakes the TV. So I can start playing/watching anything by just turning on my PS5 controller (which is not ideal because the PS5 controller has terrible battery life and is often dead when I need it, but that's a different issue)

Waking up the deck works for me with my xbox controller connected via bluetooth. Are you using those controllers via BT or USB?

Edit: Now that I think about it, this might have been a feature added to the OLED model.

Same issue with Switch 2. You can only wake it with a Switch 2 controller. Nintendo's own Pro Controller for switch, which used to wake the Switch just fine, cannot wake the Switch 2. Seems like a forced upgrade issue, to me. :(

Did Framework ever distance themselves from Omarchy after the whole discussion in October? Otherwise I hope and expect Steam to know better than to align themselves with Framework.

What would a Framework partnership accomplish? Ship SteamOS as a preinstalled option for their laptops?