Tariffs, component volatility, and Valve’s tolerance for losses all lead to uncertainty.
The title is a bit misleading, as the article lists diverging analysts’ opinions, ranging from Valve willing to sell at a loss or low margins, to high prices due to RAM and SSD price volatility.
You’re not seeing the forest for the trees. Just because other game distribution vectors lack market share does not mean there are no alternatives to Steam. People have options, but they overwhelmingly choose Steam based on the quality of their product and service. If others decide to improve those things or a particular game is better priced or contains more content on another service, the consumer is free to choose that distributor.
Market share is completely irrelevant in this case.
Market share is very much relevant to determining if some company has a dominant position in that market. You people would be arguing that Internet Explorer 6 wasn’t a monopoly because Mozilla and Opera existed.
Homie you’re having a completely different argument than the rest of us. It’s been explained to you like 3 different ways now. Not sure what else to tell you, so yeah. Believe what you want to believe, big dog.
How do you explain piracy being a perfectly viable option to game on this new console? You never need to buy the first game to use this machine effectively.
How do you feel about Google requiring apps to be notarised by them to run? How do you feel about locked bootloaders? How did Google get to be able to do that in the first place? I outlined steps that are required to get there and where Valve is on that timeline (this HTC Dream, attempt 2).
For PC you can Frankenstein random hardware so you aren’t at the mercy of prebuilt OEM options.
Now look at phones and see how easy it is to make your own from scratch with parts. Then look at OEMs and how many will even let you unlock the bootloader.
Then look at how many iOS options there are for phones not from Apple. Mobile hardware freedom was dead from the get go compared to PC. Why? Hardware roadblocks for mobile compared to PC.
When has Android been open? How many people do you know building their own parts to make their own Android phone from random parts? Android has mostly been at the mercy of OEM prebuilts.
I feel like you’re purposefully ignoring everything that’s being said. I understand what you’re saying, but it isn’t applicable in this case. It’s just a PC man. A Linux based PC. There’s nothing mandatory about using steams services on the hardware, nor given the announced architecture, could they enforce such a requirement.
Linux ≠ Android. One is open source, the other is not. And to add, it’s pointless to discuss what might happen on a theoretical piece of hardware multiple generations away. You might as well argue that Windows will go open source in 2035 based on the fact consumers never pay for it for home use.
You could build entire working Android system, dialer, launcher and other regular stuff included, from source. You had to supply some binary blobs for kernel drivers due to ARM platforms being a bit of a clusterfuck but that’s about it. Did people forget this already?
Linux and proton are open source, and their licenses allow literally anyone to fork it. GE-Proton already exists.
How are they currently locking Linux down? The Steam Deck is literally a desktop PC, and can do anything a desktop Linux PC can do (including using it in desktop mode which is KDE Plasma). You can even install a different Linux distro (or Windows if you’re a freak) on it if you want. There’s literally nothing locked down about it.
Same could be said about Android. Will you be able to install other OS on Steam Machine 3 in 2035? It could have bootloader locked, they could say it’s required for anti-cheat and some even will be happy that they can finally play CoD.
You’re right, that’s why there’s countless mature Android distributions to choose from, and they’re all free. Oh wait.
I don’t really know much about AOSP, but isn’t the fact that it doesn’t contain any of the proprietary Google stuff mean that the “sideloading” restrictions likely will not apply? How could it?
So you don’t really know the story of Android, much of it very recent, but you’re going to argue that Valve is not following the same path. What a waste of time.
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If they have no market share then that competition exists in theory only.
You’re not seeing the forest for the trees. Just because other game distribution vectors lack market share does not mean there are no alternatives to Steam. People have options, but they overwhelmingly choose Steam based on the quality of their product and service. If others decide to improve those things or a particular game is better priced or contains more content on another service, the consumer is free to choose that distributor.
Market share is completely irrelevant in this case.
Market share is very much relevant to determining if some company has a dominant position in that market. You people would be arguing that Internet Explorer 6 wasn’t a monopoly because Mozilla and Opera existed.
Homie you’re having a completely different argument than the rest of us. It’s been explained to you like 3 different ways now. Not sure what else to tell you, so yeah. Believe what you want to believe, big dog.
How do you explain piracy being a perfectly viable option to game on this new console? You never need to buy the first game to use this machine effectively.
How do you feel about Google requiring apps to be notarised by them to run? How do you feel about locked bootloaders? How did Google get to be able to do that in the first place? I outlined steps that are required to get there and where Valve is on that timeline (this HTC Dream, attempt 2).
For PC you can Frankenstein random hardware so you aren’t at the mercy of prebuilt OEM options.
Now look at phones and see how easy it is to make your own from scratch with parts. Then look at OEMs and how many will even let you unlock the bootloader.
Then look at how many iOS options there are for phones not from Apple. Mobile hardware freedom was dead from the get go compared to PC. Why? Hardware roadblocks for mobile compared to PC.
Are you sure that’s relevant when every major Android OEM locks their bootloaders now? Illusion of an open system.
When has Android been open? How many people do you know building their own parts to make their own Android phone from random parts? Android has mostly been at the mercy of OEM prebuilts.
There’s been definitely way more people running custom roms 10 years ago. Xiaomi got a start with a custom rom.
I feel like you’re purposefully ignoring everything that’s being said. I understand what you’re saying, but it isn’t applicable in this case. It’s just a PC man. A Linux based PC. There’s nothing mandatory about using steams services on the hardware, nor given the announced architecture, could they enforce such a requirement.
Linux ≠ Android. One is open source, the other is not. And to add, it’s pointless to discuss what might happen on a theoretical piece of hardware multiple generations away. You might as well argue that Windows will go open source in 2035 based on the fact consumers never pay for it for home use.
You could build entire working Android system, dialer, launcher and other regular stuff included, from source. You had to supply some binary blobs for kernel drivers due to ARM platforms being a bit of a clusterfuck but that’s about it. Did people forget this already?
You can launch any .exe through Steam using Proton… You don’t even need to buy the games if that’s your prerogative.
Where the software is from is entirely irrelevant.
Just walk me through what prevents Valve from following Google’s footsteps in commoditising Linux only to lock it down like they are doing currently.
Linux and proton are open source, and their licenses allow literally anyone to fork it. GE-Proton already exists.
How are they currently locking Linux down? The Steam Deck is literally a desktop PC, and can do anything a desktop Linux PC can do (including using it in desktop mode which is KDE Plasma). You can even install a different Linux distro (or Windows if you’re a freak) on it if you want. There’s literally nothing locked down about it.
Same could be said about Android. Will you be able to install other OS on Steam Machine 3 in 2035? It could have bootloader locked, they could say it’s required for anti-cheat and some even will be happy that they can finally play CoD.
The same cannot be said about Android. I think you need to educate yourself on what Linux and FOSS actually is.
I see AOSP was forgotten very quickly.
You’re right, that’s why there’s countless mature Android distributions to choose from, and they’re all free. Oh wait.
I don’t really know much about AOSP, but isn’t the fact that it doesn’t contain any of the proprietary Google stuff mean that the “sideloading” restrictions likely will not apply? How could it?
So you don’t really know the story of Android, much of it very recent, but you’re going to argue that Valve is not following the same path. What a waste of time.