Valve announces Steam Frame, Steam Machine, Steam Controller
- Thread starter Aurel Guthrie
- Start date
Aurel Guthrie
They/Them
I imagine part of it might be immersion. There would be no visual noise past the screen to distract you. To me that's very appealing, though its obviously not a selling point, but it's still a whole VR headset more powerful than the index. To me the option comes across as a very nice bonus.
Also convenience and comfort, I suppose. You could sit on your living room couch away from your computer setup and start playing. For that purpose there's likely not much advantage over using a Steam Deck unless you don't want to play on a tiny screen (I'm personally not much of a fan of handheld gaming)
Why?
Just like Windows, Steam has iterated on their OS over the years. Do you have experience with their current OS that runs the Steam Deck?
Not the average PC user . . .
I picked up a Steam Deck last year and barely touched my PS5 ever since but I'd totally buy a Steam Box for my TV to have access to all those games. I used to build PCs all the time but now I have other hobbies... So I'd rather buy a single box ready to go for all my Steam games.
I once provided desktop support to a law firm. One lawyer angrily asked why Outlook looked and interfaced so different on his phone than it did on his laptop. I then had to come up with a polite way to explain to a non-tech person, "Because it's your phone and not your laptop".
The Steambox is, essentially, a very focused PC - the Steamdeck is vastly more limited. Like any networked device, there are going to be inherent vulnerabilities. I do not trust Valve (on any level) to provide quality security support. I don't trust Microsoft either, but I trust Valve even less. Also, Windows is easy to modify if it starts doing things I don't like (such as removing things nobody asked to be removed).
How much control am I really going to have over my Steambox? I admit that I don't know. Nothing that Valve has done over the years makes me feel very confident however. My confidence in MS hovers around zero. My confidence in Valve is in the negatives.
Aurel Guthrie
They/Them
SteamOS is a Linux distro, so I imagine you should have plenty of control, and Valve did state in their announcement "Who are we to tell you how to use your computer?"
Though I'm curious why you feel this way about Valve, do they have a history of security issues that went past my radar? I personally trust them a lot more than Microsoft, who recently shipped an update that bricked some people's SSDs.
MoonSong
Rules-lawyering drama queen but not a munchkin
Taking into account nothing wold stop me from formatting my Deck and installing any other Linux distro in it. (Or even Chrome OS or Android), I would say a fair amount of control. Not even the drivers would be a problem because AMD makes them open source so one doesn't even need to rely on Valve for them.
