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.

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.

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.

Steam is a game distribution store, Steam machine and deck are console oriented machines. Linux as a whole has dominance in the server world, valve is touching the gaming side of desktop Linux. Desktop Linux is tiny compared to Windows. You are comparing it to a phone operating system in a world where they were two-ish, to a potential distro in a world where there are 12 or more, several of those widely used in servers. Be angry if you want but it's not the same.

It's just not even comparable in any way, regardless of how you try to shoehorn it into your analogy. Android was not a mature, stable OS with hundreds of distributions, for several decades, before Android phones came along.

You did not address anything I’ve said really. I’m going to go with block because I value my time too much.

Please stop digging that hole because it’s getting embarrassing.

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.

Oh I'm wrong?

First public release of Android was in 2008 but you’re talking about several decades. No billionaire is your friend. Please sober up.

How do you feel about Google requiring apps to be notarised by them to run? How do you feel about locked bootloaders? I outlined steps that are required to get there and where Valve is on that timeline.

It doesn't come with windows. For a lot of businesses that is a requirement. The other thing valve has done is require you to have a steam account with purchases, and limit the number you can purchase on that account, before you buy a hardware device from them. This was to prevent scalping but also would prevent the scenario you present limiting sales to those that have already purchased games is a solid strategy for their new devices imo.

i swear i read *somewhere* that they were shootin for around $400 for a base model

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.

There is absolutely no way they're selling it for less than $400. Whoever said that has absolutely no idea what they're talking about. They told LTT that they were planning to price it competitively with entry-level PC's

Just saying The steam deck was 600€ The steam Maschine is 4x faster I think your math dosent math

While I think you’re ultimately right, 6 years ago I would have said the same thing about the Steam Deck idea, so I’m compelled to offer counterpoints. Valve, very uniquely, does offer *the best* Linux-based digital games storefront to use on that Linux gaming PC you bought. So, they’re very much positioned to take advantage of the hardware purchase. Users aren’t “locked in”, but they are compelled in, and users may have a smoother time getting games on Steam than trying to set up controller-based launchers on Heroic or something. It’s like when the pet isn’t literally fenced into the house, and is allowed to roam free, but is reminded that its fluffy toy and warm meals are all back at home, so it’ll never go far. Valve also might just be more forward-thinking than ~~most game companies~~ most COMPANIES these days. They build goodwill this way and get people obsessed with their brand by having more wins like this.

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?

> hope one day soon someone makes a better frontend that supports other platforms better, Heroic Games Launcher isn't that bad IMO. Though I haven't checked if it has something equivalent to big picture mode, which is kind of a necessity to compete with Steam on the Steam Machine. But on PC it's fine. I use it for my free Epic games lol

> No billionaire is your friend. What exactly do you think my argument is? I think Gabe is a pos for having multiple yachts. It's absurd. However, I have eyes and a brain, and I have seen how he runs the company. I'm honestly not sure what you're trying to say with the first part.