Mastodawn

I know a lot of folks have been going on about it, but Steam's latest hardware announcement has been utterly insane for the day and age in which we live.

Consider that they didn't hype it up with a launch event. They didn't sell a bunch of hype and buzzwords. All they did was release a ~6 minute video that effectively described the hardware and what it would provide, and had a webpage with *actual specs on it*.

They invited a bunch of tech reporters/YouTubers to their HQ, but they let them talk to *engineers*, not marketing people. The discussions focused on real capabilities of the hardware, and actual demonstrations. No vapor and promises. Not glitz and glam.

They made it clear this is all SteamOS driven, and that they have a focus of getting *existing x86 Windows software* running not only on Linux, but on ARM and in VR!!

They aren't pitching a closed ecosystem. They said, outright, "This is your hardware, you can do whatever you want with it".

THEY DIDN'T MENTION AI ONCE.

And they're _already_ making a bigger splash than any competitor ever did, even though those competitors have gobs more money they've thrown at this stuff, and tremendously more staff.

It's flabbergasting. I hope they make enough of an impact with all this that people sit up and take notice.

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Wolf480pl Nov 14

@Phorm I think the difference is, Valve makes money by doing nothing. So all the money that's left it can spend on working on a single product for years without launching anything in the meantime.

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Natanox 🇺🇦🇵🇸Nov 14

@wolf480pl @Phorm I wouldn't call maintaining a service and community "doing nothing". They just don't be part of the whole tech hype bullshittery.

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Wolf480pl Nov 14

@Natanox @Phorm
Yeah but like, it seems that maintaining that takes a small percentage of Valve's effort?

Idk, I haven't seen their books, but they seem to behave in a more secure and less desperate way...

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Haelwenn /элвэн/

@wolf480pl @Natanox @Phorm Yeah, for this case I wouldn't say they do nothing, that would be more like just having the steam store and just keeping it running, not launching hardware.

To me the difference with Steam is they are a private company and want to stay one, so no shareholders / investors bullshit, just selling their stuff to customers and providing a marketplace scoped on games.