One of the main failures of the Steam Machine was that there was no baseline “steam machine.” They were just a myriad of prebuilt machines running a specific OS, and was especially confusing to people not already into PC gaming.
The Steam Deck fixed that by being just one thing (pedants fuck off, you know what I mean). If their next console like offering is indeed console like and not just a rebranded PC ecosystem, it probably will see more success than their first venture in Steam Machines.
I really hope they come up with some kind of certification system for games targeting Steam consoles, in the same way Microsoft/Sony/Nintendo do. All the boring stuff like making sure controllers connect and disconnect gracefully, the console can be slept/woken at any point in gameplay without bugs, consistent language/UX etc. That stuff goes a long way to making things “just work” on a platform. IMHO it’s the one edge console still has over PC gaming. Even if it was an optional certification, it would give players some decent guidance as to what will work well.
One of the main failures of the Steam Machine was that there was no baseline “steam machine.” They were just a myriad of prebuilt machines running a specific OS, and was especially confusing to people not already into PC gaming.
The Steam Deck fixed that by being just one thing (pedants fuck off, you know what I mean). If their next console like offering is indeed console like and not just a rebranded PC ecosystem, it probably will see more success than their first venture in Steam Machines.
I really hope they come up with some kind of certification system for games targeting Steam consoles, in the same way Microsoft/Sony/Nintendo do. All the boring stuff like making sure controllers connect and disconnect gracefully, the console can be slept/woken at any point in gameplay without bugs, consistent language/UX etc. That stuff goes a long way to making things “just work” on a platform. IMHO it’s the one edge console still has over PC gaming. Even if it was an optional certification, it would give players some decent guidance as to what will work well.
They do have that for the Steam Deck.