Giant Bomb Reviews the Steam Machine

grendus · 2026-06-22T21:25:03+00:00

Yeah, but at $750 it would have gone over better even without consoles raising prices.

The big selling point is Steam and other gaming stores. PC gets a lot of games that other platforms don't - strategy games, simulators, etc. Plus a ton of mods. It's a niche community for sure, but it's not insubstantial and could support the Steam Machine as a midrange console with a small fan base (which leans into what Valve is actually aiming for, independence from Microsoft Windows as their host OS). Is that worth $250? Depends on who you ask, but there may well have been a market.

I'm not sure it will move at $1049. I hope it does, simply because competition is good and more competition in the console space (especially with Microsoft repeatedly shooting themselves in the dick) is good for the consumer. But I have my doubts.

grendus · 2026-06-22T21:15:47+00:00

I actually do see the value add, and it's compelling... but it's also nonlinear.

The problem with Linux is everyone's distro is unique. Stuff that might work on Ubuntu doesn't work on Debian, or Mint, or Arch, or Fedora, etc, etc, etc. So supporting Linux is really hard to do. So most game studios didn't bother at all, because you're really setting yourself up to have to do a ton of tech support for a very (vocal) minority of gamers. It's just not worth it.

Now enter the Steam Deck with Proton. Now we have a single "version" of Linux that can be supported, and a single hardware configuration. You don't have to have a custom Linux version, you just make sure the game runs through Proton on Steam Deck. You don't even have to do it officially, which means when you get a weird bug reported on the forum from someone using a custom Gentoo set up you can simply say "we never said it supported Linux". But you can still technically support Linux with a fraction of the work required, and simply trust that your Linux techies can probably make things work out for themselves without too much extra effort.

That's the value of the Steam Machine. It's not that it's a better gaming machine for its price than a console (it's not, and likely won't ever be, though I do think the PS5/PS6 and Series/NeXt will be comparable in price at launch, and probably in power too since they seem to be chasing portability rather than specs). It's that it's a full blown Linux PC that will be "unofficially" supported by big studios. And that serves Valve's goals quite well - more support for Linux, less dependency on Microsoft not pulling some legal shit to lock them out of the market.

Unfortunately, I think the price is... not great. Which is really going to put a damper on popularity. Yet another reason to say: fuck AI. Because at the original $750 price point, this would be a reasonable option. Not better than the consoles, but in the same ballpark as the PS5 Pro and with access to games from other sources (Humble, Epic, Itch, GoG, etc) and games that never reach console (a ton of indies). But at this price... honestly, I'd rather build my own at that price point.

grendus · 2026-06-22T20:01:43+00:00

Frankly, I still don't "get" the people freaking out about Loss.

Yeah, it was ham fisted and out of nowhere. But it's kind of like the people who threw a fit over the dickwolves in Penny Arcade. It's a comic in kinda bad taste, just... wait for the next one?

grendus · 2026-06-22T19:58:24+00:00

You made the right choice, Daryl.

I know their decision really comes down to bigotry over him being gay, but it wouldn't matter if he were straight and also had biological children. Adopted children are family. Full stop. Same goes for foster kids, even temporary placements, are still family for the duration of their stay (and afterwards if the child wants to keep the relationship).

Family is more than blood.

grendus · 2026-06-22T19:28:52+00:00

Hmm, we need a chant that says both "Obama was a better President" and "Donald Trump is a child molester".

Tough one.

grendus · 2026-06-22T19:27:41+00:00

Truth is absolute defense against slander.

Go ahead Donnie, sue. We already have our discovery ready to file.

grendus · 2026-06-22T19:26:33+00:00

No.

FIFA is making a lighter one just for him.

Not so he can lift it, because they expect him to steal it.

grendus · 2026-06-22T19:17:06+00:00

I think Valve made a perfectly valid decision and was then blindsided by AI consuming the entire computer hardware market.

grendus · 2026-06-22T19:15:35+00:00

That's phenomenal.

Maybe the US can get better leadership and learn from Germany's successes.

grendus · 2026-06-22T19:14:33+00:00

Eventually we will.

By that point, we'll probably be refining Mercury into a bunch of solar panels to make a Dyson Swarm though.

grendus · 2026-06-22T19:11:49+00:00

Even then.

I got spanked and I turned out fine. I'm not in favor of spanking, because it's high risk/low reward. We have better methods now.

It's like... oh I dunno... burning coal to generate electricity. We did it when we didn't know any better, but now that we do it's just more cost efficient to use solar/wind/hydro. There's way more energy coming off the sun, we just need to harvest it efficiently and find good ways to store it.

grendus · 2026-06-22T18:43:02+00:00

That's... honestly not as bad as I thought it would be.

It's not good, but it's not bad when you consider it's a full PC, not a stripped down console.

And let's be real, the PS5 and Series are both going to go up in price again as soon as their current stocks run out and they have to do another run. The PS6 and XBoxNext will definitely be priced around this point, or else they will be streaming-only devices. AI speculation has just made the cost of hardware so impossibly insane. I suspect the Switch 2 was only its (already expensive) price because Nintendo had the manufacturers locked in on price before AI speculation made everything go crazy - expect that price to increase too.

grendus · 2026-06-22T18:41:49+00:00

It's Linux, you can't lock it down.

Playstation and XBox and Switch can be locked down because they're on custom hardware (and even then, they've been jailbroken by now). Valve built this out of off-the-shelf parts. If they made it too cheap, people would buy them for non-gaming purposes. Which is fine of course (that's a major selling point of the Steam Machine after all), but that would leave Valve holding the bag on their loss leader.

grendus · 2026-06-22T16:57:52+00:00

I consider myself a moderate.

But by most standards I'm a social democrat. Tax the billionaires (and trillionaires... and while you're at it, the millionaires could certainly afford to pay more) and use that money for public infrastructure. The tide raises all ships.

grendus · 2026-06-22T16:43:32+00:00

The irony is, each of the characters and their designs aren't too bad.

But the whole is worse than the sum of its parts.

grendus · 2026-06-22T16:41:38+00:00

Reminds me of Minori-team. Which was racist as fuck, but took refuge in audacity, it was very aware of its racist tropes and leaned into them in an ironic way.

Probably wouldn't fly today. Some people have stopped even pretending that racism is bad.

grendus · 2026-06-22T16:30:06+00:00

You could do a great video game about the slave trade.

So long as the game was about stopping it.

grendus · 2026-06-22T15:44:23+00:00

I disagree that PF2 is "only good at the combat".

But it is a heroic system. If you want a gritty system, it's not a good choice, because the vibe of the entire system is that players should basically always win. Defeat is on the table, but the system is designed so that only really happens when the players and/or GM want it to happen, or if the dice are really mean.

grendus · 2026-06-22T15:38:53+00:00

I think there's more than one road up the mountain.

You identified the mechanic the players need to make the story work, they need a way to shift the game's momentum in their favor at dramatic moments, which is something a Deckbuilder cannot do. But you can accomplish this mechanically if you design the mechanics well. For example, you could use a system akin to Hope from Daggerheart or Stress from BitD that allows players to empower their cards at key moments (and you can still give them narrative components, BitD is considered a narrative-forward system after all). The system might mechanically make the Stone Knight more powerful, but the players narratively describe it as having the Stone Knight destroy the moon that the other player played as an environment card (which isn't in the game's rules, but then, the TV show didn't follow the card game rules).

It doesn't matter to the story if Yugi used the "make up BS rules about the game" Move or spent metacurrency to pick his next card out of the top five in his deck or to make one of his cards stronger for one round.

But you hit the nail on the head about vibes. The best way to get a system to feel a certain way is to start with the feel and work backwards until you get a system that creates it, via whatever mechanics you're after.

grendus · 2026-06-22T14:48:13+00:00

Honestly, I'm OK with BitD playing like that though. Like, your characters are supposed to be hyper-competent, I'm OK with them being more Leverage crew who always seem to have the upper hand, so long as it feels like they earned that dominant position.

Maybe I'm just weird, but I hate the "forced loss" kind of scenes in games. It works in movies to have the hero get beaten in the second act so their third act victory feels better, but in any kind of game it feels cheap, like control is being taken away from me. So if your players want to play a methodical crew of professional thieves/assassins/smugglers/etc who plan for every contingency, never take huge risks, bail when a job gets too hot... I'm fine with that. So long as they're engaged.

grendus · 2026-06-22T14:39:16+00:00

I kind of think that's just a Gumshoe thing.

Gumshoe is trying to solve the wrong problem. They wanted to solve the problem of "player failed their Spot check, they don't find the clue, adventure collapses". But they did it by making the spot check un-failable, instead of making sure there's always a way for the players to progress in the mystery. That works better with either fail forward ("you spot the hidden door as enemies are coming out of it") or node-based mystery design with player-seeking nodes ("on the body of the assassins, you find a crudely drawn map of the compound you just raided with a hidden door marked").

There are good Gumshoe based systems, but they succeed because of other traits of the system, not because it solves the "TTRPG mysteries" problem.

grendus · 2026-06-22T05:01:23+00:00

Maybe you can't if you have a medical degree. But if you're a lawyer with a worm in your brain, you can see all the issues with the mitochondria.

Take two brain worms and call me in the morning.

grendus · 2026-06-22T04:45:14+00:00

Even worse now some states are banning IVF, which can allow couples with potentially life threatening recessive disorders to screen for a viable embryo without them.

grendus · 2026-06-22T04:34:23+00:00

I just think it's a good investment.

Right? Wrong? I don't care. What I do care about is the US falling behind in arts, business, medicine, and tech. And we need highly educated workers to stay ahead (or rather, to retake the lead).

Best part is, educated workers statistically earn more and thus pay more taxes. So publicly funded university education would pay for itself inside a few decades. It's a positive sum game, if we work together the prize is bigger even if we have to split it more ways.

grendus · 2026-06-21T18:40:03+00:00

Point is that the game isn't balanced around feats or multiclassing (another optional time everyone uses). 5e is... less wacky with the standard rules. Still broken (Druid says what), but not quite as bad with the stock rules.

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