346: Are Steam Sales Even That Good?

00:00SPEAKER- Will, have you heard about the dbrand story?

00:02SPEAKER- Oh, the forgiveness rather than permission model.

00:05SPEAKERYes, I'm familiar. - Oh my goodness.

00:06SPEAKERI got some, I got some, I don't know if it's tea,

00:10SPEAKERbut I'll give you the scoop here.

00:12SPEAKERI haven't talked to anyone about it.

00:14SPEAKER- This has happened, this isn't the first time

00:15SPEAKERthis has happened to them, for what it's worth, right?

00:18SPEAKER'Cause they did this with the PlayStation blades too,

00:20SPEAKERdidn't they? - Something like that.

00:21SPEAKERI mean, I'm not even super familiar.

00:22SPEAKERI know they do a lot of sponsorships,

00:24SPEAKERand I know they make a lot of skins and stuff,

00:28SPEAKERbut this is a whole new level of brashness.

00:32SPEAKERSo for folks who don't know, we're talking to Steam Machine

00:35SPEAKERand dbrand, maker of skins and cases and stuff.

00:40SPEAKER- Screen protectors and cases and stuff like that, yeah.

00:43SPEAKER- Things to modify your, everything from Steam Decks

00:45SPEAKERto Switch 2s and things like that, and phones.

00:49SPEAKERThey, when Steam Machine was announced in November,

00:52SPEAKERI guess they teased, oh, here's a thing we're working on,

00:55SPEAKERwhich is the companion cube, weighted companion cube

00:58SPEAKERenclosure, a case, for Steam Machine.

01:01SPEAKER- It's a cube, it's a natural,

01:03SPEAKERit's a collaboration that was born to happen.

01:06SPEAKER- A collaboration would be one way to put it, right?

01:08SPEAKER- Seems like an easy thing to just call it and be like,

01:10SPEAKERhey, can we do this?

01:11SPEAKERAnd then they'd be like, oh yeah, sure, absolutely,

01:13SPEAKERor no, leave us alone.

01:15SPEAKER- So I had Steam Machine for review about,

01:20SPEAKERlike, I think I got it nine days before the embargo,

01:24SPEAKERand Dbrand reached out.

01:27SPEAKERThey're like, oh, if you're considering,

01:31SPEAKERif you're doing coverage on Steam Machine,

01:34SPEAKERwould you consider checking out our companion cube case?

01:37SPEAKERI was like, oh, okay, I'm happy to check that out.

01:40SPEAKERSo they sent one over, and it was a production prototype,

01:44SPEAKERand they sent it to a bunch of content creators.

01:45SPEAKERHonestly, some people, if you go on YouTube

01:47SPEAKERand just search Dbrand companion cube,

01:49SPEAKERa bunch of people who don't even have Steam Machines have it.

01:51SPEAKERSo they made a fair number of these pre-production prototypes

01:55SPEAKERand I'll tell you two things

01:56SPEAKERabout the pre-production prototype.

01:57SPEAKEROne, the build quality was great.

01:58SPEAKERIt wasn't like a 3D printed thing.

02:00SPEAKERIt was definitely injection molded plastic.

02:02SPEAKERThe mold release- - They made molds?

02:04SPEAKER- Oh, they made like 14 molds, right, injection molds,

02:07SPEAKERwhich is like, you know, six figures worth of tooling.

02:11SPEAKERAnd they had to redo it because the mold release,

02:16SPEAKERapparently, that they use for the parts that contact them,

02:21SPEAKERthe Steam Machine, left the grease on the hardware.

02:26SPEAKERAnd so it wasn't even their final product.

02:29SPEAKERLike they said, you know, shipping versions,

02:30SPEAKERwhich obviously won't happen now, won't have this.

02:33SPEAKERSo it was like, you know, pre-release stuff,

02:35SPEAKERbut it looked industrial.

02:37SPEAKERThey had like fancy portal aesthetic boxing.

02:41SPEAKERIt was very elaborate box.

02:44SPEAKERAnd so, yeah, okay, I included a shot of it, tried it out.

02:46SPEAKERIt's very nice, because as a product, very nice thing.

02:50SPEAKERAnd then, yep.

02:51SPEAKER- Do you think that they, do you think that they, okay,

02:54SPEAKERso do you think that they actually made injection molds,

02:57SPEAKERlike the milled out? - 100%.

02:58SPEAKER- Or do you think it's like 3D printed

03:00SPEAKERand they're using silicone molds and just doing rubber?

03:02SPEAKER- They went to tooling, 'cause they wanted to,

03:05SPEAKERthey were ready to ship, they were ready to manufacture.

03:07SPEAKERThey probably had paid for a run of these.

03:09SPEAKERI mean, who knows, right?

03:10SPEAKERThey could have taken pre-orders.

03:11SPEAKER- God, that's hundreds of thousands of dollars.

03:12SPEAKER- Oh yeah, six figures easy for tooling.

03:15SPEAKERAnd I think in their Reddit posts,

03:17SPEAKERthey talked about having to do revisions, right?

03:19SPEAKERThey did like, they did a whole promo shoot.

03:21SPEAKERI would say in terms of like having some sense

03:24SPEAKERof manufacturing, it was easily, with R&D,

03:27SPEAKERtwo to $300,000 worth of someone's time, a company's time,

03:31SPEAKERpeople's time that they put into this.

03:34SPEAKER- Okay, so we should get to the punchline,

03:35SPEAKER'cause I bet people don't know this.

03:37SPEAKER- Yeah, so Steam Machine went for a pre-order

03:40SPEAKERa week and a half ago.

03:41SPEAKERWhen the embargo dropped, they went,

03:43SPEAKERthere was a lottery system.

03:45SPEAKERAnd the same day, actually, the head of the review embargo,

03:50SPEAKERdbrand put up the landing page for pre-ordering this case.

03:56SPEAKERAnd I think they- - Q lawyers?

03:57SPEAKER- Yeah, and I think they said, you know,

03:59SPEAKERlike 15,000 people express interest.

04:01SPEAKERI don't know how many people actually pre-ordered.

04:03SPEAKERBut then less than a week later, they put up Reddit posts

04:06SPEAKERand people got emails saying full refunds are bad.

04:10SPEAKERWe didn't get permission from Valve

04:13SPEAKERto make this product, which uses Valve IP,

04:17SPEAKERthe weighted companion cube,

04:19SPEAKERand graphics that are very close to portal graphics.

04:22SPEAKERAnd they had to take it down.

04:24SPEAKERAnd Valve reached out and said, "No, no."

04:26SPEAKERAnd dbrand said, "Okay, I guess

04:30SPEAKERwe're not making this anymore."

04:32SPEAKERAnd so we're not doing it.

04:33SPEAKERBut the thing I haven't told anyone is, so-

04:37SPEAKER- So you have one.

04:38SPEAKER- I have one, you know,

04:38SPEAKERand it's now it's like this rare collector's edition.

04:41SPEAKERYeah, right, like, I don't know,

04:42SPEAKERmaybe like a dozen or two dozen of them

04:43SPEAKERwere out in the world somewhere.

04:45SPEAKERBut they sent a, like, over email,

04:49SPEAKERa assembly video, just like shot with an iPhone.

04:52SPEAKERJust like, if you have problems putting this together,

04:54SPEAKERhere's how it comes together.

04:56SPEAKERAnd it's, first of all, it was very easy.

04:59SPEAKERYou just slide it in.

04:59SPEAKERLike, it's not like replacing the sides.

05:01SPEAKERYou don't have to take apart the steam machine at all.

05:03SPEAKERIt just literally just slides into this enclosure.

05:05SPEAKER- Does it impede airflow?

05:07SPEAKER- No, it actually raises the bottom off of the ground.

05:11SPEAKERSo it might help it in some way,

05:15SPEAKERbut definitely doesn't impede the intake

05:17SPEAKERor the exhaust on the back.

05:18SPEAKERThe back is just the Valve logo, the same-

05:21SPEAKER- It's just open, okay.

05:21SPEAKER- The same back as what comes with the steam machine.

05:24SPEAKERBut the video they shared,

05:26SPEAKERdemoing how to install this case,

05:30SPEAKERhad it installed in a steam machine.

05:33SPEAKERThey used- - How'd they get

05:34SPEAKERa steam machine?

05:35SPEAKER- They must have been a partner somehow,

05:38SPEAKERor tied to a developer or something,

05:41SPEAKERbut they had access to a real steam machine

05:44SPEAKERto make this product.

05:46SPEAKERAnd so my assumption is that they were partnered

05:49SPEAKERwith Valve in some way to make skins or something.

05:53SPEAKER- Oh, wow.

05:54SPEAKER- And still made the choice to not get permission

05:58SPEAKERto make this very clearly Valve-associated visually product.

06:05SPEAKERLike, who does that?

06:07SPEAKER- Like, it's such an own goal.

06:09SPEAKERThat's just wild.

06:10SPEAKER- Like, it's one thing to make the fan design,

06:14SPEAKER'cause there's a bazillion of those

06:15SPEAKERout on 3D printing sites now, right?

06:18SPEAKERBut then there's a whole other thing

06:19SPEAKERto go through the process,

06:20SPEAKER'cause it's not an insubstantial time and energy

06:23SPEAKERand work investment to make injection-molded plastic stuff.

06:27SPEAKERIs it multiple, are all the different colors,

06:31SPEAKERdifferent pieces, is that how it works?

06:32SPEAKERAnd then they assemble them?

06:34SPEAKER- That's right.

06:35SPEAKER- And it's a sleeve you just kind of lower down

06:36SPEAKERand then magnet on the front piece?

06:39SPEAKER- Magnet on the front piece and then bolt on a back plate, yep.

06:42SPEAKER- It's wild, it's wild.

06:44SPEAKERWell, congratulations on a one of 15 collectible there, Norm.

06:49SPEAKER- Well, the other thing is it actually,

06:51SPEAKERand we'll get to the Steam Machine,

06:55SPEAKEReven though it's small,

06:56SPEAKERit makes a small thing not really that small,

07:00SPEAKERas small anymore.

07:01SPEAKERSo even aesthetically, it's very nice to look at,

07:05SPEAKERand obviously we're not selling it right now,

07:06SPEAKERbut one of the appeals of Steam Machine

07:08SPEAKERis just how small it is.

07:10SPEAKERAnd now it's just a little less small.

07:12SPEAKER- And you'd think they'd know that,

07:13SPEAKER'cause when they did the PlayStation wings for the PS5

07:16SPEAKERand they made the low-profile ones

07:17SPEAKERthat don't stick out over the top,

07:19SPEAKERand then Sony sent them the Nasty Gram and said,

07:21SPEAKER"Hey, stop selling these."

07:23SPEAKERThat was making the big thing small,

07:26SPEAKERwhich makes sense to me.

07:27SPEAKERThis is a whole, anyway, wild choices all around.

07:30SPEAKER(upbeat music)

07:38SPEAKER(upbeat music continues)

07:59SPEAKER- Welcome to Brad and Will Made a Tech Pod.

08:01SPEAKERI'm Will.

08:02SPEAKER- Oh, I'm Norm. - Oh, yeah.

08:03SPEAKEROur substitute, Brad, this week,

08:05SPEAKERBrad's still out on personal stuff.

08:06SPEAKEROur substitute, Brad, this week is one Norman Chan

08:08SPEAKERof Tested.com and Adam Savage is Tested on YouTube.

08:12SPEAKERWelcome to the show.

08:13SPEAKERWelcome back to the show, Norm.

08:14SPEAKER- Oh, excited to be here.

08:16SPEAKER- I guess this is the season,

08:17SPEAKERthis is the season of talking about Steam stuff.

08:20SPEAKERSo, once again, you're back.

08:23SPEAKERYou have had access to a Steam Machine,

08:26SPEAKERI think longer than just about anybody

08:29SPEAKERoutside of Valve at this point.

08:32SPEAKER- Or developers, but yeah, yeah, yeah.

08:34SPEAKER- Yeah, I've had mine.

08:35SPEAKEROh, that's where the dbrand folks got one,

08:37SPEAKERis they must've seen them to early developers.

08:40SPEAKER- Yeah, that's my assumption,

08:41SPEAKERis that they maybe, they knew a developer

08:44SPEAKERwas able to borrow one,

08:45SPEAKERbut if they actually got one from Valve

08:47SPEAKERas a manufacturer of aftermarket cases or something,

08:51SPEAKERor skins, that would be crazy. - Base plates or skins

08:54SPEAKERor whatever, yeah, yeah.

08:55SPEAKER- Anyway. - Yeah.

08:56SPEAKERBut yeah, so you've had the,

08:58SPEAKERI've had my Steam Machine for a little bit over a week now.

09:01SPEAKERValve was kind enough to send me the two terabyte kit

09:05SPEAKERwith the controller, which is what they sent

09:07SPEAKERto everybody, it seems like.

09:09SPEAKERAnd I've spent kind of a lot of time with it.

09:12SPEAKERIt's become one of the main ways

09:14SPEAKERI play video games right now.

09:17SPEAKERIt's been hooked up in my living room.

09:18SPEAKERI hooked up to the monitor in the office for a minute

09:20SPEAKERjust to try some stuff out.

09:22SPEAKERBut we're gonna talk about it.

09:22SPEAKERWe're gonna go through the whole thing,

09:23SPEAKERthe good, the bad, how it works,

09:25SPEAKERwhat the kind of out-of-box experience is like.

09:28SPEAKERWe're gonna have to talk about pricing

09:30SPEAKER'cause it's unavoidable at this point.

09:33SPEAKERI think people who listen to this show

09:35SPEAKERknow that pricing of all electronics that involve RAM

09:38SPEAKERand/or flash memory are a shit show right now.

09:42SPEAKERBut if you don't, well, we're gonna talk about that.

09:44SPEAKERAnd then I have some questions from Discord

09:46SPEAKERand from the Blue Sky that people had sent in

09:48SPEAKERthat we'll hit at the end if we have some time.

09:50SPEAKERAnd we have performance, the whole thing.

09:52SPEAKERSo I guess let's just get right into it.

09:54SPEAKERI thought the setup, the out-of-box and the setup

09:57SPEAKERfor this was really nice.

10:00SPEAKERThe box was, did you get retail box, I assume?

10:02SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, yeah, retail box.

10:05SPEAKERSo two terabyte model, same as you,

10:06SPEAKERwhich they do a 512, there's four models, right?

10:09SPEAKERThere's the 512 gigabyte

10:10SPEAKERand the two terabyte $300 price difference.

10:14SPEAKERAnd then there's also the Steam controller pack-in,

10:16SPEAKERwhich is like a $80 difference or something,

10:20SPEAKERwhich is a little bit discount on Steam controller.

10:22SPEAKERAnd then you get the, with the two terabyte models,

10:24SPEAKERyou get the face plates too.

10:26SPEAKER- Yeah, so you get a wooden face plate

10:27SPEAKERand a red cloth face plate.

10:29SPEAKERI'm using the wooden face plate right now.

10:31SPEAKERAre you a red cloth?

10:32SPEAKERAre you a black or are you a wood?

10:33SPEAKER- See, it's not red and I had this in my review

10:35SPEAKERand people are shouting it out, but they're like,

10:37SPEAKER"Hey, it's an orange, it's a blood orange one.

10:40SPEAKERIt's clearly a reference to orange box."

10:43SPEAKERAnd I'm like, well, well,

10:46SPEAKERI am very familiar with orange box.

10:48SPEAKERWell, you reviewed orange box for max PC.

10:51SPEAKERI reviewed orange box for PC gamer.

10:53SPEAKERAnd yeah, oh yeah.

10:54SPEAKER- I didn't know that.

10:55SPEAKER- I went to Valve, I think we went the same time.

10:57SPEAKEROh no, no, you went right after it.

10:57SPEAKER- I was there with Josh Norum, yeah, yeah.

10:59SPEAKER- That's right, that's right.

10:59SPEAKERAnd we put orange box on the cover of PC gamer magazine

11:04SPEAKERfor the review.

11:04SPEAKERAnd do you remember the big controversy

11:07SPEAKERor the big hubbub?

11:08SPEAKER- Did you all mess up the orange?

11:09SPEAKER- We messed up the orange.

11:11SPEAKERWe had old Pantone guides and famously PC gamer

11:15SPEAKERput out the review of orange box

11:18SPEAKERand had a more salmon like color

11:21SPEAKER'cause there's a faded Pantone

11:23SPEAKERand that was sent to the printers.

11:24SPEAKER- We did the exact same thing at maximum PC

11:25SPEAKERfor a different topic, same orange.

11:28SPEAKERAnd we messed it up because future was too cheap

11:31SPEAKERto buy current Pantone guides, it turns out.

11:33SPEAKER- Hundreds and hundreds of dollars even back then.

11:35SPEAKERBut that's to say, I have a very intimate relationship

11:41SPEAKERwith that Valve orange box orange.

11:43SPEAKERI know that orange, I can spot it.

11:45SPEAKERAnd I'll tell you the steam machine face plate

11:48SPEAKERis not that orange.

11:49SPEAKER- It's rust, it's not like that orange box orange

11:52SPEAKERis like a neon orange.

11:53SPEAKERIt's fluorescent orange.

11:55SPEAKERAnd this is definitely not that.

11:56SPEAKERThis is more like some inside baseball.

11:59SPEAKERBut this is closer to the orange

12:01SPEAKERthat the Valve in their lobby,

12:03SPEAKERthe wheel on that is painted.

12:04SPEAKERAlthough I think that's redder probably.

12:05SPEAKER- That's more red.

12:06SPEAKERYeah, when you see like the red in the back of the Valve

12:09SPEAKERon the back of the guy's head, right?

12:11SPEAKERThat's more red.

12:12SPEAKERThis is somewhere in between.

12:13SPEAKERSo I don't know where they chose this color.

12:14SPEAKERI don't know why they have that like soft felt texture.

12:17SPEAKERThat's the part that was confusing to me.

12:18SPEAKEROf course I know they made the orange box.

12:21SPEAKERLet me tell you listeners out there,

12:22SPEAKERthis is not that orange.

12:24SPEAKER- Yeah, Norman Chan knows orange.

12:27SPEAKER- The setup was really easy.

12:28SPEAKERYou pop it out, the box was nice.

12:30SPEAKERThe packaging was really good.

12:32SPEAKEREverything was really secure.

12:33SPEAKERIt was three cables for me, power, HDMI and ethernet.

12:36SPEAKERYou could do wifi as well if you want.

12:39SPEAKERAnd then I logged in with the, it did an update.

12:41SPEAKERI logged in with the QR code from my Steam app

12:44SPEAKERand I was there in Steam just like on my desktop.

12:46SPEAKERIt was, it was, or on the Steam Deck.

12:49SPEAKERIt was, it was, they've gotten good at this part of it

12:51SPEAKERI think over since the Steam Deck came out.

12:53SPEAKER- Totally, yep, yep.

12:55SPEAKER- We've talked about the hardware a little bit.

12:57SPEAKERI gave some kind of first impressions last week

12:59SPEAKER'cause I got it the day before we recorded the episode.

13:02SPEAKERBut it's Zen 4 CPU, RDNA 3.5 GPU.

13:06SPEAKERIt's six cores, six CPU cores with two threads each,

13:09SPEAKERthermally limited to I think 30 watts, it's pretty low.

13:13SPEAKER- That's right.

13:15SPEAKER- And then the GPU is an RDNA 3.5,

13:18SPEAKERwhich is like a 7,000 series GPU

13:22SPEAKERwith 28 compute units and eight gigs of VRAM,

13:26SPEAKER16 gigs of system RAM total.

13:27SPEAKERDo you know if you have a single stick

13:29SPEAKERor a two stick model, did you look?

13:30SPEAKER- They're only doing the single stick.

13:31SPEAKERThey're only doing-- - Oh, they are?

13:33SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, and this is a change

13:35SPEAKERfrom what we had learned back in November

13:37SPEAKERand actually got it wrong in my video review

13:39SPEAKER'cause I shot it before I did the disassembly.

13:41SPEAKERBut in the disassembly, yeah, all the shipping models,

13:44SPEAKERat least, they, I don't know if they're even

13:45SPEAKERgonna make an announcement if they get to do dual channel.

13:49SPEAKERBut two ways of thinking about it,

13:50SPEAKERand I think gamers next listed a latest video

13:54SPEAKERdoing some benchmarks.

13:55SPEAKERSingle channel is like single digit percentage slower

13:58SPEAKERin some compute tasks, but I guess if you wanna go upgrade

14:04SPEAKER'cause RAM is one of the places you can upgrade

14:06SPEAKERand you can buy another 16 gigs of sodium,

14:11SPEAKERyou could get up to 32 gigs easier than if you had 286.

14:16SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, in a world where 16 gigs of RAM

14:20SPEAKERcosts 200 or 300 bucks, it's nice to not have to buy

14:23SPEAKERan extra 16 gigs of RAM if you wanna get to 32 gigs.

14:28SPEAKER- I don't see a lot of people doing that though.

14:30SPEAKERI mean, like-- - I can't imagine.

14:31SPEAKER- No, no, no, for this type of machine,

14:32SPEAKERlike yes, you can run into legacy stuff,

14:34SPEAKERbut like 16 gigs is gonna be plenty for most stuff

14:37SPEAKERunless I guess people are buying something like this

14:41SPEAKERto not just use as a living room gaming PC,

14:43SPEAKERbut to make it some type of semi-portable workstation.

14:48SPEAKER- Yeah, we can talk about that.

14:49SPEAKERI played, I spent a fair amount of time

14:52SPEAKERusing the Linux desktop on it the other day.

14:54SPEAKERI think that as somebody who spent,

14:56SPEAKERlike I'm a 99% Linux user at this point, right?

15:02SPEAKERI think that that idea that you're gonna use this

15:05SPEAKERas a desktop with the immutable OS running in Steam OS

15:08SPEAKERis maybe not particularly realistic.

15:11SPEAKER- We can talk about that later, but the hardware is capable.

15:16SPEAKERThe thermal limits on the GPU and the CPU

15:18SPEAKERare very aggressive compared to even comparable

15:21SPEAKERlike NUC style boxes and definitely compared

15:25SPEAKERto like an ITX machine you would build yourself.

15:27SPEAKER- So we should talk about the choice here

15:30SPEAKER'cause it's not an APU, right?

15:31SPEAKERThey chose discrete CPU, discrete GPU, both from AMD.

15:36SPEAKERAnd while Valve won't say it, you can kind of suss out

15:39SPEAKERthat what they've done is they've taken a binned CPU part

15:43SPEAKERthat wasn't APU and disabled the GPU cores.

15:46SPEAKERAnd then maybe they, for the pricing, for the sourcing,

15:51SPEAKERthey were able to get this version of that 28 CU version

15:55SPEAKERof the 7,000 series RDNA 3.5 at that price point

16:01SPEAKERfor this level of TDP for that 110 watt on the GPU side,

16:05SPEAKERwhich is gonna be your cap for your performance.

16:08SPEAKER- And it seems like that was a really strategic choice.

16:13SPEAKERSo I did some, I've been playing a bunch of games on it.

16:16SPEAKERI've been playing like indie games,

16:17SPEAKERof course, run great on this.

16:18SPEAKERIt's very performant.

16:24SPEAKERI also downloaded some PlayStation 5 games.

16:26SPEAKERSo I downloaded like God of War, Ragnarok,

16:28SPEAKERand Horizon Forbidden West and some stuff like that

16:31SPEAKERthat's a little more intensive.

16:34SPEAKERAnd I was seeing a solid like locked 60 frames per second

16:37SPEAKERon all of those games, right?

16:40SPEAKERLike I think that this choice to throttle the hardware

16:42SPEAKERwas A, tied to noise in the living room

16:45SPEAKER'cause the machine's really quiet even under full load.

16:47SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah.

16:49SPEAKER- But I think it's also like in the same way

16:51SPEAKERthat the Steam Deck was spec'd to run current gen

16:54SPEAKERconsole games at a good frame rate at the 1280 Bay,

16:58SPEAKERthe 100 display, this feels like it's spec'd

17:01SPEAKERto run current gen console games at 1080p to 4K,

17:05SPEAKERdepending on what kind of scaling you want to use

17:07SPEAKERand get decent performance out of that.

17:10SPEAKERLike this is a decent performance machine.

17:12SPEAKERThis isn't like an enthusiast computing thing.

17:15SPEAKER- No, no, no.

17:15SPEAKERAnd, you know, the pricing's unfortunate, right?

17:19SPEAKER'Cause the supply chain stuff, but when they designed this,

17:22SPEAKERI think they really prioritize that form factor

17:25SPEAKERand the noise level, right?

17:27SPEAKERSuper custom fan, custom fan mount, custom blades.

17:31SPEAKERAnd it is so quiet.

17:33SPEAKERThat's the thing.

17:33SPEAKERI think even, it was hard to communicate

17:35SPEAKERin a video review the size of this thing.

17:38SPEAKERLike if you have a Steam controller,

17:39SPEAKERif you have a game pad, it's less wide

17:43SPEAKERthan basically your game pad, your Steam controller.

17:46SPEAKERLike six inches by six inches by six inches is tiny, right?

17:50SPEAKERIt's tall, it's bigger than the Kleenex square,

17:53SPEAKERthe cube tissue box, slightly bigger than that,

17:56SPEAKERbut not much bigger.

17:57SPEAKERThat's why when we go back to the portal cube thing,

18:00SPEAKERjust even adding like an inch in any dimension

18:02SPEAKERis significant volume wise.

18:04SPEAKERIt's like 3.8 liters.

18:06SPEAKER- Yeah, so I have a dice roller, dice tower thing

18:09SPEAKERthat somebody printed for us back in the tested days.

18:11SPEAKERIt's been sitting on the speaker by my TV for years

18:14SPEAKERand it's five inches by five inches by five inches.

18:16SPEAKERAnd this is, that now sits on top of the Steam machine

18:19SPEAKERand like, it looks like a little hat for the Steam machine.

18:24SPEAKERLet's see, it ships a 512 gig or two terabyte storage.

18:29SPEAKERIt has the same kind of EMMC slot that the Steam Deck has.

18:32SPEAKERSo you can take a micro SD card,

18:34SPEAKERwhich also are phenomenally expensive now

18:36SPEAKERand use those to store excess games

18:38SPEAKERif you don't want to open it up.

18:40SPEAKERIf you do, like opening it up

18:41SPEAKERand getting to the SSD seemed pretty easy.

18:44SPEAKERYou just pop it out and the slots on the bottom,

18:47SPEAKERbut there is only one NVMe slot, so you can't add to it.

18:50SPEAKERYou're just replacing the one that it ships with.

18:52SPEAKERAnd then I assume you have to go through the process

18:54SPEAKERof reinstalling SteamOS and that whole thing.

18:57SPEAKER- Yeah, so the external storage, the hot swappable storage,

19:01SPEAKERbecause it really is hot swappable.

19:03SPEAKERYou can just plug it in and the library will recognize.

19:05SPEAKERThat's not express speeds.

19:07SPEAKERSo I think it's kind of capped at,

19:08SPEAKERI want to say like 100 megabits per second

19:10SPEAKERor megabits per second.

19:11SPEAKER- So it's not like the Switch 2,

19:13SPEAKERwhich uses the newer spec, right?

19:14SPEAKER- Correct. - This is the older, yeah.

19:16SPEAKER- Yeah, so you're not going to be able to,

19:19SPEAKERand you wouldn't want to run critical applications

19:22SPEAKERoff of that.

19:23SPEAKERIt's really just for game storage.

19:24SPEAKERIt's fast enough for loading.

19:26SPEAKERThe NVMe will fit the full width, 2280 size.

19:31SPEAKERAnd the cavity which lives in, like as compact as it is,

19:35SPEAKERwill fit NVMe M.2 SSDs with heat sinks to a certain extent.

19:42SPEAKER- So like not, like there's multiple levels of heat sink.

19:46SPEAKERI want to say Crucial made a T700

19:48SPEAKERthat had like a two inch tall heat sink on it.

19:49SPEAKERThat's not going to fit.

19:51SPEAKERBut your normal, like a PlayStation 5 style SSD

19:55SPEAKERwith a heat sink in it seemed to fit

19:57SPEAKERfrom what I was able to tell.

19:58SPEAKER- Yeah. - They're using a Qualcomm

20:01SPEAKERwireless chip set.

20:02SPEAKERLinux users will know we love MediaTek over here.

20:05SPEAKERSo I'm glad that they used Qualcomm for that.

20:08SPEAKERWe don't love MediaTek just for the record.

20:09SPEAKERMediaTek sucks shit.

20:11SPEAKERBut Airflow, they have a custom cooling solution

20:16SPEAKERfor this thing.

20:17SPEAKERBasically the whole box looks like cooling fins.

20:21SPEAKERAnd did you do a teardown too?

20:22SPEAKERI saw the Gamers Nexus teardown.

20:24SPEAKER- Yeah. - Yeah, so you should watch

20:27SPEAKERthe teardown videos 'cause it's a really fascinating

20:29SPEAKERpiece of hardware.

20:31SPEAKERIt seems like it's sucking a little bit air in the front,

20:34SPEAKERbut mostly in from the bottom.

20:35SPEAKERIs that fair?

20:37SPEAKERAnd then blowing it out the back?

20:39SPEAKER- It's a combination and that's why the feet,

20:43SPEAKERwhich is where the bolts are hidden in,

20:46SPEAKERif you wanted to do a disassembly,

20:47SPEAKERthe four feet are raise it up off the ground.

20:50SPEAKERAnd so their big recommendation is definitely

20:51SPEAKERdon't put it on carpet 'cause a lot of it does come

20:54SPEAKERfrom the Airflow.

20:55SPEAKERThe Airflow does come from the bottom.

20:57SPEAKERThe back feet actually has a little divider

20:59SPEAKERthat connects the back feet to prevent recirculation.

21:02SPEAKERSo the exhaust in the back,

21:04SPEAKERand you don't want to block the back of course,

21:05SPEAKERbut the hot air that goes out the back,

21:07SPEAKERwhen you can't feel it,

21:09SPEAKERit doesn't come back underneath the steam machine

21:13SPEAKERto recirculate.

21:14SPEAKERSo it's really well designed Airflow wise.

21:16SPEAKERAnd really the notable thing is at load 30 watt CPU.

21:21SPEAKERAnd most games aren't CPU like heavy,

21:24SPEAKERbut yeah, 110 watt max RPM, you're not gonna hear it at all.

21:29SPEAKER- You literally-- - You really don't hear it.

21:31SPEAKER- I had to get right up on it when I was running,

21:33SPEAKERgot a war Ragnarok yesterday to hear anything.

21:37SPEAKERJust sitting in the living room on my couch, 15 feet away,

21:41SPEAKERI didn't, you couldn't tell it was on.

21:44SPEAKEROn that front, I got to say like, I don't want to,

21:49SPEAKERit's a cliche to talk about the spouse approval factor here,

21:52SPEAKERbut in terms of things that I put it visibly connected

21:56SPEAKERto the TV over the years, my wife is like,

21:59SPEAKERthis is way better than the dock

22:00SPEAKERthat you had the steam deck on before.

22:02SPEAKER- No, and that's why they made this, right?

22:04SPEAKERLike so many people buy steam deck

22:07SPEAKERand steam deck prices went up by 200 bucks, right?

22:09SPEAKERBy 30%, but so people dock the steam deck,

22:12SPEAKERthe attach rate for the dock

22:14SPEAKERand Valve just knows their cell numbers,

22:16SPEAKERbut there are plenty of people who make tiny third party

22:19SPEAKERsteam deck docks as well.

22:20SPEAKERIt's just a great way to use the steam deck

22:23SPEAKERbecause you can stream from your tower over ethernet

22:27SPEAKERand streaming is just, you can pump it out.

22:30SPEAKERBut steam deck had some issues just like,

22:33SPEAKEReven if you don't go into the Linux, the desktop mode,

22:36SPEAKERyou're not going to get full resolution.

22:38SPEAKERIt's going to output just a, you know,

22:40SPEAKERcaptain neck, I think 1920.

22:43SPEAKERAnd even then the thermal design of steam deck,

22:47SPEAKERyou're going to hear that exhaust and it goes up the top too.

22:49SPEAKERSo it's not really well designed for small cavities.

22:53SPEAKERAnd there's a whole argument that, yeah,

22:55SPEAKERyou could build your own PC like a laptop works as well,

22:57SPEAKERright, for living room.

22:59SPEAKERBut I've tried putting a laptop, you know,

23:01SPEAKERbehind the entertainment center

23:02SPEAKERin the corner of the room.

23:03SPEAKERAnd it's thermally, it's just not made for that.

23:05SPEAKERThe giant power bricks that laptops come with,

23:09SPEAKERit's just really not family or, you know, spouse friendly.

23:13SPEAKER- Having to dig it out to do the,

23:15SPEAKERto like to press the power button or whatever.

23:17SPEAKERLike there's always, whenever I've done that in the past,

23:20SPEAKEReven using like a NUC style machine.

23:21SPEAKERCause I went through a thing with PC world

23:23SPEAKERa couple of years ago where we went through and tested

23:25SPEAKERa bazillion like Beelink and MSI and ASUS NUC boxes,

23:29SPEAKERwhich are basically like steam deck hardware.

23:31SPEAKERIt's an APU in a less thermally limited

23:34SPEAKERand less power limited box.

23:37SPEAKERSo we installed Bizite and SteamOS and a hollow ISO

23:39SPEAKERand all that stuff on them.

23:40SPEAKERAnd the experience was fine, but it wasn't great.

23:43SPEAKERIt was good for streaming.

23:44SPEAKERLike that was the thing.

23:45SPEAKERBut the problem with those was I couldn't get

23:47SPEAKERthe cost to a point that it was in like the price range

23:50SPEAKERthat felt okay for streaming.

23:51SPEAKERSo like a streaming box felt like it should be a hundred

23:53SPEAKERor maybe 200 bucks at the outside.

23:55SPEAKERAnd if you were going to go more than that,

23:57SPEAKERyou want something to actually play games at 4K.

24:00SPEAKERAnd the, but when you got to performance,

24:02SPEAKERit could do that you're looking at seven or $800

24:04SPEAKERfor the most part.

24:06SPEAKERSo yeah, like the experience in terms of like how it is

24:10SPEAKERas a, as a console, I was really blown away, right?

24:14SPEAKERFrom, from really simple stuff that actually

24:16SPEAKERthe Steam Deck does this now too.

24:17SPEAKERI learned this the other day by accident

24:19SPEAKERbecause it didn't used to do this.

24:21SPEAKERYou can wake up the Steam Deck with a PlayStation

24:23SPEAKERor Xbox controller, an external controller now,

24:26SPEAKEReven on Bluetooth, which is, which is the last time

24:30SPEAKERI tried that was probably more than a year ago,

24:32SPEAKERbut it did not work for a long, long time.

24:35SPEAKERYou can wake this up with a Steam controller.

24:37SPEAKERYou can wake this up with a PlayStation controller.

24:38SPEAKERYou can wake this up with an Xbox controller

24:40SPEAKERconnected wirelessly.

24:41SPEAKER- Well, more importantly,

24:42SPEAKERyou could wake up your TV that way too.

24:44SPEAKER- Yeah, and it does HDMI CC, yeah.

24:46SPEAKER- That's it, yep.

24:47SPEAKERYou can, and that's, that's one of the reasons

24:49SPEAKERthat things that you're not necessarily going to get

24:50SPEAKERwith a home built PC.

24:52SPEAKERThe Steam Deck got it through the, you know,

24:53SPEAKERlatest software channels, but you can wake up your TV

24:57SPEAKERwith, you know, console style.

25:00SPEAKERAnd the one thing it doesn't do-

25:02SPEAKER- Change to the appropriate channel, change your receiver,

25:04SPEAKERyour soundbar or whatever, all of that stuff happens.

25:07SPEAKER- The one thing you can't do is there's no wake up on LAN.

25:10SPEAKERSo for example- - That's fine though.

25:12SPEAKER- Well, it's one of the ways

25:14SPEAKERI would be using the Steam Machine.

25:16SPEAKERLike, you know, when Steam Frame comes out,

25:18SPEAKERis you stream games maybe from it.

25:20SPEAKER- Oh yeah. - And maybe stream games

25:22SPEAKERfrom Steam Machine to Steam Deck, right?

25:25SPEAKER'Cause I don't, that's better power consumption

25:27SPEAKERon Steam Deck.

25:27SPEAKERI want all the bi-directional streaming possibilities, right?

25:30SPEAKERAnd so Steam Machine is in sleep mode

25:33SPEAKERbecause it's only going to consume like in sleep mode,

25:36SPEAKERsub one watt. - Yeah.

25:37SPEAKER- And I would love the ability to power on Steam Deck

25:40SPEAKERand say, hey, wake up my Steam Machine over LAN

25:44SPEAKERand let me stream the game, 6x processing power.

25:47SPEAKERI'm actually gonna get much better frame rates

25:49SPEAKERat the 1280, 800 OLED, right?

25:51SPEAKERAnd then let it go back to sleep after 15 minutes

25:54SPEAKERwhen I'm done with my game.

25:55SPEAKER- It's interesting because there's,

25:57SPEAKERlike this is the thing that Apple realized

25:59SPEAKERlate in Apple TV's life,

26:00SPEAKERis that having an always on box in the home

26:03SPEAKERis a real powerful thing

26:04SPEAKERfor like their home automation stuff and all that.

26:07SPEAKERAnd this gives Valve a similar place where you can have,

26:10SPEAKERhey, this is the machine that is the local cache

26:12SPEAKERfor all of your game downloads or whatever it happens to be.

26:19SPEAKERI don't know that they're,

26:21SPEAKERlike this feels like,

26:23SPEAKERI think a lot about the first year,

26:25SPEAKERwhat the first two years of the Steam Deck looked like

26:27SPEAKERand how that software evolved.

26:29SPEAKERAnd at the beginning it was just like,

26:30SPEAKERoh, thank God the game worked.

26:32SPEAKERAnd by the end of the second year,

26:33SPEAKERyou were like, yeah, I'm gonna plug this into the TV,

26:34SPEAKERI'm gonna stream from the office

26:36SPEAKERand I'm gonna have my giant video card in the office

26:38SPEAKERmake my games look really awesome in the living room.

26:41SPEAKERI still feel like the Steam streaming is not always there.

26:46SPEAKER- Moonlight's better for sure, 100%.

26:49SPEAKERAnd it's not just the Valve,

26:50SPEAKERlike they're so fast,

26:52SPEAKERit's a relatively small team for the size of company they are

26:55SPEAKERespecially on the hardware side, right?

26:56SPEAKERAnd so they push out updates nonstop.

26:58SPEAKERI'm getting on Steam machine,

26:59SPEAKERlike we're getting almost daily beta updates, right?

27:04SPEAKERAnd you're gonna get those updates

27:06SPEAKER'cause they can iterate so fast

27:07SPEAKERand there are lots of bugs to fix.

27:08SPEAKERLike there are things with recognizing the aspect ratios

27:14SPEAKERand screen sizes, there's things on the front panel

27:17SPEAKERthat the light that is the LED light strip,

27:21SPEAKERthey need to figure that out

27:22SPEAKERbecause I can't get it dim enough

27:24SPEAKERto where it doesn't annoy the room sometimes.

27:26SPEAKER- Oh really, okay.

27:27SPEAKER- It's just broken for me, the brightness on it.

27:31SPEAKERBut you're gonna have third-party stuff.

27:32SPEAKERI mean, people are getting Steam machine in Asia right now

27:34SPEAKERand the US, it's gotta be in the next couple of days,

27:37SPEAKERbut you're gonna get like the equivalent of Deky

27:38SPEAKERon Steam machine and that's just gonna be great.

27:42SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, the benefit of building on something

27:45SPEAKERthat's open and actually shipping an open OS for this

27:48SPEAKERis like we're not gonna see the benefit for that for a while

27:52SPEAKERuntil the hardware gets out in the world.

27:53SPEAKERBut I think Deky is a good call out

27:57SPEAKERbecause the stuff you get with Deky Loader on a Steam deck

28:01SPEAKERis a real plus up for the whole platform.

28:07SPEAKER- And Valve did really, I mean, one of the things

28:08SPEAKERthat you get with Deky and all the emulation stuff, right?

28:11SPEAKERAnd that's the thing.

28:12SPEAKERSo many people buying into the Valve hardware ecosystem

28:15SPEAKERhave their Linux or third-party

28:20SPEAKERhardware-based emulation setups

28:21SPEAKERand Steam Deck isn't great for that.

28:23SPEAKERAnd while Valve won't talk about that

28:26SPEAKERor they don't care about it

28:27SPEAKER'cause they care about selling games on Steam store,

28:29SPEAKERit's gonna be a great,

28:30SPEAKERSteam machine's gonna be a great machine for emulation.

28:33SPEAKER- Yeah, it's funny.

28:34SPEAKERThe first thing I did when I booted into desktop mode

28:36SPEAKERwas install Steam Grid, DB, and Moonlight.

28:41SPEAKERThose were the two things I put on.

28:42SPEAKERAnd then I mounted up a SMB share with all my stuff on it.

28:50SPEAKER- I wanna talk about performance

28:51SPEAKER'cause I know you talked about some of the games

28:52SPEAKERyou loaded up and going back to hardware, right?

28:55SPEAKERLike they chose this specific level of CPU performance

28:59SPEAKERand GPU performance, but more importantly,

29:01SPEAKERthey also chose eight gigabytes of VRAM.

29:03SPEAKERAnd I would say the one sticking point

29:06SPEAKERbecause the VRAM is tied to the GPU and the TDP load, right?

29:13SPEAKERAnd I think aside from the pricing stuff

29:15SPEAKERthey couldn't anticipate or that they just couldn't control,

29:19SPEAKERthe messaging was the thing that they could control.

29:22SPEAKERAnd even back in November,

29:23SPEAKERthey were talking like up to 4K, 60 FPS.

29:27SPEAKERAnd I think they, to some extent, had to say that

29:30SPEAKERbecause a lot of the console equivalents, PS5, PS5 Pro,

29:33SPEAKERare being sold as 4K machines.

29:36SPEAKERI think from a practical standpoint,

29:39SPEAKERif you're playing this, even on like,

29:40SPEAKERI have a 77 inch OLED, I'm never playing the games,

29:45SPEAKERnative 4K out of steam machine,

29:47SPEAKERor even on my console style equivalents.

29:51SPEAKER1440p is totally fine on that at a standard

29:55SPEAKER12 foot distance or something, 10 foot distance.

29:58SPEAKER- I was gonna say, have they reached,

30:01SPEAKERI know AMD talked a couple of weeks ago

30:03SPEAKERabout doing FSR 4.1 on this era of hardware,

30:07SPEAKERwhich FSR 4.1 is, it's kind of the parody,

30:12SPEAKERit finally gives AMD parody with DLSS

30:14SPEAKERon the current gen RDNA 4 hardware.

30:19SPEAKERSorry, we've got too many fours and fives here.

30:22SPEAKEROn the RDNA 4 hardware, you get like a Tensor Core

30:26SPEAKERacceleration for upscaling and stuff like that,

30:28SPEAKERFrame Gen and all that.

30:29SPEAKERSo you're not sacrificing performance

30:31SPEAKERto get the upscaling or the Frame Gen.

30:35SPEAKERThey talked about rolling that out a couple weeks ago,

30:38SPEAKERbut it's unclear if that's hit the Linux side yet,

30:40SPEAKERand I'm not seeing, like the way Proton works,

30:44SPEAKERsometimes the FSR and DLSS settings get obfuscated

30:48SPEAKERin ways that are confusing, and I was curious,

30:51SPEAKERdid you experiment with that stuff at all?

30:52SPEAKER- Oh yeah.

30:53SPEAKER- Do you know what the status is?

30:54SPEAKER- And this is another thing where timing

30:55SPEAKERreally hurt them, right?

30:57SPEAKERSo to refresh for people, and I had to refresh this

31:00SPEAKERfor myself too, 'cause I'd been so much more familiar

31:02SPEAKERwith DLSS side, right, and DLSS just in general

31:05SPEAKERhas been better, I think more acceptable visually for me.

31:10SPEAKER- Yeah, the artifacting, so when I've done

31:13SPEAKERhead-to-head comparisons with the FSR3 and DLSS4 or 4.5,

31:20SPEAKERthe DLSS solutions generally are less artifacty,

31:24SPEAKERand they have less weird stuff going on

31:27SPEAKERis the easiest way to say it, so.

31:29SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, so FSR2 gave you kind of a,

31:41SPEAKERtheir upscale, AMD's upscaling, which was fine,

31:44SPEAKERlike Cyberpunk used FSR2, FSR3 added frame gen,

31:51SPEAKERand revised, right, the low latency stuff,

31:57SPEAKERand revised or upscaling, but you see a lot of games

31:59SPEAKERlet you choose between two and three,

32:01SPEAKERbecause the general consensus, and I hadn't done

32:03SPEAKERthe testing on this, but the general consensus is

32:05SPEAKERvisually, three was impacted a lot.

32:08SPEAKER- Yeah.

32:09SPEAKER- Like you get better frame rates, but you just,

32:11SPEAKERthe quality modes were not as good as on two.

32:14SPEAKER- And the fundamental problem with both of those

32:17SPEAKERis that AMD didn't have dedicated tensor hardware,

32:20SPEAKERand still doesn't on the 3.5 stuff,

32:22SPEAKERso you were using the compute cores that the GPU uses

32:26SPEAKERto do shaders and things like that, so you are,

32:29SPEAKERyou're kind of robbing Peter to pay Paul

32:31SPEAKERin some of this stuff, which isn't great.

32:34SPEAKER- And so the machine learning base upscaling

32:37SPEAKERthat was in FSR4 was previously limited

32:40SPEAKERjust to RDNA4 class of hardware.

32:44SPEAKER- 9000 series GPUs, yeah.

32:47SPEAKER- But as of last year, a DLL leaked

32:52SPEAKERthat allowed FSR4 to run on RDNA3 hardware

32:56SPEAKERthat people could inject themselves with OptiScaler,

33:01SPEAKERand so you got a better sense, like one,

33:02SPEAKERhey AMD, you could have, you can, you're working on this,

33:05SPEAKERyou can run FSR4 and get those visual benefits

33:09SPEAKERon RDNA3 hardware, and so I think two months ago

33:13SPEAKERthey announced, okay, it's actually coming,

33:15SPEAKERJuly was their time frame, and as we're recording this,

33:19SPEAKERit's like beginning of July, and so Valve actually

33:23SPEAKERhad to let reviewers know as a part of AMD's release,

33:27SPEAKERSteam Machine would also get FSR4,

33:30SPEAKERbut they just couldn't commit to the date

33:33SPEAKERthat ProTime would get updated, but here's what happened.

33:36SPEAKERReviews went out, the review embargo went out,

33:39SPEAKERFSR4 dropped that same day on ProPone Experimental,

33:43SPEAKERand so no one in the reviewers batch got a chance

33:47SPEAKERto, or the embargo, compare FSR3 and 4 on Steam Machine,

33:52SPEAKERand you can run it right now, so I have it,

33:54SPEAKERI have ProTonic, you know, the experiment on the running,

33:56SPEAKERFSR4, and it's gonna be one of those things

34:01SPEAKERwhere if you don't care, like if you're not pixel peeping,

34:06SPEAKERif you're not playing this on a monitor,

34:09SPEAKERif you're just gonna TV, you know, the takeaway is

34:12SPEAKERyou can now run FSR4, which in many games is just,

34:15SPEAKERyou just turn FSR3 on, and you're running 4

34:17SPEAKERin the background, you can run--

34:19SPEAKER- ProTone will handle that in the background, right, yeah.

34:23SPEAKER- You can run performance, FSR, performance-based upscaling,

34:28SPEAKERperformance priority, but get the quality-based visuals.

34:32SPEAKER- Okay, so basically you're going from performance visuals

34:36SPEAKERto quality visuals at performance speed.

34:38SPEAKER- That's it, that's exactly it.

34:41SPEAKER- It's, so I was gonna say, I hadn't used a lot of FSR stuff

34:44SPEAKERoutside of like some specific testing we did at PC World.

34:48SPEAKERI'm mostly, in my experience, I'm generally just playing

34:52SPEAKERat 1080p and letting the TV upscale or using the--

34:57SPEAKER- Or old school.

34:59SPEAKER- Look, man, it's fine.

35:01SPEAKERThe thing, I guess my point is when I was sitting

35:03SPEAKERin front of the monitor, and I have a 4K monitor

35:05SPEAKERsitting 15 inches from my face or 24 inches from my face,

35:09SPEAKERI noticed this much, much, much more than I do

35:12SPEAKERin the living room when I'm sitting 10 feet away from it.

35:15SPEAKER- And you're talking about aliasing, right?

35:16SPEAKERYou're talking specifically edges, edge sharpness.

35:19SPEAKER- Specifically edge sharpness, and then also the artifacts

35:21SPEAKERthat come with the AI upscaling stuff.

35:23SPEAKER- I think that's the stuff that's more noticeable

35:25SPEAKERon the big TVs.

35:26SPEAKERI think you're right, like edge sharpness on TVs,

35:31SPEAKERhonestly 1080, 1440p is like a really nice sweet spot

35:33SPEAKERwhere it feels good for a big 65 or 77 inch TV,

35:37SPEAKERbut 1080p on a standard 50 inch TV is gonna be,

35:40SPEAKER55 inch TV is gonna be totally fine.

35:43SPEAKERBut it's the artifacting, it's where in previously

35:45SPEAKERin performance mode on FSR3, you get the shimmers,

35:49SPEAKERyou get the weird shadows, the ghosting and the movement,

35:53SPEAKERand it depends on the game to game,

35:56SPEAKERbut it also, it depends on what the internal resolution

36:00SPEAKERthat they, what the game's gonna be comfortable running at

36:02SPEAKERto get to your frame rates.

36:04SPEAKERAnd if you're going from 720p to 1440,

36:07SPEAKERit didn't look good before FSR4.

36:10SPEAKER- Norm, it's also worth reminding you,

36:11SPEAKER'cause you haven't been to the house in a minute,

36:13SPEAKERbut we are still, my wife is really attached

36:17SPEAKERto the ancient Panasonic TV, so we are still,

36:21SPEAKERevery time I've tried to bring an LCD or an OLED in here,

36:24SPEAKERshe's looked at it and she's like,

36:25SPEAKER"Yeah, I want the old one back, this doesn't look as good,"

36:27SPEAKERbecause she's used to that, the motion on the Panasonic.

36:31SPEAKERI'm gonna have to buy a phenomenally expensive OLED

36:34SPEAKERto get the refresh rate that she likes on the TV.

36:38SPEAKERSo my living room testing has been exclusively at 1080p,

36:42SPEAKERwhich it turns out, you can run native 1080p on this thing

36:44SPEAKERand it's rock solid.

36:46SPEAKER- Oh yeah, it's 80, 90 FPS, no problem.

36:49SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah.

36:53SPEAKERSo I did some benchmarks, 'cause you could get it out of here.

36:57SPEAKERThe thing I found is that it's kind of hard

36:59SPEAKERto get it to unlock the frame rate, actually.

37:02SPEAKERBy default, it locks to whatever your refresh rate is

37:04SPEAKERon the monitor, it seems like, up to, I think, 120 or 144 hertz.

37:10SPEAKERShadow of the Tomb Raider ran at 60 hertz

37:12SPEAKERno matter what I did.

37:14SPEAKERLike, the benchmark, I unlocked it on the Steam side,

37:17SPEAKERI unlocked it in the game, I turned off v-sync,

37:19SPEAKERall that stuff, it loved 60 hertz,

37:22SPEAKERthere's nothing I could do to change that.

37:24SPEAKERCyberpunk, I was seeing 74.5 frames per second

37:27SPEAKERon the RT low setting running at 1080p,

37:31SPEAKERwhich was like, RT low is basically reflections

37:35SPEAKERand puddles and stuff like that, it's not the full,

37:37SPEAKERobviously it's not the full overdrive path tracing mode,

37:40SPEAKERthat's not gonna, this is not a machine

37:42SPEAKERto run full path tracing.

37:44SPEAKER- Absolutely not.

37:45SPEAKER- Yeah, this is a PS5 launch, not a PS5 Pro

37:47SPEAKERis the way I kind of think about it.

37:50SPEAKERDoom the Dark Ages, again, not the full path tracing,

37:52SPEAKERbut the Steam Deck path basically

37:54SPEAKERis 61.5 frames a second average.

37:58SPEAKERAnd then everything else I played with the ticker

38:00SPEAKERwas basically locked at 60 hertz.

38:02SPEAKERLike, I couldn't find something,

38:04SPEAKERGod of War was solid 60, I never saw SAGs.

38:08SPEAKERThe performance has been kind of remarkable

38:11SPEAKERin that the frame pacing feels really, really good

38:14SPEAKERfor a Linux machine sitting in my living room

38:17SPEAKERplugged up to a TV.

38:19SPEAKER- The kind of rule of thumb I've been telling people

38:23SPEAKERis you could play 1080 with FSR4 now on,

38:27SPEAKER'cause I think we've passed the point with FSR4

38:29SPEAKERwhere I would feel comfortable in performance mode

38:31SPEAKERjust leaving that on for everything.

38:33SPEAKER1080 ultra settings, 1440p high settings,

38:37SPEAKERand 4K low to medium settings turn ray tracing off.

38:41SPEAKERThat's my recommendation.

38:42SPEAKERAnd then you're gonna get the,

38:43SPEAKERthat hits your 50 to 60 for everything.

38:46SPEAKER- So I, it's funny, I was playing this and I tried,

38:50SPEAKERI wanna say 007 was probably the newest big

38:52SPEAKERkind of triple A game that had come out

38:55SPEAKERat the time I got the Steam machine.

38:58SPEAKERAnd you know, light, running the basic,

39:01SPEAKERjust default version of Proton that they recommend,

39:03SPEAKERwhich I think is, I think it's the most recent one,

39:05SPEAKERI can't remember.

39:08SPEAKERIt ran great, no problems, no weird artifacts,

39:11SPEAKEReverything's running great.

39:12SPEAKERAt 4K, I was running FSR performance, I think,

39:15SPEAKERand it was a very playable 60, you know,

39:18SPEAKER55, 60 frames per second across the board.

39:21SPEAKERThat game doesn't have ray tracing.

39:22SPEAKERIt still looked really nice on the TV.

39:24SPEAKER- And these games don't have Steam machine profiles now.

39:27SPEAKERI mean, that's another thing that developers, you know,

39:29SPEAKEReven if they weren't optimizing for Steam machine,

39:31SPEAKERthey were creating performance profiles

39:35SPEAKERthat made it easy.

39:36SPEAKERAnd so in this early stage,

39:38SPEAKERyou're still going into settings

39:39SPEAKERand this is where it feels more like a PC experience

39:41SPEAKERand a console experience.

39:43SPEAKERI'm going in and kind of like making my trade-offs

39:45SPEAKERand looking at the VRAM consumption and saying,

39:47SPEAKERoh, where do I want, what type of filtering do I want?

39:50SPEAKERDo I want the tech?

39:51SPEAKERAnd like at living rooms,

39:53SPEAKERlike the things I want are textures

39:55SPEAKERand, you know, draw distance and textures at 1440.

39:59SPEAKERAnd, you know, some post-processing I can turn off,

40:02SPEAKERbut, you know, modern games, Indiana Jones runs great.

40:05SPEAKER- Yeah, I was shocked at Indiana Jones

40:08SPEAKERand Doom that Archeages, honestly,

40:09SPEAKER'cause both of those, at least at launch,

40:11SPEAKERwere ray tracing only via full path tracing only

40:15SPEAKERon the PC and the experience.

40:19SPEAKERI mean, they've done some pre-lit modes now for Steam Deck

40:24SPEAKERand for lower end hardware.

40:26SPEAKERGame ran great, still looks really good.

40:29SPEAKERThe big thing I noticed on the performance stuff generally

40:34SPEAKERis that, it's when I was sitting at the desktop specifically,

40:41SPEAKERI did notice that I wanted to run the better quality FSR.

40:44SPEAKERI didn't actually run stuff at 1440p and scale it up.

40:47SPEAKERI did, which is, I think, the quality profile at 4K.

40:50SPEAKERIs that right?

40:52SPEAKERPerformance is a 4X upscale from 1080p to 4K.

40:56SPEAKERAnd I think quality is from 1440p or thereabouts to 4K.

41:01SPEAKERAnd it's funny, the benefit of running the upscaling stuff

41:05SPEAKERis much greater when you start with more pixels

41:08SPEAKERversus the Steam Deck where you're starting with like 640

41:11SPEAKERby 480 or something like that to upscale to 1280 by 800.

41:16SPEAKER- Yeah. - Yeah.

41:17SPEAKERAnd not every game supports it, sports them straight.

41:19SPEAKERLike AMD has their list of FSR3 games, FSR4 games,

41:24SPEAKERand you assume that gets expanded.

41:26SPEAKERAnd it is fundamentally with RDNA3

41:30SPEAKERwithout those Tensor Cores doing a different style

41:33SPEAKERof upscaling.

41:34SPEAKERI think it still ends eight,

41:35SPEAKERbut it's not a full RDNA4 upscaling.

41:39SPEAKER- One of the things I did hit

41:40SPEAKERthat was a little bit of a frustration is that some games,

41:44SPEAKERI wanna say Capcom was the big offender here,

41:47SPEAKERwas detecting the, and it does this on PC as well.

41:50SPEAKERIf you're using Linux on the PC,

41:51SPEAKERit says, "Oh, hey, this is a Steam Deck."

41:53SPEAKERAnd it locks you into a Steam Deck mode

41:56SPEAKERwhen it sees you're running on Linux.

41:58SPEAKERSo it assumes you're running a 1280 by 800 screen

42:01SPEAKERand makes some downstream choices around ray tracing

42:04SPEAKERand upscaling and stuff like that

42:06SPEAKERthat don't make sense in the new context.

42:08SPEAKER- Yeah, there are two things

42:09SPEAKERthat every Steam Machine owner should do is one,

42:13SPEAKERdisable on a system level the auto detect a Steam Deck

42:15SPEAKERsetting, which is in SteamOS.

42:17SPEAKERYou could uncheck a box, you know, on a per game setting,

42:20SPEAKERbut Valve knows this, like the Steam Machine,

42:23SPEAKERits name was Steam Deck in the, you know,

42:26SPEAKERfor the review units in terms of the game profiles.

42:30SPEAKERAnd then also out of box,

42:32SPEAKERthey've capped the resolution to 1080 as a default,

42:36SPEAKERI think just so people get good performance.

42:39SPEAKERBut you set your display resolution to whatever,

42:41SPEAKERmax display, max whatever your output resolution is.

42:45SPEAKERFor me, I set that to 1440, 120.

42:48SPEAKER- Okay.

42:51SPEAKERSo let's see.

42:53SPEAKERI think that's the last thing to talk about.

42:54SPEAKERAnd I feel like we've talked about this to death.

42:56SPEAKERIt has all the same problems

42:58SPEAKERthat every other Linux gaming machine is gonna have

43:00SPEAKERin that anti-cheat that the developers choose

43:04SPEAKERnot to run on Linux isn't gonna work.

43:06SPEAKERSo you're not gonna get Call of Duty,

43:07SPEAKERyou're not gonna get Battlefield 6,

43:08SPEAKERyou're not gonna get Riot Games,

43:10SPEAKERyou're not gonna get Fortnite.

43:13SPEAKERIt's just stuff like Apex Legends and the games,

43:16SPEAKERthe Helldivers, the companies that choose to support Linux

43:19SPEAKERwith their anti-cheat, Embark with finals and Arc Raiders,

43:24SPEAKERall work, but no Destiny 2 or Marathon

43:26SPEAKER'cause Bungie doesn't like Linux apparently.

43:31SPEAKERSo that stuff remains an issue.

43:34SPEAKERI don't, I kind of don't anticipate them selling

43:36SPEAKERenough of these just 'cause of the pricing

43:38SPEAKERand the RAM situation, that it's gonna move the needle

43:40SPEAKERin any kind of meaningful way.

43:43SPEAKERBut maybe one day Microsoft and Bungie

43:47SPEAKERand Epic and Riot will decide that they wanna support

43:53SPEAKERLinux gamers.

43:57SPEAKERDid you spend any time on the desktop, Norm?

43:59SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah.

44:00SPEAKERI mean, it's very similar to Steam Deck

44:02SPEAKERon desktop, right?

44:03SPEAKERIt's KDE, I mean, they got rid of the Steam Deck logo stuff,

44:05SPEAKERso it's just a standard KDE logo.

44:08SPEAKERBut you know, it's not a production machine for me

44:11SPEAKER'cause there's just not the applications I need for work.

44:15SPEAKERBut I had it plugged into my monitor

44:18SPEAKERand you know, for web browsing, for just downloading stuff.

44:21SPEAKERIt's just, it's so easy now.

44:23SPEAKER- So yeah, the big challenge for me sitting down

44:27SPEAKERand using it is that is the immutable nature of the OS.

44:30SPEAKERAnd the idea there is that the core bits of the OS,

44:35SPEAKERthe basically everything but your home folder

44:38SPEAKERand which is where games are stored

44:40SPEAKERand where your profile stuff happens

44:41SPEAKERand where you save your work and things like that

44:45SPEAKERis an unwriteable partition.

44:49SPEAKERAnd when you get an update from Valve,

44:51SPEAKERthen it just rewrites, it just dumps over new information

44:54SPEAKERon top of that partition, which just replaces it wholesale,

44:57SPEAKERthe main brunt of the OS.

44:59SPEAKERAnd then things like your Steam folder

45:00SPEAKERwhere your games are installed

45:02SPEAKERand your screenshots folder where your screenshots are saved

45:04SPEAKERor if you're doing desktop stuff,

45:06SPEAKERyour documents and downloads and all that stuff

45:09SPEAKERlives in a different sub volume that is writable

45:12SPEAKERand does persist between system updates.

45:16SPEAKER- And that's more like the consolification

45:18SPEAKERof the OS update system, right?

45:20SPEAKERThat you're downloading packages

45:22SPEAKERand rewriting the whole thing every time you do.

45:24SPEAKER- I mean, I would say that this is the trend

45:27SPEAKERin OS's that aren't Windows.

45:28SPEAKERApple's been moving in this direction

45:30SPEAKERfor like five, six years now to the point

45:32SPEAKERthat the Apple OS updates replace the brunt of the OS

45:37SPEAKERand just leave your home folder untouched.

45:40SPEAKERThe big change is that most Linux applications

45:43SPEAKERyou install natively, like if you're installing stuff

45:45SPEAKERfrom the Arch repositories or the Arch user repository,

45:49SPEAKERthey're gonna wanna install somewhere

45:51SPEAKERin the root of the drive that's gonna get blown away

45:54SPEAKERevery time you do an update.

45:57SPEAKERSo as a result, Valve ships the Discover app

46:00SPEAKERand makes that front and center,

46:01SPEAKERwhich mostly deals with flat packs,

46:03SPEAKERwhich are kind of like containerized applications

46:05SPEAKERthat include all the bits and pieces,

46:07SPEAKERand then those will live in your system folder,

46:11SPEAKERin your home folder rather than the system root.

46:15SPEAKERI think that's fine for light use computing,

46:17SPEAKERfor like Chrome OS tile,

46:20SPEAKERhey, I'm just using the browser mostly.

46:22SPEAKERIf you get into more complicated workloads,

46:24SPEAKERif you're using stuff like OBS or using DaVinci Resolve

46:27SPEAKERor anything that has actual real lift behind it

46:30SPEAKERand requires access to the file system

46:35SPEAKERor access to specific hardware,

46:37SPEAKERthat becomes a kind of sticking point.

46:39SPEAKERIt's not insurmountable, but I don't,

46:42SPEAKERlike I could see this being a kid computer,

46:43SPEAKERI don't see this being a computer

46:45SPEAKERI'm ever gonna use on my day-to-day,

46:47SPEAKERpartly because of the horsepower,

46:48SPEAKERbut mostly because of the immutable nature of the OS.

46:53SPEAKERI wanted to talk a little bit about

46:55SPEAKERkind of the consoli stuff, we touched on this a little bit,

46:58SPEAKERbut things like that HGMI/CC,

47:01SPEAKERwhen I was looking at this and I looked at the hardware,

47:03SPEAKERI was like, oh, okay, I can spec a machine out

47:04SPEAKERthat's like this.

47:05SPEAKERAnd I think everybody who did a video

47:07SPEAKERalmost did that exercise.

47:08SPEAKERAnd of all those, the one that Steve did

47:12SPEAKERover at Gamers Nexus, I think was the most realistic

47:16SPEAKERin terms of like what actual,

47:18SPEAKERwhat you're gonna get that's comparable to performance

47:20SPEAKERgiven the throttling and the cooling and all that stuff.

47:23SPEAKERAnd I wanna say his price at the time,

47:25SPEAKERwhich probably has changed,

47:26SPEAKERwas 60 or 70 bucks less than the retail price

47:29SPEAKERfor the 512 gig model.

47:32SPEAKERAnd to me, that's the interesting question, right?

47:37SPEAKERIs like, can I build a machine as quiet as this,

47:40SPEAKERas it's in my living room?

47:41SPEAKERI actually don't think so, right?

47:43SPEAKERI'm good at building quiet machines.

47:45SPEAKERIf I wanna build something that's as quiet as this

47:46SPEAKERand as performant as this,

47:47SPEAKERit's gonna be a lot more expensive.

47:49SPEAKERAnd I'm also not gonna get the benefits

47:52SPEAKERlike the being able to turn it on

47:54SPEAKERby pressing the button on the controller

47:57SPEAKERfrom across the room.

47:58SPEAKERI'm not gonna get the stuff like the MMC slot

48:03SPEAKERthat just seamlessly connects.

48:04SPEAKERI don't know that I'm ever actually gonna use that,

48:06SPEAKERbut that feels like a nice thing to have.

48:09SPEAKERAnd it's not gonna be a six inch by six inch cube.

48:11SPEAKERIt's gonna be the size of a fractal Terra

48:13SPEAKERor like a small IT.

48:18SPEAKERI can't build an ITX box as small as this thing.

48:21SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, you start talking about leaders,

48:23SPEAKERlike small form factor,

48:24SPEAKERmost people are only 10 to 15 liters.

48:27SPEAKERAnd that's more than like triple,

48:29SPEAKERlike quadruple the volume of this.

48:32SPEAKERAnd yes, this is a cube,

48:33SPEAKERbut like I think people are just underestimating

48:35SPEAKERhow small and how quiet this thing is.

48:37SPEAKERAnd I think the exercise

48:38SPEAKERof building a similarly performing computer

48:42SPEAKERis like, it's fine as an exercise,

48:44SPEAKERbut most people,

48:45SPEAKERif you're gonna spend a thousand plus dollars

48:48SPEAKERon a gaming PC,

48:49SPEAKERyou spend the extra $200 just for the better performance.

48:52SPEAKERYou're gonna wanna level up and step up.

48:55SPEAKERAnd that's where the more interesting comparison

48:59SPEAKERis like something like the framework desktop.

49:01SPEAKERSo that's under, it's a sub five liter machine

49:04SPEAKERand that's Strix Halo.

49:05SPEAKERAnd so that's your alternate reality

49:07SPEAKERof what if Valve chose Strix Halo APU,

49:11SPEAKERwhich costs more from a build materials standpoint,

49:15SPEAKERbut is more performant than the 28CU 110 watt GPU,

49:19SPEAKEReight gigabytes of VRAM.

49:21SPEAKERStrix Halo gets that 32 gig minimum of shared memory.

49:24SPEAKERAnd so it scales better.

49:27SPEAKERAnd even if you're not using it as a,

49:28SPEAKERthen you're talking about,

49:29SPEAKERokay, well then for a gaming machine,

49:32SPEAKERthat's a lot, that's like 1300, $1,500

49:34SPEAKERfor something that's gonna live in your living room

49:36SPEAKERthat you might not use for, you know.

49:38SPEAKER- Oh, it's way more than that.

49:39SPEAKER- Let's just say AI workloads or whatever

49:41SPEAKERthat people would be investing

49:43SPEAKERon a small form factor for a desktop.

49:45SPEAKERNow your PC equivalent of a Linux equivalent of a Mac mini.

49:48SPEAKER- The 32 gigabyte Strix Halo machines are way more

49:51SPEAKERthan 1400 bucks at this point also, yeah.

49:53SPEAKER- That's crazy.

49:54SPEAKER- Like there, I'm looking at the GMK tech.

49:58SPEAKERThis one has, okay.

49:59SPEAKERSo the problem is they come in,

50:02SPEAKERthe AI people like them.

50:03SPEAKERSo they're doing butt loads of RAM.

50:06SPEAKERA 64 gig model is 2,400 bucks.

50:08SPEAKERSo, so I think-

50:11SPEAKER- 32 gigs would be a good sweet spot there.

50:13SPEAKER- Yeah.

50:13SPEAKER- For gaming and PC.

50:14SPEAKERAnd then, and this is the reason that,

50:16SPEAKERanother reason that Steam Machine exists is for Steam OS.

50:20SPEAKERLike along with the release of this device,

50:23SPEAKERSteam OS 3.8 now gets ability to install on the desktops,

50:29SPEAKERrunning AMD hardware pretty easily.

50:31SPEAKERIt becomes a competitor to Bazzite.

50:34SPEAKER- It's interesting 'cause like,

50:35SPEAKERI've been thinking about who I would recommend

50:37SPEAKERto install Steam OS at this point

50:38SPEAKERversus who I would recommend.

50:40SPEAKERSo let's take a moment back.

50:43SPEAKERI think that Steam OS makes a lot of sense

50:45SPEAKERin the context of these machines,

50:47SPEAKERthe Steam Deck and the Steam Machine.

50:51SPEAKERI don't know that it makes sense in a DIY system.

50:53SPEAKERI think that the Bazzite people have done a really good job

50:55SPEAKERof building something that's generally accessible

50:57SPEAKERto most PCs, including people who have Nvidia graphics cards

51:01SPEAKERand also that are designed to work better.

51:05SPEAKERLike they handle things like bootloader

51:08SPEAKERand things that I'm curious.

51:11SPEAKERI haven't, full disclosure,

51:13SPEAKERI have not installed Steam OS on a machine.

51:15SPEAKERIn the current, since they released it a couple of weeks ago,

51:21SPEAKERbut I am pretty skeptical about dual booting

51:24SPEAKERon a Linux machine with Windows on a Steam OS machine.

51:27SPEAKERAnd Bazzite has that stuff locked down.

51:28SPEAKERIt's really good.

51:29SPEAKERSo like, I don't know that it's this short.

51:33SPEAKERI think more interesting to me

51:34SPEAKERis what is this who's gonna do?

51:36SPEAKERWhat is Lenovo gonna do with a NUC style,

51:39SPEAKERsmall sub three liter box using an APU?

51:45SPEAKERWith Steam OS.

51:46SPEAKERI think that the other thing I'm curious about

51:49SPEAKERis when they start selling the Steam,

51:51SPEAKERthe integrated hardware controller

51:54SPEAKERfor the Steam controller.

51:57SPEAKERIf on iFixit, if we're gonna be able to hack

52:00SPEAKERthat into existing machines.

52:01SPEAKER- Oh, interesting.

52:02SPEAKER- To have built-in Steam control plus.

52:06SPEAKERI didn't actually, I meant to take it apart and look.

52:07SPEAKERI forgot when I had it open the other day

52:10SPEAKERto look at this.

52:10SPEAKERIs there, do they, they have a,

52:11SPEAKERI wonder if they're jumping straight into a power lead

52:14SPEAKERoff of that daughter board

52:16SPEAKERso that it's getting always on power

52:17SPEAKERand then also is triggering the boot sequence.

52:21SPEAKERBut I don't remember.

52:22SPEAKER- I'd have to look at the footage.

52:23SPEAKERIt's two wifi radios, one Bluetooth

52:25SPEAKERand one dedicated Steam controller on the top left.

52:27SPEAKERI wanna say, but I wanna say it's this,

52:29SPEAKERall the radio wires go to the same plate

52:32SPEAKERand I want, it's two, two wires.

52:35SPEAKERSo one must be power.

52:36SPEAKERI don't think it's dedicated power.

52:38SPEAKERI don't know. That's a good question.

52:39SPEAKER- I wonder if they have a,

52:40SPEAKERI guess I wonder if they have like an I2C bus

52:42SPEAKERor something like that's doing the communication

52:43SPEAKERor if it's, yeah, anyway, TBD.

52:47SPEAKERBut yeah, it's much more console-y than I expected.

52:51SPEAKERIt's much more console-y than the Steam Deck was at launch

52:54SPEAKERand I think in all the important ways.

52:57SPEAKER- And to go back, you know,

52:59SPEAKERwithout even having to buy iFixit parts,

53:01SPEAKERI've seen people build small form factor PCs

53:03SPEAKERwhen after Steam Controller came out

53:05SPEAKERand try to embed the chongle on the inside,

53:08SPEAKERjust, you know, wire USB cable into the cavity of their case

53:12SPEAKERand just have the receiver there.

53:15SPEAKERIf you do that,

53:16SPEAKERmake sure you put electrical tape over the contacts.

53:20SPEAKER- Oh God, yeah.

53:22SPEAKERYou don't want to weld that to your case.

53:24SPEAKER- Or start a fire.

53:25SPEAKER- Yeah, or start a fire, fire.

53:27SPEAKEROkay, so pricing and lottery,

53:32SPEAKERlike the pricing is hard.

53:33SPEAKERLike this to me feels like it was meant to be

53:35SPEAKERa $750 kind of entry, 600, $750 entry point.

53:41SPEAKERAnd the price of RAM, the price of VRAM,

53:44SPEAKERthe price of the SSD, all conspired over the last year.

53:49SPEAKERI mean, I assume the people listening to this podcast

53:53SPEAKERare part of the thin layer of sea foam

53:55SPEAKERat the top of the ocean of uninformed consumers

53:59SPEAKERthat know that RAM is four times more expensive

54:02SPEAKERthan it was this time last year.

54:04SPEAKERI don't, judging by the reaction to your video

54:07SPEAKERand the videos I watched on this,

54:09SPEAKERI don't think the vast majority of people understand that.

54:12SPEAKERAnd they were thinking this is a hundred dollar,

54:15SPEAKERthis is going to be a five or $600 box, which is-

54:17SPEAKER- Well, talk about timing.

54:18SPEAKER'Cause after they announced price and reviews dropped,

54:22SPEAKERa week later, Microsoft jacked up prices,

54:24SPEAKERApple jacked up prices.

54:26SPEAKERAnd so you have, you're the first one that you're,

54:29SPEAKERyou take the brunt of that coming up with a, you know,

54:33SPEAKERunappealing, unattractive price,

54:36SPEAKERbut it looks more attractive a week later

54:38SPEAKERrelative to, you know, other hardware.

54:40SPEAKERAnd then maybe like, and then also PlayStation

54:44SPEAKERjust yesterday, you know, sunsetting fiscal dis, right?

54:49SPEAKERSo like, it's just like Steam Deck today

54:52SPEAKERmaybe isn't like financially more attractive

54:55SPEAKERthan anything else a week ago,

54:57SPEAKERbut you get a better understanding

54:59SPEAKERof where the market's going.

55:00SPEAKER- I will say, Norm, we went to a Giants game last week.

55:02SPEAKERI think I told the story on Nextlander.

55:04SPEAKERWe were at a Giants game and the guys,

55:06SPEAKERwe were in the bleachers out in right field.

55:09SPEAKERAnd the guys sitting behind us were like,

55:10SPEAKERhey, what do you think about that Steam machine?

55:12SPEAKERUnfortunately, this happened while I was taking the kiddo

55:14SPEAKERoff to get a Sunday at the end of the sixth inning.

55:17SPEAKERSo Gina was sitting there, she was listening,

55:19SPEAKERshe's like taking notes.

55:19SPEAKERShe's like, oh yeah, okay.

55:21SPEAKERBut like, they were like, hey, it's expensive,

55:23SPEAKERbut this is way cheaper

55:25SPEAKERthan I'm gonna get a PC for otherwise.

55:28SPEAKERAnd they were all talking about wanting to build it.

55:29SPEAKERI like, I wish I had known this before we left the game

55:32SPEAKER'cause I would have totally interrogated them

55:34SPEAKERabout the kind of games they wanted to play on it.

55:36SPEAKERAnd like, if they knew that COD wasn't gonna work

55:38SPEAKERand all this stuff.

55:39SPEAKERBut just the fact that they were having this conversation

55:43SPEAKERin a, like, I can't,

55:46SPEAKERI've never had an incidental conversation

55:49SPEAKERabout the Steam Deck in the last five years, right?

55:52SPEAKERThe fact that this is broken through at that level

55:54SPEAKERthat people are talking about it,

55:55SPEAKERjust like normal dudes at the baseball game,

55:59SPEAKERI was kind of surprised by, so.

56:01SPEAKER- Well, think about the success of the Steam Deck, right?

56:03SPEAKERThere was nothing on the market like Steam Deck

56:06SPEAKERwhen that came out.

56:07SPEAKER- Oh, I mean, there was stuff out of China,

56:09SPEAKERbut it was not accessible.

56:10SPEAKER- The GPD stuff, but like Valve made a really,

56:14SPEAKERlike, even when it was rumored,

56:17SPEAKERit was Valve's Switch handheld, right?

56:20SPEAKERBut it ended up being so much more than that.

56:22SPEAKERAnd the big success of Steam Deck is that one,

56:25SPEAKERit allowed you play this existing library of stuff

56:28SPEAKERthat people have invested in on the go,

56:30SPEAKERwhich you could never do, right?

56:32SPEAKERBefore, from your Steam library.

56:34SPEAKERAnd two, it made Proton, like over the many years

56:38SPEAKERit's come out, it made that a non-question, a non-issue.

56:42SPEAKERAnd so the big success of Steam Machine, you know,

56:45SPEAKERis that now they've put that on the desktop.

56:47SPEAKERAnd if you compare it to the Steam Machine we saw,

56:50SPEAKERwhat was it, 15 years ago or 10 years ago, right?

56:52SPEAKER15 years ago, you know,

56:54SPEAKERValve with Linux gaming is like they've achieved

56:59SPEAKERkind of what they set out to do,

57:01SPEAKERis to not have compatibility be a thing

57:03SPEAKERyou have to really worry about.

57:05SPEAKERCertainly not for old games,

57:06SPEAKERbut for most new non-multiplayer new games.

57:10SPEAKER- Well, and they're getting enough market share now

57:11SPEAKERthat people are actually paying attention to it

57:13SPEAKERbefore launch, even the bigger folks.

57:17SPEAKERThe other thing that, so the pricing is,

57:19SPEAKERit feels high, it feels bad.

57:21SPEAKERI think it's an unfortunate reality

57:23SPEAKERof the time in which we live.

57:26SPEAKERIf you don't like it, write an SD letter to Sam Altman,

57:28SPEAKERI guess, 'cause it seems like they're the driver

57:31SPEAKERof the problem.

57:32SPEAKER- I mean, the thing I go back to is if Valve knew,

57:37SPEAKERlike obviously they were trying to reach

57:38SPEAKERa certain price point and maybe internally they felt

57:41SPEAKERthis size, this performance, 750 or whatever it was

57:44SPEAKERas they originally planned it, was a great seed spot.

57:47SPEAKERA little bit of a premium over consoles, PS5 equivalent,

57:50SPEAKERbut it will last for this long,

57:53SPEAKERit moves the ball forward for SteamOS,

57:56SPEAKERand it serves this need right now.

57:58SPEAKERIf they knew that prices were gonna go up by a third,

58:01SPEAKERlike would that have changed their allocation of memory?

58:05SPEAKERWould that have forced them to say,

58:06SPEAKER"Okay, maybe if it was gonna be over $1,000 anyway,

58:08SPEAKER"if it was gonna be $1,300 anyway,

58:11SPEAKER"should we have invested in 12 gigs of VRAM

58:13SPEAKER"to make it last a little longer?"

58:14SPEAKER'Cause like-- - See, I don't think--

58:17SPEAKER- Should they have put things like an audio head check-in

58:20SPEAKERor different Thunderbolt on here?

58:24SPEAKERLike would they have allocated the materials differently?

58:28SPEAKER- I think, for me, I think their focus has always been

58:33SPEAKERon what's the cheapest thing we can sell

58:35SPEAKERthat will play current gen console games well?

58:38SPEAKERAnd with that in mind, I can't imagine them

58:41SPEAKERchanging too, too much.

58:43SPEAKERI think the, actually, it's funny,

58:46SPEAKERthe backhanded compliment on this is that

58:51SPEAKERthe high price of RAM, I think that the console vendors

58:53SPEAKERare looking really closely at how this is going,

58:57SPEAKER'cause if it doesn't sell out,

58:58SPEAKERif it doesn't sell super well,

58:59SPEAKERthen they're going to, it's gonna make them

59:02SPEAKERgun-shy about $1,000 consoles for next generation.

59:05SPEAKER'Cause just to be clear, that's what we're looking at,

59:07SPEAKERis that PS6 at $1,000 and should there be another Xbox,

59:13SPEAKER$1,000, which I think is gonna extend

59:16SPEAKERthis console overlap period way longer than we've already,

59:19SPEAKERlike the last one already went long because of the pandemic.

59:22SPEAKERI think this next one will see

59:23SPEAKERa much longer cross-generation overlap time

59:28SPEAKERthan we ever have before.

59:30SPEAKER- In terms of future-proofing, the way I think about it is,

59:33SPEAKERis this a machine that you're gonna buy to play GTA 6?

59:37SPEAKERAnd for this performance, the answer I think is no.

59:40SPEAKER- I do not, do we even know what GTA,

59:43SPEAKERdoes GTA 6 have ray tracing?

59:45SPEAKERWe don't know, I assume so.

59:47SPEAKER- It's gonna run on current gen hardware,

59:48SPEAKERbut I think GTA has always been a game to bridge generations

59:53SPEAKERof hardware and for PC gamers who want to have the best

59:58SPEAKERversion of GTA when they get the chance to play it,

1:00:01SPEAKERI think it's hard to say spend $1,300 on a machine

1:00:03SPEAKERor $1,100 on a machine that you're gonna compromise

1:00:07SPEAKERyour GTA 6 experience on.

1:00:09SPEAKER- I think that this will,

1:00:13SPEAKERif the launch PlayStation and the Xbox Series S

1:00:15SPEAKERare the low bar for what your GTA 6 experience is,

1:00:19SPEAKERI think you're gonna get exactly the same thing here.

1:00:23SPEAKER- That's fair, yeah, but I would want more,

1:00:26SPEAKERI would want more, I would wanna turn textures

1:00:29SPEAKERfrom low to high.

1:00:31SPEAKER- Here's my question, is are you gonna play GTA 6

1:00:33SPEAKERon a PlayStation when it comes out later this year,

1:00:36SPEAKERor are you gonna wait until the PC release

1:00:37SPEAKERtwo years from now?

1:00:39SPEAKER- Yeah, it's a thing, they've also changed the release.

1:00:41SPEAKERI'm gonna play it on PS5 Pro, I mean, that's the best,

1:00:44SPEAKERthe best possible way to play it when that launches,

1:00:46SPEAKERso I'm not gonna wait two years.

1:00:49SPEAKER- Yeah, I thought the lottery was interesting,

1:00:52SPEAKERthey rolled out a lottery scheme.

1:00:54SPEAKERThis is the eternal battle against scammers and scalpers,

1:00:57SPEAKERI think, more than anything.

1:01:00SPEAKERIt seems like they, you expressed interest,

1:01:04SPEAKERthey assigned you a number randomly based on

1:01:09SPEAKERwhat you're in, then they put you in the highest

1:01:13SPEAKERnumber slot that you fell, if you expressed interest

1:01:16SPEAKERin multiple skews, the one you stayed in is the one

1:01:19SPEAKERthat you were closest to the top of the list on

1:01:21SPEAKERafter that initial period, and then they're emailing people

1:01:24SPEAKERas they get allocations.

1:01:27SPEAKERThere's a lot of tea reading going on in the subreddits

1:01:30SPEAKERabout who's getting what when and which models

1:01:32SPEAKERthey have more of and all that, but it seems impossible

1:01:34SPEAKERto know from outside.

1:01:37SPEAKER- Demand is more than supply, that much is clear.

1:01:39SPEAKERSo, the argument that they should have priced it lower

1:01:44SPEAKERor priced it at a loss, I completely understand

1:01:48SPEAKERwhy they did not do that, 'cause obviously demand is there.

1:01:52SPEAKER- Look, I don't think in the modern era,

1:01:55SPEAKERI don't think in the current era, in the age of tariffs

1:01:58SPEAKERand exorbitant RAM and storage prices,

1:02:01SPEAKERI don't think anybody's gonna sell anything at a loss,

1:02:03SPEAKERMicrosoft, Sony, Nintendo, Valve.

1:02:08SPEAKERLooking at the prices and looking at the BOM

1:02:10SPEAKERand looking at the terror of tariff prices

1:02:15SPEAKERand looking at how they've raised the steam deck prices

1:02:16SPEAKERin the last year, I really, really don't think,

1:02:21SPEAKERthis doesn't feel like they're making a ton of money

1:02:24SPEAKERon the hardware, especially when you factor in

1:02:27SPEAKERwarehousing and shipping and the risk of tariffs

1:02:30SPEAKERat any given moment.

1:02:31SPEAKER- I suspect it's as much as cost as they could make it

1:02:34SPEAKERand they're eating the R&D, basically, the people time.

1:02:40SPEAKER- And there's enough padding that if RAM prices go up,

1:02:42SPEAKERthey have one RAM price increase

1:02:44SPEAKERwithout having to raise prices

1:02:46SPEAKERand then we'll see a price increase if that happens.

1:02:49SPEAKERAs always-- - Yeah, suppliers just won't,

1:02:50SPEAKERthey can't negotiate, right?

1:02:51SPEAKERThey can't say, "We're buying this amount."

1:02:53SPEAKERSuppliers will just say, "No, we'll ghost you."

1:02:56SPEAKER- Yeah, and I think the expectation,

1:03:00SPEAKERmy recommendation on all of this is the same

1:03:01SPEAKERas any time somebody asks me if they should buy

1:03:03SPEAKERa hardware right now, which is like, if you wanna buy it

1:03:05SPEAKERin the next two years, it's not gonna be cheaper

1:03:06SPEAKERthan it is today, which is kind of grim.

1:03:11SPEAKERLet's see, do we have time for a couple questions, Norm?

1:03:13SPEAKERDo you have a couple more minutes?

1:03:14SPEAKER- Yeah, let's take a couple questions

1:03:15SPEAKERand then I'll give my one final thought

1:03:17SPEAKERon the thing I wish they made.

1:03:18SPEAKER- Okay, final thoughts, I like this.

1:03:20SPEAKERSo M.Burgs from Blue Sky asked,

1:03:23SPEAKER"How are the console-like aspects like Wake from Sleep,

1:03:26SPEAKER"background game updates?"

1:03:27SPEAKERWe didn't talk about that, game suspend,

1:03:29SPEAKERwe should talk about that.

1:03:31SPEAKERHe says, "I hook my PC up to my TV pretty often,

1:03:33SPEAKER"but it's always a big hassle,

1:03:34SPEAKER"something different breaks every time."

1:03:37SPEAKERI love the game suspend thing.

1:03:38SPEAKERIt's my favorite thing about the Steam Deck,

1:03:40SPEAKER'cause I can play a game like TerraTech Legion

1:03:42SPEAKERthat doesn't really have a pause or resume or save.

1:03:45SPEAKERI just put the thing to sleep.

1:03:46SPEAKERThis works the same way.

1:03:47SPEAKERI haven't had any failures on that yet.

1:03:49SPEAKER- So it does and it doesn't, right?

1:03:51SPEAKERBecause unlike the Steam Deck, you don't turn it off.

1:03:56SPEAKERIt's always plugged in, it doesn't run on a battery, right?

1:03:59SPEAKERSo while SteamOS supports that game suspend,

1:04:01SPEAKERif you put it into sleep mode,

1:04:04SPEAKERthe game suspend doesn't resume the same way.

1:04:07SPEAKER- Oh, it did for me.

1:04:09SPEAKER- Like if you go to sleep and then you go back

1:04:10SPEAKERinto the game? - Yeah.

1:04:11SPEAKER- I had to reload the game.

1:04:13SPEAKEROkay, I gotta double check that.

1:04:14SPEAKER- It may vary on the game.

1:04:15SPEAKERLike I did, so I was playing Indiana Jones yesterday,

1:04:19SPEAKERI put it to sleep, I came back like 30 minutes later,

1:04:21SPEAKERit was exactly where I left off with no problem.

1:04:27SPEAKERI didn't try that with a ton of different games.

1:04:29SPEAKERI'm sure that there's, suspend mode for games

1:04:32SPEAKERis a nightmare for a whole host of reasons,

1:04:34SPEAKERmostly related to the GPU turning off

1:04:37SPEAKERand dumping whatever's in memory, so.

1:04:40SPEAKER- UI, the main UI, I still think,

1:04:44SPEAKERis not as console-friendly, user-friendly as a console UI.

1:04:50SPEAKERI think that's the weakest point of Valve's design

1:04:53SPEAKERis their UI, is that they make a,

1:04:57SPEAKERit's not like a phone UI, it's not reactive in that way.

1:05:02SPEAKERAnd the design language, I guess,

1:05:03SPEAKERis consistent with Steam Deck.

1:05:05SPEAKERBut I had this same issue with Steam Deck,

1:05:07SPEAKERis that it is cluttered and it is still intimidating

1:05:11SPEAKERfor people who come from the console experience.

1:05:15SPEAKER- I think, so, it's funny, I set my daughter up

1:05:18SPEAKERwith an account on the Steam Deck,

1:05:20SPEAKERon the Steam Machine, rather, earlier today,

1:05:21SPEAKER'cause she was like, "Hey, does this thing

1:05:23SPEAKER"let me play my Steam games in the living room?"

1:05:24SPEAKERI was like, "Yeah, absolutely."

1:05:25SPEAKERShe was like, "Oh, I wanna do that."

1:05:31SPEAKERI would put it below the PlayStation

1:05:33SPEAKERand probably below Nintendo on the Switch 2.

1:05:35SPEAKER- Oh, definitely below Nintendo, yeah.

1:05:37SPEAKERNintendo, that's the gold standard.

1:05:39SPEAKERMy five-year-old can power on Switch 2

1:05:41SPEAKERand launch Just Dance with no problem.

1:05:43SPEAKER- That's true.

1:05:44SPEAKER- And the five-year-old with the Steam Machine,

1:05:46SPEAKERit's like accidentally clicking onto the news tiles

1:05:49SPEAKERand the update tiles and random things.

1:05:54SPEAKER- So, I think it's better than the Xbox, though.

1:05:56SPEAKERI think the Xbox experience is abysmal.

1:06:00SPEAKERHonestly, the last time the Xbox had a good UI

1:06:03SPEAKERwas probably like 2009.

1:06:05SPEAKERSo, the background updates, it does the same thing

1:06:10SPEAKERthat the Steam Deck does, where it's like,

1:06:11SPEAKER"Hey, you're downloading stuff.

1:06:12SPEAKER"Do you wanna keep going in the background

1:06:14SPEAKER"when you try to turn it off?"

1:06:15SPEAKERAnd I think that's the way the Switch works now.

1:06:17SPEAKERI think the Switch pops a similar prompt when you do that.

1:06:21SPEAKERThere's a whole splash screen that it goes to

1:06:24SPEAKERwhen you activate sleep mode,

1:06:25SPEAKERbut you still have a download queue

1:06:27SPEAKERwhere it just shows the bar,

1:06:28SPEAKERand then obviously the LED light

1:06:29SPEAKERshows the download progress bar,

1:06:32SPEAKERand then it'll go to sleep after that,

1:06:33SPEAKERand that's all configurable, too.

1:06:34SPEAKERSo, you can say, "No, just go to sleep,"

1:06:36SPEAKERor you can say, "Let me download while I'm in a game,

1:06:38SPEAKER"and I'll take the performance hit,"

1:06:40SPEAKERwhich Steam Deck wouldn't let you do

1:06:42SPEAKER'cause there was too much performance hit.

1:06:44SPEAKERSo, that background now, and this is, again,

1:06:47SPEAKERthe modern PC gaming, there's so many downloads.

1:06:51SPEAKERI get patches for everything.

1:06:53SPEAKER- The other thing, it does do the thing

1:06:56SPEAKERwhere it downloads shaders in the background,

1:06:57SPEAKERso you're not compiling shaders necessarily, I think.

1:06:59SPEAKERI actually don't know that I've seen that on everything.

1:07:01SPEAKERI think I've seen that on a handful of things,

1:07:03SPEAKERand I wonder if that's tied to the Steam Deck

1:07:05SPEAKERbackwards compatibility. - I've had so much

1:07:06SPEAKERshader compilation, especially with the new patches

1:07:10SPEAKERand the new FSR4 stuff, just like shader, shader, shaders.

1:07:13SPEAKER- I do, I will say it doesn't do the thing

1:07:18SPEAKERwhere it wakes up in the middle of the night

1:07:19SPEAKERto download the patches for you,

1:07:20SPEAKERwhich I kind of wish it did.

1:07:23SPEAKERI wouldn't mind having a fresh,

1:07:25SPEAKERlike powering it on in the morning

1:07:26SPEAKERand having everything up to date

1:07:28SPEAKERwithout me having to download it.

1:07:30SPEAKER- Scheduled wake or something.

1:07:31SPEAKER- That's the thing that the consoles do,

1:07:33SPEAKERand it's quite nice.

1:07:36SPEAKERThe last thing is it does let you do things

1:07:39SPEAKERthat the consoles do.

1:07:41SPEAKERIt lets you change your TV volume or your soundbar volume

1:07:43SPEAKERor your receiver volume, which is really nice.

1:07:45SPEAKERThe interface for that isn't great.

1:07:47SPEAKERI'm sure they'll work on that over time

1:07:48SPEAKER'cause I think it's a relatively new feature

1:07:50SPEAKERto the SteamOS front.

1:07:52SPEAKERBut yeah, that's pretty much,

1:07:55SPEAKERthose are the big things for me.

1:07:58SPEAKERI hope that the update cadence slows down

1:08:00SPEAKERafter it's available to general public

1:08:02SPEAKER'cause right now, even in the stable channel,

1:08:04SPEAKERI'm getting an update or two every day,

1:08:06SPEAKERwhich is a bit much.

1:08:07SPEAKER- One analogy I have, and it's not the most flattering one,

1:08:10SPEAKERis so much of it is built off of the Linux architecture

1:08:15SPEAKERthat they're only servicing so much of that in SteamOS

1:08:19SPEAKERas a UI.

1:08:21SPEAKERI had this same issue with Steam Deck

1:08:22SPEAKERis that you have to go into desktop mode

1:08:24SPEAKERsometimes to get to the deeper settings,

1:08:27SPEAKERespecially for audio, like configuring 5.1 sound

1:08:29SPEAKERand what type of audio speaker setup you have

1:08:31SPEAKERand not getting your vocals to your center channel

1:08:33SPEAKERand that stuff.

1:08:34SPEAKERThat's best configured and sometimes only configurable

1:08:37SPEAKERin the desktop mode.

1:08:38SPEAKERAnd it feels like Windows when they reskin control panel

1:08:42SPEAKERand they gave you Windows 10 friendly,

1:08:45SPEAKERfamily-friendly control panel,

1:08:46SPEAKERbut they still hid the real control panel.

1:08:49SPEAKER- Yeah.

1:08:50SPEAKER- Underneath that, it feels like that.

1:08:52SPEAKERLike you want to get to the real meaty parts

1:08:54SPEAKERof the configuration stuff,

1:08:55SPEAKERbut that's really only in desktop mode.

1:08:57SPEAKERAnd what they present to you in SteamOS,

1:08:59SPEAKERthe big picture mode when you put that up

1:09:01SPEAKERis sometimes not everything you need to get to,

1:09:04SPEAKEReverything you want to get to.

1:09:05SPEAKER- So in fairness, I didn't have to boot into desktop mode

1:09:09SPEAKERuntil I went over there to see,

1:09:10SPEAKERuntil I wanted to install Moonlight, honestly,

1:09:12SPEAKERwas the big thing that got me to do that.

1:09:15SPEAKERAnd I plugged in a wireless, like a Microsoft keyboard

1:09:19SPEAKERthat has a trackpad on the side

1:09:20SPEAKERand that worked great for that experience.

1:09:26SPEAKERI haven't done anything complicated with the audio routing.

1:09:30SPEAKERLike I hooked a DualSense up to it,

1:09:33SPEAKERbut I haven't tried to use the headphone port on that.

1:09:35SPEAKERI think probably not putting a headphone port

1:09:36SPEAKERon the Steam controller is a deliberate choice

1:09:39SPEAKERbecause that makes the audio routing configuration

1:09:43SPEAKERand complexity really,

1:09:45SPEAKERit's like it multiplies that complexity a lot.

1:09:49SPEAKER- Let's see, I've got another question from Humanity Plague.

1:09:53SPEAKERThey wanted to know,

1:09:53SPEAKERdo you think the apples to apples comparison

1:09:55SPEAKERof how does this compare to a PS5 is actually valid?

1:09:58SPEAKERBoth things seem to be going for vastly different aims.

1:10:04SPEAKER- I mean, from a performance standpoint,

1:10:06SPEAKERthat's a safe comparison to say like,

1:10:08SPEAKERit performs like a PS5, but a little better,

1:10:10SPEAKERespecially with FSR4,

1:10:12SPEAKERit borders that PSSR stuff that you got with PS5 Pro.

1:10:17SPEAKERSo I'd say, yeah, performance wise, it's a fair comparison,

1:10:20SPEAKERbut the person in the market for PS5

1:10:22SPEAKERis not the person in the market for Steam Machine.

1:10:24SPEAKER- I think that's right.

1:10:26SPEAKERIt's funny, one of the things that the guys at the basketball

1:10:27SPEAKERat the baseball game were talking about

1:10:29SPEAKERwas how good Steam sales are.

1:10:31SPEAKERMy wife wasn't, she doesn't buy games on Steam,

1:10:33SPEAKERso she doesn't know, but she was like,

1:10:34SPEAKER"Hey, they were talking about Steam sales

1:10:36SPEAKER"being really good, is it better than everything else?"

1:10:39SPEAKERI was like, "Oh God, yeah, you have no idea."

1:10:41SPEAKER- That's their entire business.

1:10:42SPEAKER- Yeah, that's like,

1:10:43SPEAKER"Hey, we're gonna race to the bottom on pricing for games.

1:10:46SPEAKER"Let's go."

1:10:47SPEAKER- Build the library.

1:10:50SPEAKER- Let's see, people wanted to know,

1:10:53SPEAKERI have this written down, but I don't have the username,

1:10:55SPEAKERso I apologize.

1:10:56SPEAKERSomebody asked how it works with mixed mode controllers.

1:11:00SPEAKERSo if you're like using a Steam controller

1:11:01SPEAKERand an Xbox controller and a PlayStation controller,

1:11:03SPEAKERhow does that work?

1:11:04SPEAKERI didn't actually test that, did you take a look at that?

1:11:06SPEAKER- Absolutely, 'cause there's a Bluetooth radio

1:11:08SPEAKERand the Steam 2.4 gigahertz.

1:11:10SPEAKERSo you can use both, it does up to four,

1:11:13SPEAKERjust the charcoal, up to four Steam controllers.

1:11:16SPEAKERAnd so I have one Steam controller

1:11:18SPEAKERplugged wirelessly connected to that.

1:11:20SPEAKERAnd then the Bluetooth is slightly noisier,

1:11:23SPEAKERbut I have my Stadia controller

1:11:26SPEAKERand an Xbox controller as a two and three.

1:11:28SPEAKERSo if you're playing Lego Batman right now,

1:11:32SPEAKERdoing split screen, I'm on a Steam controller

1:11:34SPEAKERand the kit is on Xbox controller.

1:11:35SPEAKER- Okay, that sounds good.

1:11:38SPEAKERMiguel Burgers in the Discord asked,

1:11:39SPEAKER"What does the vent exhaust smell like?"

1:11:43SPEAKER- I didn't, it doesn't have the flux smell.

1:11:46SPEAKER- It doesn't, it doesn't, yeah.

1:11:51SPEAKER- So I think that's probably, let's see,

1:11:53SPEAKERthe last one is how many USB controllers

1:11:55SPEAKERare there in the box?

1:11:57SPEAKERI didn't actually look at that.

1:11:58SPEAKERI mentally, when I had the thing open last night

1:12:00SPEAKERand I forgot to switch over and LS USB it,

1:12:03SPEAKERbut I don't know how many root hubs they have.

1:12:06SPEAKERThere's only four ports.

1:12:07SPEAKERWell, there's five ports,

1:12:08SPEAKER'cause there's two USB-A on the front,

1:12:11SPEAKERtwo USB-A on the back, and one USB-C.

1:12:14SPEAKERAnd some of those are USB two and some are three point.

1:12:17SPEAKER- That's right, the ones in the front are 2.0

1:12:21SPEAKERand the ones in the back are three

1:12:23SPEAKERand the USB-C is not Thunderbolt.

1:12:27SPEAKERSo I would assume three controllers.

1:12:29SPEAKER- I'm not surprised that they didn't do Thunderbolt

1:12:33SPEAKERon this, honestly, that adds so much expense

1:12:34SPEAKERand I don't know that any normal people are going to do it.

1:12:39SPEAKER- Norman Chan, anything, oh, let's hear that final take.

1:12:42SPEAKER- Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, so.

1:12:43SPEAKER- Is this a hot take?

1:12:44SPEAKERDo I need to like get the asbestos gloves out

1:12:46SPEAKERor do I need to put the fire suit on?

1:12:48SPEAKER- No, I don't know if it's that hot of a take,

1:12:50SPEAKERbut you know, Steam Machine, I think it's gonna be,

1:12:52SPEAKERyou know, it is what it is.

1:12:54SPEAKERIn using the Steam Machine and in using the Steam Deck

1:12:58SPEAKERas a living room PC and as primarily a streaming device,

1:13:03SPEAKERit made me realize the thing I want

1:13:05SPEAKERand I know Valve will not make this

1:13:07SPEAKER'cause they got burned so badly from the first iteration

1:13:09SPEAKERis another, is a modern take on a Steam Link box.

1:13:14SPEAKERAnd I know you talked about, Will, you built,

1:13:18SPEAKERyou know, you tried to figure out, you know,

1:13:19SPEAKERif you wanted to build dedicated streaming box

1:13:21SPEAKERfor like 200 bucks, what would that look like, right?

1:13:25SPEAKERLike the analogy I have is the Steam Frame.

1:13:27SPEAKERSo Steam Frame is still coming out,

1:13:29SPEAKERhopefully, you know, by end of summer, right?

1:13:32SPEAKERThat's their next hardware device they're working on.

1:13:34SPEAKERBut the Steam Frame, interestingly, is a device that--

1:13:38SPEAKER- It's the VR headset for folks who don't know.

1:13:40SPEAKER- Yes, right, right, right.

1:13:40SPEAKERIt's a VR headset and we're not gonna get

1:13:42SPEAKERinto the architecture of it running ARM

1:13:44SPEAKERin addition to Proton.

1:13:45SPEAKERBut the idea with the usability of Steam Frame

1:13:47SPEAKERis you can run games locally on it, some games, right?

1:13:51SPEAKERYou can run games, flat screen, you put on the VR headset,

1:13:54SPEAKERbut you run like Hades 2 or something or like a 2D game

1:13:58SPEAKERor maybe like a Xbox 360 or Xbox One era game locally on it.

1:14:04SPEAKERAt least that's the hope.

1:14:05SPEAKERLike you run something that's just like a little underpowered

1:14:09SPEAKERthan what the Steam Deck could run.

1:14:11SPEAKERBut if you were for a more modern game or higher fidelity,

1:14:15SPEAKERit's primarily as a streaming device.

1:14:17SPEAKERIt's that the set top box version of that philosophy

1:14:22SPEAKERis kind of what I want from Valve,

1:14:24SPEAKERwhich would be the Steam Deck, right?

1:14:26SPEAKERI want a Steam Deck without the screen or the controllers.

1:14:30SPEAKERI want a Steam Deck in a Apple TV sized box

1:14:36SPEAKERwith an SOC on there and maybe it's running ARM

1:14:39SPEAKERand where I can run locally at 1080, 40, 40 or 4K,

1:14:43SPEAKERa game like Hades, right?

1:14:45SPEAKERWhere I just wanna run locally,

1:14:47SPEAKERdon't wanna have it on network

1:14:48SPEAKERand maybe a lot of like emulators or whatever,

1:14:51SPEAKERbut for anything that's gonna be at high resolution,

1:14:54SPEAKERfor anything that's gonna be modern,

1:14:56SPEAKERstream it from the desktop gaming PC I already have

1:14:59SPEAKERin my house and have that cost like two to $300,

1:15:06SPEAKER200, 250 bucks or something I feel like

1:15:07SPEAKERwould be a good sweet spot for that.

1:15:08SPEAKER- Nvidia Shield price is totally fine, right?

1:15:10SPEAKER- Exactly, yeah, exactly, right?

1:15:12SPEAKERI want that type of box where it can run most things,

1:15:17SPEAKERold games, 2D games locally,

1:15:19SPEAKERbut really it's designed as a streaming box

1:15:21SPEAKERand then have Valve focus on optimizing streaming.

1:15:25SPEAKERSo Steam Link streaming needs work.

1:15:28SPEAKER- Okay, I think you and I and Gordon,

1:15:31SPEAKERwhen I was helping Adam clean out Gordon's stuff

1:15:34SPEAKERat PC World earlier this year,

1:15:36SPEAKERhe had like a stack of six Steam Links

1:15:39SPEAKERthat apparently he'd bought when they were clearing them out

1:15:41SPEAKERand I think, I can't remember if it was you and I were there

1:15:43SPEAKERor I was there for a VR thing when I was working on Foo,

1:15:47SPEAKERbut I was up there and I was like, man, I love the Steam Link.

1:15:49SPEAKERThis thing is my favorite thing you guys have ever made.

1:15:50SPEAKERYou gotta do a new one that supports newer Wi-Fi,

1:15:53SPEAKERyada yada, and they're like, hey, you want more Steam Links?

1:15:54SPEAKERI got you Steam Links and rolled out like a half dozen.

1:15:57SPEAKERWe're like, take as many as you want.

1:15:59SPEAKERI don't think they're gonna make another Steam Link.

1:16:01SPEAKER- They got burned by it.

1:16:02SPEAKERLike it didn't sell well, right?

1:16:03SPEAKERAnd that's because it was tough to sell a hundred dollar box

1:16:06SPEAKERthat people could get that feature as an application

1:16:10SPEAKERon whatever set top box on their TV, on their Apple TV.

1:16:12SPEAKERAnd that's kind of how Valve thinks about it now.

1:16:14SPEAKERBut if you're supporting it as an app,

1:16:16SPEAKERone, it doesn't have enough support, I think.

1:16:18SPEAKERThe UI for Steam Link, I think is like terrible.

1:16:21SPEAKER- It's terrible, it's really bad.

1:16:22SPEAKER- It's so bad.

1:16:24SPEAKERAnd you're not optimizing for decoding hardware.

1:16:27SPEAKERLike if you look at the SOC that you can get

1:16:31SPEAKERthat people are, Qualcomm, whoever are making for phones,

1:16:35SPEAKERyou get AV1 decoding.

1:16:36SPEAKERThere's next gen stuff that are made for mobile

1:16:40SPEAKERthat's gonna give you high bandwidth

1:16:42SPEAKERand faster low latency decoding.

1:16:44SPEAKERThe Valve can put some engineering on,

1:16:46SPEAKERboth on the hardware and the software side,

1:16:48SPEAKERand then build in things like Steam Controller support

1:16:51SPEAKERso you have the benefits of that integrated

1:16:54SPEAKER2.4 gigahertz receiver, like Steam Machine does,

1:16:58SPEAKERand put it in an even smaller form factor,

1:17:01SPEAKEReven quieter, lower power consumption box.

1:17:04SPEAKERI paid 250 bucks for that.

1:17:05SPEAKER- Well, and my hope is that the FEX, the Steam Frame focus,

1:17:11SPEAKER'cause they did, they listed the Steam Streaming

1:17:14SPEAKERas a selling point on that thing, right?

1:17:15SPEAKERWhich is the first time it's been more than like,

1:17:17SPEAKERoh, also you can do this weird thing for weirdos.

1:17:20SPEAKERAnd my hope is that the focus on that

1:17:23SPEAKERwill make that experience smoother,

1:17:24SPEAKER'cause the problem isn't that it doesn't work.

1:17:27SPEAKERLike, when it's good and it works, it's great.

1:17:29SPEAKERIt's really, really good, it's really easy.

1:17:32SPEAKERThe problem is that there are a million edges,

1:17:34SPEAKERwhich, like, they have a proven plan

1:17:37SPEAKERfor fixing the million edges at this point.

1:17:38SPEAKERLike, they have a proven use case for that,

1:17:41SPEAKERwhere it's how they fixed Proton.

1:17:43SPEAKERThey looked at, every time they found a bug

1:17:44SPEAKERin a high profile game, they fixed it,

1:17:46SPEAKERand then that had downstream fixes for another 100 games

1:17:50SPEAKERthat had a similar pipeline and similar pathway.

1:17:55SPEAKERI apologize, the people next door

1:17:57SPEAKERare having their yard crew come, so it's loud now.

1:18:01SPEAKERBut the thing that I wish that they would do,

1:18:04SPEAKERhere's my Valve wish, they have a tool

1:18:10SPEAKERthat lets you build and share custom configurations

1:18:14SPEAKERfor the Steam controller and any other input device.

1:18:19SPEAKERI wish that they would do the same thing

1:18:21SPEAKERfor the Proton configuration and the command line stuff,

1:18:24SPEAKERso that I can load up Steam,

1:18:27SPEAKERand when I have a game that's not working right,

1:18:29SPEAKERor that's iffy, whether it's on the Steam machine

1:18:32SPEAKERor the DEC or my Linux machine,

1:18:34SPEAKERI wish I could hit a button and say,

1:18:36SPEAKERoh, get the ProtonDB experience built into Steam

1:18:39SPEAKERusing the same kind of community-voted infrastructure

1:18:43SPEAKERthat they're using for the controller configurations.

1:18:46SPEAKER'Cause it shouldn't be complicated,

1:18:48SPEAKERthey know what the hardware in my machine is,

1:18:50SPEAKERthey should be able to filter down to the people

1:18:52SPEAKERwho are running the same stuff that I'm running,

1:18:55SPEAKERand give me, hey, this is something

1:18:56SPEAKERthat everybody thinks is okay,

1:18:58SPEAKERso that I don't have to go look at ProtonDB

1:19:00SPEAKERand copy in a bunch of command line stuff,

1:19:02SPEAKERand choose some screwy version of Proton,

1:19:04SPEAKERall the stuff that you have to do right now.

1:19:05SPEAKERSo that's my wish. - I like it.

1:19:07SPEAKER- Valve, are you listening? - All right.

1:19:08SPEAKER- Let us know. (laughing)

1:19:11SPEAKERI guess on that note, that's as good a place as any

1:19:13SPEAKERto wrap it up, we've both shared our deepest Valve desires.

1:19:18SPEAKERNorm, thank you, as always, for coming by.

1:19:19SPEAKERYou've done, I think, I've seen two videos, I think,

1:19:22SPEAKERfor this, is there more that I've missed?

1:19:24SPEAKERYouTube is inscrutable these days.

1:19:26SPEAKER- No, you know, there's a second team channel

1:19:30SPEAKERthat I might do more stuff on,

1:19:31SPEAKERbut at this point, I'm just waiting for frame.

1:19:33SPEAKER- Okay, cool.

1:19:34SPEAKER- I can say, I don't have frame.

1:19:36SPEAKER- Okay. - Not right now.

1:19:37SPEAKER- Okay, good to know.

1:19:38SPEAKER- I'm not under NDA, I'm not under Virgo,

1:19:40SPEAKER'cause I don't have it.

1:19:41SPEAKERI am wild, like, look, tea leaves a little bit.

1:19:47SPEAKERWhat do you think, are we looking at,

1:19:50SPEAKERhey, you can port your Quest games over to this thing

1:19:52SPEAKERand you'll be able to VR it,

1:19:54SPEAKERwe're gonna make VR a thing again,

1:19:55SPEAKERor is this a, hey, this is a--

1:19:58SPEAKER- That's the hope, right?

1:19:59SPEAKERYou could put an Android APK right on this thing.

1:20:01SPEAKERThat was the promise when they announced it in November.

1:20:04SPEAKERBut there's so much more to test with frame.

1:20:07SPEAKERThere's local games, there are Android,

1:20:10SPEAKERthere's games that are x86, then there's streaming,

1:20:13SPEAKERthere's the wifi streaming stick, right?

1:20:16SPEAKERAnd there's so many questions, and of course, price too.

1:20:19SPEAKER- I mean, the other thing that's happened

1:20:21SPEAKERsince they announced that is,

1:20:22SPEAKERand it's partly due to the downstream work

1:20:24SPEAKERthat they're doing with the FEX,

1:20:25SPEAKERis the x86 emulation on ARM is,

1:20:30SPEAKERyou know, Adam, Patrick Murray over on Expedition Handheld

1:20:33SPEAKERhas been talking about this a lot lately,

1:20:35SPEAKERbut it's feeling real good now, not even for old games,

1:20:38SPEAKERjust for current x86 games.

1:20:40SPEAKERSo it might be the stealth, like, hey,

1:20:43SPEAKERthis is the baller product out of all these.

1:20:46SPEAKERI can't wait to see it, I'm very curious, so.

1:20:49SPEAKERAnyway, normtested.com, youtube.com/tested.

1:20:54SPEAKER- That's it.

1:20:55SPEAKER- Anything personal you wanna plug here?

1:20:57SPEAKERI don't think you're here.

1:20:59SPEAKER- No, blue sky, and channel blue sky.

1:21:02SPEAKER- Alrighty, thanks again, Norm, for coming by.

1:21:03SPEAKERIt's always a pleasure to get to catch up

1:21:06SPEAKERand talk about the latest hardware.

1:21:07SPEAKERMake sure you go check out Norm's work over on Tested.

1:21:09SPEAKERHe does a wonderful job covering what's going on in VR

1:21:12SPEAKERand consumer technology over there,

1:21:15SPEAKERamong all the other stuff on the channel.

1:21:17SPEAKERAgain, it's tested.com and the Tested YouTube channel.

1:21:21SPEAKERAs always, this is the part of the show

1:21:23SPEAKERwhere I remind folks that we are a listener-supported show.

1:21:26SPEAKERWe wouldn't be here without you all, the listener.

1:21:29SPEAKERSo if you would like to find out how to support the show

1:21:31SPEAKERand keep the TechPod ad free,

1:21:33SPEAKERyou can go to patreon.com/techpod.

1:21:36SPEAKERAgain, it's patreon.com/techpod,

1:21:39SPEAKERwhere for five bucks a month,

1:21:41SPEAKERyou get access to the Discord,

1:21:43SPEAKERwhich is full of beautiful nerds just like you,

1:21:45SPEAKERtalking about all sorts of interesting stuff,

1:21:47SPEAKERincluding things like the Steam machine

1:21:49SPEAKERand how they're booting it off of the controller input

1:21:52SPEAKERand stuff like that.

1:21:53SPEAKERYou can also get the monthly patron exclusive episode

1:21:56SPEAKERwhere we sometimes take questions,

1:21:58SPEAKERsometimes talk about projects.

1:21:59SPEAKERLast month, I did a little bit of both.

1:22:01SPEAKERI talked about Glance, which is the thing I'm using

1:22:03SPEAKERto build a custom new tab page in my browser.

1:22:09SPEAKERAnd then we took questions from the Discord.

1:22:11SPEAKERI took questions from the Discord

1:22:13SPEAKERand kind of just went down the list of things

1:22:15SPEAKERthat are interesting and exciting going on

1:22:17SPEAKERin everyone's lives, technology-wise.

1:22:20SPEAKERSo please check that out.

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1:22:42SPEAKEROctothorpe Bunnyfiend, David Allen, James Kamik,

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1:22:50SPEAKERThanks everybody for listening.

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