this post was submitted on 25 Oct 2024
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Given the ridiculously low prices of all Steam Deck models, I imagine that the main revenue for Valve is mainly from increased game sales rather than profit from their hardware. If that's the case, it makes sense to see Steam OS on as many devices as possible, even if they compete directly with the Steam Deck.
That being said, I'm just excited by any decision that puts Linux in front of more users.
They absolutely took the console business model on the Steam Deck. Just like the other big guys Sony, Nin, Micro. Sell the hardware at a loss with the promise that the customer will buy the associated products, in this case, the games from the steam store. The bigger and better difference of course being that you can do whatever with the steam Deck. But Valve knows that the majority will still get their games from Steam because it's just easier that way.
It's the old razor blade model. Sell the handle cheap because you know people will buy the razors for it, and they most likely buy your brand of razors since you bought their brand of handle.
Printer companies (at least home consumer ones) do it too but are slimy about it. Get a printer for $50 then buy ink for it that often costs twice as much.
Do you remember back in the early 2000's/2010's when steam machines for gaming tried to break into the market and there were laptops and gaming rigs you could get with steam os?
I'm asking because I wonder how that's going to go. It wasn't particularly successful back then, and given MS's hold on the gaming market and people buying into that OS, it seems like offering a skew of handhelds like the steam deck in both Windows and Steam OS will cause sales to drop. If I walk into Best buy or Microcenter and want to purchase the steam OS version of the ROG Ally but they only have the Windows one, I'm going to be disappointed. Same would happen in reverse.
That's what happenee back in the early aughts too. People didn't buy the steam version because they wanted the Windows version and so both versions did poorly (probably more poorly than they might have done otherwise).
That was before proton and Linux gaming was a joke back then. Now the opposite is true.
I feel like the fact that steam OS wasn't ready for prime time played a significant part but, still, it doesn't speak to wanting one or the other OS and not having it readily available. Amazon and other online only retailers would be able to carry stock in both. But brick and mortar stores (even with their online component) don't always have that option. Converting people to proton/steam is from windows is an ongoing struggle.
I only have anecdotal evidence here, but I know two people who have switched their main gaming computers and laptops to linux recently, and in both cases the Steam Deck played a big part.
I've tried convincing people to move over, but in these cases, it wasn't until they owned the steamdeck for a while and wanted to do something like adding emulators or games from another source that they dropped into desktop mode on the SD and had that experience.
I need a better analogy, but right now I think the Steam Deck is an outstanding Trojan Horse for linux adoption. Many people won't bother going out of their way to use it as a computer, just a console, but it's there if they do.
The Steam machines were a similar idea but linux wasn't useful for gaming until DXVK, several years after the Steam machines. I was dual booting when they came out simply because running games on Linux at that time was a nightmare
Yeah and there's the rub. If other handhelds only come in the steam OS variant people who come in looking for or expecting a Windows variant are still less likely to pick up the steam OS variant. On the other hand, I don't know that this is true going the other way. People who want to steam OS variant will more be more likely to buy the Windows variant and flash it to what they want because that's sort of the nature of a lot of Linux users in general.