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Steam Hardware
A place to discuss and support all Steam Hardware, including Steam Deck, Steam Machine, Steam Frame, and SteamOS in general.
As Lemmy doesn't have flairs yet, you can use these prefixes to indicate what type of post you have made, eg:
[Flair] My post title
The following is a list of suggested flairs:
[Deck] - Steam Deck related.
[Machine] - Steam Machine related.
[Frame] - Steam Frame related.
[Discussion] - General discussion.
[Help] - A request for help or support.
[News] - News about the deck.
[PSA] - Sharing important information.
[Game] - News / info about a game on the deck.
[Update] - An update to a previous post.
[Meta] - Discussion about this community.
If your post is only relevant to one hardware device (Deck/Machine/Frame/etc) please specify which one as part of the title or by using a device flair.
These are not enforced, but they are encouraged.
Rules:
- Follow the rules of Sopuli
- Posts must be related to Steam Hardware or Steam OS in an obvious way.
- No piracy, there are other communities for that.
- Discussion of emulators are allowed, but no discussion on how to illegally acquire ROMs.
- This is a place of civil discussion, no trolling.
- Have fun.
True. There is an unofficial release - HoloIso - which uses Valves packages but is not quite complete. Also manufacturers may be able to get access as Valve previously has been keen on getting other manufacturers to buy into it's hardware attempts (e.g. Steam PCs previously, and VR now) but I'd expect the manufacturers to be making a big deal of it if they were launching a SteamOS handheld. It seems Valve want to keep exclusivity on Steam Deck for now (which makes some sense given how successful it's been)
It really doesn't make sense, considering how small the hardware profit margins probably are, if any.
What would make sense is making the Steam-first OS open to be installed on any device.
It doesn't matter if there's no hardware profit margin if the end result is, as it seems to be, more people buying more games from steam. That's no different than most console manufacturers anyways - so far as I know, none of them are in it to make profit off the hardware itself, just the exclusivity.
Granted, Steam Deck still let's you run non-steam games and connect other launchers, but even so most people will buy from steam for it regardless.
This is the end result of releasing their software, not selling more hardware.
Oh look, you stumbled on to the point. Valve would benefit from making a more console-like pc (a la the steam boxes from yesteryear) because it could get more people into the valve ecosystem. There are people who buy consoles simply because they offer the simplicity of buying a prebuilt thing that you don't need to fudge around with and comes integrated with everything you need to run the games.
I didn't "stumble onto" anything. Valve would benefit much more from simply releasing their operating system for universal hardware use than they ever would from hardware sales. That was my point from the beginning.