It all depends on what you’re looking for. I’ve put hundreds of hours into games and gotten way less than $1/hr, and I’ve also had a great experience paying significantly more.

So I don’t see games in terms of $/hr, especially these days when I’m more limited by time than money. Instead, I look for unique experiences with cost being a much lower factor. Generally speaking, I spend much less than $1/hr since I buy a lot of older games, but I’ve spent far more ($5-10/hr) on particularly interesting games.

But yeah, generally speaking, I’m willing to pay more for indies than AAA titles because indie games are more likely to offer that unique experience.

Why? Look at how many people here say they want Steam OS, and Lemmy skews heavy toward Linux users. This is that, but OOTB.

I don’t think it’ll sell anywhere near as well as the Steam Deck, but it’s also a less exciting form factor. I do think it’ll sell a fair number of units though.

The cheapest equivalent prebuilt I can find with similar specs (RX 7600 is slightly better than the Steam Machine) is $850, and a DIY build is more like $900 (lots of corners cut), so there’s probably not much margin on the prebuilt. Valve is probably saving some cash with their custom CPU, and they’re probably shipping it with a Steam Controller, hence the $800 target. If component prices rise significantly before launch, I could see $1k.

1. Yeah, I’m guessing $800-1000, and they’ll probably throw in a Steam Controller. That’s about how much a comparable PC would cost
2. I’ve been debating it, but it needs to be something my 5yo can use.
3. And that’s Valve’s target market here, those unwilling to DIY.

Get ready to riot because there’s no way it’s that cheap. My money is on $800-1000.

That’s a rip off, it’ll be more like 1/4 troy ounce, if that

Eh, I don’t particularly enjoy building PCs, but I do it because it’s cheaper, esp. for upgrades. I’m really not the target market for this.

That said, this is the right product for a lot of people. Many don’t want to mess with their gaming system, they want it to just work. That’s why consoles are popular, and the Steam Machine being a bit more expensive than a console and get access to Steam’s catalog is very attractive to a lot of people, especially if it otherwise works like a console.

Yeah, I’ve been guessing $800-1000. That’s a decent deal on a prebuilt with this performance.

I used Linux for regular desktop stuff before I installed Steam on it. Steam got me back into gaming.

Use something like Backblaze or Hetzner storage boxes for off-site backups. There are a number of tools for making this painless, so pick your favorite. If you have the means, I recommend doing a disaster recovery scenario every so often (i.e. disconnect existing drives, reinstall the OS, and load everything from remote backup).

Generally speaking, follow the 3-2-1 rule:

• 3 copies of everything on
• 2 different types of media with
• 1 copy off site (at least)

For your situation, this could be:

• 3 copies - your computer (NVMe?), TrueNas (HDD?), off-site backup; ideally have a third local device (second computer?)
• 2 media - NVMe and HDD
• 1 copy off site - Backblaze, Hetzner, etc

You could rent a cloud server, but it’ll be a lot more expensive vs just renting storage.

Headlander was surprisingly fun. Probably not my favorite, but certainly up there.

I miss them. But I guess I’m in the minority on that one.

All of them? Maybe an international consortium that pays devs in their home currency.

There’s a Linux gaming community, that’s probably where you’d get a better answer.

I like their first party games, not so much their published games. They should stick to what they do best.

Yup, I might try the Jellyfin thing as well. I currently use an app on the TV, but it’s flaky and the TV keeps losing network randomly. Newer TVs at adding ads, so I’ll need an alternative.

High end would be the high end of the market components, right? So RTX 5090 ($2k+) or RX 9070 ($700+). High end CPU would be Ryzen 7 9800X3D for $400. Add a motherboard and copious RAM and you’re looking at $2k+ for all AMD, $3-5k for Nvidia.

Mid tier would be somewhere in the middle, so cut those numbers in half ($1-1.5k). Low end is what you can get away with, so cut the mod tier in half again, though going below $700 would be hard for anything but the most casual of games.

Console manufacturers haven’t sold at a loss in a long time.

They tend to at first launch. This article says it took 6 months for the PS4 and a bit longer for the PS5 to stop selling at a loss. It’s no longer the whole product lifecycle, but they are still sold at a loss at least at the start. I think that implies that hardware sales aren’t a major profit center, so even if they are profitable, there’s probably not a ton of margin.

Worked for Goose Goose Duck!

Sure, if you eat it.

Nah, it’ll probably be $800-1k. It’s basically a 7600 CPU + RX7600 GPU or whatever, and it’s not really upgradeable. So somewhere between the Series S and X in performance, and not subsidized by game sales.