Steam

I like Bill, but he isn't super technical and he likes to speculate a bit. He's a genuine guy, though, and he has a pretty great podcast voice.
 
I like Bill, but he isn't super technical and he likes to speculate a bit. He's a genuine guy, though, and he has a pretty great podcast voice.
it's like the first time I listen to him, but the rumour is in some sites. It could be a reasonable rumour. Valve are the only ones that managed to console-rize a PC in an efficient and useful manner for now. MS had this in their hands but they don't see things coming.

Millions of Windows users are gamers.

Plus Valve won't forget their roots and will let people use a computer like a computer, i.e. when you enter desktop mode on the Steam Deck.
 
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it's like the first time I listen to him, but the rumour is in some sites.
A rumour only need be started and it'll be parroted across the internet. These days even bots harvest and produce content. And if other people are stating it, website will feel the need to copy or they won't appear in search results.
 

PC gaming continues to grow and be healthy despite of hardware pricing.
 
it's like the first time I listen to him, but the rumour is in some sites. It could be a reasonable rumour. Valve are the only ones that managed to console-rize a PC in an efficient and useful manner for now. MS had this in their hands but they don't see things coming.

Millions of Windows users are gamers.

Plus Valve won't forget their roots and will let people use a computer like a computer, i.e. when you enter desktop mode on the Steam Deck.

I've not watched the video, but there more than just rumour here. A new steam controller and 'Fremont', a hdmi output only AMD device, are in SteamOS/VR files some folks have been mining.

Whether Fremont is actually going to release as a 'console' is where speculation comes in at the moment.

Interesting times!

New VR controllers are in that data mining too, along with the forever teased Deckard HMD.
 
it's like the first time I listen to him, but the rumour is in some sites.
You should keep listening to him, he has a pretty good show. He started out as a Nintendo focused podcaster, and his show was called Switchcraft, and he transitioned to being more of a general gaming podcast, called Games with Bill while he found his post-switch format until he settled on Nerd Nest, adding a couple of people to the show (it used to be mostly solo). After he moved away from Switch focused content, it was pretty clear he still enjoyed handhelds and he's covered most of the windows handhelds on his show, but keeps going back to the Steam Deck because of the overall experience. Handhelds (and portable devices like phones/tablets) are the real growth sector for games, and you aren't going to lear about the cache per CU of any of those devices, but you will get an informed opinion of how the user experience is from an enthusiast with a lot of handheld gaming experience. And also some semi-informed speculation.
Whether Fremont is actually going to release as a 'console' is where speculation comes in at the moment.
That's the thing, right? We've had plenty of HL3 leaks over the years, but....
It's Valve we are talking about here.
 
are you people going to buy any game during the Christmas sale?

I got Mad Tracks -a game to play split screen with my nephews- and Bright Memory: Infinite, a few days ago.
 
Btw, I created a collection called "Games I Want to Finish" to focus solely on the games I really want to play.

I'm overwhelmed by the sheer number of games I have and the lack of a structured way to play them. I often find myself jumping from one game to another without truly focusing. So, the idea is to include only the games I genuinely want to complete on this list. If I lose interest in a game, I'll remove it from the list and move on to the next one, while ignoring the rest as if they don't exist.

Tbh, I'm truly fed up. One of the evils of today's society, related to video games.

They've become so popular and they give you so many for free that they take away your enthusiasm for having a video game. In the past, with fewer choices, we would play and finish even mediocre games. Now, despite the many great titles available, I rarely enjoy any of them fully. It’s exhausting, even though my Steam library isn't the largest.
 
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Gabe's GDC Steam talk (March 2002, iirc).

For all the praise Steam gets, it definitely took some time to gain traction. I keep trying to pin down the rough timeframe where Steam went from being a Valve store to the PC game store. What was the first non-Valve game you bought on Steam? For me it might be something like CoD4? I think the last physical media I ever bought was LOTR Online and Test Drive Unlimited, so 2007/2008 is probably where I moved entirely to Steam.

My memory as a user back in 2002/2003 was very much a "Is Steam really necessary?" The best thing about it was the overlay that allowed you to access the server browser without having to alt+tab. At the time client patches for HL were relatively irregular (maybe a few times a year), so it's not like the automatic updates were a huge quality of life improvement.

A lot of the stuff Gabe talks about in the GDC talk sounds ambitious, but I don't know how the details really panned out. Things like alternative modes of purchasing(time limited licensing), Burger King promotions, playing before downloads are complete, etc aren't things I'd associate with Steam today.
 
It was indeed COD4 that was the first non-Valve game I bought on Steam. It might have been the first game I bought on Steam, because I used to share a steam account with my friend, and we had registered all of our Half-Life games to it so we could share them. So in 2007 between Christmas and New Years, when COD4 launched, I went to a LAN party after having buying bought Unreal Tournament 3. And I enjoyed what I had played of that game, thought it was pretty good and was excited to play some other people in it... and people were sharing a copy of COD 4, that I'm sure was 100% legal and everything, and we ended up playing that and holy crap, UT3 felt antiquated immediately. So I went home, thought about it for a couple of days, and found out COD was on sale for the 2007 holiday sale on Steam. I think it was 10% or 20% off, which is big for a game that had only been out for a month or so. But I remember I picked up that and Titan Quest, which I think was half off.

So Steam got me because of the deep discounts. Still pisses me off that they got rid of the parlor games, but my largest digital games library is probably on Steam.
 
Lenovo announce their Legion GO S at CES, running the Z2 Go. They'll be a WIndows and SteamOS version. The Windows version is out this month and SteamOS version in May. The pricing structure is interestingly tiered. Essentially $100 more for a Windows version with double the storage.

But the Windows version shipping in January will cost $729.99, with 32GB of RAM and 1TB of storage. In May, the true experiment will begin when gamers can pick between a $499.99 SteamOS version with 16GB / 512GB, a $599.99 Windows version with 16GB / 1TB, or the Steam Deck and Steam Deck OLED at $399 and $549, respectively.
 
To be fair: it did exist on Steam in 2002, as it was demonstrated in that GDC talk, so I would still maintain that nothing good came of GFWL :p
 
To be fair: it did exist on Steam in 2002, as it was demonstrated in that GDC talk, so I would still maintain that nothing good came of GFWL :p
Universal controller support with predefined configurations was non-standard before GFWL. GFWL also brought achievements to PC. Steam added achievements about 6 months later. Also GFWL's parental controls were pretty solid. Steam finally caught up in that regard in September 2024.
 
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 20500.45%
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 20603.31%
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER1.27%
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 20700.93%
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER1.29%
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 20800.43%
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER0.51%
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti0.41%
20 Series Steam market share8.6%
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30503.45%
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 6GB Laptop GPU0.33%
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Laptop GPU0.68%
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Ti0.23%
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Ti Laptop GPU1.07%
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30606.02%
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Laptop GPU3.36%
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti3.69%
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30703.59%
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU0.79%
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti1.57%
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti Laptop GPU0.39%
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30802.40%
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Laptop GPU0.20%
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti0.87%
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30900.63%
30 series Steam marketshare29.27%
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4050 Laptop GPU1.37%
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 40604.86%
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Laptop GPU5.04%
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Ti3.91%
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 40703.30%
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Laptop GPU1.21%
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER2.22%
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti1.38%
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER0.84%
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 40800.92%
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 Laptop GPU0.27%
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER0.97%
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 40901.18%
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 Laptop GPU0.15%
40 series Steam marketshare27.22%
Total RTX Steam Market share65.09%

The number or RT capable GPU's are reaching "critical mass" soon (+75%)
I exluded AMD numbers due to them being a mess/not a lot of entires, so actual number of RT GPU's are higher.
 
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But nobody liked GFWL or Vista, so they pretend that nothing good came out of those projects.
Tbh I don't think it was a particularly common feature with GFWL, and honestly it's kinda useless. Installing games doesn't take that long. Halo 2 Vista is the only game I can remember that had it.
 
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