Valve's future console plans

[tuna]

Expensive work. How are they going to recoup the cost? Sony and Microsoft do this by selling tens of million bits of hardware then leveraging licensing. Steam has no licensing for SteamDeck, they rely only on the revenue cut of Steam - which Sony and Microsoft also have in addition to licensing and masses sales of juicy profitably accessories like controllers, headsets and other bobbins.

That is the good thing for Valve. There are very small HW development cost since they can take whatever AMD/Intel (and in the future nVidia) has available for their thermal profile. It will just be a PC in a box running a Linux distro.

The SW stack will be exactly the same as Steam Deck, so you don't have to do anything extra there either.

Then, if the boxes are a success you can get other manufacturers to design and manufacture them, so Valve can go back to be the most successful game store.

 

[eastmen]

I saw the earlier analysis and it looked like the SteamDeck was struggling to maintain 30fps PS4 performance targets, i.e. 1080p.

In the video for steam deck it looks like medium to high with 800p is netting you 40fps. Does the ps4 even run the game at 1080p without reconstruction? It also certainly doesn't run the enhanced version which as DF points out has further draw distance and better textures and lighting.

 

[tongue_of_colicab]

I don't really see why Valve would want to get involved in to desktop hardware space. I can see why they did the Steamdeck. Not a lot of competition in that segment so a bigger chance of success and probably a good vehicle to put SteamOS on the map again.

But in the desktop space they'd basically be going up against the likes of Dell and HP. Doing custom hardware on desktop makes no sense so basically its going to be a very low margin business. Probably makes more sense to do a deal with a big vendor to release proper hardware with Valve fully backing that hardware in SteamOS for the best experience possible.

Valve just wants people to buy games in their store so they can cash that fat margin and if possible I think they want SteamOS to work well enough to act as some kind of stick behind to their in case MS ever does something to screw Steam on Windows. I don't think Valve wants to be in hardware apart from what are essentially side projects.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

In the video for steam deck it looks like medium to high with 800p is netting you 40fps. Does the ps4 even run the game at 1080p without reconstruction? It also certainly doesn't run the enhanced version which as DF points out has further draw distance and better textures and lighting.

This is not the thread for this, but yes. According to DF, at launch base PS4 was mostly hitting 30fps at 1080p with some drops in some scenes and rare situations.

That is the good thing for Valve. There are very small HW development cost since they can take whatever AMD/Intel (and in the future nVidia) has available for their thermal profile. It will just be a PC in a box running a Linux distro.

AMD and Nvidia have good-performance, lost cost parts lying around? What are they? Why is nobody else building PCs from them?

 

[cheapchips]

AMD and Nvidia have good-performance, lost cost parts lying around? What are they? Why is nobody else building PCs from them?

I agree with you on this. PC components are too expensive for either individuals or the like of HP/Dell to build anything compelling for low cost PC gaming. Even if Valve can comission a suitable APU, the likes of HP etc aren't going to build a machine around it.* What would it offer over Valve's box? They also don't benefit from the Steam back end revenue either (unless we see a repeat of xbox style digital revenue sharing).

* Or at least a competing desktop/tv box/vr base station. What they could do it make some quite compelling laptops and all in ones.

 

[PSman1700]

The not-quite consistently perfect performance of PS5 and Series S and X against various PC configurations I think does demonstrate how much more performance is possible from a very cheap console compared to a PC costing even just 50% more on the hardware. And that's with most games running on DirectX natively on Windows with no API translation layer that SteamOS relies on.

Hardware-cost indeed, the pc is going to be more costly (but you also get more, games are cheaper, no paying to play online). The point he tried to make was that you dont need so much more bruteforce to obtain on the pc as prior the PS4 generations. Now equal to console hardware does about as well, a 3060 or RX6600XT/R5 3600/nvme setup performs very, very close to the PS5 even two years into the generation, even in spiderman. With the advantage in ray tracing and reconstruction tech.
This wasnt the case two decades ago with the PS2 and the PS3 generation of consoles. Goes to show we have come long ways since. Hence the reason the Steam Deck does perform so well even considering the layer between. The Deck runs Spiderman very close to what you see on the PS5, thats very impressive (see DF video).

Valve doesnt need and probably doesnt want to enter the console market, they are going to remain in the pc gaming space (the largest entity aside from mobile). They could offer the steamos platform for anyone that meets the specs. Just like the Deck but available on laptops and desktop systems. The laptop platform is an intresting one, its getting more and more popular, their getting more capable and closer to the desktop experiences and basically sip power relative to desktop setups. Its mobile and easy to setup/use. Expanding into that market could be something they are planning.

 

[eastmen]

This is not the thread for this, but yes. According to DF, at launch base PS4 was mostly hitting 30fps at 1080p with some drops in some scenes and rare situations.


AMD and Nvidia have good-performance, lost cost parts lying around? What are they? Why is nobody else building PCs from them?

Except that this isn't the launch game on PS4. This is an enhanced edition and in the new digital foundry video they talk about some differences

AMD itself has the 6800u laying around. If valve wanted too they can put it in a small nuc type box run it at 25w-35 w and then you have what an 8core/16 thread clocked between 2.7-4.7ghz with a rdna 2 gpu featuring 12cu's at 2.2ghz . That would make for a pretty nice machine to play a lot of last gen and current gen games at pretty reasonable settings.

I agree with you on this. PC components are too expensive for either individuals or the like of HP/Dell to build anything compelling for low cost PC gaming. Even if Valve can comission a suitable APU, the likes of HP etc aren't going to build a machine around it.* What would it offer over Valve's box? They also don't benefit from the Steam back end revenue either (unless we see a repeat of xbox style digital revenue sharing).

* Or at least a competing desktop/tv box/vr base station. What they could do it make some quite compelling laptops and all in ones.

I think valve would go it alone. They are proving with the index and steam deck that they can build their own hardware. Why even get dell or someone else involved.

Based on the 6800u I would wager for a small form factor nuc like gaming product would do really well. If we speculate for a moment that the 7800u would be zen 4+ rdna 3 you could easily get a more performant system vs the series s at that point. Series S is 20 cus at 1.6ish ghz. 6800u is 12 @ 2.2ghz. The 7800u would likely end up close to 20 if not 20 and at faster clocks. You get a faster cpu with zen 4 most likely clocked faster than the zen 2 @ 3.6ghz. I'd also bet that Valve would go with 16gigs vs 10gigs. About the only thing I see that could be troublesome is bandwidth in that case.

 

[tuna]

I don't really see why Valve would want to get involved in to desktop hardware space.

I totally agree. Valve already makes all the money it can make from the desktop games eco-system. What we are discussing here is how Valve is uniquely positioned to enter the console space.

 

[PSman1700]

What we are discussing here is how Valve is uniquely positioned to enter the console space.

And thats something they dont have to or want to do either i think.

 

[Johnny Awesome]

Console business is suicide at this point. Even MS wants out in the long run IMO.

 

[PSman1700]

Console business is suicide at this point. Even MS wants out in the long run IMO.

Exactly what i ment with my post. For established players they will take whats left in the tank and continue with plastic boxes for the time being. But Valve is already there (where things are going), kinda.

 

[cheapchips]

I don't think a Steambox would really entering the console space. PC gaming lacks a good option for playing on bedroom/lounge TVs and a reasonably priced entry point.

 

[PSman1700]

I don't think a Steambox would really entering the console space. PC gaming lacks a good option for playing on bedroom/lounge TVs and a reasonably priced entry point.

The Deck provides a good alternative to something like the Switch/other console handhelds. Valve's next could provide to be an alternative for under TV in the bedroom/lounge.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Except that this isn't the launch game on PS4. This is an enhanced edition and in the new digital foundry video they talk about some differences

You asked "Does the ps4 even run the game at 1080p without reconstruction?". That's why I pointed you to DF's PS4 analysis.

 

[cheapchips]

I was sort of wrong when I referenced Telsa using a custom 10TFLOPS Ryzen APU. They have a custom labelled 4 core/11 CU APU, which is coupled with a custom Navi 23.

That somewhat spoils the tongue in cheek suggestion I was going to put forward. There's an opportunity for Tesla and Valve to reduce chip costs by sharing.

Steam is due to come to Teslas this year. It will be interesting to see how games perform on that 4 core /6600m-ish hardware.

 

[eastmen]

You asked "Does the ps4 even run the game at 1080p without reconstruction?". That's why I pointed you to DF's PS4 analysis.

The answer would be that it doesn't cause it doesn't run the game

 

[cheapchips]

Pondered whether to post here or in the EV thread, but figured it'd just end in boring autopilot/CEO conversations there...

Steam in Teslas is available for 2022 S/X models. Seems that it's basically the same as the Deck's interface. No comments from Valve about it. That's a bit of a shame. It'd be interesting to know how much work went into getting Steam OS running on Tesla's hardware.

Performance will be interesting. The Tesla screen is 2200 x 1300. Does DF's hardware budget stretch to £100,000k+?

 

[tuna]

It is probably not running SteamOS, I think it is only running Steam+Proton etc on Tesla's OS.