AMD looking to beat the performance of Nvidia's $3000 graphics card at half the price

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Ok, let me explain why Valve's steam machine COULD BE a good idea (depends on how they go about doing it, so I wont commit to "will be" yet) -

1. Small Form Factor-

The whole craze with amazon fire TV, apple TV, Xbox, and PS (plus google and all them will soon do something as well) is to "take over" your living room, that's a big part of where the marketing is going right now, and Valve is smart to head in that direction.

2. Consoles, believe it or not, were actually killing out the PC gaming industry -

This was a big deal around the time of Xbox 360 and PS4's launch, PC gaming was outrageously expensive (a big reason why I'm always so quick to defend AMD - competition drops prices) but because Microsoft and Sony bought in mass bulk and standardized the hardware, it allowed them to get huge discounts, then they were also able to take a loss on the items (for a while) to lower the prices even more, as they would be making money on games, so more gamers in the market with lower prices = more games coming out to satisfy them (it worked, but xbox 360 and ps4 yielded a total loss last gen because they took too much of a loss of the hardware).

That isn't to say that PC gaming is by any means "fucked" now, but if something isn't done to appeal to more casual consumers, it will only be a matter of time before it is fucked. It's not about "there will always be gamers in the PC market" it's about the most viable "install base" for game developers to make games on. If a company wants to maximize profits, it develops for a console, if that console has a huge install base (like Xbox 360's 30+ million, for example) then a company will make the game for Xbox 360, but then microsoft says "hey, if you make it EXCLUSIVE, we'll only take 5% of sales, instead of 30%" and the company takes a look and realizes that saving 25% of that royalty, plus the savings of not having to port the game to PC, means going console exclusive is more profitable. This is the reason we have "console exlusive" games, and if the market kept going like that, then valve would have very few games to make money on with Steam.

3. Steam Controller -

Making a universal controller for the PC was the smartest idea valve ever came up with. Not only is the market for that extremely huge, but the costs associated with creating something as in-demand as a controller are super low (it costs like, $15 to make the xbox one controller, they sell it for $59, and millions buy it, some people even buy 2, or 3!)

4. SteamOS -

Believe it or not I'm not actually opposed to this, for one thing, Linux does indeed run games with significantly better performance than windows (Microsoft recently commented that it agrees, and that they're working on a solution) but that's not the biggest deal. There were crazy rumors that Microsoft was planning on forcing all games on it's platform to be downloaded through the windows store, I initially said - thats bogus, microsoft would never do something that stupid but then I remembered DRM. Also, if it doesnt do it, it will definetly use the windows store feature to compete with Steam, and it will come built in to your computer and with onedrive support, it might also come with free copies of the games you by on your xbox and/or offer streaming support. Thus, steam needs to compete fast.

The make or break factor here is one thing - the producers of the Steam Machine. Fragmenting the development and not specifying MINIMUM specs at least means they won't be able to get the two benefits consoles enjoyed - bulk pricing passed on to the consumer, and a specific set of specs for developers to use when making their games (in this case it would be minimums, since obviously I wouldn't want steam to lower itself into making non-upgradable low tier consoles)

<< LINK REMOVED >><< LINK REMOVED >> U CAN ALWAYS DOWNLOAD STEAM, SAME 5HIT. NOW WHEN DEVS START MAKING APIS FOR STEAM MACHINES, THEN ITS A DIFFERENT STORY. BUT THEYLL STILL RUN OPEN GL OR DX SO IDE RATHER GO FOR A OWN BUILD WITH WINDOWS

<< LINK REMOVED >><< LINK REMOVED >> STEAM MACHINES IS PRETTY MUCH SELLING U A GAMING PC WITH ALL THE WORK DONE FOR YOU. I PREFER BUILD IT MYSELF, THATS THE BEAUTY OF PC GAMING, FUBU: FOR US BY US!

<< LINK REMOVED >><< LINK REMOVED >> NO I DONT THINK SO, FOR 500$ U CAN GET A FX6300 WITH A R9 270X , YOULL HAVE WINDOWS AND ALL THAT. THE STEAM MACHINE IS A PC WITH A LINUX OS PRETTY MUCH

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