ericwdhs
@ericwdhs@discuss.online
- Comment on Deck: Does anyone have an idea or way of estimating how many Steam Deck are in use? (Speculation) 16 hours ago:
Yeah, the inverse problem also exists, multiple users on a single device causing that device to get over-reported. This is most commonly seen with cyber cafes in Asia. The effect is present all year (and is another reason to expect the actual Deck percentage to be slightly higher), but it spikes every February as Chinese cyber cafes get busy over Lunar New Year.
- Comment on Deck: Does anyone have an idea or way of estimating how many Steam Deck are in use? (Speculation) 16 hours ago:
As I understand it, the survey flags a random sampling of logged in Steam user accounts to run the survey on each month. For each selected user, the survey prompt then pops up the next time they’re online on the device they’re online with as an offline device can’t receive the survey notice.
Let’s say I game with my desktop 20 times per month and my Deck 10 times per month, but I’m only actually connecting it to the Internet 2 times a month for updates. In that scenario, it seems the desktop would be 10 times more likely to get the survey even though that doesn’t reflect the actual usage spread.
- Comment on Deck: Does anyone have an idea or way of estimating how many Steam Deck are in use? (Speculation) 18 hours ago:
See my other comment here. I’m in the “active Deck user, but not as main PC crowd.”
- Comment on Deck: Does anyone have an idea or way of estimating how many Steam Deck are in use? (Speculation) 18 hours ago:
@thingsiplay@beehaw.org Does this work like Reddit tagging?
I have a Steam Deck I would consider to be in active use, but it’s a secondary system for me, and the times I’m using it most heavily are done without Internet. I don’t believe it’s ever been counted in a survey, and I imagine there’s a bunch of users in the same situation.
The same kind of thing used to happen with VR headsets before they switched it to counting any headset used in the last 30 days (determined by whether the driver was launched). I always used to get the survey when mine wasn’t plugged in, and it always annoyed me to not be counted in the VR userbase. Lol.
- Comment on Has anyone here got their Steam Machine yet? 1 day ago:
I just did some testing.
The game ran a quick benchmark and set stock settings of 1080p, medium preset, FSR scaling, and quality scaling mode to yield a steady 60 fps with about 70% GPU usage. The frame generation was enabled, but there was enough horsepower for it to not actually be used. The picture was a bit grainy however.
With both FSR scaling and frame generation disabled still at medium and 1080p, it’ll play around 45 fps.
I would say the optimal settings are close to stock, but you’ll want to upgrade from FSR 3 to FSR 4 released recently on Proton Experimental. This will probably be unnecessary later when FSR 4 gets rolled into the regular Proton releases. The game looked much less grainy with this.
To do this, on the Steam page for the game, you’ll want to go to Settings (the gear icon) > Properties > Compatibility > enable “Force the use of a specific Steam Play compatibility tool” > Proton Experimental. Do note the settings in game are currently hard coded to say FSR 3, so you won’t see it mention running on 4.
There’s probably more tweaking that can be done, but that’s kind of getting away from the point of this thing. I have a beefy PC and would still be happy to play it as above.
- Comment on Has anyone here got their Steam Machine yet? 1 day ago:
Nice. I already have that one. I’ll check it out in a few resolution-settings configurations later tonight.
- Comment on My steam machine arrived! 2 days ago:
I feel sorry for anyone that doesn’t have at least one area they are enthusiastic enough about to splurge a little in. Still, can we really call it consumerism when Valve releases hardware so infrequently? Seriously. 11 years between controllers? 7 years between VR headsets? 6+ years expected between handhelds?
- Comment on My steam machine arrived! 2 days ago:
Well, I never claimed it filled a necessary niche. It’s a luxury good by definition. I just don’t mind having multiple options, redundancy, and overlap in hardware roles even if that means some of it gets underutilized. That said, I’m not planning to keep the thing under the TV indefinitely. It’s going to justify its standalone performance at least occasionally.
- Comment on My steam machine arrived! 2 days ago:
I think you’re just not seeing outside the bubble of the use cases that make sense to you. I already have great daily driver PCs currently running a mix of Bazzite and CachyOS (and Windows, ew), and I have built a couple SFF PCs before, so I’m no stranger to all of that. I can’t speak for anyone else here, but part of why I find the Steam Machine compelling is it covering the opposite end of that spectrum to a degree other SFF options haven’t reached.
- Comment on My steam machine arrived! 2 days ago:
Lol. Don’t assume I’m going into these purchases on blind fanboyism, and don’t confuse “niche” with “bad.” I just have very good experiences with their hardware going all the way back to the OG Controller, Link, and the Vive (which I consider theirs more than HTC’s), and that informs decisions that follow.
- Comment on My steam machine arrived! 2 days ago:
Just tested it. Yes, it does. It woke it from sleep and also woke it from shutdown.
CEC, on the other hand, is behaving weird for me. That’s probably a software issue Valve will soon patch or an issue with my TV. I have a 2017 4K Samsung that I will never connect to the Internet and have never bothered to update. I’ll just keep its remote handy in the meantime.
- Comment on My steam machine arrived! 2 days ago:
“Not that much smaller” is doing some heavy lifting. Every SFF build or mini PC compromises something, price, size, thermal performance, whatever. Physics necessitates it. It’s perfectly fine for you to not value size so much that a 3.8L case isn’t compelling to you over let’s say a 6L ITX case (or the 8L you really need for a discrete GPU), but it’s also okay to feel the opposite.
- Comment on My steam machine arrived! 2 days ago:
Repairability isn’t an absolute scale, and smaller form factors need to make more compromises in modularity. It’d be silly to judge this on the same metric as a fully modular desktop PC since it’s not trying to be a substitute for that use case.
- Comment on My steam machine arrived! 2 days ago:
Lol. Thank you.
- Comment on My steam machine arrived! 2 days ago:
I got mine yesterday. Copying my thoughts from a comment in another thread:
Don’t mind my essay here. TLDR: I love this thing.
I got mine yesterday. It’s the 512GB with no controller since I already got the controller separately and the 2TB version felt like an especially bad deal.
I was initially on the fence about the price and reserved just to get into the queue to make the actual buy decision later. I was expecting more people to have thoughts on it out before my spot in the queue came up, but I ended up getting my purchase email very quickly on 6/30. I let the email sit for a day but ended up deciding to pull the trigger for a few reasons:
One, I’ve owned every first-party Valve device so far, and all of them have been more than the sum of their parts. Two, I wanted a HTPC, travel, and LAN party PC that’s a bit less restraining than a laptop. Three, being a bit of a performance snob has been distracting me away from actually gaming and I wanted to get back into the no nonsense side of PC gaming again. And four, I don’t mind spending a little extra money advancing Linux, repairable hardware, etc.
I feel like I have to acknowledge reviews from the PC space have been largely negative, but they seem to be undervaluing a lot: the form factor (a 6" cube is still tiny compared to almost all other SFF builds), performance per volume (almost the entire cube is a heat sink), and the benefits of more standard performance targets we’ve already seen with the Deck.
As for first impressions, the device is packaged well, and unboxing was very satisfying. I did have some trouble getting my controller paired since it was already paired to my existing desktop PC and plugging it in directly wasn’t enough to get around that like I expected, but looking up how to pair it to multiple PCs got me past that.
I spent a few hours testing a mix of light to demanding games, and I’m more than happy with what it can do. I haven’t tried gaming beyond 1080p yet, but I’m going to be very selective about when and how I do that. 512GB is proving to be plenty of space for what I’m playing at any one time, and I think that would still be true if I didn’t have other devices acting as additional storage.
I feel like all my expectations above have been validated, and now I’m really looking forward to getting the Frame. I want to make a travel backpack or suitcase with foam cutouts for the whole set.
- Comment on Has anyone here got their Steam Machine yet? 2 days ago:
Got any particular games you’d like tested? I got mine in yesterday, and I’ve got a pretty big library of games to throw at it.
- Comment on Has anyone here got their Steam Machine yet? 2 days ago:
I’m in the same position, but I actually decided to proceed with my purchase. See my other comment here for details, but the short answer is that I still think the base model is a good value for what it is and fills some niches my beefy PC can’t.
- Comment on Has anyone here got their Steam Machine yet? 2 days ago:
Don’t mind my essay here. TLDR: I love this thing.
I got mine yesterday. It’s the 512GB with no controller since I already got the controller separately and the 2TB version felt like an especially bad deal.
I was initially on the fence about the price and reserved just to get into the queue to make the actual buy decision later. I was expecting more people to have thoughts on it out before my spot in the queue came up, but I ended up getting my purchase email very quickly on 6/30. I let the email sit for a day but ended up deciding to pull the trigger for a few reasons:
One, I’ve owned every first-party Valve device so far, and all of them have been more than the sum of their parts. Two, I wanted a HTPC, travel, and LAN party PC that’s a bit less restraining than a laptop. Three, being a bit of a performance snob has been distracting me away from actually gaming and I wanted to get back into the no nonsense side of PC gaming again. And four, I don’t mind spending a little extra money advancing Linux, repairable hardware, etc.
I feel like I have to acknowledge reviews from the PC space have been largely negative, but they seem to be undervaluing a lot: the form factor (a 6" cube is still tiny compared to almost all other SFF builds), performance per volume (almost the entire cube is a heat sink), and the benefits of more standard performance targets we’ve already seen with the Deck.
As for first impressions, the device is packaged well, and unboxing was very satisfying. I did have some trouble getting my controller paired since it was already paired to my existing desktop PC and plugging it in directly wasn’t enough to get around that like I expected, but looking up how to pair it to multiple PCs got me past that.
I spent a few hours testing a mix of light to demanding games, and I’m more than happy with what it can do. I haven’t tried gaming beyond 1080p yet, but I’m going to be very selective about when and how I do that. 512GB is proving to be plenty of space for what I’m playing at any one time, and I think that would still be true if I didn’t have other devices acting as additional storage.
I feel like all my expectations above have been validated, and now I’m really looking forward to getting the Frame. I want to make a travel backpack or suitcase with foam cutouts for the whole set.
- Comment on Steam machine prices are live 2 weeks ago:
I think the size is a selling point for a lot of people actually, especially outside PC enthusiast circles where we’ve come to expect big cases and whatnot. I’ve got a visual for a 6" cube on my desk right now, and it’s crazy how small it feels. All the “equivalent” small form factor builds I’ve seen proposed are still legitimately several times bigger at best when comparing volume.
Paired with the Frame’s virtual screen and controls, it might be a great travel gaming PC solution with better ergonomics than a laptop.
- Comment on Steam machine prices are live 2 weeks ago:
It’s worth remembering that most discussions like this are dominated by enthusiasts (including both of us) whereas most people in general are not enthusiasts.
In my experience, most people don’t actively play more than 512GB worth of games at once, and you can add to this with spare microSD cards or other PCs on the network. Steam makes transferring game installs to the main SSD from elsewhere rather painless.
Even as a bit of a data hoarder myself, I only really go beyond 512GB to: 1) keep pace with multiple friend groups that like entirely different game genres I need to all keep available at a moment’s notice, and 2) maintain games modded outside the Steam workshop that I may not play that often but still want to not have to set up more than necessary.
- Comment on Steam machine prices are live 2 weeks ago:
I doubt $700-$800 was going to happen even before prices went crazy. Some time ago, someone at Valve stated they were trying to beat the Index’s $1000 launch price in a way that implied that if the Frame had beaten that price, it wouldn’t have done so by much. The Frame probably won’t see the 40% price jump of the Steam Machine, but it won’t be 0% either.
- Comment on Steam Controller: Reservations open May 8th 2 months ago:
I’ve spent thousands of dollars on Steam over 13 years now, and I still think that’d be unfair. It just needs to be a hard threshold that answers this question for Valve, “Do you have genuine skin in the game or not?” I think Valve’s new rules for the reservations answers that well enough. I just wish they had done this from the start.
- Comment on 50 T of "game consoles" imported by Valve in the past week 2 months ago:
Yeah, this is my main concern for the Frame release. I don’t want a “blocked for suspected fraud” credit card payment being the reason I miss the first few minutes of the reservation window, but I also don’t want hundreds of dollars just sitting in my Steam Wallet in case I miss the window anyway. First world problems.
- Comment on Some speculation on the Steam Controller and scalpers 2 months ago:
Yeah, I work at a plant where this is an ongoing concern. If we overstock product, we have to rent trailers to store the excess. The price works out to about $12 per pallet per month. It’s not much, but it’s also not nothing, and if we were in a more urban area, I could see that price quickly getting higher.
- Comment on Some speculation on the Steam Controller and scalpers 2 months ago:
I went through a ton of the reviews, and as far as I know, none of them gave a box weight or even dimensions. Still, I based my palletizing math on the original Steam Controller box, 8.5" x 6.5" x 3", and I don’t think the new one is too far off of that. We’ll know for sure in “3 to 5 business days” at least.
- Comment on Some speculation on the Steam Controller and scalpers 2 months ago:
It doesn’t mean a lot for your overall point, but I think you’re underestimating the weight of the packaging and USB-C cable it comes with a little. I grabbed a cable and a similar sized box and weighed them at 110g. It was a lot flimsier looking box than the controller’s too, so I could see that still being at good bit heavier. With that in mind, I think something closer to this math is more likely:
- 463g per controller including package and all accessories
- 28,000 controllers total or 700 per pallet for 40 pallets
- pallet arrangement of 5 wide by 7 deep by 20 high for 700 exact to fit 40" x 48" pallet at maybe around 60" high
- Comment on Some speculation on the Steam Controller and scalpers 2 months ago:
Unlike some comments here, I don’t think this is a “test run.” Valve just doesn’t like to sit on inventory. Where most companies let some stock build up before opening the flood gates, Valve just puts a product up for sale when the first shipping container comes out of the factory. Many customers end up feeling left out if they can’t make the first wave, but technically the majority of customers get the product earlier than they otherwise would have, so I’m sure Valve sees it as a win-win.
We’ll probably see a steady supply of similar batches for a while. The Deck preorders shipped much the same way.
- Comment on Anyone manage to order a controller? 2 months ago:
I got mine in via Firefox on Android, but it definitely took some persistence.
- Comment on Anyone manage to order a controller? 2 months ago:
Haha, I’ll never forget it because of how much the community was obsessed with mapping order times down to the second with each shipping wave and trying to predict ahead. I checked all those spreadsheets and things quite often in the couple months before my shipping notification. They actually got pretty close. It’s a shame I don’t actually use the Deck more than I do.
- Comment on Anyone manage to order a controller? 2 months ago:
Congrats!
I’m wondering if the “ships in 3 to 5 business days” is valid for everyone who got an order in.