SteamOS

Today we're looking at the Valve Steam Deck, a gaming machine with built-in game controls that runs SteamOS. This device's industrial design owes to several machines that've found some measure of success in the past - the Sega Game Gear, Razer Project Fiona, and the most obviously similar recent powerhouse of a device like this: Nintendo Switch. But might this be a device that's too idyllic to make it to gamer hands in the real world?

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Although gaming handhelds have been around since the days of the Nintendo Game Boy, the Nintendo Switch definitely kicked up interest by a notch, revealing a potentially profitable market for portable devices that can run AAA titles, even in medium or low settings only. That, in turn, has created a series of devices and concept designs inspired by the Switch, except running PC hardware and PC games instead. Given that trend, it's not surprising to hear that Valve, best known for the Steam PC gaming platform, is planning to jump into that fray and no later than the end of this year even.

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The folks at SCUF and Ironburg Inventions sued Valve a few years ago for patent infringement. They claimed that Valve's "Steam Controller" was made without the proper paperwork, working with SCUF to license their patents for back-facing paddle controls. But wait, you might be saying, the Steam Controller isn't the only controller with back-facing paddles, right? You're right!

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Some sad news is coming around the bend today for those who play Rocket League on macOS or Linux, as developer Psyonix has revealed that it will be ending support for both of those operating systems. Support won't be happening right away, but rather in March, giving macOS and Linux users a little bit of time to figure out what they want to do in regards to Rocket League.

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Valve took quite a risk with its Steam Machines which, for the most part, are meant to run the Linux-based SteamOS. While highly praised by Linux gamers, the dearth of notable titles on the platform was almost like a death sentence to the PC-turned-console product. Valve, however, refused to throw in the towel and assured believers that it is still working on improving the situation. It turns out that its solution might involve finding a way to run Windows games on Linux Steam Machines.

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Steam Machines have failed, at least commercially. There’s hardly any argument there. Even Valve itself admits as much. Valve, however, would not concede defeat and promises to remain committed to pushing Linux gaming forward. Some might see it as simple lip service to calm SteamOS fans. Others might see it as a pointless endeavor and business suicide. And yet, if Valve’s dreams are to become reality, it really doesn’t have much choice to stick to its Linux guns for the long term and these are the reasons why.

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Earlier this week, we ushered in the month of April by discovering that Valve had removed mention of Steam Machines - pre-built PCs that run SteamOS - from its hardware listings on Steam's main page. Many people, including me, took this to mean that Valve was moving away from Steam Machines, which haven't been heavily promoted for a couple of years now. Today, Valve spoke out about why it removed the PCs from Steam's main store page, and what that means for other products like SteamOS.

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Two days ago, Valve removed any trace of Steam Machines from its store. If it weren’t for the media coverage, people might not have even remembered they still existed. Except for the hardest core of PC gamers, most have probably presumed Valve’s overnight sensation to have been long gone. And now, it really is. What was first seen as the revolution of PC gaming has now become almost an embarrassing footnote in gaming history. What happened and why did Valve fail so miserably? It all boils down to trying to hit too many birds with just one stone.

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There was a time not too long ago when Steam Machines were an exciting component of Valve's emerging hardware business. Acting as a vehicle for SteamOS, the idea was that Steam Machines would make the process of buying PC hardware a lot more straightforward some folks, while at the same time giving PC gamers more options besides just Windows. While SteamOS has been seeing consistent - if not always visible - improvement over the last few years, the market for Steam Machines seems to have stagnated.

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This current generation of consoles, both the PlayStation 4 and the Xbox One, did something substantially different from their predecessors. For the first time, they sported desktop PC components inside, practically making them special purpose PCs fine-tuned for gaming. That fact, of course, has piqued the curiosity of many modders and hackers in actually making those machines run a different operating system, usually Linux. One such modder is OsirisX, who has not only successfully loaded Linux on the PS4, but was able to get SteamOS games up and running at decent performance.

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Earlier this month, sad news was delivered to Linux gamers everywhere. Arkham Knight was canceled on their OS of choice (as well as on the Mac). Of course, with all of the issues that PC gamers encountered with the game since its original launch, it really wasn't much of a surprise to see it get canned on other platforms. Thankfully, there are other, better games that will see Linux releases.

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Some things that sound too good to be true sometimes do turn out to be such. A SteamOS PC gaming handheld might sound nice, offering the ultimate PC gaming on the go, but turning that dream into reality is going to take a lot more than just a nice idea and a couple of hundred thousand bucks. That's the reality that the team behind SMACH Z is now facing as they cancelled their Kickstarter campaign in order to re-evaluate their goals, requirements, and financial needs. In other words, back to the crowdfunding drawing board.

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