Steam Machine may kill consoles
Steam Machine Release
The Steam Machine is coming soon:
IGN - Update Leak Suggests Four Steam Machine Packages
The Steam Machine is quite a big entry of Steam back into the console and set-top gaming market.
The original Steam Machine previously was quite unseccessful back in 2015:
The reasons for the lack of interest and support were many fold:
- Hardware was a little lacklustre compared to competing consoles and PC’s.
- SteamOS not really being well suited to gamers at the time.
- Lack of titles
- The big competitors were selling like hotcakes at the time (PS4 and Xbox One)
It was the wrong machine, with the wrong titles at the wrong time.
VG237 - Proof of death: Valve removes the Steam Machines section from Steam
However… this time… its different. Very different.
Steam as a store
Back in 2015 Steams entire store of games was a total of roughly 1500 SteamOS Linux compatible games.
Today, Steam has in excess of 25,000 SteamOS games.. with potentially over 100,000 games able to run under Proton on SteamOS! Added to that, there are over 9,000 games specifically targeted for native Linux.
The main improvements have occurred with the massive popularity of the SteamDeck:
GamingOnLinux = Steam Deck sales still going strong over three years later
Where it helped improve and expand the Proton system for more and more compatible games.
TweakTown - Valves Proton 11 beta unlocks more playable games
And for me, this is the interesting part that people seem to have ignored or maybe not understood going forward.
What is Proton
Proton is a fork of the Wine project which allows Linux users to run Windows applications (native ones) on Linux with minimal adjustments to the application.
This project has been quietly moving forward as an Open Source project (Wine) for 32 yrs now. And it has quite extensive features, even running older software often better and more compatible than modern Win11 runs old windows apps!
The Proton fork Valve has been sponsoring is here:
And the important thing is this is both open source, and partnered with Valves excellent engineers as well. This fork, is getting regular monthly improvements.
Proton is a more “tweaked” version of Wine specifically for handling games. The focus is on graphics, audio, input and movie playback and performance. With that in mind, this creates a fascintating process. One which developers, gamers, and Valve can cooperate on building the best version for their hardware.
Thus. Valve have built community developers support, gamers support and a “layer” of hardware abstraction that is bolted directly into SteamOS.
Proton is really important - because this actually allows other hardware to run this as well. PC gamers can (and have) already made their own Steam Machines:
T3 - I built my own Steam Machine
This benefits Steam because more users will use the Steam ecosystem, but it also means alternative Steam Machine manufacturers will be able to get in on the act and make various levels of high performance Steam Machine.
It is very similar to how the Steam Deck has done well. It has regular hardware sales, but the big interesting numbers are how many people are installing SteamOS on other handheld platforms.
Steam will be king
There is nothing like Steam from a game development and gamer perspective that brings these two groups together so well in community forums, game early access, networking integration, and marketing… oh. The marketing we will talk about that.
Steam already is now a one-stop shop for games. “Is it on Steam yet” is no longer a phrase used by gamers. Games are relased day-0 on Steam (or close to) otherwise you can miss out on massive marketing and captured market attention.
A popular release on Steam can quickly gain millions of players in a matter of days. There is no other platform that can do this with such a wide variety of games being released.
Some numbers to boggle the mind:
- Steam releases around 1000-1500 games per month.
- Steam games do regularly sell 200,000-500,000 units in a week (and more).
- Steam has over 132 million monthly active users and 96 million daily active users
- Annual Revenue of $10.8 billion USD
This is a growing market in a world where finding growing markets is hard. Here it is. Right here.
And the big recent change in the gaming world, is that AAA game development publishers and studios are no longer the main producers of big titles anymore - Independent studios are now more than 50% of the successfully selling gaming market.
CGM - How Indie Studios are Beating AAA Games At Their OWn Storytelling Game
80LU - IIndie Games Break Records
The end result of this, if you look at the numbers, as an investor, the indie market is where your money should go. And who is the main store platform for indie developers? Steam. Yes. Steam.
Steam, with the developers, the quality titles and the marketing from the Steam store itself is already king in the PC gaming world - there are no competitors for them here. The Microsoft store briefly was, now its not.
Steam isnt just a store though. Its power in both genre marketing, community marketing, ewarly access and wishlisting are concrete ways that an entire marketing campaign can be applied on Steam alone! The huge user audience of 96 million people checking the store daily is a captured gaming audience with no comparison. Marketing alone on Steam has been one of the greatest benefits for Indie developers in the last decade. And this is set to become substantially bigger.
If you land the whole Steam ecosystem onto a good performing, reasonably priced (around $1000) console, then I dont think it will matter what Sony, Nintendo or Microsoft do from hereon in. They are toast. The tidal wave of benefits to developers, gamers, companies are all large positives. The only question is if Valve stuggle with supply - which in some cases in the past (PS5) that might not be a bad thing.
The days of Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft consoles are coming to an end. I dont think they will disappear, since there are fan markets of those systems that will probably manage to keep these companies profitable enough for a little while. But without the unique and big indie titles hitting Sony or MS consoles exclusively.. there just is no competition.
The great change…
This is what the gaming industry needs anyway. Yes. It does. For too long Sony, MS and Nintendo have re-hashed old IP over and over again to less and less effect. Especially when it comes to taking old titles and “enhancing them” for newer consoles - this was a grand scam by itself and it shows the lack of creativity in modern AAA studios anymore.
There are very few “great” AAA gaming studios left. Maybe a couple in Japan, and thats about it. The rest have become Unreal Engine bling junkies and have forgotten how to make “great” games entirely. This is why indie development will continue their growth and dominance of the industry, like they deserve finally…
The new Steam Machine is a fullstop in console gaming. If Sony, MS or Nintendo want to survive they are going to need to come up with something radically new, very quickly or they are going to have to make Steam compatible consoles - I think this is very likely, but it then destroys their own profit making business.
This is all my opinion though. Anything can .. and often does.. happen. However it would surprise me if the Steam Machine didnt change the console industry forever. The time is right, the price looks to be right, the hardware is right and the games are right… hard to fail at this point.