The Communication Cube


I think it was outselling Battlefield 6, but I don't play either as I don't play (much) multiplayer these days.
BF6 has single-player, but I'm not a fan of the kernel-level anti-cheat on PC.
Aww. I would've bought BF, too. Used to love 2. Oh well.
 
Aww. I would've bought BF, too. Used to love 2. Oh well.
I went from BF1942 to Rainbow 6 Ravenshield, to BF2 which I played so much. BF3 was great to, especially graphics, but the browser plug-in was annoying. Afterwards I mostly played single player games. So I was happy Battlefield games still had a single player mode. I might get BF6 on console when the price drops, and I have free time.
 
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I've thought for a while headset gaming will be big. You can just lie on your bed and disconnect. Add drugs to the mix and youre in heaven.
 
"Foveated Streaming" - When streaming over the network the headset tracks where your eyes are looking to make sure that those areas of the picture are the sharpest, saving bandwidth and improving quality. Neat.
 
I'm intrigued by the Steam Machine. It's assumed it will be quite expensive but it could be heavily subsidised by (high) game commissions. If gamers spend an average of £500 a year on digital downloads then Valve gets £150 (per year) which they could use to bring the price down which means more Machines sold which means more games sold which means more games produced which means more games sold which means more commission which means cheaper Machines, etc. Eventually Stream Machines will be free and it will be GAME OVER for PlayStation.
 
I'm intrigued by the Steam Machine. It's assumed it will be quite expensive but it could be heavily subsidised by (high) game commissions. If gamers spend an average of £500 a year on digital downloads then Valve gets £150 (per year) which they could use to bring the price down which means more Machines sold which means more games sold which means more games produced which means more games sold which means more commission which means cheaper Machines, etc. Eventually Stream Machines will be free and it will be GAME OVER for PlayStation.
I would expect that they have a bit of an older hardware produced on a cheaper process node to get the price as low a possible. A Steam Machine at $800 would still sell but it would get crazy if it's $400 or less.
My expectation is that it won't be cheap, even though the Steam Deck was really sharply priced at the time. According to LTT it will be priced "like a PC", hinting at a higher price compared to consoles (Xbox/PS are like $700).

If the controller is priced a bit high, you might expect people to purchase the base console + one extra controller, but I guess that won't be enough to have a lower base price. But maybe the buzz generated by the Steam Deck makes Valve comfortable with a higher base price. They didn't announce HL3 yet, but that could be a system seller I guess. Especially with the VR headset (sure, HL3 isn't VR), so people could also play HL:Alyx if they wish to do so to get the full Half-Life line-up.
 
I'm intrigued by the Steam Machine. It's assumed it will be quite expensive but it could be heavily subsidised by (high) game commissions. If gamers spend an average of £500 a year on digital downloads then Valve gets £150 (per year) which they could use to bring the price down which means more Machines sold which means more games sold which means more games produced which means more games sold which means more commission which means cheaper Machines, etc. Eventually Stream Machines will be free and it will be GAME OVER for PlayStation.
 
@TeDaDeS I think I heard that the Steam Machine has a Zen4 SoC. ? Old enough 4 you?
Zen4 is from 2022, Zen5 from 2024. Zen4 isn't antique, and Valve uses a custom design, but I think they went for this generation to reduce the costs.
Best guess it's a Hawk Point made on TSMC's N5P/N6 process nodes, that node is roughly 25% cheaper compared to Zen5 on N4.
 
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