GameStop Stores to Carry Steam Machines in Dedicated Steam Sections

I think it's time to celebrate by buying this shirt.

Wonder if they'll try to set aside some floorspace as a Vive VR demo area.

Do the steam machines they carry have physical media slots? what are those things called again? oh yeah dvd drive or blu-ray drives?

Imagine the damage this will do to PC gaming when a novice user goes to Gamestop, buys a Steam Machine and discovers that the titles available for it are all flavor-of-the-month Indie side scrollers or years old Windows ports that run like dog shit. Or when he attempts to play an online FPS and gets crushed due to his useless Steam Controller.

I do hope, for the greater good, that the consumers who purchase Steam Machines are aware that touchpads and poorly performing Linux games do not represent PC gaming. If not, then this endeavor by Valve could have the opposite intended effect - turning people off to PC gaming instead of drawing them in.

I was thinkg of this the other day. TV's have or are going to have hardware picture enhancements so it WILL make old games fun.

crusty_juggler said:

Imagine the damage this will do to PC gaming when a novice user goes to Gamestop, buys a Steam Machine and discovers that the titles available for it are all flavor-of-the-month Indie side scrollers or years old Windows ports that run like dog shit. Or when he attempts to play an online FPS and gets crushed due to his useless Steam Controller.

I do hope, for the greater good, that the consumers who purchase Steam Machines are aware that touchpads and poorly performing Linux games do not represent PC gaming. If not, then this endeavor by Valve could have the opposite intended effect - turning people off to PC gaming instead of drawing them in.

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I have no idea if this really matters. I don't have an issue with Linux based Steam Machines. I also think that no one outside of the anti-Microsoft crowed really cares either, let alone even heard of them. I will be interesting to see if these things make a dent, which I seriously doubt. I still don't get the point of them for average PC gamers. Or why anyone in a GameStop would buy this over a PS4 or Xbone. Not unless there is some killer exclusive coming. And the only one I can think of would be HL3 which I seriously doubt that Valve would release to only 1% of its current customer base to promote a platform it makes no money from when it makes its money selling game no matter the platform.

There's just a lot of questions about this concept. I doubt the answers will all arrive on November 10. Valve obviously was obviously worried about the Windows Store when 8 came 8 out. And actually there's a little more to be worried about in Windows 10 as Win32 apps are now going to be in the store, including games. So I don't fault Valve for what it's doing. But Linux gaming market share has to do a lot more than it is now and I don't see how Steam Machines will address that.

Ashbringer said:

I think it's time to celebrate by buying this shirt.

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I almost fell off the toilet laughing...

So a store that sells 99% console stuff is getting a new console to sell...

I wonder how long it will take for Steam/Valve to force game for their console and less for PC's
much like Microsoft did with xbox.

If you think a Steam Machine is a PC and not a console. Think again.
Only games made to run on SteamOS will work.

You can install Windows but it will Void your warranty

My concern is that if a wide-eyed, budding PC gamer walks into a Gamestop and buys a Steam Machine, he'll be forever turned off to PC gaming once he discovers the limited number of games available for it, their poor comparative performance to those on Windows and the inferiority of the Steam touchpad to mouse+KB.

Basically, I don't want to see some 16 year-old kid struggle to save up cash from his minimum wage job to then waste on a Steam Machine and then think to himself, "THIS is PC gaming!?".

We need to draw more people in to the PC platform, and I'm afraid that entry level, non-technically inclined gamers (whom Steam Machines are targeted towards) are going to get burned by Steam Machines.

Loose Nut said:

I wonder how long it will take for Steam/Valve to force game for their console and less for PC's
much like Microsoft did with xbox.

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There's no financial incentive for Valve to do this. They don't make a dime on Steam Machines, they make their money through game sales regardless of the platform.

crusty_juggler said:

Imagine the damage this will do to PC gaming when a novice user goes to Gamestop, buys a Steam Machine and discovers that the titles available for it are all flavor-of-the-month Indie side scrollers or years old Windows ports that run like dog shit. Or when he attempts to play an online FPS and gets crushed due to his useless Steam Controller.

I do hope, for the greater good, that the consumers who purchase Steam Machines are aware that touchpads and poorly performing Linux games do not represent PC gaming. If not, then this endeavor by Valve could have the opposite intended effect - turning people off to PC gaming instead of drawing them in.

Click to expand...

The few games I've played with on Linux (not SteamOS mind you, but Mint 17.x versions with the Steam client installed) haven't really exhibited any performance difference on the same hardware that I've really noticed (Dell Latitude e6400, C2D 2.26 GHz, 4GB RAM, NVS 160m GPU). Unless SteamOS is specifically broken in some odd way, I think that the performance of the ~1/3rd of the Steam library that runs under Linux will be reasonable on a Steam Machine which will have much more modern hardware. Also, I just can't imagine why they would disallow the use of a keyboard and mouse if the user wants to plug one into it. Even the Nintendo Wii was like "Oh, a USB keyboard? Yeah, I can support that thing-y."

I think your fears are irrational anyhow. I mean like, there are literally swarms of old fat guys out there now who play games on PCs that started playing games on consoles first and the experience didn't mentally scar them for life and prevent them from going from being little Nintendo addicts to being PC game addicts. No matter what, you can totally count on people picking up unhealthy infatuations with various forms of entertainment because they're humans and that's just what humans do.

crusty_juggler said:

Imagine the damage this will do to PC gaming when a novice user goes to Gamestop, buys a Steam Machine and discovers that the titles available for it are all flavor-of-the-month Indie side scrollers or years old Windows ports that run like dog shit. Or when he attempts to play an online FPS and gets crushed due to his useless Steam Controller.

Click to expand...

I was not aware of the limitations, but you are right.

crusty_juggler said:

My concern is that if a wide-eyed, budding PC gamer walks into a Gamestop and buys a Steam Machine, he'll be forever turned off to PC gaming once he discovers the limited number of games available for it, their poor comparative performance to those on Windows and the inferiority of the Steam touchpad to mouse+KB.

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I'll take another HuniePop over another BF, CoD, or Batman any day.

Soooo... Where exactly are they going to even put these in Gamestop?

All of them that I have set foot in in the past 5 years or so have been so small that the place is crowded when there are more than about 5 customers, not to mention the complete lack of space for any more product.