Valve Removes Steam Machine Store Page

[Sniperfox47]

52 minutes ago, Derangel said:

Atari? Lol. Don't put your hopes in Atari. The Atari Box is going to fail harder than Steam Machines.

Based on the pushback when they delayed preorders that's already not the case. Don't underestimate the power of nostalgia *cough*nesclassic*cough*.

 

But I guess we will see. I don't expect it to sell crazy well but I'm willlling to bet we'll at least see the sales to support the platform.

[Derangel]

37 minutes ago, Sniperfox47 said:

Based on the pushback when they delayed preorders that's already not the case. Don't underestimate the power of nostalgia *cough*nesclassic*cough*.

 

But I guess we will see. I don't expect it to sell crazy well but I'm willlling to bet we'll at least see the sales to support the platform.

Legal means to get a lot of stuff on the NES Classic have generally been few and far between. Atari (or the various companies that leech off that name) has been shitting out compilations of 2600 titles for the last couple decades. I don't think the nostalgia is as strong for them as it is for early Nintendo stuff. Plus, $300(?) system vs the $50 NESClassic or $70 SNESClassic. $300 is a lot to ask for the sake of nostalgia and a bunch of indie games you can already buy and play on low powered computers.

 

The Ouya received a lot of pushback when they delayed too. How did that system turn out? Valve got a ton of flack for how they handled Steam Machines and SteamOS. Where are those two now? Social media pushback is not an indicator of sales. If the Atari Box/VCS is as underpowered as people are speculating it will fail.

 

Even if the nostalgia exists for old Atari games you're still relying on this version of Atari being able to release anything half-way decent. Have you seen any of the recent games with their name attached? They're all horrible and the new Rollar Coaster Tycoon looks like some half-assed knock-off someone made with a $5 budget. This is the company you're putting hope into?

[Donut417]

To be honest I never though the steam machines would succeed. It was more about pushing gaming on Linux any way. While AAA titles might be lacking, many indie devs are making Linux versions of games. So to some one like me, who generally doesn't play AAA titles as most are broken as shit when released anyway. The push to Linux is nice. Especially if MS keeps going to way they are going. 

[Sniperfox47]

1 hour ago, Derangel said:

Even if the nostalgia exists for old Atari games you're still relying on this version of Atari being able to release anything half-way decent. Have you seen any of the recent games with their name attached? They're all horrible and the new Rollar Coaster Tycoon looks like some half-assed knock-off someone made with a $5 budget. This is the company you're putting hope into?

It's not about nostalgia for the games themselves thought look at the design and marketing of the console itself. It's intentionally queing off of the nostalgia of the branding and design as a whole.

 

And that's the whole point. It's not just Atari pushing a console with a bunch of their old games. In fact they've already said it's not them developing most of the games. It's about creating a platform for indie games to target, onboarding those indie devs who have less resistance to new platforms, encouraging exclusive titles from those same devs, and building up an indie and hackable ecosystem.

 

The Ouya ultimately flopped because it's hardware was straight up hot garbage. Even by normal Android device standards. Android also wasn't yet at a point where it supported things like the Android Extension Pack and high quality graphics hardware. It was doomed from the start on both software and hardware support.

 

The new VCS is x86 with stock Linux. It's not super powerful but it's decent enough to run things like WoW and eSports titles "decently enough". It's got support for in-home and cloud game streaming. In general it's just got a stronger base to build from than the Ouya. But again, we'll see.

[Nowak]

A Valve employee has posted about this. Interesting read.

 

https://steamcommunity.com/app/221410/discussions/0/1696043806550421224/