Where Steam Deck Learns From Steam Machine
Last week Valve announced Steam Deck, a handheld PC with a starter price of $399 and going up to $650 for the highest end model. Automatically people compared it to other Valve hardware, namely the Steam Machine; Valve's attempt at the console market in 2015 that failed miserably. However, I disagree with people making this comparison; in fact I think Steam Deck stands a far better chance than Steam Machine did. But in order to understand why I need to explain why Steam Machine failed in the first place and where the Deck seems to learn from it. The Steam Machine was released in 2015 as an attempt to go up against the PS4 and Xbox One while offering an entry into the PC market for non-PC gamers. This was where the problem began, no one knew is this was meant as just a prebuilt PC or a whole new console. And because Valve took the 3DO route of licensing the brand no one knew if you could even upgrade a Steam Machine. It was a very muddled system with an unclear role in a market wher...