site banner
PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   2195 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for January 5, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

1
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

To date, Valve has never meaningfully iterated on their hardware.

First the Steam Link and Steam Machines, until they lost interest in that.
Then the Index, until they (mostly) lost interest in that.
Now the Steam Deck. It's only been out for a year and a bit and they replaced the screen- sure, faster than Nintendo did, but that's a really low bar.

Sure, the Switch 2 has absolutely sold a lot of units- far more than any other Valve hardware product has- but I can understand why a manufacturer wouldn't be interested in seriously developing the Gabe Gear with a track record of no repeat business- especially if they're now saying "there won't be a new one for a while", and when Valve says "a while"...

At least never releasing a second version of a thing prevents people from asking them when the third one's coming.

At least never releasing a second version of a thing prevents people from asking them when the third one's coming.

The most wounding comment I've ever read on the Motte.

Yeah, especially given Valve's competence in the designs it does create, it's weird how much they don't like building new stuff. Even places that look like past iterations aren't, officially: the Lighthouse V1s were HTC builds and V2s were the first genuine Valve production design, and the Knuckles controllers were 'updated' a few different times but never had an official release.

Optimistically, maybe that's just Valve Being Valve, and when they get bored other people can go into the market that they've formalized (and done a lot of the annoying software work for). Pessimistically, if you only expected to have one shot at this design and picked those joysticks, it doesn't say a lot about what you're planning around. Worse, other companies seem equally cautious about the field: Asus looks like it's using off-the-shelf panel-controller combos on their display as well, even if a little higher-quality, and hasn't committed to long-term support or replacement parts.

((And Asus isn't as competent when it comes to software.))

I think that whole "playground" structure they have there (they call it "flat office", but "office" suggests it's a place where work happens) does kind of kneecap them when it's time to do things long-term or that are "uninteresting". I think Valve gets to be Valve because Steam literally prints money, so as long as they're not drawing the budget down too hard they (as a business) can piss high-six-figures-per-employee time into a hole indefinitely.

I think the hardware strategy might have been intended as some internal group's hack around this, because hardware designs have a half shelf life. If they want a game to push the hardware- and as everyone rushing to adopt the Alyx way of grabbing things showed that was the right decision- they need to make harder decisions and actually sit down together and make the thing rather than sit around and Episode 3 it up until Mark Laidlaw leaves an obscene yearly income behind for lack of work (also semi-retirement, but y'know).

I don't think it worked as well with the Steam Deck- yeah, we got Desk Job, but I think the "become really exclusive Nintendo" (one game per franchise per hardware release, and those games are tech demos that encourage full use of the hardware) thing might have a chance if they had a success rate greater than 1 in 2 (only counting post-Index). And the only unique thing with the Deck, other than the form factor, is the gyros (done already with the Switch, but in fairness Nintendo didn't do it right) and the touchpads (which not even Valve gets right on the first time- the ones on the Knuckles are just awful- and the PS4 console ports most people are playing on the Gabe Boy Advance probably don't implement touch controls, good riddance).

That said, however, I think console manufacturers have absolutely been put on notice. Nintendo has it worst because the Deck is literally just a better Switch that they got soundly beat to market releasing and the fact the Deck implements all Switch hardware (and then some) is fantastic for pirates customers who want a better refresh rate or maybe just to do this, and this thing kind of boxes Sony and MS (to a lesser extent, since Microsoft's game pass doesn't really work on Linux to my knowledge) into a place they really do not want to go, since the Gabe Boy Advance is also a better PS4/XBone than those consoles are and GPU improvements in the sub-400-dollar range over what those consoles currently use literally do not exist.

Also, doesn't ASUS clone-and-one-better a computer in basically every form factor anyway?

Also, doesn't ASUS clone-and-one-better a computer in basically every form factor anyway?

Weirdly, no. For the bigger markets, they're willing to make weird one- and two-offs (though not always well, contrast FriendlyElec).

But there is no Asus GPD-clone, for example, probably because it's just too small of a market. While the 5-inch tablets in general have just dissolved since around 2010 for everybody but the weird Aliexpress vendors, for 7-inch tablets you're looking at the MeMoPads running android 4.4 on an atom processor from 2014 (wut), despite a lot of sales at the high and low ends. They don't do nano itx as a form factor, period, even as they've become a major player for NUCs.

Which isn't an awful decision as a business -- spread too far and you lose yourself -- but it's a weird one.

Don't forget the steam controller.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats