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S.T.A.G.E. on 05 July 2017
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derpysquirtle64 said:
S.T.A.G.E. said:

Agreed for a good chunk of sonys library, but the chunk of Sonys library that is exclusive is still more exclusive and a selling point compared to Microsoft. There is little to no exclusivity between Xbox and PC now save for Halo. Once Halo is gone, its done. They arent close in that respect. if Nintendo had third party support the narrative that you hold for Sony would it remain true for them as well. The core exclusives for the Japanese brands are not multiplatform. This is where Microsoft becomes the anomaly.

Once your exclusivity is gone so is your indentity. Your console is just an optional vessel for the games that pass through. As I alluded to before, this is what the steam box was going to be. Without exclusives consoles gamers want and an affordable price, it had no chance against the other consoles.

Steam machines didn't fail just because they've had no exclusives. The main reason they failed is that they've had SteamOS pre-installed and this OS isn't supported by major pbulishers. So it basically had almost nothing but indie games and a few AAA titles. While you could have installed Windows on it, it would kill the purpose of buying this thing instead of PC. Because then you will need to install OS, install Steam drivers, etc, the same as on PC. It kills that simplicity of console gaming when you just press power button, insert disc and play. 

So, with Steam machines consumers were left with 2 choices: either you have very small amount of games to play but with console simplicity, or either you can access all Steam library but you will basically turn your Steam machine into PC hooked up to TV rather than console. I think Steam machines would have succeded more if they had Windows as an OS with Steam Big Picture in auto-start. But then Valve would be needed to pay MS for Windows license which they didn't want to do.

Interesting. So the steambox had so much more standing in its way before it even got to the real battle of competing. Thanks for this information. I will look into it. While I still think the Steam Box would've had a harder time in the console market regardless, its interesting to see the complexity of its issues before it could get its feet on the ground. Once again, thanks for this.