Ahoy!

I do love a good future prediction thread, especially one that seems completely nuts when I post it!

Anyway, it appears that Steam is going to start including pre-loaded Steam OS on third party devices; probably ROG Ally style handhelds.

After this I do think they'll make a console version of the Steamdeck which will be the end for Xbox.  You'll buy Switch 2 for those sweet Nintendo games, PS5 Pro for a premium optimised console experience and a Steam Machine because, well Steam is great!  There will be no room left in the market for the Xbox consoles.

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Anyway, I don't think Steam will stop there.

Considering the amount of PC's being made and sold for purely just gaming, in these cases why wouldn't you forego the awful nightmare that is Windows 11 and just use Steam OS for a Desktop PC gaming rig?

I can see people buying pre-built "Gaming PC's" coming with Steam OS installed instead of Windows 11 as standard.

Once people start talking about the performance benefit of not having Windows 11 hogging up system resources (even if its very little difference, you know how hyperbolé spreads online), I can see a large chunk of users abandon Windows 11 in their gaming PC's.

Now obviously most Windows users are actually office users so I'm not trying to say this is the death of Windows or anything.  But for adult users, who maybe have a Mac/Work machine as well as a Gaming PC, as well as users who ONLY use their PC exclusivly for gaming (younger users), I think there is an argument to say that Steam OS could quite easily take the place of Windows 11.

Never say never but I don't see Steam releasing a "console" for 2 reason:
-They already did, it was the steam machine and whatever numbers they added to steam it was enough to not keep licensing the name.
-The Steam Deck is basically that, a lot of people actually use it as their gaming pc instead of just a portable device and it actually works great for a cheap "first time"-work in your living room kind of pc.

It's still up to know how committed MS is to xbox as a console but if they are still interested that rumor of they including steam on their consoles is probably the most intelligent move they can make. Spencer said it, they lost the generation where users built their digital libraries and steam is the biggest digital library there is, an xbox series s2 with steam would be the cheapest way out there for steam games. Still the fact is as much as people complain about prices, they aren't really that interested in "cheap". The idea of the series s on paper sounded like a killing idea but it sold less than the series x.

I can see that eventually being the case. Valve tried that a decade ago with Steam Machines, but there's still major issues that Valve would have to overcome as well since it's not just Steam on PC. Very few games are made natively for Linux (underlying OS for SteamOS) so Steam Deck operating has been reliant on a Windows compatibility layer called Proton to get Windows games to work on Linux. Unfortunately, even to this day, tons of games on Steam do not work with Proton.

So Proton is a short-term solution. It's not the long-term solution. Valve would somehow have to get all developers to make native Linux versions of their games for mass adoption of the OS. Because outside of Steam quite a few publishers have their own PC storefronts that either do not work on Linux or have a lot of/all games that don't work on Linux such as Ubisoft, Epic Games, Blizzard, EA, Rockstar, and Riot Games.

Then there's the other issue of Anti-Cheat as multiplayer games take up a massive amount of PC gamers, nearly all of them do not work at all through Proton. So we're looking at many years before this type of scenario comes to pass.

The problem that most people gloss over is that this will raise the price of the unit by a 30-40% margin.

Console prices are subsidsed by users buying games and the 30% cut the platform holder gets.  Including Steam/Epic would remove this cut.

So right now, the practice is to sell the console at basically cost price and make your money on the games.

Why would MS release a box, make no profit, and make no money from game sales?

Highly doubt that Valve will make a console version for Steam Deck. Steam Deck's already niche as it is but more popular than the Steam machines because its portable and a alternative to the portable PC market which doesnt have as much competition as the laptop or desktop markets.

On top of that, SteamOS is a linux based OS which isnt being used as widely as Windows is nor does it have as much support for all the games compared to Windows.

Windows 11 isnt that bad to be honest, been using it for a while now and havent had any issues aside from the S-mode which came with early Windows 11 systems which I had to disable (which they dont implement anymore thankfully).

I'm sticking with Windows instead of Linux, mainly because the applications I use all work fine on Windows regardless of whether its Windows 7, 10 or 11.


I've used Linux at work before and not a fan of the UI.


On top of that, there's still a ton of games which dont run on Linux yet and therefore are not "Deck Verified" for Steam Deck.

I dont see SteamOS overtaking Windows as far as gaming as whole, the number of users will go up for sure when they announce something (likely at CES this year) but I doubt it'll move the needle much.

I'd argue that the biggest threat to Windows is Microsoft. They are the ones that have been messing with Windows, making each new version less user friendly and bringing more and more troubles and compatibility issues. What's happening now with the latest Win11 24H2 release is a clear example of that. That is what's giving Valve is a chance to disrupt the market.

Also, with a bit of tinkering and a careful pick of hardware, you can already build yourself a SteamOS desktop to play games without too many problems and still have a nearly fully functional OS to do regular stuff other than gaming.

LTT posted a video showing it a couple days ago:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdR-bxvQKN8

Valve should just have as a download for whoever wants it.

They do. Here's a link to the .ISO

https://store.steampowered.com/steamos/buildyourown

Cool.

I have games that have worked perfectly in all versions of windows for the past 30 years... Until Windows 11 24H2 update broke everything.
So now I have to use my Windows 98 PC to play those games.

Alpha Centauri is a example.
https://www.reddit.com/r/alphacentauri/comments/1hb4q7r/important_do_not_upgrade_to_windows_11_24h2/

A crap ton of Ubisoft games were borked under Windows 11 24h2 update, so Microsoft paused the rollout of that update to PC's with that software installed.
https://www.theverge.com/2024/11/23/24304313/microsoft-delays-windows-11-24h2-update-ubisoft-star-wars-outlaws-assassins-creed-valhalla-crashes

Competition for Windows is a good thing. Hopefully SteamOS gains some traction.