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Comment by adamrezich | Hacker News Reader

I was initially skeptical of the effectiveness of their hedge against Windows but in the end, over time, it ended up being quite fruitful

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I am personally reaping the benefits of their labor. I do wonder how much business impact it has. The steam deck has sold about 1/10 of the units as the PS5. On Steam all Linux is 1.5% of users.

I think the biggest business impact might be behind-the-scenes negotiations with Microsoft.

Of course, this is a seed that might bare more profitable fruit in the future.

I am not sure why you compare PS5 sales to Steam Deck, Playstation is a brand that has been around from the 90s, has been advertised left and right, and so is known in every angle of the world, and are not even the same format/segment, I'd compare Steam Deck sales to ASUS Rog Ally if anything, since they've been around for pretty much the same and have been advertised as much?

I compared the Steam Deck to the current market leader in console sales.

Which is Nintendo Switch when it comes to latest gen consoles. https://www.vgchartz.com/article/458542/ps5-vs-switch-sales-...

Do Playstation still have a portable unit of some sort? Like the PSP used to be.

If so, that's probably the thing to compare it against. :)

Sony gave up on handhelds after the PS Vita didn't take off (even though Sony never did anything to help it take off in the west in the first place).

They don't have any directly comparable unit.

They did recently release "PlayStation Portal" which has the form factor of a portable gaming unit, but its not really a portable gaming console, its a portable hardware streaming client for PS5 games.

It's insurance policy; an option. You can't do the work they have done over the past two decades to support Linux gaming overnight.

If Microsoft pulls some radical move, Valve will be in a better position to react than having to start from scratch.

They still depend on Windows games developer ecosystem regardless.

and their effort are reflected there too

Numbers to go along with assertion?

They still depend on Windows developers.

They would have an edge if they would actually be pushing for native GNU/Linux games, as it is, it is just like OS/2 runs Windows better than Windows, kind of thing.

Just wait until the other SteamDeck competitors get more market share, all of them running Windows.

> They would have an edge if they would actually be pushing for native GNU/Linux games, as it is

The game using a PE or ELF for its binary is irrelevant, what matters is the game actually running. There was a fringe loud minority that went all "No Tux No Bux" a few years ago but nobody really cares about that anymore.

> it is just like OS/2 runs Windows better than Windows, kind of thing.

This is a myth, OS/2 was only able to run 16bit Windows software and that was when 32bit Windows software - which OS/2 was unable to run - was starting to become relevant. In addition OS/2 wasn't even able to run 16bit Windows software as good as real Windows as there were various small incompatibilities (e.g. try running Delphi 1 on it and see all the visual gliches). And finally OS/2's (in)compatibility with Windows was among the smaller of its issues - more important was the lack of hardware support at a time when 3rd party "PC compatible" hardware was the majority of PCs and lack of support by IBM themselves (the story mentioning how IBM saw OS/2 as an accessory to their mainframe business has been posted a few times over the years here).

And let's not forget the anticompetitive licensing scheme Microsoft had for their OSes that practically forced people to get DOS/Windows unless they explicitly asked for something different (that would end up more expensive).

like steam machine?, they doed becauae of that

Which only proves the lack of Valve's power against the Windows developer ecosystem.

Lets see how the SteamDeck will stand against a market flooded with Windows handelds, Game Pass and GeForce Now, from 2024 onwards.

Geforce Now existed before Steam Deck. It has it's niche but it's not same. I used it for a bit, too. Real competition is Windows handhelds.

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