There was a Mario movie trailer today, though I haven’t watched that yet because something else got my attention. The Deckard is real, and it’s called the Steam Frame. On top of that, Valve’s giving another go for the Steam Controller and Steam Machine ideas.
People have been waiting around a while for Valve to make another headset, especially since Index stuff has been discontinued and harder to find even secondhand, and this one’s more like a standalone in design, but also meant to be wirelessly connected to a gaming PC to play whatever the headset alone can’t handle, just as all the leaks and rumors suggested. The controllers are also more traditional, looking a lot like the current Quest ones down to using a replaceable battery rather than a built-in rechargeable, which of course can be replaced with a rechargeable of the same size. As someone who’s managed to get two other wired headsets working with my VR gaming PC, I’m not immediately jumping at this, but it’s good to have a wireless standalone option that’s not a Quest and is also available outside of parts of Asia and Europe. Depending on the price, which was one lacking detail consistent with all of their hardware announcements today, I’ll have to think on it.
The Steam Controller is coming back, and as someone who checked out the first iteration and found it neat, this one also seems neat, though it’s obviously designed after the Steam Deck’s layout so it looks a bit weird and square, but it might end up being pretty comfortable. At the moment I’m probably fine with my old one, as infrequently as I use that though I really should check it out more for whatever I find a little awkward to play in both keyboard and mouse as well as standard controller. I do also have my Steam Deck.
Then there’s the Steam Machine. This time it’s being done directly instead of hoping hardware manufacturers catch on, and with the progress since the first time on aspects like Proton and SteamOS itself, being a modified distro of Arch Linux, plus what they’ve figured out working on the Steam Deck, it has good potential, we just have to see how much it’s realized. It’s more the implications that I’m looking at, if VR gaming on Linux is going to become much more accessible for one thing. On top of that, this seems like what Microsoft is attempting to do with the Xbox brand according to whatever info or misinfo is flying around at the moment, but a year sooner at least. A home console that’s also just a PC, and not tied to Windows weirdness. Granted, it’s also tied to Steam stuff by default, but they say that as a PC you can install whatever you want on there that’ll work, and people have been doing that with Steam Decks since launch.
Of course I see the whole picture here, someone with enough cash could pick up all three things and hook them together, so they can do VR or virtual screen gaming powered by the PC and using either type of controllers for whatever game. Whatever ulterior business motives might be behind this to keep Steam dominating PC gaming, this is at least a push for the fabled Year of the Linux Desktop, as much as an uphill battle this is against the Windows behemoth despite Microsoft’s best efforts at self-sabotage, and the rest often using Macs for whatever things people use Macs for, I think video editing and iOS app development is a lot of it. Sometimes there’s games on there too, but I don’t see these as often and it seems like a big deal when a major game gets a Mac version.
I’ve been using a Linux desktop as my daily driver for general tasks like web stuff and whatnot for about a couple years now, and my main gaming PC is the Windows 10 machine that I’ll keep on that OS for as long as Steam supports it at least. I hope to not have to deal with Windows 11 and its continued weirdness including recording the whole desktop constantly and spawning too many Task Managers and sometimes just breaking games entirely. My second gaming PC would be the Steam Deck, which is just neat. And my work at the moment usually involves a Mac. So there’s days where I’m on all three kinds of OS. I have complaints about all of them of course, with both Windows and Mac doing weird stuff for whatever reason or insisting on having online logins just to get on the machine, and Linux in general not having all the games and other certain programs on it, but that’s an issue that’s being worked on further by the day. Meanwhile I just see the other OS getting more concerning, including the inclusion of highly-insisted-you-use-this “AI” stuff that’s not quite ready for prime time if it will be. At least it’s a little easier to just hide that away on Mac, for now at least.
Long story short, Valve hardware is neat, even if it’s similar to previous hardware but it runs on Linux this time. It’s more the implications of “Linux can do games pretty well now” even if a lot of that was helped along by Valve, but it’s help regardless. I don’t know how much of this round of stuff I’ll get since I generally have all those niches filled at the moment. In fact I was more going back and forth on a Switch 2 because of that Kirby Air Riders game coming out soon and my mindset still moving more toward a “carpe diem” one but still held back by the desire to save cash for some kind of apocalypse where I can still use cash I guess. Speaking of Nintendo, there was that Mario movie trailer, so I guess I’ll look at that now.
Yep, it sure is a trailer that assumes you’ve seen the previous movie or were at least spoiled on it. Jack Blowser is jar-sized and then they go to the Super Mario Galaxy, which is also other games. Apparently Bowser Jr. is the Prowler according to people. Also Rosalina defeats an Eggman robot. I’ll probably see it at some point later. I don’t usually go to theaters though, especially on opening weekends. Me seeing the new Superman in theaters on opening weekend was a rare occurrence by that metric, but I was invited and had nothing else going on. It was a neat movie. All I ask for in a movie is that it’s entertaining, which isn’t a high bar but it’s more of a wiggly one that can be somewhere between hilariously bad and amazingly good, just not something that bores me by being too sappy for the most part.