Valve just dropped the next iteration of their hardware not one but 3 new devices

Steam Machines

Steam Frame (VR)

Steam Controller

I feel steam machines which jokingly looks like GameCube 2.0 know as GabeCube might bring many Steam games to consoles into living room, thanks to the steam deck, steam does not need to depend on Xbox now to do that as they have their own Steam OS to handle it building a closed ecosystem for steam gamers.

https://www.threads.com/@indieklem/post/DQ_P03ikpsD

Steam Frame (VR)

I have little experience with VR but this version might be a 2nd attempt at making VR go more main stream, they probably will have Half Life Alyx bundled into the hardware, but I am not so optimistic about it due to the previous high entry price of the older VR headsets and cumbersome setups.

Its a wait and see, but I see Valve feel that VR will be a new comupting mediam as seen by other hardware vendors like meta and apple except the price point is keeping consumers away.

Probably this is to cater to the niche users using Steam games in VR and I believe they have the data to justify making a 2nd Version.

A a dev you should target Steam?

I feel there is not much time to try and cater to many platforms as a solo dev this splits time away from making your game. Some of the indie games that managed to get their games into Xbox or Switch had to hire separate teams to do the porting.

This may help free up that resource if Valve is able to penetrate all forms of play and be a sucessful platform.

But it’s important to note why this may be good Valve does take a steep cut of 30% except this time it might be jsutified with differen forms of hardware distribution to play games.

On Steam, the competition is immense with huge backlogs and new titles releasing to about the time of 10,000 titles a year. But I am hoping with the hardware releases and consumer friendly (this is perception on consumer side) that with enough hardware distribtion your game might have a chance of visibitlity.

One thing I feel as a solo dev I want to be able to distrubute the game once without haveing to worry too much of compatability and wiht a $100 entrance fee its a good time to try.

Unknowns Possible Half life 3

There is rumors that Half Life 3 is going to be bundled with Steam machines. If this is true it may move some significant units of the hardware.

Not sure about the price yet, this is some thing I am still hopeing it won’t cost as much as the next PS5 Pros or XBOX prices.

One thing is for sure Gabe did nothing much and just won