Valve gets it. I very much want to support them and vote with my wallet. Unfortunately the Steam machine isn't a good fit for me. I will buy the frame in a heartbeat though. HMD with a FOSS OS? That's in its own class.

I like that we can write the story that Microsoft sold their software with the home computer on the idea of productivity at home while the actual incentive was entertainment, and valve ends up justifying buying gaming hardware with the incentive that it can do productivity.

They need to do that because, in some sense, they're competing with Gaming PCs, not really with Gaming consoles. Gaming consoles sell their consoles at a discounted price because they can recoup a lot of it when selling games. Steam can't have a markup on games because they share their marketplace with other PCs.

That is why the frame will be the most interesting to the people on HN. A VR PC you can do whatever u want with.

And I like knowing that I will own the hardware long term. I have so many bricks at home with great hardware and locked boot loaders.

I do hope they will release drivers for the Steam Machine, otherwise the openness isn’t very useful. Or at least make it possible for others to make drivers by publishing specifications.

Edit, reply to bjord as I am rate limited: HDMI CEC, the chipset, GPU drivers, controller receiver etc.

Edit, reply to robhlt: Thanks! Hope we can get that ported to Windows

Xbox Series S/X, PS5 and both Switches are pretty much commodity hardware.

Nobody has even hinted that it would be nice to have a 3rd party store or the ability to run whatever OS on them freely.

I keep wondering why.