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Indeed. I guess one reason is that PC gaming hardware was always a moving target, and so newer games and graphics APIs exploiting features found in newer hardware, and hardware makers enabling them (driven by capitalism) created a vicious cycle.

Luckily the market did find a sort of stable target to aim for with the Steam Deck; many modern titles do aim to work well with those modest specs, such as Cyberpunk 2077, Baldur's Gate 3 etc. And when Blizzard launched Diablo IV on Steam, they explicitly announced that they had partnered with Valve to ensure the game was heavily optimised for the Deck and very playable on Day 1 (and it was indeed, from my experience).

Hopefully we see more such examples with the Steam Machine. And I do agree with you that they could've gone with specs worth $250, but sadly with the current pricing crisis, $250 won't get much and I bet many people would've laughed at the specs. Even the Switch 2 now costs $500. :(

by tonymet21 hours ago|

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i agree about steam deck and i think a couple solid hardware players need to take a risk, like xbox did with series S. try to draw a line and encourage game studios to join in

by tonymet21 hours ago|

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that's what I'm working to figure out. The business model worked until around 2018 . Software could target gen + 1 , and things would balance out as hardware got cheaper. Now we have the inverse, where hardware is only going up, so why are software developers still pushing hardware into unattainable territory?

The capitalism part actually made sense until it didn't