Valve’s Master Plan FINALLY comes together

Summary

Highlights

• Rumors suggest Valve's new devices, Fremont and Ibex, will revitalize the Steam Machines. 🕹️
• Fremont's likely to be a more traditional console with a full-size HDMI port, possibly entering the market as an affordable and powerful gaming option. 📺
• Brad Lynch's data mining credibility lends weight to these potential developments. 🚀
• Valve's inexpensive hardware strategy is feasible due to their profit from game store sales. 💸
• Proton enables most Windows games on Linux, addressing compatibility issues from previous attempts. 🖥️
• Valve's private ownership grants them unique freedom to risk and innovate over long periods. 🧠
• A successful Fremont launch could introduce new competition for existing consoles, affecting industry dynamics. 🎮

Key Takeaways

• Valve might be reviving their Steam Machines idea with new hardware and a controller. 🎮
• Fremont could be a set-top box using a full-size HDMI port, making it TV-friendly. 📺
• Data miner Brad Lynch's leaks have often turned out to be accurate, adding credibility. 🔍
• Valve's ability to sell hardware affordably comes from their revenue from game sales. 💰
• Proton, a compatibility layer, solves past failures by enabling Windows games on Linux. ⚙️
• Valve, as a privately-owned company, can think long-term and innovate without investor pressure. 🔒
• Potential Fremont launch could foster competition against Sony and possibly re-balance the console market. ⚔️

Overview

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction and Leaks The chapter discusses recent leaks from data miners revealing that Valve is developing a new set-top box code-named Fremont and a controller code-named IEX. The discussion includes a reference to the Nerd Nest podcast, where the IEX controller was extensively discussed. The chapter suggests that these developments could signify the return of Valve's Steam Machines, a decade after their initial failure.
• 00:30 - 01:30: Valve's New Hardware and Why It's Different In this chapter, the speaker discusses new hardware from Valve and expresses optimism that the company is well-positioned to succeed this time. They examine leaks regarding the hardware and argue for Valve's unique capability to make it successful. Additionally, the potential positive impacts on the broader industry are considered, alongside a brief mention of showcasing Indie titles in videos.
• 07:00 - 11:00: The Role of Proton and Past Failures This chapter provides an overview of various games, encouraging viewers to wishlist them on Steam. It emphasizes audience engagement by inviting comments and subscriptions. The host aims to reach 100K subscribers by next year.
• 11:00 - 19:20: The Potential of Valve's Set-Top Box The chapter explores a tweet by Brad Lynch, known for his YouTube channel focusing on VR, particularly Valve's developments. He regularly data mines Steam to uncover reliable information about Valve's upcoming VR headset, Deckard. Through his investigations, he frequently discovers truthful insights beyond his primary focus on VR.
• 19:20 - 25:00: The Future of Gaming with Valve's Innovations The chapter discusses leaks and rumors surrounding Valve's upcoming technological innovations in gaming.
• 25:00 - 30:00: Conclusion and Industry Impact Brad's Discord reveals more about Fremont's independent firmware development, linked to f7f, which will be explained later.

Valve’s Master Plan FINALLY comes together Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 hey nerd Nest we've got more leaks thanks to data miners valve it seems is working on a set toop box that is code named Fremont this is coming along with a controller code named IEX we spent a very long time talking about this Ibex controller on the most recent episode of the nerd Nest podcast I will leave a link to that episode down below so that you can check it out if you've missed it but I think these two things together spells the return of valves Steam Machines 10 years after they failed
• 00:30 - 01:00 miserably only this time I think valve has set themselves up to do it right so let's take a look at these leaks and then I'm going to tell you why I think it is going to work this time around why valve is the only company that I can see actually being able to pull this off and what I want to have from Fremont plus how this could be good for the entire industry but first lately I have been showing off Indie titles in my videos in order to give them a a little bit more
• 01:00 - 01:30 attention and I've got the names of each game in the on the screen as it pops up so if something looks cool be sure to wish list it on Steam I will have links to all of the games in the video down below that like button and uh while you're down there if there's a game that jumps out at you that uh you think I should include then let me know in the comment section and then click on subscribe it's free it helps out a ton and I would love to hit 100K by the end of next year so all of that said let's
• 01:30 - 02:00 jump into it starting with this tweet from Brad Lynch AKA sadly it's Bradley for those of you don't who don't know who's who Brad is he has a YouTube channel mostly about VR stuff and he data mines Steam on the regular to find out information about what's going on with the upcoming VR headset AKA Deckard from valve um but while he's in there digging around he often finds out a lot of information that almost always turns out to be true give you an example
• 02:00 - 02:30 before the steam deck OLED system came out he was leaking all kinds of information that turned out to be for the OLED steam deck so I think that Brad uh or Bradley has some really really good credentials and I think that a lot of times when he leaks stuff it turns out to be true so here's what he said valve Fremont has more evidence of being a new Steam OS Hardware device foxit fox in my Discord and when I say my Discord
• 02:30 - 03:00 I mean Brad's Discord because I'm reading his tweet found more connections of Fremont not only having its own firmware being worked on f7f we will get to what that f7f means later on in the video but also that Quant computer which is the manufacturer that is making valves steam deck they are giving feedback on it and you can see in the tweet that there's this little thing it says bring in debug changes from quanta okay so what about this makes us think that this is going to be a set top box
• 03:00 - 03:30 and not another handheld from valve maybe one without track pads you know a steam deck light as it were and here's the thing that jumps out uh to Brad and to me uh he's got this second tweet where he says all references to Fremont ensure checks for a full siiz HDMI type a port that you would see on TV focused consoles and other desktop computers you don't typically have HDMI ports especially full-size Type A HDMI ports
• 03:30 - 04:00 on handhelds because space is at a premium and those ports are really really big so you will usually see USBC uh serving as the way to get video out or you'll see micro HDMI on some some uh some devices uh the steam deck uses a USBC so if this device is going to have a fullsize HDMI type a port then that is the kind of thing that you do in a device that number one you don't really
• 04:00 - 04:30 have to worry about how small things are going to be and number two you want to save money because the bigger parts are probably a little less expensive than these smaller parts so I think that this is uh almost a Lynch pin into the argument that valve is continuing to work on a set toop box that you can plug into the back of your TV and then play all of your steam library from without having to sit at your desk or something like that and somebody might say Bill
• 04:30 - 05:00 why would I want that when I can just use my steam deck and that is a perfectly valid argument for you but there's a lot of people out there that aren't really interested in a handheld and even if they are interested in a handheld they aren't interested in the limitations of a handheld when they plug it into a TV because a handheld you have to worry about the battery you have to worry about the heat you have to worry about the size the portability you have so many things that you have to take
• 05:00 - 05:30 into consideration that you don't have to worry about with a set top box so if valve puts out a set top box that can do all of these things and play all of these games at higher performance profiles than you can on the steam deck then I think that there's going to be a lot of people out there that find that compelling and I am absolutely one of them back to f7f which I mentioned earlier in the video uh what is f7f well it it has to do with the way that valve has been Cod naming their Steam OS
• 05:30 - 06:00 devices the things that are quote unquote powered by Steam OS that valve is making themselves and right now there is a board uh seems like a developer board that's currently being worked on until they actually get the first Fremont based board finished uh that board is called AMD lilac and AMD lilac keeps coming up in the leaked files as f7f so what is f7f well in order to and
• 06:00 - 06:30 understand what f7f is we got to talk about the original steam deck which was known as code named Jupiter uh which turned out to be the LCD steam deck originally in the codes that thing was called f7a or aith which is named after you know aith the character in Final Fantasy 7 then there's f7g which was Data mined and later turned out to be Galileo or the OLED steam deck well now we've got f7f the F stands for Fremont we don't know what
• 06:30 - 07:00 this device is but if it has that fullsize HDMI type a port then it's got to be okay it doesn't have to be but I think that the chances of it being anything other than a set top box are really really low if you have ideas for what else it could be let me know in the comments down below that like button now that we're all on the same page I want to rewind 10 years and talk about when valve tried the Steam Machines the first time around and they they they tried
• 07:00 - 07:30 something big but they didn't have the building blocks in place that they do now and it failed spectacularly and the reason it failed spectacularly were for two reasons the first reason is proton for those of you that don't know proton is a translation layer that allows you to run Windows games on Linux back 10 years ago we didn't have proton or at least it wasn't in the state that it is now where you can play most games on Linux using proton and
• 07:30 - 08:00 because of this valve selling Steam Machines running a Linux operating system meant that most games wouldn't run on this system valve was hoping that developers would buy in but developers said no we don't want to do the extra work for such a small user base we're not interested no thank you valve learned from that and now we have proton and we'll talk more about that in a little bit the other big reason why the steam machines failed in my opinion was
• 08:00 - 08:30 because valve didn't make their own Hardware instead they partnered with thirdparty manufacturers to make hardware and those third party manufacturers priced themselves out of Interest so if you wanted to pick up a steam machine you were paying a pretty penny and the reason you were paying a pretty penny I think is because the thirdparty companies that were making this these these Hardware machines they didn't have steam as a way to to offset
• 08:30 - 09:00 the cost because if valve makes hardware and they sell it for less than it costs them to make it that sounds like a terrible idea Until you realize that every time you buy a game from Steam they make 30% no matter what game what the game is all the thirdparty manufacturers that were making Steam Machines didn't have access to that and because of that they were way too expensive so you have way too expensive can't run Windows games huge failure it's a flop fast forward 10 years
• 09:00 - 09:30 now valve is in the hardware business they've made the steam the steam deck they made the steam deck OLED and they are doing really well with those devices and you take a look at the entire handheld industry valves is usually the cheapest why is it the cheapest it's the cheapest because valve can subsidize that cost by making money on every game that is sold on top of that we also have proton so before valve required buyin from developers developers had to make a Linux version of their game and they
• 09:30 - 10:00 didn't want to now they don't have to valve said fine I'll do it myself and that's why we have the steam deck and proton and it just works which is awesome does it work for every game no absolutely not there's multiplayer games that it doesn't work for because of anti-che there's DRM that doesn't work but I don't know about you but for my library I can play almost every single game on my steam deck or at least they'll all run even if they won't run well depending on the power is needed for a game so if valve does ship a set
• 10:00 - 10:30 top box that plugs in via VIA a type a HDMI port and you can play games from your couch well this time it's going to be a lot cheaper and this time it's going to be able to play almost every game on Steam and because of that that is really compelling I think to a lot of people myself included earlier I said that I wanted to talk about why I think that valve is the only company that can pull this off and here's the reason why Val tried this 10 years ago and they
• 10:30 - 11:00 fell on their face the only reason that they can try again is because they don't have investors valve is able to do things that other companies can't because they are a private company investors always want money now they want an immediate return on their investment they don't actually care about the long-term because all they want to do is buy a stock when it's cheap and then sell it when it goes up
• 11:00 - 11:30 they don't care if it's going to go down after they sell they don't care about the company they just are trying to make money and I'm not saying that valve isn't trying to make money but because they're a privately owned company they can think longterm whereas companies with investors in the stock market they can't think longterm they can try to think longterm but a lot of times the you know their investors will get in their way and that's the reason that I think is uniquely suited to attack this
• 11:30 - 12:00 and bring PC gaming into the console space and you might say to yourself well bill I don't want a console what makes a console a console a console is a console because it's locked down so is valve going to lock this thing down I don't think that they will I think you'll be able to install whatever the hell you want on it but for for a lot of people they want the Simplicity of a console
• 12:00 - 12:30 and for a very long time now I've been saying that the steam deck is a computer it is a PC but it feels like a console because it's simple to use yes you can boot into desktop mode and you can do whatever the hell you want with it you can go crazy with that thing that's why it is a PC but it feels like a console and that is what is compelling to a lot of people yeah you can build your own Steam machine and install your own Steam OS on
• 12:30 - 13:00 there I did it with bite but I would prefer to just buy a box plug it in and walk away and never have to really think about it and that's what I really want to see from Fremont and so let's talk about what I want to see from Fremont number one it needs to be way way more powerful than the steam deck the steam deck is a fantastic system but it is hampered by the limitations of being a handheld system meaning you have to
• 13:00 - 13:30 consider the screen you have to consider the battery you have to consider heat when you are talking about a computer or a console they can be much much bigger so they can use a lot more power in fact the I'm going to put on screen right now the amount of power that an Xbox series X uses the amount of power a PlayStation 5 uses the amount of power that A PS5 Pro uses and compare that to the steam deck which only uses 15 watts at its maximum draw that is really really
• 13:30 - 14:00 impressive what we can get with 15 watts with the vano chipet imagine what we could do with a device from valve that is not limited to 15 watts it would be really impressive and that's why I'm excited for it which brings me to number two it needs to ship with the steam controller or AKA Ibex this is a controller that supposedly has trackpads in it it needs needs to have all of the
• 14:00 - 14:30 things that the steam deck has so that it's just like sitting down with a steam deck only instead of holding it in your hands you're just holding the controller and the display is up on the screen running it probably I don't know I'm going to say 1440p 60 frames per second or maybe even higher if you lower your resolution you could probably get up to 120 frames per second depending on what game you're playing this is the kind of thing that I want from Fremont I want to know what you want from Fremont let me know in the comments ments down below that like button but here's the coolest
• 14:30 - 15:00 thing valve won't be the only ones making these so for me when I look at Fremont as something that I want to buy I want to buy the first party valve one but there's going to be people who want a cheaper version there's going to be people who want a more expensive version I'm sure that valve will have a couple of different skews depending on storage and that kind of thing but there's going to be people who want more or want something different different and because of that valve is partnering with
• 15:00 - 15:30 other manufacturers I just put out a video about this powered by Steam OS branding guidelines that is leaked from valve and um I'll leave that linked down below so that you can check it out as well but the long and short of it is basically valve is saying look if you want your system to be sold it where it says powered by Steam OS it has to meet these guidelines and the guidelines are that you can bring it home plug it in it
• 15:30 - 16:00 boots right into Steam OS and you can buy and play your games just like you can on a steam deck and if valve has these branding guidelines then they must be working with other manufacturers to make these things so not only is valve going to be making Fremont but other manufacturers will also be making their own Steam Machines as well and again you go back to 10 years ago the other manufacturers were too expensive well now they're going to have a cheaper version to compete with them
• 16:00 - 16:30 because valve is going to put out the cheapest version available kind of like the current handheld Market yeah you can go out and buy you know a Lenovo Legion go or an Rog Ally or an ally ax and most of these devices are all going to be more expensive than a steam deck a steam deck you can get as little as like 400 bucks although it often goes on sale for less than that and these other systems are usually much more expensive than that why can valve get that cheap
• 16:30 - 17:00 because they make money on the store and these other companies like Asus and Lenovo they don't make money on the store so theirs is a little bit more expensive but if you look before the steam deck came out most handheld PCS were well over $1,000 now that the steam deck is out and people have seen that you can get a handheld for a lower price the other companies had to lower the prices I often say that I think that Asus were
• 17:00 - 17:30 and Lenovo were inspired by valve's steam deck who was inspired by the Nintendo switch in order to make this Hardware but if we lived in a world where valve didn't ship the steam deck and Asus still made the Rog allyx I bet it would be more expensive than it is because we wouldn't have the steam deck to compare it to and people would just assume well I guess that's what it costs I also wanted to talk about why I think that this development is good for the
• 17:30 - 18:00 entire industry and here's the reason why you look at the console Wars you know you've got Xbox PlayStation and Nintendo Nintendo they always just do their own thing they don't care about anybody else and most of the time the other PE the the other companies might try and copy a gimmick that Nintendo's doing that's succeeding but usually they just say well Nintendo's doing their own thing and they're just going to go do the Nintendo thing and we're going to do our own thing so usually it's just Xbox
• 18:00 - 18:30 and Sony well Xbox is getting outsold by the PlayStation I think like 5 to one at this point I'm not sure exactly what the numbers are but it's a lot like there's a lot of PlayStation fives out there and not nearly as many Xbox series out there Xbox is failing it's failing enough that at this point Microsoft is basically saying okay we're going to be shipping our games on PlayStation we're going to be shipping our games everywhere because we're not just a hardware manufacturer
• 18:30 - 19:00 we're the biggest publisher that there is and we are going to publish our games wherever we're going to make money that makes a lot of sense for Xbox but I don't like the idea that Sony doesn't have any real competition in that console space and while the steam deck and the steam machine or Fremont I know that that's not a console it feels like a console and if valve can put out the Fremont or the or the steam machine and
• 19:00 - 19:30 have it compete with Sony that will keep Sony in check and we've seen many times whenever companies do really really well they start to push just a little too hard I often say that they they you know they turn into Icarus they fly too close to the Sun and then their wings melt and then they fall back down to earth and we all laugh at them for you know having uh you know being just a little bit too ambitious so I think that Sony needs
• 19:30 - 20:00 somebody to keep them in check and if Microsoft isn't able to do it and Nintendo is just going to do what Nintendo does I really hope that valve can step in and not necessarily try and you know fight with Sony but just to show that there are other options and when you look at the ridiculous size of the steam Library if valve ships a quote un quote console and it has access to
• 20:00 - 20:30 70,000 games or whatever stupid number of games are on Val or on Steam right now that is going to be really compelling to a whole lot of people and it might help keep Sony in check so I think that this is good for the entire industry let me know what you think in the comments section down below or hit me up on the social medias as always stay rad thanks for watching and I hope to see you on the next one