If I know anything about those communities, they sit on a bag of zero days and another bag of leads to zero days in the bootloader or whatever everjail they need to break out of.
I saw a post from someone who worked in the scene recently, seems they were someone famous. I don’t follow things so I’m not sure. Basically they were giving up because new people to the scene were just discovering things with AI and then immediately disclosing them to the world, allowing Sony to patch them before they really got used.
Sucks for the hoarder, but that is indeed how bug bounties are supposed to work. The first reporter gets the payout, disincentivizing sitting on valid vulns.
Their store and possibly their entire main OS menu sure feel like "webshit" on the PS4 and PS5. I'd be pretty surprised if they weren't using Webtech for layouts, formatting, and scripting (with Javascript).
On the PS3, only the store was webshit, and it performed so amazingly poorly (and crashed all the time) that I never bought anything on it, and I doubt I'm alone in that. The PS3 could have handled a website well (obviously), but not the trash heap of a "web app" they used.
From what I can tell, they didn't learn a lesson from this, they've just benefitted from beefier hardware to keep their newer stores usable (and I may be imagining it, but performance on menus and in their store already seems to have declined a lot from when I purchased my PS5).
Given all that, I'm not sure how much Javascript performance they can afford to give up without making their entire system's UI experience totally suck. They could improve the quality of their system and use of web tech to improve performance, like it's a joke any of this isn't perfectly, buttery smooth on a system that powerful even if it is Javascript and HTML and CSS... but given they never seemed inclined to do that even in the pre-AI-slop days...
I mean, only sort of. Almost all of the UI portion of XMB was written in PSJS (PlayStation JavaScript), which was their internal scripting language of choice. It manipulates ha is almost exactly a webgl context in order to draw to the screen (which is the main reason why the PS3 supported a pretty low perf opengles library in addition to gcm).
I think the point they're trying to make is that, assuming this is an implementation of the bug that caused the PS5 Linux dev to quit, it was known about and had been being sat on intentionally to prevent it from being fixed before GTA 6 came out, but some other group found it and reported it.
An interesting thought would be what would happen if they manage to exploit past GTA6 release, and actually manage to ship a PC-compatible GTA6 version based on that exploit. Surely Rockstar got a lot of cash to be console-only on launch - but the hype around the game would destroy PC game revenue. I hope this happens and they just let me buy the game through steam for honest money as a response of the pirated version.
This is a different exploit. This one is a kernel exploit, the one that caused the drama is a hypervisor exploit. A kernel exploit lets you pirate games but running Linux requires a hypervisor exploit.
Note that Sony significantly improved the PS5's security on firmware 14.0 and above, likely to prevent GTA 6 from getting pirated. Ripping a PS5 game apparently requires a hypervisor exploit, and the last known one was sold to Sony. This means that nobody will be able to rip GTA 6. Even if it was ripped, they would then need to "backport" it to run on hacked PS5s running earlier firmware versions, which would take some time and expertise.
Digital Foundry [1] (a popular game graphics YouTube review channel) not just put Linux on it, but made it run games, sometimes even with better perf than PS5 itself does. I'd say if you can do this, then it's pretty much general purpose!
Going back a few years to covid lockdowns, work from home exploding and a shortage of computers, I thought the mirror image of that was something MS should have tried. Enable a variant of windows on the xbox (probably locked down) so people can plug in keyboard/mouse and do some desktop tasks on the recently released consoles, and it'd also serve to seed a userbase for the gaming side.
I'm not heavy on gaming so I can't justify buying PS5 just for the games, but my god, if I would be able to thinker with it - I'd buy it in an instant!
If this lets you install Linux that would be neat.
Unfortunately holding the PS5 controller gives me crippling pain in my wrists and it also doesn't have any games I care about, but if it could become a Linux media PC, you've got my attention. Especially once its price drops due to the next gen coming out.
No, but I'm using a PS4 controller with my Linux PC. Really comfy controller, I just had to replace the original charging port since it stopped working with usb-c and also I had to replace the rubber pads inside.
Very cheaply made given the price, but it's one of the few controllers with a touch pad that works on Linux. The touch pad is nice to get the mouse cursor out of the way.
Truly we live in a golden period where any of the major console vendor's controllers can be reasonably well-supported on Steam and Linux. My own Gaming PC's main companion is a spare Switch Pro Controller that I took out of rotation due to a stick-drift issue but then repaired.
From a non-gamer is there any reason there isn't something like an Apple TV Pro that would be a 4K gaming console? I imagine they have hardware capable of this in their existing inventory. Would it be the major game studios are kept locked in to XBox or PS consoles?
Apple tried this, I forgot which year, there was a push to make the Apple TV a console. Arcade support, controller compatibility, it all shipped. You can plug in an Apple TV and pair an Xbox controller right now and play a surprisingly large number of AAA and indie games, from Resident Evil VIII to Slay the Spire. It was too little too late, though. Most games are played on phones, and the console market is falling apart. Microsoft seems to be pulling out, Sony is basically shipping locked-down gaming PCs with a couple of exclusive games. Nintendo is holding course more or less, but their main value propositions are simplicity and first-party exclusivity, and phones already ate the first half of that.
The Apple TV chip is currently quite old. It would be fine for much indie stuff or streaming but pales against a modern phone/iPad.
Have to buy games from the App Store meaning limited selection. Few bother because no one plays games on Apple TV. And since it’s the same as the iPhone app it’s often optimized for that even if the Apple TV was more powerful.
The other big Apple sin is Apple tried a push but (at the time, later changed) demanded games worked with the Apple TV remote only. At least for Apple Arcade. They “had to” because they’ve never sold a gamepad. Only 3rd party ones which weren’t very good.
So you have to buy games from Apple that are either super simplistic (to work well on phone) or advanced but old (RE VII), play on an old chip, on a TV while it was probably designed for a phone, and pay $70+ to Nintendo/Sony/MS to buy a good quality game pad.
Surprise. It never went anywhere.
There was a rumor that they’re going to try again with a first-party controller. If they’re smart they will just white label one from a good company. And they should absolutely push cloud gaming with PS/MS. Steam Link is a good idea.
A new Apple TH is rumored any day now (and has been for a long time) but between the high original cost, the insane cost increases due to RAM/storage, and the price of buying a controller, it just doesn’t seem worth it. Buy a Series S or Switch 1/2 and be happier.
As someone who used to be into console gaming but has been out basically since the PS2, this is an interesting summation of the current state of things. Do you have any color you'd add with regard to the Steam Machine and its potential?
Video games are still video games. Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft are still the main platforms.
Microsoft is trying to reason about how gaming fits into their computer-centric empire. They've been using the Xbox brand for a new gamepad shell in Windows, for their cloud gaming subscription service, and for the gaming section of the Windows Store.
Steam has built the most popular computer game download service. They're renowned for having sales - you can get the Arkham Trilogy for $5 with some regularity when it would cost you $30 on Nintendo's eShop. It's a meme that most Steam users end up impulse-buying hundreds of cheap games and only playing dozens of them.
Microsoft and Sony have both bought a lot of previously-independent game studios. They've often let them continue publishing on other platforms. For instance, Sony's Spider-Man games are also available on Steam.
There are rumors that amid Microsoft's clusterfuck of an Xbox strategy, the next Xbox is going to share a lot of infrastructure with Windows, including the ability to play Windows games. This has spooked Sony into pulling its new titles from Steam - they don't want people buying an Xbox to play Spider-Man games.
> This has spooked Sony into pulling its new titles from Steam - they don't want people buying an Xbox to play Spider-Man games
That's not what happened, Sony's decision is more about the poor saels of its single player titles on Steam, they are now focusing their PC releases for online multiplayer games instead
Microsoft sells less consoles each month than the previous gen Nintendo Switch sells today
A lot of publishers are skipping Xbox, citing not enough players/sales
As someone with a Steam Machine, somewhat low potential. It has a console like experience but not everything in the store supports it. It's open then other things but there are plenty of multiplayer games that refuse to support it due to Anti Cheat.
It feels like R&D project that Steam is doing so in case Microsoft gets really aggressive and locks down Windows 11 to point that Steam no longer works, they have fallback option.
Not an person you're address your question for, but I would say that Steam Machine is a thing Valve released as an addition to their library. Average Steam user has a library for a few hundred of dollars, he can buy a console that guaranteed to has games on it. Its potential depends on PC gaming overall which is bright as people still buying PCs and love to play games on it.
Steam Machine owner here! As of like three weeks ago.
The Steam Machine's biggest problem in general: it's launching into a headwind, because of hardware shortages. It should have been like $650-$700 for the base model, instead it's $1100ish.
The Steam Machine's biggest strength, overall: the Steam library. Absolutely massive.
The Steam Machine's nerd-gamer appeal: you can also run emulators, use it as a desktop, and play games from other stores (Epic, GOG, et c.). Nb this all comes with a big asterisk, as you're very much into non-console-like operation with any of this—I had to intervene with Heroic's installation of The Outer Worlds (from Epic) once to get it running with functioning cutscenes, which took me probably 30 minutes including a lot of trawling Reddit and forums to figure out the most-recent version of Proton that would work [I doubt I found the most-recent one, but I did find one more-recent than the first suggestion I saw], and then again on about my fourth play session when an update caused it to misplace its own saves (my only indication was all the saves had disappeared—they hadn't moved, it just wasn't finding them there anymore) for some reason, which I doubt would have happened on for-real Windows, and also any time it has an update available it silently fails to launch until it's updated, but I'm not notified of this until I re-start Heroic itself. This is some real computer-gaming and Linuxy bullshit (which is to say, it sucks and wastes your time) not a console experience. Still a benefit that it's there, but comes with a caveat that someone who just wants it as a console won't/can't/shouldn't engage with any of this.
Where the Steam Machine struggles as a console: Yes, it has tons of games available from many, many consoles of multiple generations, running natively (not emulated console games—though, mostly through proton, but Wine Is Not [an] Emulator), including very recent games, giving it a library that dwarfs that of any (... non-"hacked") console. HOWEVER:
1) Couch multiplayer sucks. Very few PC-first games include it, and a lot of console ports will have had it removed (since, who local-multiplayers on a PC now that the Internet is widespread? That hasn't been a normal feature for PC games since, like, the DOS era). If you want lots of couch multiplayer options you're gonna need to deal with console emulation (and I can tell you, bluetooth pairing is better on here than most Linux systems I've thrown together, but it's still bluetooth pairing under linux... hope you like either cords, or headaches) most likely, not just playing Steam games, at which point you're outside the space of treating the Steam Machine like a normal console and into wrestling with a computer.
2) Parental controls basically don't exist. You can have restricted-library child accounts after you jump through some very annoying hoops ("sorry, this just-created kid's account seems to be in another country from the family you're adding it to, based on its purchase activity... which doesn't exist, there has been no purchase activity")... but there's no PIN-locking, anyone can just use anyone else's account unless you want to log all the hell the way out every time you use it. It's a total joke compared to a Switch or PS5, neither of which are, themselves, exactly amazing at this. In short, its account management is tacked-on crap, they do not adequately-well support having multiple people using one of these, even if you don't factor in the various ways a person could get around it on account of the thing actually being a fairly ordinary Linux OS.
Where the Steam Machine struggles as a gaming PC: Hope you don't love playing the very-latest online multiplayer games. Odds are pretty good you'll be excluded by anti-cheat.
This leaves it a damn nice device for, almost exclusively: 1) people like me, a (to put it mildly) power-user who can benefit from its more computer-like aspects while also appreciating just putting it in its default Steam-only environment and relaxing, and who doesn't give a damn about online multiplayer, AND who can afford it; and 2) people who want to treat it as a console and play almost exclusively local single-player games (and have some money burning a hole in their pocket)... and this'll probably only be a great use-case if they already have a largish steam library, since otherwise their needs are likely covered by a Playstation or X-Box and starting from scratch on a steam machine with no owned games won't be very appealing. Which means it's kinda only a great deal for people in this category who were also already PC gamers.
That's a pretty small market of ideal customers, IMO. I'm rooting for the thing overall but I'd hesitate to recommend it to most gamers.
> but there's no PIN-locking, anyone can just use anyone else's account unless you want to log all the hell the way out every time you use it.
This part does not make sense to me, because as far as I'm aware the Steam Machine runs basically the same OS as the Deck and my Deck absolutely prompts me for my PIN every time I bring it out of suspend, the same as my Xbox does. I'd find it really strange if the Machine wasn't capable of doing the exact same thing.
This is a setting somewhere in the Deck or your Steam account, my Deck comes right up into my account without ever asking for a PIN or password or anything.
I have a Deck and never figured out how to make it do that. I also researched all this again when I got the Steam Machine and was setting it up, hoping something had changed, and found nothing but other people complaining about this still being absent (as recently as this year) and info on the rather painful set-up for creating a restricted library for children's accounts (which worked, but, still no PIN lock for accounts).
Maybe it's a PIN to unlock the device period, but not per-account? The former is a lot less useful to me than the latter, and I may have overlooked it. I don't want to have to intervene any time someone else wants to use it, I want to let other people use it without worrying they'll (intentionally or accidentally) end up seeing the wrong library, or messing with anyone else's saves, or anything like that.
If that functionality does exist and I've just not found it, I'd love a clue to send me in the right direction.
The new Steam Machine is a horse of a different color. Unlike AppleTV, the hardware supports the same Proton compatibility layer that people know and love on Steam Deck. The majority of Windows-only titles on Steam run without issue, making the Linux experience quite tolerable.
Apple's policy on macOS, iOS and tvOS is to prioritize native ports at all cost. The difference in compatibility is thousandfold; even games that have native ARM/Mac builds like Cyberpunk 2077, Death Stranding and No Man's Sky only work on macOS and not iOS/tvOS.
The Steam Machine will probably still flop, but Apple's failure vis-a-vis making gaming work is self-inflicted.
> Nintendo is holding course more or less, but their main value propositions are simplicity and first-party exclusivity, and phones already ate the first half of that.
Someone at Nintendo had the genius idea of charging you a subscription fee for internet access.
So, you can play Pokemon Champions on a Switch 2 for $35 / year, or you can play it on your phone, which has an internet connection outside Nintendo's control, for free.
Nintendo's value proposition really seems to be "we will screw you as hard as we can, and we hope you like that".
> Someone at Nintendo had the genius idea of charging you a subscription fee for internet access.
Microsoft had that 'genius' idea with the original Xbox. The others saw that people will indeed pay for such a thing and copied the idea with the PS4 and Switch.
Developers need to optimize and debug their game for each console. Xbox/PS are completely different platforms (UWP vs heavily customized BSD) so fixes don't transfer over. Adding another incompatible target with new store guidelines and system APIs adds a lot of work so Apple would have a hard time convincing them.
Now add the perception that Mac users don't play games and Apple devices are made for people already in their ecosystem. The only way they could gain market share is competing with Steam Machine as a more open platform, but without a giant library of existing games.
Apple is still against games. Next year they'll remove Rosetta 2, and all the games that require it will stop working. There's no upcoming Vulkan drivers, or upstream support for Proton. CrossOver is expensive and incomplete.
The best gaming hardware will always be the hardware you keep on you; be it a phone, GameBoy, or a Mac. macOS is basically last-place in supporting PC gaming though, and Apple has no qualms letting it die again.
I think this is a multifaceted problem:
- Apple TVs as they currently are can run RetroArch and some other more demanding games just fine, though not at full 4K
- Game engine developers (Unity, Unreal are most notable) work very hard to add optimization tools for mainline consoles, and Apple has only recently started to really bolster this with the GPTK (game porting toolkit) and more Metal/GPU focus
- Ouya and other similar Android standalone boxes have been underpowered for years, and the AI hardware inflation will make this segment harder to get into
They’ll probably need to design new silicon that is much more GPU oriented (with less CPU) than anything they have in the A or even base M series to handle 4k gaming at sub-M Max prices
A console-optimized lower-priced higher-GPU variant of the A series could be useful for local AI in so many products that don’t come with a capable processor (eg homepods, TV, the monitor they put a whole iPhone chip in)
I could see something for around the price of a Mac Mini with a controller that’s og MacBook plastic white/black
Consoles come with a controller and enough storage to be usable for games. The largest Apple TV 4K is 128GB and it's really common for games to easily be 50+ GB or even considerably more. 100 GB is not even that uncommon anymore (e.g., Call of Duty, FF7 Rebirth, Baldur's Gate 3).
When Apple first launched the Apple TV game store they required games be playable with the horrible remote. Understandably even games that would have been fine on the hardware didn't bother and while Apple later relented and allowed games to require a controller it's still an extra purchase that's needed.
Call of duty is kicking close to 500GB to 1TB depending what you have installed.
That said, I think the hardware is totally capable they just don't have a layer to run win32 or Linux apps natively (like proton for m series) so they'd have to commit to what valve is doing for linux, for macos
Google tried this with Stadia. I was a pretty happy user of it, but I think it probably exposed the weakness of US bandwidth/ throughput. Still trying to find what to do with the two controllers but it was the best refund experience I've gone through and Google probably regrets setting my expectations like that.
there is the steam machine but from my experience it is a matter of hardware drivers and support.
Steam Machine is GREAT. But it still has warts around controller support etc...
Also, a lot of AAA games do not work on steam machine because of aggressive anticheat and DRM, and those vendors don't provide Linux builds. No spyware, no game.
The software for the UI just isn't there for Windows machines. There have been attempts but it is always janky and you end up pulling out a keyboard anyway.
Devs are afraid of piracy so they like the walled garden. They don't want emulators running because then they have to compete with the 90s-2015 era which is the golden age of gaming, and their newer games don't stack up ( except in graphics ). Nintendo doesn't want to compete with Mario Kart Double Dash on the Switch 2.
Also: Modern PCs absolutely MOG the Switch 2 and Xbox. The games are all in the same engines and cross-platform anyway, so piracy ends up useful.
PS5 emulation on x86 hardware will be more like running wine, so as long as your PC is as powerful as a PS5, performance should be close...eventually. The real performance bottleneck will be the GPU translation layer, much like converting DirectX to Vulkan isn't trivial, so isn't converting GNM (PS5's graphics API) to Vulkan, even tho the APIs are close (IIRC, they're cousin APIs)
Heck, someone in the emulation community dropped a preview that they're a couple of months out from creating a Switch game recompiler - which generates native x86 windows builds AOT. It's incredible.
I have to imagine that AI has significantly increased the velocity of technically demanding hobby projects.
> This project is intended for educational and security research purposes only. It does not endorse piracy, unauthorized access, or misuse of commercial devices.
Sure, "education". Releasing exploits for software vulnerabilities has very little to do with education. The relation to piracy is clear however.
The irony of posting something like this on HACKER News of all places must have escaped you... this term is tightly related to breaking hardware/software systems apart to understand them and it is very common to share your findings.
What people decide to do with them is on them, and fixing the exploits would be on the manufacturer if they care about this so-called "piracy".
Pirates don't usually bother hacking consoles. It's easier for them to just bypass the security on the disc drive. That's why we had "mod chips" for decades
If I know anything about those communities, they sit on a bag of zero days and another bag of leads to zero days in the bootloader or whatever everjail they need to break out of.
I saw a post from someone who worked in the scene recently, seems they were someone famous. I don’t follow things so I’m not sure. Basically they were giving up because new people to the scene were just discovering things with AI and then immediately disclosing them to the world, allowing Sony to patch them before they really got used.
It sounded like things may have changed.
Might've been 'PS5 Linux lead quits: "a bunch of noobs using LLMs" that "they don't understand"'
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49727627
I didn’t see it here, but I do believe that’s it!
Sucks for the hoarder, but that is indeed how bug bounties are supposed to work. The first reporter gets the payout, disincentivizing sitting on valid vulns.
I think the hoarder just wanted to have rooted PS5
At a glance, it looks like it exploits a bug in WebKit's JavaScriptCore JavaScript engine.
Does the PS5's WebKit use JavaScriptCore with JIT enabled? Have to wonder if Sony will respond by disabled its JIT, to narrow the attack surface.
Their store and possibly their entire main OS menu sure feel like "webshit" on the PS4 and PS5. I'd be pretty surprised if they weren't using Webtech for layouts, formatting, and scripting (with Javascript).
On the PS3, only the store was webshit, and it performed so amazingly poorly (and crashed all the time) that I never bought anything on it, and I doubt I'm alone in that. The PS3 could have handled a website well (obviously), but not the trash heap of a "web app" they used.
From what I can tell, they didn't learn a lesson from this, they've just benefitted from beefier hardware to keep their newer stores usable (and I may be imagining it, but performance on menus and in their store already seems to have declined a lot from when I purchased my PS5).
Given all that, I'm not sure how much Javascript performance they can afford to give up without making their entire system's UI experience totally suck. They could improve the quality of their system and use of web tech to improve performance, like it's a joke any of this isn't perfectly, buttery smooth on a system that powerful even if it is Javascript and HTML and CSS... but given they never seemed inclined to do that even in the pre-AI-slop days...
They could apply a different policy to their web-based dashboard GUIs (if these do exist) than to the web browser.
> On the PS3, only the store was webshit
I mean, only sort of. Almost all of the UI portion of XMB was written in PSJS (PlayStation JavaScript), which was their internal scripting language of choice. It manipulates ha is almost exactly a webgl context in order to draw to the screen (which is the main reason why the PS3 supported a pretty low perf opengles library in addition to gcm).
I wish they waited until gta6
The exploit has been fixed in 14.0. Realistically gta6 will require it
I think the point they're trying to make is that, assuming this is an implementation of the bug that caused the PS5 Linux dev to quit, it was known about and had been being sat on intentionally to prevent it from being fixed before GTA 6 came out, but some other group found it and reported it.
An interesting thought would be what would happen if they manage to exploit past GTA6 release, and actually manage to ship a PC-compatible GTA6 version based on that exploit. Surely Rockstar got a lot of cash to be console-only on launch - but the hype around the game would destroy PC game revenue. I hope this happens and they just let me buy the game through steam for honest money as a response of the pirated version.
This is a different exploit. This one is a kernel exploit, the one that caused the drama is a hypervisor exploit. A kernel exploit lets you pirate games but running Linux requires a hypervisor exploit.
Note that Sony significantly improved the PS5's security on firmware 14.0 and above, likely to prevent GTA 6 from getting pirated. Ripping a PS5 game apparently requires a hypervisor exploit, and the last known one was sold to Sony. This means that nobody will be able to rip GTA 6. Even if it was ripped, they would then need to "backport" it to run on hacked PS5s running earlier firmware versions, which would take some time and expertise.
Use this exploit to bypass the check.
Is it practical/sensible to turn a PS5 into a general purpose computer? What are the specs?
Digital Foundry [1] (a popular game graphics YouTube review channel) not just put Linux on it, but made it run games, sometimes even with better perf than PS5 itself does. I'd say if you can do this, then it's pretty much general purpose!
[1] https://www.digitalfoundry.net/news/2026/05/playstation-5-li...
No need if you can get a BC250 for less than a PS5 these days - though even that may be difficult now
Playing PC Games from Steam on PS5 would be a win.
Might be a reality quite soon! https://github.com/boykopovar/AnyPS5
This is the opposite of what GP asked for.
Whoops, guess I flipped it around!
Will Linux on the ps5 be back?
God I hope so. Some of my fondest professional memories were my early Navy days, hacking together PS3's into a big ol cluster
Edit: Reading through the exploit, looks like linux compatability for older (non 13.6) is possible. 13.6 needs a new hypervisor exploit.
Going back a few years to covid lockdowns, work from home exploding and a shortage of computers, I thought the mirror image of that was something MS should have tried. Enable a variant of windows on the xbox (probably locked down) so people can plug in keyboard/mouse and do some desktop tasks on the recently released consoles, and it'd also serve to seed a userbase for the gaming side.
I'm not heavy on gaming so I can't justify buying PS5 just for the games, but my god, if I would be able to thinker with it - I'd buy it in an instant!
My friend bought a used BC-250 (basically a PS5 on a board) and modded it into a gaming PC the other week. Costs like 1/3rd the price of a PS5
https://bc250.info/
I don't think Sony is interested in customers like you.
this is a kernel level exploit and afaik ps5 linux requires full hypervisor... so not yet, but probably soon.
Is there any reason why we need the ps5 software? Is the processor locked to it? Is there a security microcontroller which needs it?
Edit looks like the answer for both questions is yes
just get a bc-250...
If this lets you install Linux that would be neat.
Unfortunately holding the PS5 controller gives me crippling pain in my wrists and it also doesn't have any games I care about, but if it could become a Linux media PC, you've got my attention. Especially once its price drops due to the next gen coming out.
> Unfortunately holding the PS5 controller gives me crippling pain in my wrists and it also doesn't have any games I care about
Juice might not be worth the squeeze, but have you tried one of their Access controllers?
https://www.amazon.com/Access-Controller-PlayStation-5-Gamin...
No, but I'm using a PS4 controller with my Linux PC. Really comfy controller, I just had to replace the original charging port since it stopped working with usb-c and also I had to replace the rubber pads inside.
Very cheaply made given the price, but it's one of the few controllers with a touch pad that works on Linux. The touch pad is nice to get the mouse cursor out of the way.
Truly we live in a golden period where any of the major console vendor's controllers can be reasonably well-supported on Steam and Linux. My own Gaming PC's main companion is a spare Switch Pro Controller that I took out of rotation due to a stick-drift issue but then repaired.
From a non-gamer is there any reason there isn't something like an Apple TV Pro that would be a 4K gaming console? I imagine they have hardware capable of this in their existing inventory. Would it be the major game studios are kept locked in to XBox or PS consoles?
Apple tried this, I forgot which year, there was a push to make the Apple TV a console. Arcade support, controller compatibility, it all shipped. You can plug in an Apple TV and pair an Xbox controller right now and play a surprisingly large number of AAA and indie games, from Resident Evil VIII to Slay the Spire. It was too little too late, though. Most games are played on phones, and the console market is falling apart. Microsoft seems to be pulling out, Sony is basically shipping locked-down gaming PCs with a couple of exclusive games. Nintendo is holding course more or less, but their main value propositions are simplicity and first-party exclusivity, and phones already ate the first half of that.
Yep! Some more details, many of which kill it:
The Apple TV chip is currently quite old. It would be fine for much indie stuff or streaming but pales against a modern phone/iPad.
Have to buy games from the App Store meaning limited selection. Few bother because no one plays games on Apple TV. And since it’s the same as the iPhone app it’s often optimized for that even if the Apple TV was more powerful.
The other big Apple sin is Apple tried a push but (at the time, later changed) demanded games worked with the Apple TV remote only. At least for Apple Arcade. They “had to” because they’ve never sold a gamepad. Only 3rd party ones which weren’t very good.
So you have to buy games from Apple that are either super simplistic (to work well on phone) or advanced but old (RE VII), play on an old chip, on a TV while it was probably designed for a phone, and pay $70+ to Nintendo/Sony/MS to buy a good quality game pad.
Surprise. It never went anywhere.
There was a rumor that they’re going to try again with a first-party controller. If they’re smart they will just white label one from a good company. And they should absolutely push cloud gaming with PS/MS. Steam Link is a good idea.
A new Apple TH is rumored any day now (and has been for a long time) but between the high original cost, the insane cost increases due to RAM/storage, and the price of buying a controller, it just doesn’t seem worth it. Buy a Series S or Switch 1/2 and be happier.
As someone who used to be into console gaming but has been out basically since the PS2, this is an interesting summation of the current state of things. Do you have any color you'd add with regard to the Steam Machine and its potential?
Video games are still video games. Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft are still the main platforms.
Microsoft is trying to reason about how gaming fits into their computer-centric empire. They've been using the Xbox brand for a new gamepad shell in Windows, for their cloud gaming subscription service, and for the gaming section of the Windows Store.
Steam has built the most popular computer game download service. They're renowned for having sales - you can get the Arkham Trilogy for $5 with some regularity when it would cost you $30 on Nintendo's eShop. It's a meme that most Steam users end up impulse-buying hundreds of cheap games and only playing dozens of them.
Microsoft and Sony have both bought a lot of previously-independent game studios. They've often let them continue publishing on other platforms. For instance, Sony's Spider-Man games are also available on Steam.
There are rumors that amid Microsoft's clusterfuck of an Xbox strategy, the next Xbox is going to share a lot of infrastructure with Windows, including the ability to play Windows games. This has spooked Sony into pulling its new titles from Steam - they don't want people buying an Xbox to play Spider-Man games.
> This has spooked Sony into pulling its new titles from Steam - they don't want people buying an Xbox to play Spider-Man games
That's not what happened, Sony's decision is more about the poor saels of its single player titles on Steam, they are now focusing their PC releases for online multiplayer games instead
Microsoft sells less consoles each month than the previous gen Nintendo Switch sells today
A lot of publishers are skipping Xbox, citing not enough players/sales
They have nothing to worry about Xbox
https://i.imgur.com/TrI3q6e.png
Which makes sense. Exclusives is basically the best reason for buying a PlayStation, so if they stick them all on PC, that’s not gonna help them much.
As you’ve said, Microsoft is basically toast. They’ve been sinking for multiple generations.
As someone with a Steam Machine, somewhat low potential. It has a console like experience but not everything in the store supports it. It's open then other things but there are plenty of multiplayer games that refuse to support it due to Anti Cheat.
It feels like R&D project that Steam is doing so in case Microsoft gets really aggressive and locks down Windows 11 to point that Steam no longer works, they have fallback option.
Not an person you're address your question for, but I would say that Steam Machine is a thing Valve released as an addition to their library. Average Steam user has a library for a few hundred of dollars, he can buy a console that guaranteed to has games on it. Its potential depends on PC gaming overall which is bright as people still buying PCs and love to play games on it.
Steam Machine owner here! As of like three weeks ago.
The Steam Machine's biggest problem in general: it's launching into a headwind, because of hardware shortages. It should have been like $650-$700 for the base model, instead it's $1100ish.
The Steam Machine's biggest strength, overall: the Steam library. Absolutely massive.
The Steam Machine's nerd-gamer appeal: you can also run emulators, use it as a desktop, and play games from other stores (Epic, GOG, et c.). Nb this all comes with a big asterisk, as you're very much into non-console-like operation with any of this—I had to intervene with Heroic's installation of The Outer Worlds (from Epic) once to get it running with functioning cutscenes, which took me probably 30 minutes including a lot of trawling Reddit and forums to figure out the most-recent version of Proton that would work [I doubt I found the most-recent one, but I did find one more-recent than the first suggestion I saw], and then again on about my fourth play session when an update caused it to misplace its own saves (my only indication was all the saves had disappeared—they hadn't moved, it just wasn't finding them there anymore) for some reason, which I doubt would have happened on for-real Windows, and also any time it has an update available it silently fails to launch until it's updated, but I'm not notified of this until I re-start Heroic itself. This is some real computer-gaming and Linuxy bullshit (which is to say, it sucks and wastes your time) not a console experience. Still a benefit that it's there, but comes with a caveat that someone who just wants it as a console won't/can't/shouldn't engage with any of this.
Where the Steam Machine struggles as a console: Yes, it has tons of games available from many, many consoles of multiple generations, running natively (not emulated console games—though, mostly through proton, but Wine Is Not [an] Emulator), including very recent games, giving it a library that dwarfs that of any (... non-"hacked") console. HOWEVER:
1) Couch multiplayer sucks. Very few PC-first games include it, and a lot of console ports will have had it removed (since, who local-multiplayers on a PC now that the Internet is widespread? That hasn't been a normal feature for PC games since, like, the DOS era). If you want lots of couch multiplayer options you're gonna need to deal with console emulation (and I can tell you, bluetooth pairing is better on here than most Linux systems I've thrown together, but it's still bluetooth pairing under linux... hope you like either cords, or headaches) most likely, not just playing Steam games, at which point you're outside the space of treating the Steam Machine like a normal console and into wrestling with a computer.
2) Parental controls basically don't exist. You can have restricted-library child accounts after you jump through some very annoying hoops ("sorry, this just-created kid's account seems to be in another country from the family you're adding it to, based on its purchase activity... which doesn't exist, there has been no purchase activity")... but there's no PIN-locking, anyone can just use anyone else's account unless you want to log all the hell the way out every time you use it. It's a total joke compared to a Switch or PS5, neither of which are, themselves, exactly amazing at this. In short, its account management is tacked-on crap, they do not adequately-well support having multiple people using one of these, even if you don't factor in the various ways a person could get around it on account of the thing actually being a fairly ordinary Linux OS.
Where the Steam Machine struggles as a gaming PC: Hope you don't love playing the very-latest online multiplayer games. Odds are pretty good you'll be excluded by anti-cheat.
This leaves it a damn nice device for, almost exclusively: 1) people like me, a (to put it mildly) power-user who can benefit from its more computer-like aspects while also appreciating just putting it in its default Steam-only environment and relaxing, and who doesn't give a damn about online multiplayer, AND who can afford it; and 2) people who want to treat it as a console and play almost exclusively local single-player games (and have some money burning a hole in their pocket)... and this'll probably only be a great use-case if they already have a largish steam library, since otherwise their needs are likely covered by a Playstation or X-Box and starting from scratch on a steam machine with no owned games won't be very appealing. Which means it's kinda only a great deal for people in this category who were also already PC gamers.
That's a pretty small market of ideal customers, IMO. I'm rooting for the thing overall but I'd hesitate to recommend it to most gamers.
> but there's no PIN-locking, anyone can just use anyone else's account unless you want to log all the hell the way out every time you use it.
This part does not make sense to me, because as far as I'm aware the Steam Machine runs basically the same OS as the Deck and my Deck absolutely prompts me for my PIN every time I bring it out of suspend, the same as my Xbox does. I'd find it really strange if the Machine wasn't capable of doing the exact same thing.
This is a setting somewhere in the Deck or your Steam account, my Deck comes right up into my account without ever asking for a PIN or password or anything.
I have a Deck and never figured out how to make it do that. I also researched all this again when I got the Steam Machine and was setting it up, hoping something had changed, and found nothing but other people complaining about this still being absent (as recently as this year) and info on the rather painful set-up for creating a restricted library for children's accounts (which worked, but, still no PIN lock for accounts).
Maybe it's a PIN to unlock the device period, but not per-account? The former is a lot less useful to me than the latter, and I may have overlooked it. I don't want to have to intervene any time someone else wants to use it, I want to let other people use it without worrying they'll (intentionally or accidentally) end up seeing the wrong library, or messing with anyone else's saves, or anything like that.
If that functionality does exist and I've just not found it, I'd love a clue to send me in the right direction.
The new Steam Machine is a horse of a different color. Unlike AppleTV, the hardware supports the same Proton compatibility layer that people know and love on Steam Deck. The majority of Windows-only titles on Steam run without issue, making the Linux experience quite tolerable.
Apple's policy on macOS, iOS and tvOS is to prioritize native ports at all cost. The difference in compatibility is thousandfold; even games that have native ARM/Mac builds like Cyberpunk 2077, Death Stranding and No Man's Sky only work on macOS and not iOS/tvOS.
The Steam Machine will probably still flop, but Apple's failure vis-a-vis making gaming work is self-inflicted.
You might be surprised to hear that Death Stranding now does have an iOS/iPadOS version.
> Nintendo is holding course more or less, but their main value propositions are simplicity and first-party exclusivity, and phones already ate the first half of that.
Someone at Nintendo had the genius idea of charging you a subscription fee for internet access.
So, you can play Pokemon Champions on a Switch 2 for $35 / year, or you can play it on your phone, which has an internet connection outside Nintendo's control, for free.
Nintendo's value proposition really seems to be "we will screw you as hard as we can, and we hope you like that".
> Someone at Nintendo had the genius idea of charging you a subscription fee for internet access.
Microsoft had that 'genius' idea with the original Xbox. The others saw that people will indeed pay for such a thing and copied the idea with the PS4 and Switch.
They all do this. Sony charges for PlayStation online too.
It's not good, but it's not just Nintendo. In fact, Nintendo is the most reasonably priced.
It's really not much different than PSN or Xbox Live, so I don't think it's fair to say that Nintendo "had" the idea.
Err, Pokemon Champions does not require a Nintendo Switch Online subscription to play online.
Developers need to optimize and debug their game for each console. Xbox/PS are completely different platforms (UWP vs heavily customized BSD) so fixes don't transfer over. Adding another incompatible target with new store guidelines and system APIs adds a lot of work so Apple would have a hard time convincing them.
Now add the perception that Mac users don't play games and Apple devices are made for people already in their ecosystem. The only way they could gain market share is competing with Steam Machine as a more open platform, but without a giant library of existing games.
My Macbook Pro is my favorite emulator machine, and CrossOver is incredibly good at running most of the games I want to play.
OSX has also recently released a proton-style compat layer so we are seeing gains there as well.
For a long time Apple was outright AGAINST games. They wanted their machines to be for musicians and artists, not bratty kids.
Apple is still against games. Next year they'll remove Rosetta 2, and all the games that require it will stop working. There's no upcoming Vulkan drivers, or upstream support for Proton. CrossOver is expensive and incomplete.
The best gaming hardware will always be the hardware you keep on you; be it a phone, GameBoy, or a Mac. macOS is basically last-place in supporting PC gaming though, and Apple has no qualms letting it die again.
They’ve stated an intent to exempt games specifically:
> Beyond this date, we will maintain a subset of Rosetta features designed to support older, unmaintained games that rely on Intel frameworks.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/102527
Ah, good catch. Gotta keep Tomb Raider around for a few more keynotes, I suppose.
I think this is a multifaceted problem: - Apple TVs as they currently are can run RetroArch and some other more demanding games just fine, though not at full 4K - Game engine developers (Unity, Unreal are most notable) work very hard to add optimization tools for mainline consoles, and Apple has only recently started to really bolster this with the GPTK (game porting toolkit) and more Metal/GPU focus - Ouya and other similar Android standalone boxes have been underpowered for years, and the AI hardware inflation will make this segment harder to get into
They’ll probably need to design new silicon that is much more GPU oriented (with less CPU) than anything they have in the A or even base M series to handle 4k gaming at sub-M Max prices
A console-optimized lower-priced higher-GPU variant of the A series could be useful for local AI in so many products that don’t come with a capable processor (eg homepods, TV, the monitor they put a whole iPhone chip in)
I could see something for around the price of a Mac Mini with a controller that’s og MacBook plastic white/black
Consoles come with a controller and enough storage to be usable for games. The largest Apple TV 4K is 128GB and it's really common for games to easily be 50+ GB or even considerably more. 100 GB is not even that uncommon anymore (e.g., Call of Duty, FF7 Rebirth, Baldur's Gate 3).
When Apple first launched the Apple TV game store they required games be playable with the horrible remote. Understandably even games that would have been fine on the hardware didn't bother and while Apple later relented and allowed games to require a controller it's still an extra purchase that's needed.
Call of duty is kicking close to 500GB to 1TB depending what you have installed.
That said, I think the hardware is totally capable they just don't have a layer to run win32 or Linux apps natively (like proton for m series) so they'd have to commit to what valve is doing for linux, for macos
Google tried this with Stadia. I was a pretty happy user of it, but I think it probably exposed the weakness of US bandwidth/ throughput. Still trying to find what to do with the two controllers but it was the best refund experience I've gone through and Google probably regrets setting my expectations like that.
A pro device is going to be expensive. Non gamers won't buy it, let alone $60+ games.
A walled garden living room appliance that allows you to purchase a revokable digital license to download games only through the manufacturer's store?
Apple TV, PS and Xbox all meet that definition. I'm not following what you're pitching…
there is the steam machine but from my experience it is a matter of hardware drivers and support.
Steam Machine is GREAT. But it still has warts around controller support etc...
Also, a lot of AAA games do not work on steam machine because of aggressive anticheat and DRM, and those vendors don't provide Linux builds. No spyware, no game.
The software for the UI just isn't there for Windows machines. There have been attempts but it is always janky and you end up pulling out a keyboard anyway.
Devs are afraid of piracy so they like the walled garden. They don't want emulators running because then they have to compete with the 90s-2015 era which is the golden age of gaming, and their newer games don't stack up ( except in graphics ). Nintendo doesn't want to compete with Mario Kart Double Dash on the Switch 2.
Also: Modern PCs absolutely MOG the Switch 2 and Xbox. The games are all in the same engines and cross-platform anyway, so piracy ends up useful.
Also PS5 Emulation is advancing at an insane pace. https://x.com/BrutalSam_/status/2104554823240860065
Is the emulation layer thin enough for a non-stupidly specced computer to run stuff? Or is this more of a theoretical/advancing for the future thing?
PS5 emulation on x86 hardware will be more like running wine, so as long as your PC is as powerful as a PS5, performance should be close...eventually. The real performance bottleneck will be the GPU translation layer, much like converting DirectX to Vulkan isn't trivial, so isn't converting GNM (PS5's graphics API) to Vulkan, even tho the APIs are close (IIRC, they're cousin APIs)
There's also a Switch emulator that's being made for the PS5 that's a port of Eden. It's called ProsperoEden and can already run some games [1]
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXGiTuSAZ5o
Heck, someone in the emulation community dropped a preview that they're a couple of months out from creating a Switch game recompiler - which generates native x86 windows builds AOT. It's incredible.
I have to imagine that AI has significantly increased the velocity of technically demanding hobby projects.
If sony released jailbroken ps5 I'd buy it in a heartbeat. Unsure why they do not let us use it as much as we can. They would definitely sell more.
Because they don't make money from the hardware. If you don't buy games for it, there's no point in selling you a console, from their perspective.
They don’t make much money (if any) selling hardware.
Sony is barely making money on PS5 hardware.
they aren't in the business of selling consoles (duh). they are in the business of selling games. jailbroken consoles can run pirated games ...
consoles are sold at a loss, best information i can dig up is that this is still true today, even after all the volume.
Cool, now we can have disks again :-)
> This project is intended for educational and security research purposes only. It does not endorse piracy, unauthorized access, or misuse of commercial devices.
Sure, "education". Releasing exploits for software vulnerabilities has very little to do with education. The relation to piracy is clear however.
The irony of posting something like this on HACKER News of all places must have escaped you... this term is tightly related to breaking hardware/software systems apart to understand them and it is very common to share your findings.
What people decide to do with them is on them, and fixing the exploits would be on the manufacturer if they care about this so-called "piracy".
Pirates don't usually bother hacking consoles. It's easier for them to just bypass the security on the disc drive. That's why we had "mod chips" for decades
Are you against accessing hardware that you own?
Don't clog the liability sink pls