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I think that quote says it would be cost competitive with equivalent PC parts, which is cheaper than buying a prebuilt computer, fwiw. (And you’ll get a compact GabeCube instead of a big tower).
I expect GabeCubes might be my kiddos first desktops. CachyOS should run like a dream on 'em, so they’ll work great as both computers and entry-level gaming rigs.
Yes, you can with derivatives: buy out-of-money puts.
Derivatives are financial instruments that pay out based on market movements. A classic example is crops: using derivatives, farmers can, essentially, “lock in” the price they sell their goods at. This allows them more stability, since they know in advance how much they’ll be paid for their crops. (And they’ll separately buy crop Insurance to cover their risk for crops failing, most likely.)
Puts are a derivative that is a contract for the right to sell an asset at a given price (the “strike price”) on a given date. Usually, these are closed out by paying the cash value at the end, not actually selling the stocks.
Out of money means that the strike price is below the current market price. If they are still out of money at the end of the contract term, they are literally worthless. But, if the underlying asset (like NVidea stock) crashes, then you can earn the difference between the strike price and the market price.
What makes this speculation* strategy effective is that the market usually prices in a low probability of a major price decrease, so they’re (relatively) cheap. They also have limited downside risk—at worst, you lose everything you spent buying them. For deeply out-of-money puts, you can make a lot of money with a huge crash, but most of the time you “just” lose all your money.
This contrasts with short selling where you have unlimited downside risk. With short selling, you’re basically borrowing someone else’s share and immediately selling it at the current market price, then you need to buy it back from the market when you close out the position. So if you sold it for $100, and need to buy it back at $1000, you’re royally fucked. (You won’t be allowed to get that far, though; you need to keep assets in your account to cover the cost, so you’d be forced to continually “pony up” more cash as the price rises, until you can’t make a payment and you’re forced to close out the position, losing all your initial money and all the money you were forced to keep adding as it rose.)
But good luck with that strategy; I imagine NVidea puts are pretty expensive right now since a lot of people are making this exact bet. As such, people issuing/selling puts are demanding a lot of money to pay for them taking on risk.
* This is “speculation”, not “investment”. Investment requires, by definition, capital put towards productive assets—in other words, it needs to be expected to return an income stream of some kind, like interest, profits, or dividend payments. Speculation is betting on the direction of price movement on an asset—“gambling”, effectively, but with fancy investment words. Like in the farmer example above, they’re gambling that prices won’t go up, since they won’t gain any of the benefit from rising prices. That type of speculation reduces risk—unlike what you are asking about.
There are other ways that derivatives can reduce risk, but that’s not what you were asking about here.
Steam Input would work, I’m pretty sure. I think I could overload all the buttons on the back so that they do all the complex D-Pad stuff. I haven’t tested if this is possible, but I’m imagining something like: pull starting direction from the DPad, press button on back for quarter/half/full/shuriouken movement, then execute with face button. So, like, DPad-Left+R3+A does full roll starting from facing right, then A.
Alternatively, I could load a radial menu on one of the touch pads with specific moves to execute in one click, with DPad input auto-toggling switching between directionally-correct radial menus (or maybe L3 as a manual toggle or something).
There are lots of options… Maybe I’ll try and see what I can figure out.
Are input macros in fighting games considered cheating or accessibility tools? I like the idea of learning fighting games, but with my thumb injuries, I literally can’t do the key inputs.
I assumed key input macros would be banned, so I never looked into this as an option. I remember hearing about upset when even official pressure-sensitive input controls on Dead or Alive 3 were banned in a major tournament in that game, let alone custom input macros.
Oh, weird. I just read the whole chain going up and I don’t see any indication the figures were for prebuilt systems. Maybe someone edited their post or something isn’t federating?
Regardless, Valve is apparently going to be competitive just in hardware costs, which makes sense—they can’t expect to extract extra value from software sales, but they should still be able to have an acceptable profit margin with their scale and lack of layers in their distribution model.
Valve’s Pierre-Loup Griffais claimed that the Steam Machine price had not been nailed down internally, but that Valve’s aim was to offer a “good deal” in line with equivalently powered PCs.
“I think that if you build a PC from parts and get to basically the same level of performance, that’s the general price window that we aim to be at,” he said.
There going to be price competitive with building from parts, apparently.
Depends on the price point. Obviously, it’s not going to be competitive with a $2K gaming rig. But if the price is right, I might get GabeCubes for my kiddos as their first “desktop” computers. They should run CachyOS flawlessly, since it’s also Arch based, so it will work great as a desktop computer and a gaming rig.
My midrange computer from 3 years ago should outperform it, I would hope. If not, then it’ll be priced out from what I’d consider buying.
That would be amaze balls, but hard to see happening in reality.
How cool would it be if Steam split* into a non-profit, giving rebates back to developers for platform fees collected in excess of costs (including generous salaries for their employees, of course) with directives to make the platform as good for gamers and developers as possible?
One can dream.
- I’m assuming a split because game development and sales don’t really mesh with a non-profit in the same way. Hard to make competitive multiplayer-only live-service games (let alone The International for DOTA 2) and loot crates your business model that way, at any rate.
Dwarf Fortress, so much. But I agree; I don’t think that type of play is unintended. It’s a fantasy world simulator first and game second (if at all). There are absolutely no objectives in the game at all; it’s entirely self generated.
Like, what’s more fun than chopping down all the trees, getting the elves raging mad at you, then holing up in your giant underground+inverted pyramid “hourglass” base while completely ignoring the siege going on above/below you while digging deep to get magma pumps set up all the way to the inverted pyramid so you can flood the surface with magma and kiil all the elves with fire, without having a single military dwarf the entire time because you can’t be bothered to figure out the military menus/training when it’s not as much !!!FUN!!! as mechanical defense options (lava traps.)
Is that a game, or just a sandbox? idk, but I love it. I haven’t played in a while b/c of life commitments (kids, mostly), but I look forward to playing again.
Apparently military is a lot simpler, now, but I can’t be bothered. Traps are so much more !!!FUN!!! and I totally haven’t drowned my complete base with a failed water trap design killing all my dwarves. Not recently. (Mostly because I haven’t played recently.)
The article addresses a lot of the speculation about these numbers:
- This is an internal estimate that was leaked to the gaming press, and so is likely designed to be an underestimate, if anything, since it makes the entire XBox division look bad for cannibalizing their own sales (although most likely this was a best estimate).
- A whopping 82% of full-price sales of BO6 was on PS5, the one platform that does not have GamePass
- Inflated piracy numbers are addressed directly by the writer, although no specifics are given in relation to this number since the modeling was not disclosed
So, I think a lot of other commenters are unreasonably dismissing this number as inflated when it’s likely fairly accurate.
Good question; didn’t even occur to me this might be a thing, but a quick search confirms that previous demo releases have had Denuvo.
Still waiting on Hogwarts Legacy to drop Denuvo. I’ve almost bought it three times, when it’s been on sale, only to cancel when I did the Denuvo check. It’s been cracked for 2½ years, since 12 days after release. Why the hell is it still included!?
Or keep the live service model, but label things correctly:
You’re getting a subscription to the service that’s guaranteed to last at least until [planned minimum end date]. Make it illegal to label anything using “buy” that doesn’t grant a permanent, non-expiring license to the software or digital good.
There’s nothing wrong with charging for a subscription. If that’s their product, and the only way they can offer the product, then clearly market it that way and there’s no legal problem under the proposed rules.
Granted, that still sucks for videogame preservation, but at least it’s honest. And I’m not sure how many people will be willing to shell out $80+ for a “minimum 24 month subscription” to a new game, or pay $9.99 for a "micro"transaction they’re guaranteed to keep access to for 8 7 6 5 months.
Shitty timing for the Gabe Cube launch to have all these market forces fucking with hardware prices. There’s going to be some massive sticker shock when the price is announced.