Are you me? 5800X3D and 7900XTX is my exact setup right now.

I’m not anti-capitalism like the other guy, but I still need to correct your first bit. I’d rephrase it as “People adding value to something then reselling it is the cornerstone of (uncorrupted) capitalism.” “Adding value” can be lots of things, even something as simple as collecting a bunch of related products together in a more accessible, easily browsed format, i.e. what your average retail store does.

Scalping does not add value. It leaches it. You could try saying it adds value to someone who couldn’t be present during the original sale, but it does that by robbing the purchase opportunity from someone else while adding an exorbitant middle-man tax, so there’s no net gain in the system. It shouldn’t matter what platform or legal rules exist. It should be enough that it’s obviously unethical.

The closest I’ll come to saying something like scalping is okay is when someone resells a product forclose to the original price to people left out of the original market.

I’ve spent thousands of dollars on Steam over 13 years now, and I still think that’d be unfair. It just needs to be a hard threshold that answers this question for Valve, “Do you have genuine skin in the game or not?” I think Valve’s new rules for the reservations answers that well enough. I just wish they had done this from the start.

Oh, I didn’t think of that. If Valve did something like subtracting Machine wishlists from Controller wishlists to estimate the number of people wanting to buy the Controller to use by itself, that leaves a lot of room for underestimating the overlap. I probably contributed to this too by wishlisting the Machine despite not being sure I actually want it. If you only wishlisted the Controller, I may have taken your spot. Oops. Sorry, guys.

Yep, it’s a complete mess to try to predict. Despite both the Frame and Machine being in my wishlist and expected to come in around the same general price, I’m buying the Frame day one while the Machine may stay on hold indefinitely. I’ve been all in on VR since the Vive, but I’ve got better PCs than the Machine already, so my interest in it is more just for its novelty. Nothing about my wishlist status tells Valve any of that though.

I cycle through phrases just because language variety also matters. I’m fighting myself not to edit a recent comment because I used “still” twice in one sentence. Lol.

Yeah, this is my main concern for the Frame release. I don’t want a “blocked for suspected fraud” credit card payment being the reason I miss the first few minutes of the reservation window, but I also don’t want hundreds of dollars just sitting in my Steam Wallet in case I miss the window anyway. First world problems.

I said it somewhere else, but I think Valve actually did factor in wishlist counts. The problem is in the percentage of those that convert to sales. For games, the median conversion rate is 10% to 20% of wishlists converting to sales within the first week. I expect the Steam Controller’s conversion rate was much higher.

Valve may have even tried anticipating this from Deck sales and still failed to account for the Deck conversion rate still being lower due to the greater price.

Lol. I use hedging terms constantly, because I’m autistic and precision in language matters to me. 99% certainty is still enough uncertainty to justify a “likely.” I’m not planning to change that even if more and more people think my writing is AI.

Even having high-end enthusiast hardware, I want those devices as the baseline too. Whatever optimizations they do still apply over the whole hardware spectrum.

Also, you can technically say 2030 is less than 4 years away if you want to traumatize old people. Lol.

Yeah, I work at a plant where this is an ongoing concern. If we overstock product, we have to rent trailers to store the excess. The price works out to about $12 per pallet per month. It’s not much, but it’s also not nothing, and if we were in a more urban area, I could see that price quickly getting higher.

I went through a ton of the reviews, and as far as I know, none of them gave a box weight or even dimensions. Still, I based my palletizing math on the original Steam Controller box, 8.5" x 6.5" x 3", and I don’t think the new one is too far off of that. We’ll know for sure in “3 to 5 business days” at least.

It doesn’t mean a lot for your overall point, but I think you’re underestimating the weight of the packaging and USB-C cable it comes with a little. I grabbed a cable and a similar sized box and weighed them at 110g. It was a lot flimsier looking box than the controller’s too, so I could see that still being at good bit heavier. With that in mind, I think something closer to this math is more likely:

• 450g per controller including package and all accessories
• 28,800 total controllers or 720 per pallet for 40 pallets
• pallet arrangement of 6 wide by 6 deep by 20 high for 720 exact to fit 40" x 48" pallet at maybe around 60" high

To be even more pessimistic, I think this works too especially if pallet weight is an appreciable amount of the total:

• 600g per controller including distributed pallet weight
• 21,600 total controllers or 540 per pallet
• pallet arrangement of 6 by 6 by 15 for closer to 48" high

Edit: tweaked math a little for better palletizing

May 9th edit for posterity:

I have my controller now, and my estimates above were still very optimistic. The total package weight per controller is 748g including an additional shipping box that has to come from the factory due to the serial label on the outside. This means the 12,970 kg shipment couldn’t have been more than 17,300 controllers

Also, package dimensions are 8.0" x 5.75" x 3.1".

Unlike some comments here, I don’t think this is a “test run.” Valve just doesn’t like to sit on inventory. Where most companies let some stock build up before opening the flood gates, Valve just puts a product up for sale when the first shipping container comes out of the factory. Many customers end up feeling left out if they can’t make the first wave, but technically the majority of customers get the product earlier than they otherwise would have, so I’m sure Valve sees it as a win-win.

We’ll probably see a steady supply of similar batches for a while. The Deck preorders shipped much the same way.

Just curious, what kind of hardware are you used to gaming on?

Good to know. I can’t speak for OP, but I’m one of those people for whom a good gameplay loop alone isn’t enough. I need some lasting justification in long-term progression, story and world-building, or whatever, so anything that weakens those can kill a game for me. (And yes, I basically can’t make myself interested in roguelikes.) It sounds like Vintage Story is propped up enough by its progression for the rest to not matter though.

I think it depends more on the person than the tech. I’ve only had AAA games on my Deck for demoing to others. I’m too spoiled by my desktop to actually enjoy playing them that way.

Even if it’s not a big part of the total experience, knowing a game’s story will be eternally unfinished can make the whole thing feel hollow. That’s my experience at least. Per the wiki, it looks like Vintage Story is planned to have 8 chapters of story and development is currently at 2.

Good to know. I’ve checked out some Let’s Plays of it, and the differences still look fun. I guess I better get on it.

Yeah, I wouldn’t be turning anything like that off until at least a second playthrough. Difficulty tweaks might be nice though, especially if the VR mod is in a good state when I get around to it.