Oddbean new post about login | logout @40ec4379 Steam Machines never took off. I don’t know about anyone who ever bought one. Anyway, my point is that the Steam Deck supports DirectX games – as it should since that’s what most PC games use. As much as I hope Vulkan eventually replaces DirectX, I still want to play all those DirectX games. And Proton does a great job. It’s rare when I find a game that completely doesn’t work on Steam Deck.
@Chris Trottier the Steam Machines lack of commercial success doesn't invalidate the time they played in the development of the SteamDeck. In fact, it was one of the driving factors behind the redoubled investment of Valve in Wine/Proton development to improve DirectX support. As for the API transition, I don't think anyone actually expects it to happen overnight.
@40ec4379 Sure, Steam Machines was an incremental step towards the Steam Deck and was a key learning event. But I don’t think it was intended as an experiment. Valve actually wanted the initiative to be a success. Many people wanted it to be a success. The problem was that even though the library of Linux games was bigger than Xbox One or PS4, it was still dwarfed by what was available on Windows. It also didn’t help that most Steam Machines were not only expensive, they were huge. Anyway, I think Valve found the killer idea: make a handheld, dock it to a TV if you want.