artyom@piefed.social 4 months ago
This is exactly why they SHOULDN’T have named it Steam Machine. The Steam Deck was released and no one talked about Steam Machines. Call it Steam Machine and suddenly everyone is reminded of the colossal flop all those years ago.
I’m trying to think of a scenario where someone would think twice about purchasing a steam machine just because a product from 10 years ago bombed in sales.
This would require them to ignore the recent success of the steam deck… which is basically impossible.
Therefore, I have doubts that the name alone would have ANY direct impact on sales.
then again i think xbox is doing alright with their crazy similar names.
I think MS is transitioning from XBOX = console to XBOX = MS gaming, and they’re just fumbling that communication.
Maybe its the norm in the gaming community like what the heck is a “NEW” nintendo 3ds lol. At this point everyone needs to fire their marketing team.
A friend of mine thinks it is gonna flop (tbh nobody knows), only because of that prior flop, he refuses to acknowledge that they might have learned of their mistakes, and hardly acknowledge that the Steam Deck is a success, only because it is a different market (he truly doesn’t believe in Steam hardware).
I for one am excited as I don’t have any PC gaming at the moment (or Steam Deck lol), I have been a console (and mostly handheld) gamer since the old days, and this bet on Steam makes sense for me in this day and age.
Does it matter though? You can put it as a failure that got so bad Valve eventually cancel it, or you can put it as a product that got good from countless iteration. Its kinda like glass half empty half full kind of situation which eventually doesn’t really matter.
Ask anyone who works in marketing is branding is important.
It is. “From failed product to global success” will also drum up a positive vibe about this particular hardware. What i meant by it is it doesn’t really matter if the previous iteration is a failure, what people really care and what’s important is the current iteration and what Valve learn from their past mistake, and the marketing team of Valve know exactly that. It’s marketing after all, turning negative vibe to positive one is part of the marketing strategy.
The goal of marketing is to get as many people as possible to be aware that a company’s product exists. These articles are doing just that, for free.
Initial sales will probably take a hit bc of the negative articles. I don’t think they’re being written bc valve decided to stick with the same name though. The articles are probably being written bc negative headlines get clicks.
If the new steam machine proves to be a solid product this time around then gamers are going to buy it. If it’s such a solid product that it manages to turn a product line that was once associated with failure and negativity into a product line that’s associated with success and positivity then I really can’t think of anything better the new steam machine could do for valve’s brand. The (hypothetical) articles comparing the huge (hypothetical) success of the new steam machine to the dramatic failure of the past will also be a bit easier to write a headline for. More free marketing.
Going from YouTube comments on gaming channels that don’t focus on PC gaming or Linux, I don’t think many people remember the first Steam Machines from 10 years ago.
There’s so few people that remember… Nobody cares.
And Steam Machine is going really hard as a brand and as a device name, really. I bet there’s a lot of salivating at this level of brand recognition in a lot of marketing departments.
I was holding out for the Steam Engine.
Game engine from Steam? Sounds like a logical next step.
Get the Steam Engine, from the Source :)
I kind of wish they’d called em steam engines
Really, how many people cared about or even remember the original? The original program was a flop but that hasn’t tainted the name.
I remember it, and that memory is why this one kind of has me hopeful.
Same. I don’t have any immediate need for any of the newly announced hardware products, but I’m hopeful they succeed because they indirectly benefit me as a Linux gamer.
Spec for spec, its a little bit better than my PC, I may consider getting this instead of upgrading of it’s comparable in price.
how many people cared about or even remember the original
The people who wrote this article do. And now so does everyone that came across it.
UnPassive@lemmy.world 4 months ago
I remember the flop, but since Proton and Steam Deck have been waiting for them to try again. In many ways it might be bad marketing and just adding a “2” to the name would probably help. But in other ways, it might just be them being transparent? Same with the controller. Like they’re owning their past and saying “we still want this, and the time is right this time”
Acidbath@lemmy.world 4 months ago
This is the initial vibes I got but then again I might be bias because I’m already familiar with steam. Honestly, it might be better if valve added 2 to the end of their products. For example, The nothing phone company tried to do something “unique” with their earbuds but all that did was confuse the shit out of people. I think they reverted back to numbering them.
But then on the flip side, sony is infamously known to name all their products with a shit load of numbers… so tbh this can go either way lmao