EmuDeck Machines - Feedback

I am very interested

Not interested

I'd go for something like this, specially like how subdued you've configured it. But two things on my wishlist would be being able to configure the system for even higher performance, and a better controller. I do get using the Xbox controller though, it's reliable. So that one is my personal gaming wish, to have a controller hybrid between PS2 / GameCube. Symmetrical sticks and Dual Stage analog triggers (like the GCN, that click).

using xbox controllers instead of dualsense was your first mistake

better cloudsync and PCSX2 steam shortcut failed to start process for the game and and other problem l have run into emudeck that can find community post here, Twitter X, and the emudeck discord group chat?

No one is going to buy a computer running bootleg Steam OS from you for $1100 when they can just buy a steam deck, a dock, and an SD card for $500. Big Industry players have this market on lockdown because they are big enough to subsidize the cost of the hardware. Just stick to making the product that you're already making better, please.

Unpopular opinion: But wouldn't it be less expensive to buy a REAL steam deck with a Dock and a gamepad?

I have joined the emudeck patreon and tried to install the emudeck app on my Asus Rog ally Z1 extreme. The installation is stuck at " collecting drives" it doesn't go further than that. If someone knows about how to solve the issue, please advise. Otherwise I'll have to cancel my patreon membership because it would be useless honestly speaking.

I think this just falls to the same problem the original Steam Machines did: Far, far too expensive. I know you said you're keeping markup low and the like, but the reality is that these things just can't be built at a profit. The only way to build a home console device at a desiriable price point is to sell at a loss, which obviously wouldn't be possible for you as a business. For these prices, it's impossible to compete with a home console, or the Deck. Or an HTPC built from preowned parts, which I went for. It's a neat idea, but I just don't think there would be enough demand to make it a worthwhile venture.

I think what I'd like to see isn't essentially prebuilt PCs, but some kind of EmuDeck handheld that can do cloud saves and is smaller than traditional handheld PCs, maybe more a of a Gameboy/DS form factor

Voted not interested but only because I recently built a living room pc, in a fractal ridge running bazzite no less!

The majority of your audience either has a Deck or a mobile Windows PC like the Legion Go. Particularly with the Windows ones like my Go, it can already emulate nearly everything. You’d really be competing with the Deck and Go and such. It doesn’t seem like something you’d succeed in. I’d rather just have better software.

When buying hardware, support is my main concern. Seeing how you often struggled with EmuDeck support (especially when new patch broke something and discord flooded with unanswered problems) - I'm not sure I'd be comfortable shelling out "big bucks" and buying system from you.

Would absolutely be my preference to have a very compact ITX Mini Pc for any of those configurations

It would be neat to see, I always like watching hardware developers try to create something they think fixes shortcomings in current offerings, however I usually am not personally interested in these types of products. My hardware tastes do not stray far from PC components.

I think having your own distro with emudeck already set up might be the better alternative. The steam deck or it's now many competitors offer too much for the casual market. The kind of person interested in a home console PC a la steam box would typically already know how to make one.

Xbox controller doesn’t have gyro. So not a great controller to bundle.

I think this is a great idea but I live in the US and the shipping and import costs would cancel out any obvious price draw. Also I think a lot depends on timing depending on the region. You may want to limit your first batch to your region and see how it goes. Good luck and as always thank you for your excellent communication about all of you and your team’s hard work!

Maybe for the right person but, I've been building computers from the first Pentium days... I used to run a small business building custom gaming PCs. With this being said should you be going down this road? You do such a great job with EmuDeck, Emulation for users is a techy product. What a mean is, most "non techy" people would not touch it. After all, they need to source BIOS files and roms. This would lead to you need to support this, after all spending $1200, to $2K on a PC, people would expect it up and running perfectly, bios in place, and roms in place, think of Nintendo coming after you.... Just building a PC is one thing but, a dedicated emulation system might be a road that could lead to a lot of problems.

I think emudeck should remain more of a software only solution. I'm already running emudeck on my PC for couch gaming, and many others are as well I suspect. If I wanted a emu only machine I'd buy a miniforums PC or use an old machine from 5 plus years ago and load emudeck on it. If I wanted to play PC games instead, then I'd want to pick my hardware instead of being stuck in picking X or Y prebuilt. Now that is just me, but hear me out on the other elephant in the room, and that is that many others have tried and failed in doing similar things to what your thinking. Hardware is a slippery slope once you have to factor in RMAs, shipping, supply chain, support, marketing, etc. Valve tried it, and canned it with desktop PCs because there wasn't enough separation of their "steam machines" and a regular pc, because they were the exact same internals. It flopped (but did at least pave the way for the deck) because of a mixture of hardware and software issues due to the machines not being unique in their features. The deck succeeded because it combined a controller, big screen, and full PC capabilities into a small form factor at the cost of a smart phone (the latter being the biggest seller). The machines you would make would have nothing unique to them that can't be added by an end user after an hour of tinkering, aside from maybe a cool Retro inspired case or something. Now if you got into making custom emudeck inspired peripherals or parts (cases, keyboard, controller, skins, shirts, etc) those I'd maybe snatch up. There would be nothing feature wise separating your machines from any other machine sold anywhere else other than being preloaded with free software that can be configured for a better initial OOB experience. It would be a convenient thing for non technical users, but I don't think it would generate enough buy-in from the general public for you to spend the time doing it. The SI space is already filled by numerous companies making custom PCs, and many offer Linux or no OS options which means it's ready for me to load bazzite and all the software I want. If you closed source all parts of emudeck and no longer offered free downloads in an attempt to push people to then buy the machines you would do more damage to emudeck than good as well. Not saying that you would do that, but if people decide to build and install emudeck manually rather than buy the prebuilts that are costing you money to have sitting around, then it might be something you may think about doing. With all that said, do what you think is best. To be honest people who follow your patreon and git may not be the right target for this question as we are likely the ones that would just install the software ourselves, but maybe someone else would be willing to buy into it.

Interesting, but I always dislike the black box resolution/fps nonsense. Giving way too much room for dishonesty in components, I don’t want to see you guys fall into that, or forced into it by a vendor.

I voted not interested but I do think it’s a great idea. It’s just not for me. I’m in the US and can build my own machine but this makes sense for other people for sure.

I’d agree with the others here, for this to work this time around, you’d need someone like Valve pushing it so the hardware can be somewhat subsidised, it’s just too expensive otherwise. Maybe explore how budget you can go with the mini-PC route and share it here again?

I think people who would rather have a PC over a console want it because they don’t mind tinkering or upgrading when they need. What you are offering is a console experience on a PC without the low cost of a console. If you could get the cost down it might make more sense. Sorry to be a downer.

I’d like more focus on the EmuDeck software.

My "no" is personal because I own a Steam Deck. I also think the price might be a bit high compared to the SD. Maybe scale back to handhelds for each generation of console? You could have a gen 1 with Atari to maybe SNES pre-installed (maybe with games you already have on the EMUDeck store pre-installed too) then a gen 2 device with PSX/N64, etc. Once you start getting to higher prices, I think most people would just get a Steam Deck.

Do an indigogo campaign and see how many people would actually buy it. You have a lot of NO’s but it’s still early. In the end, you are an entrepreneur, you might go against all odds and succeed. If you promote it and enough people preorder might be worth a shot.

I note the cautionary posts, but surely Steam Machines failed because of the dire state of Steam OS (and no Proton) back then? I have absolutely no interest in owning a Windows PC - they tend to be very large and very noisy compared to a PS5. I currently use GeForce Now to play at 4K with 7.1 surround and ultra settings, which works perfectly on my Internet connection... but only a small percentage of Steam games are available on GFN. So I'd be interested in something like this... but you need to remember that the current SteamOS/Proton combinations on Steam Deck only work so well because the developers are targettting a fixed hardware set. How will you get those same developers to include your machine specs when they're optimising?

You will lose a lot of money! Way too many devices on the market are much cheaper for the audience that would buy this.

Interested sort of but not sure the market needs this.

Don’t repeat the Steam Machine mistakes. What you’re describing is almost exactly how those were rolled out and marketed. The Steam Deck filled that hole already, I don’t see this being a profitable endeavor for you.

Valve itself tried this before with very mixed results. Yes steamos is much better nowadays but i think there are many alternative routes out there. HoloIso, ChimeraOS,etc are also very good.

Most likely too expensive for Australia.

I just want to clarify on my vote to state that I don't think the idea of the product is bad, just that i believe that I would have the capabilities to build and set up a machine of your description. Though with that said, I can see the benefit of selling this type of machine, the concern from myself would be marketing a machine of this type to the type of buyer that would benefit from this, so if this were to be carried out I just hope that significant consideration goes towards the idea of marketing such a machine.

i'd be more interested in there was a more budget friendly version - maybe 720p?

I think the idea is there for those who want a steam like computer gaming experience, but people who want that are usually more willing to either buy a steam deck or just play on there consoles. Love the idea by all means!

It's steam machines all over again. Ambitious definitely, but I don't think it's a good idea, especially considering you'd directly be competing with the pre built pc market

For emulation, go with mini PCs with 200€ you can have a very good PC

Unless it's something unrelated to EmuDeck and it's aimed at modern PC games.

I think it's a good idea if you did this for emulators, with a Raspberry Pi or a low end PC which will make it way cheaper.

Not really. The market for this is not big enough when PS5 and especially XBOX where you can run Retroarch exists. I would continue focusing on software.

for me there's not enougth info. Like, a handheld? or a itx pc build? tbh I don't think there'd be enougth people who would buy it. it's a cool idea though.

I could definitely see this going somewhere, I think honestly what would push this over the edge is if somehow someway you could pair this with a handheld emudeck device in bundle to allow seemless back and forth between both. Obviously that could be a pipe dream I know especially since the primary driver of emudeck is steamdeck but if so you could really have a great sell for anyone looking to not only get into PC gaming but have a way to snag any potential new people who haven't gotten into the emudeck ecosystem. Either way cool idea and as always thanks for the awesome service you provide 🫡

Not really. I'm in Canada so import fees + shipping would be a nightmare. Honestly you'd be better off just suggesting a config for each one, with links to the parts, or a specific model from known pre-built PC companies.

I am not sure how well steam os functions outside of Steamdeck, however I thoroughly enjoyed my Steamdeck, even though the battery life was booty and no game made in this decade would run above medium graphics settings. If you're able to run this OS on hardware that is more powerful than the Steamdeck, and place it in a package that mimics a game console, you'd do well. Or, if you could configure a small form factor and then 3d model various retro consoles as covers, you would probably make bank. Especially if it's a clip on/couple of screws to change. I'm feeling ps2 today, let me slap the ps2 cover on. I'm gonna play metroid today, slap my GameCube shell on. That would be tricky for obvious trademark reasons, however if this is possible I bet you'd make a killing. I would invest for sure.

Although I have a PC, Steam Deck, etc. I would love this and would probably buy one just to support it.