Gabe Newell says all his PC bits come from different manufacturers, and that's why PC is best

From PCGamer: "Yesterday saw the star-festooned extravaganza that was the 40th annual Golden Joystick awards(opens in new tab). Unsurprisingly when it came to the software side, Elden Ring walked off with an armful of gongs, but the best hardware award went to Valve and the Steam Deck(opens in new tab). The award was accepted by Gabe Newell, and in doing so he made a point about something we all take for granted in our wonder machines.

"On behalf of everyone at Valve, I would like to say thank you for giving Steam Deck the Golden Joystick award for best gaming hardware," said Newell. "So on my PC I have an AMD CPU, a Nvidia GPU, the PC's from Falcon Northwest, I have a Corsair mouse, I have a Logitech keyboard, I have a Samsung monitor…"

[PitbullMonster]

By the most important parts, CPU and GPU, you can only choose between 2 and 3 brands and these 3 brands use their oligopol to the max. Sorry but I won't pay 1000€+ just only for a gpu.

[ChubbyBlade]

Then don’t buy top of the line? The other cards don’t suddenly vanish into thin air

[Number1TailzFan]

Top of the line is rarely good value for performance, you go for the parts that give most performance for the money, when it's possible of course, like Intel 13600k or 13700k make far more sense than a 13900k since you're most of the way there and saving a good amount of money.

With GPUs that's difficult at the moment, at least with the 4000 series from NGreedia anyway.

[z2g]

PCs are the best for people who want to f***k around building PCs.

I just want to focus on games and services, not the machinery.

[Inverno]

Then buy prebuilt. Want to just plug and play? You can do that too. These excuses were only ever that, excuses. There is no reason you can't just focus on games and services on PC. You can if you wanted to have it go straight to big picture mode and forget it's even a PC if that's what you wanted.

[ChubbyBlade]

Then just buy one built?

Why do you console only people act like every time a Pc player plays a game they have to insert 25 pieces of hardware, enter 250 lines of code and spend $1000 each month for new parts to play?

They open steam and click launch.

[MadLad]

Because they don't want to play on it, and it gives them peace of mind to just tell themselves there's not a bunch of pros to the platform.

[Giblet_Head]

I've come to see it as nothing but a coping mechanism. Consoles have become quite anti-consumer and the old brand loyalists have been hitting mental roadblock after mental roadblock to rationalize that very one-sided loyalty. Quite literally driving them insane.

[FinalFantasyFanatic]

Once you build/set it up (two hours tops), you don't really change the PC much unless you're upgrading parts every year, I don't dick about in the game settings much either, just max most settings and play.

[Eidolon]

Didn't fuck around with mine much besides replacing the mobo because it didn't play nice with XMP, and upgrading my PSU for a 3060 TI(plus is twas a cheap ass 500W PSU I got for free and will be using it in a secondary system at some point). I primarily game on console, though.

[Number1TailzFan]

There's also people who want to do more than just game on their PC, like using it for content creation such as video editing etc.

[MadLad]

Yeah.
I think people conveniently forget that when you build a gaming PC ... It's also a PC.

Like they conveniently leave out the extra cost spent to play games over a generation.

[The3faces]

Wrong Gabe Half Life 3 would be best!

[Inverno]

Steam Deck still has some kinks, but I'm glad I bought it. It has the best controls of any console/handheld. Hope they take what they've learnt and make another steam controller.

[Tacoboto]

Steam Deck represents the best and worst to me. I absolutely loved mine the first week, but I RMA'd when I realized mine had a series of dead pixels after I started playing a game with bright colors.

For all they did right - control options, SteamOS, ease of proton version selection, freedom of extensibility, shader caching - they exhibit such immature hardware shortcomings - dead pixels, screen "bubbles", low quality fans.

I would've sought a replacement unit but chose the refund option when the subreddit became filled with reports of those screen bubbles which are still ongoing. The device I feel is absolutely transformative, and the power is actually there. But damn those kinks; when you have the kind of luck to actually get even one dead pixel in 2022, it's impossible to get that kind of excitement back...

Steam Deck OLED - fix the display up and I'll preorder it immediately.

[MadLad]

I have a Steam Deck already, but would happily sell it and grab an OLED version. That's probably something they're already thinking about.

They know they have a hit on their hands now. Far from the highly mismanaged Steam Machines.

[Knushwood Butt]

My PS5 is full of components from different manufacturers, but that's got nothing to do with why it's the best.

[MadLad]

I have a PS5.
I have a couple of games for it but, for some reason, I still find myself playing my PC 95% of the time.

[masterfox]

sorry Gabe but PC it will never be the best for gaming imo, if getting cheap priced games from Steam makes it the best, well yes then I kinda agree on that if that's the case, but for creating stunning gaming moments and what video can be I think Playstation is the only one delivering on that department and still evolving, PC more than a decade ago had this moment with the release of Crysis, but PC only gaming lost the will to try to deliver stunning new visuals that only powerful GPUs can deliver, developers no longer care to try to see what an exclusive PC game can really look like, I remember saying way before the PS4 was released, that with Playstation someday will be able to play in realtime gameplay sequences that can be very similar to the combat sequences that we find in multimillion dollar movies like the Avengers, effects, lightning, shadows, physics, etc, and well look at it now, go and see PS4 Spider Man action sequences, Uncharted 4 Market Place, PS5 Rachet and Clank, God of War initial fight with Baldur, hell I can give dozens of examples of stunning memorable moments from PS exclusives, but can I say the same for PC gaming? sorry the only thing I remember that was memorable from PC gaming and it was unforgettable, it was the moment I was able to play on my gaming PC build just to play Crysis more than a decade ago, other than that sorry but is none atm, maybe someday will get a PC game exclusive that it will only be able run it on a high end PC, don't get me wrong I love my gaming PC but to say who is the best gaming device, with out any doubt still for me is effing Playstation!!! :D

[Shiore2u]

tl;dr

[Number1TailzFan]

I had a fairly powerful PC when Crysis came out and wasn't that fussed on the game and it still didn't run that well. Half Life 2 in late 2004 was better, at least in my opinion, and was really worth building a new PC for at the time, again in my opinion. It also had a decent online deathmatch mode released shortly after.

PC will usually always give better performance and highest quality/resolution over a console for the multiplat games, with exception of crap ports.

Also i like to make content by video editing and using other software, it's not just all about games. Consoles are fine for what they do, but you're not gonna get top performance all the time, they usually fall behind 2-3 years after release by a noticeable amount, and are roughly mid-tier PC level on release.

[ChubbyBlade]

Why are you mentioning PlayStation games that are also on Pc as a way to say PlayStation is better than pc? And add to boot highly scripted very controlled next to no variation sections?

Logic my guy, doesn’t seem to be your strong suit.

[masterfox]

yes PS is way better in terms of memorable moments story and gameplay wise, and is nice PC finally can have those moments as well, years later but is good in the end.

[EternalTitan]

Also expensive as hell.

[MadLad]

So are consoles when you factor in how much you pay to play online over a generation.
Worse sales because it's only one storefront vs several fighting for your money.

And then at the end of the day a PC is a PC and can also do PC things.