Topic: What if…Microsoft allowed Steam on Series consoles?

Just hear me out: what if, as part of their push into merging Xbox with PC with the upcoming project Helix, Microsoft also allowed PC storefronts to be installed on current series consoles? In theory the SOCs in these consoles (particularly the X) should result in a wide range of PC games performing pretty well.
Steam on a Series X could well make the upcoming Steam Machine DOA…

Microsoft doesn't exist to give away their profits to a 3rd party, that solution doesn't sound viable.

I don’t think it’s viable either. But what if…?

They would have to make more money on hardware sales to make up for losing all that revenue from software sales...... So raise the price of the XSeX to $1,000? So they'll never sell another one. And they will still lose out on the few of us who already have Series consoles. Besides they would want to use that as a selling point for the new, expensive console, not give me a reason to stay on my XSeX I paid $500 for. Not going to happen.

I don't think it would make anyone buy their consoles but those who do own one would be really happy. Personally since I have no interest I'd look elsewhere for hardware and put Bazzite on it. Since Steam works so well outside of Microslop's OS anyway now.

I don't see it. why would Microsoft allow a store front benefitting there direct competitor. this could become the primary way gamers buy games on the platform and valve makes 30 percent royalties on every game sold via steam. the more likely scenario is the Xbox pc store with PC game pass becomes Microsoft's default game store for their console pc hybrid approach. I'm sure valve would love it though as they would get to make profit on game sales on both Xbox and their own upcoming steam machine.

Unless Microsoft can negotiate a share of the cut steam or other store fronts would get selling through the Xbox I can’t see why MS would open this up. But also they would probably want something In place to capture some of the revenue where people buy the game on the steam app / website / pc directly but only play on the pc. It’s all seems a bit too much fuss. Interested to see their plans for project Helix.

Though personally I’d be over the moon with steam coming to Xbox. I’m using sunshine and moonlight from my pc onto my XSX but it’s still not as convenient as firing up a game natively on my Xbox.

@Biedls I suppose that what I’m saying. If MS are going to allow third party installers / storefronts on Helix, I think it would be amazing if they could somehow open up the XSX as well. I know it won’t happen, but it would be great.

It's a very interesting idea, but the main problem is a total of 16GB of RAM - much less than a PC's "standard" requirement of a minimum of 16GB system RAM and 8GB for the GPU. I ran into problems here on PS5 Linux.

Ahhh, I hadn't considered that at all. So with that being the case, do you think Helix will move away from the unified memory pool, or simply up it to 24 or 32GB?

@BenWright Leaks currently indicates Helix will have 48GB RAM as unified memory, how it might allocate that outside of console mode would be a guess and will depend specifically on the final architecture, but 24/24 would probably be most likely.

@MattGPT any ideas how much the RAM alone would cost in today’s climate? 48GB sounds very expensive.

Online estimates for 48GB of GDDR7 would be around $155-165 at current prices, potentially closer to $200 in 2027, those are wholesale bulk buying for the chips though, which also need to be soldered to the board during assembly. The SOC bare is estimated to cost $300 and the 1TB storage will likely cost $75 wholesale, so nearly $600 just for those three components bare, all the other bits, power, ports, cooling, packaging, assembly, shipping, etc. is easily going to push it over $1,000 cost, estimates seem to say $1,300-1,500 cost per unit to MS.

@MattGPT thanks Matt

@BenWright It'll be unified memory and presumably lots of it.