Words On Wednesday

Seven months after the announcement of the new Steam hardware and barely still within the "early 2026" estimate, the Steam Machine has officially released and I got my hands on a Steam Controller. This was originally going to be a review of the Steam Controller as well, but I decided it would be better saved for a later post. I didn't want to rush through a review with a week or less using the controller, and there was enough content already before I even started on the controller itself. That's something you can look forward to later. When Valve announced the controller, I was excited about it. When they revealed the price, I had my concerns. The most expensive controller I've ever had (not counting absurdly overpriced Nintendo Switch 2 Joy-Cons) was the WaveBird Wireless GCN controller at $80. Paying $99 for a single PC controller felt particularly steep when I only paid $50 for the excellent 8Bitdo Ultimate Bluetooth controller. Plus, I could use it for both ...

After getting a Steam Deck and leaning more heavily into PC gaming, I've been really eager to see my Steam Replay for 2025 and get a more meta view on what I played this past year. While the Steam Replay doesn't span the entire calendar year (it registers everything you've played on Steam "between the first second of January 1 and the last second of December 14 (GMT)"), it covers enough of the year to get a good approximation. Plus, I didn't get my Steam Deck until April, so I was still mostly playing on my PlayStation 4 before then. I did play some games on Steam that would run on my Surface Pro 7, but the time after April is significantly more representative of all the games I played. In any case, this is the first year that Steam has taken the lion's share of my gaming time. The summary image that Steam provides for social media sharing is a good overview. I played 43 games (36 of which were new) across 1,652 sessions, earning 470 achievem...

  After months of rumors and some pretty convincing hardware leaks, Valve has   announced new Steam hardware   to be released in "early 2026." In particular, they are releasing a Steam Controller, an updated Steam Machine, and a VR headset called the Steam Frame. Last Wednesday, I was walking my dog when I got a Discord notification from the  Refurbished Steam Deck Notifier  server that I joined earlier this year. Originally, I joined to watch for refurbished Steam Deck restocks before I bought my own. After I got one, I turned off restock notifications but stayed in the server in case friends were interested. With individual restock notifications disabled, I didn't frequently get updates from this server. I considered leaving the server entirely, but after I read the alert, I'm glad I didn't. "Valve announced new Hardware for next year! https://store.steampowered.com/sale/hardware " The thumbnail showed a VR headset, a controller, and a box. I was ecsta...