Way back in the summer of 1998, I had finally scrounged up enough money between my allowance and my birthday to get an N64. I had been playing it for almost two years at the houses of friends and neighbors, trying my hand at games that any millennial would be familiar with: Goldeneye and Mario 64. The system itself was a massive leap from the Sega Genesis I had gotten for Christmas a few years prior, and I dove right into what felt at the time as very immersive 3D visuals.
In May of 2013, as Microsoft prepared to launch its new XBox console, they announced plans to tie all copies of an XBox game, both physical and digital, to a license that had to be authorized and deauthorized from your console via an online check that had to occur once a day. The outcry from the gaming community at the time was so loud and visceral that Microsoft quickly backpedaled on these plans. The damage was done, however; the first impression had been made, and for years afterwards, consumers continued to think that the XBox had some draconian DRM controls that limited their ability to share games with friends. Sony gleefully capitalized on this situation at E3 that year by mocking Microsoft with a short video demonstrating how easy it was to share a game on their new Playstation 4 system.
Way back in November of 2025, Valve made several hardware announcements that seemed to build on its previous releases. A new Steam Controller which took a lot of notes from the popular but still niche Steam Deck; a new VR headset called the Steam Frame that could connect to your PC wirelessly; and their second attempt at cracking the home theater PC/console market called the Steam Machine.
