EmuDeck's concept PC launches on IndieGoGo. The new Steam Machine?

Hey everybody, it's your friend and your guy, Gardner. I'm here today with some interesting news regarding Linux video games and emulation on Linux hardware.

Emudec has launched the Emudec machines. This is kind of fascinating to me because this is not something I would expect from the Emudec team. You know, I'm not intimately familiar with the people that work on that team, so I don't know if there are hardware experts on their team or whatever, but you know, they're primarily known for their software. Emudec is a great software utility for

playing retro games on your Steam deck and other handhelds and what have you.

So the fact that they're kind of venturing into this territory was unexpected to me.

Not to say that's a bad thing. You know, you look at this and it's clear that they're retro gaming enthusiasts. The Emudec machine case, the chassis, is clearly modeled after the Sega Dreamcast and being true to their emulation roots, I would be surprised if this was anything other than emulating the look of a disk drive, right? Like this is not an optical media drive. This is just there for aesthetic purposes, I'm imagining.

and they're building this as PCs built and tailored for retro gaming and Steam games.

now let me back up for just a second, because every Friday I produce a video, it's

So let's scroll down here and see what we actually are being sold here. Play your retro games from your couch with what looks like two USB 3 ports and two USB A ports based on the color here.

There's a custom retro inspired shell with four USB ports in the front, power and reset switch,

I'm interested how this reset switch is going to work. Is that just going to be literally like any other PC case has a reset switch, in which case why?

Those are kind of vestigial at this point, aren't they? Then there's one USB-C port in the back, 2.4 gigabit ethernet in the back and an HDMI output at 4K, which is interesting. It's powered by Bazlite Linux, which is a good operating system, especially for gaming.

Then you have gaming mode with optimized user experience. No details on what that actually means,

yet. I haven't looked at this whole page fully yet.

GameSir Nova Lite controller.

Now it's possible that you can pre-order this and get a controller with it or not, and it will have MU Deck pre-installed. Then there's going to be automatic and zero config retro games steam library.

That's interesting. I'm curious how that's going to be achieved as well.

Now the specifications,

The CPU is Ryzen 8600G with 7600M graphics or 760M graphics, I should say. It has two USB 2.0 ports, two USB 3.0 ports, and one USB-C.

No rating on this USB-C port, interestingly.

Then we have 16GB of RAM, it's DDR5 at 6000Mg of second.

512GB of internal NVMe storage, which seems a little low to me.

but this is a dedicated emulation box, so maybe that's not too small.

It also includes Wi-Fi 6AX and it's user-upgradable. There's no information on whether Bluetooth is available on this thing. I would imagine if it has a Wi-Fi chip, then it will probably have Bluetooth, but interesting omission from the spec list here. And then they give some new games that are playable and at what frame rates you can expect. Hades at 200 FPS plus, Cyberpunk 2077 60, GTA 5 is 110, and so on and so forth. Then it comes down here to the two emulators, which is probably the bread and butter of this device. And we have Simu at 60 FPS, we have PCSX2 at 60,

at 40 to 60, Xenia at 40 to 60, and Dolphin at 60.

building this as emulation on easy mode. It has a complete chassis, a complete shell, the Ryzen APU motherboard, and the GameSir controller, and it comes in at 629 Euros.

Now 629 Euros for my American friends

about $696.

There's also a DIY version up here for $165.

And this includes USB front and back ports, a back USB-C port, Ethernet and HDMI, Wi-Fi coaxial extension, power and reset switches, and it is shipped as an ITX case with a 200 watt power supply, but you provide the actual hardware.

that sheds some light on what they're actually selling here. This is a custom ITX chassis

without the hardware components. So is this doable for

they're looking at? Yeah, probably. I think it is.

They're also going to offer a docking station, although from what I've read, this is not going to be ready at release.

you're going to be able to dock

call it a steam machine here, but it's an MU deck machine, the EM2 to get discrete graphics power. So basically this is a GPU with

7600 desktop. And so I guess it's going to stack on top of this chassis here.

Interesting.

I'm curious why it sticks out just slightly on the left there. And I'm curious how it's actually going to interface with this device. Is there going to be a PCIe expansion slot on the underside that you can open up and mount it on top of? That would be kind of cool.

So now we have the project's timeline. This is how we expect the campaign to go. Dates can change depending on if there are some delays. So they have hardware selection,

have hardware OC and testing, and hardware stock securing all checked off.

I guess this is the year, so 924 would be September. They want to have a prototype 3D CAD model and prototype 3D print testing completed.

And then they want to have prototype FCC and CE compliance and regulation and everything set up for it. And that's by October. In November they want manufacturing and assembling, and then they want to ship in December.

That seems like a very ambitious timeline to me,

And I would not be surprised if this went into February or even March.

seems...that seems ambitious. Let's just leave it at that.

So this comes in multiple versions. There's the Em2 DIY kit, which is basically just an ITX chassis with some custom circuit boards for the back and the front I.O.

And that's a reasonable amount, $165 USD. That's pretty good in my opinion.

That's comparable with a lot of other specialty ITX cases that I've seen on the market.

Then there's the Em2 with no controller, which is listed at $674.

That's early bird pricing, right?

Then there's the Em2 US, which is $696. Not sure what the difference is here.

Does that include the controller? I don't know.

Then there's a Canadian variant and an EU with VAT included variant.

is an Indiegogo campaign. And one thing that always kind of tickles my spidey sense, if you will, is when a campaign has a flexible goal.

now look, I don't want to poo-poo what they're doing here,

and like I said, I don't know their team and I don't know who they have working on this project.

So I don't want to like just crap all over this. But as a rule, I don't subscribe to flexible goals.

this means that if they don't reach their end goal, which is $69,574, apparently, then they just get whatever the amount is. So if you make a pledge here, you're actually like putting money down to buy one of these things,

which is cool, right? Like if you want to get one of these, you can sign up to get one. This is basically a preorder, right?

Also, a lot of Indiegogo and Kickstarter and crowdfunding campaigns end up with nothing to show for it at the end. They make a bunch of money and then they disappear.

Now I am not saying that the Emudec team are going to do that, right? I'm not saying that at all.

They produce some great software. My question is,

they're in the concept stage, right? Like this is just a 3D render of what they're working on. If we look at the images here, that's clearly not the same device as this, right? Now they have some things going for them. First of all, they have a prototype of the software working. That's because they've already built Emudec and this is going to be running Bazlite Linux when it launches. Great. That's a lot of problem solved right off the bat. The biggest thing is going to be manufacturing this and getting the bespoke circuit board with the chips that they need.

I think it's doable, right? But again, this flexible goal has me a little, just a little bit worried.

let's actually look at what they're doing because this, like I said, this is just a concept.

There's still prototypes to be built. There's still production to sort out,

is a non-trivial issue. And then there's shipping to backers.

you know, I'm looking at this and I think it looks pretty cool. I would love to see it be a complete success for them to hit all of their targets in terms of production and shipping.

I'm a little skeptical, like to be frank, I'm a little skeptical that they can hit December with this, but I would love to be proven wrong on that.

Because it's a flexible thing, I don't think I'm going to be picking one up, but if you've got money you want to put into this and having consoles on the market that ship with Linux is a good thing.

Pre-built hardware that ships with Linux is a good thing. So I want nothing more than to see this succeed.

So yeah, that's the video. There's going to be a link to the IndieGoGo page if you want to check this out for yourself and see if you want to make your pledge or whatever the word, appropriate word to call this is.

but yeah, let me know down in the comments what you think about this.

Let me know what you think about this video.

You can share this with your friends if you're interested and make sure you like that smash button to tell YouTube you want to stay up to date with the rest of the content that I've got going on here. With that said, thank you so much for watching. Thank you to my patrons and check out maybe this video where I review some mini PCs.

00:00 Introduction
01:51 Reviewing the EmuDeck Machine offering
03:16 Device Specifications
04:42 Two Different Models
06:29 Project Timeline
08:12 Caveat Emptor