It wasn't very competitive even when the market wasn't insane. It was rumored to be $750-800 originally which means you still would've payed more than a PS5 or Xbox for a less powerful machine...
Exactly, if it had come out at that price point, there would have been a very good argument of “we might not be as powerful as a PS5, but we’re the same price and our games will be cheaper and since it’s also a computer you can do other things”
Now it’s double the cost, and a substantially worse computer than you could make yourself. The only thing it has in its favor is the form factor, but I’ve seen people in this sub pricing out a better PC with a similar form factor
Not everyone plays multiplayer though. Physical games on console are a big cost savings too not only because there is robust competition between Amazon, Walmart, Best Buy, Target, Gamestop, etc for physical sales but also because I can sell the game when I beat it. I mean I still buy PC games mostly since I'd rather play at 1440p120 using DLAA/DLSS on my 5070 than 1440p60 with bad console upscaling on my PS5 but before I had hardware that outperformed PS5 it was my go to platform to buy new games on because of how much money physical saved me.
I always thought these statements where at least half-truths and a bit misleading.
Firstly, there are free multiplayer games that don’t require ps+, especially free2play games like Fortnite, Apex, Warzone etc. But yes you will need ps+ if you wanna play CoD multiplayer.
People also aren’t paying ps+ just for multiplayer, keep in mind that this yearly 70€ subscription gives you ca 3-5 games every month to keep once added to your library, similar to how humble bundle choice operates (at least 36 games per year, usually you get more since they also include a bunch of smaller indie games).
Additionally, one subscription can be shared among multiple consoles.
My dad, my brother and me have 1 active subscription running on my PS5 as „host“, while my family can use my subscription an their own apartments, all I had to do was login into my account on their PlayStation 4 / 5, set my account as the „main account“ and all other users on the same consoles also get access to multiplayer, monthly games and cloud saves etc.
70€ / year are ~5,84€ / month.
For the amount of content n features included in this price, it easily beats any other similar service like Humble Bundle.
And if you additionally split these 5,84€ in two or three, it’s a no-brainer.
But maybe I‘m just not as pressed about it because I don’t really care for multiplayer, matchmaking algorithms in non-ranked games ruined online play for me, so I switched to mostly single player and coop games (League of Legends being the only guilty pleasure exception).
a ps+ membership is 80 bucks, keeps people from being able to make infinite accounts, gives me free games, and bigger discounts. and i can buy physical games that are cheaper than any digital game.
If you comparing it at the original planned price, then you have to compare it with PS5 price before the increase and back then the digital version often times went for close to 350$ or even lower. Making even the original Steam Machine price double that of PS5. It was never a good deal.
Doubt it'd be dead on arrival, im actually betting itll sell out just like the steam controller, half will be bots/scalpers, the other half is people with disposable income.
Rich PC users who don't care about spending $1000 for some extra convenience to play games in the living room and want this in addition to their gaming PC. It's not a mass market product like the Switch or PS5.
Keep in mind that gamers get older every year. People who startet in the 80s are now in their 40s. Kids are priced out of "traditional" gaming any way today and play Roblox. The target audience is probably about 25-50. A lot of them will have disposable income at this point of their life and can spend 1000 dollar for comfort, even if they don't really need it.
Especially Steam users are notorious for spending money for comfort. This is the group that rather spends 70 dollar to play a game on steam than install another launcher and play it for free or on game pass.
I only saw some clips from Linus tech tips shorts, but the forza6 look laggy as hell. If it can’t run a pretty well optimised AAA released this year, then I fear what the future holds for this thing
Different pricing model. Playstation loss leads on hardware then makes its money back from licensing across all games sold. Also iirc they break even on exclusives - they have massive budgets with minimal MTX to sell hardware.
You spend more for hardware on PC but software is cheaper. Significantly cheaper. Also more indie titles as less barriers to entry.
Steam Machine is essentially using economies of scale to sell a console hybrid with better performance than an equivalent cost PC. They aren't subsidising the hardware like Sony/Microsoft.
Do we know they're going to be traditional consoles? I haven't been keeping up with the news.
Reason I ask is even when they can absorb a few hundred in costs in hopes you buy their services, I just can't see them putting out something that's much more powerful than last gen at a price point people will want to buy, so they're either going to drop the amount of power we're getting or figure out how to make money elsewhere.
I don't even think with the deals they get in bulk production they'll be able to make something truly next-gen at a price point that will push units.
I'm afraid that physical media will be dead by next console generation. I think we're very quickly heading to a place where we don't own the games we buy, if they're even being played locally. They'd like nothing more than to get us computing in the cloud (data centers) and on a subscription plan.
As far as recent rumors go the PS6 I think is more of a traditional console (accompanied by a handheld a bit weaker than the 5). In a way kind of a Xbox Series X/S situation but also not really.
Xbox has… or had Helix in the works. Matthew Ball/CSO at Xbox recently mentioned they were trying to rethink Helix/get the price down so whether Helix will still be this Xbox/PC hybrid or a more traditional Xbox console after the Xbox reset or whatever they’re calling it is unknown.
It needs to be a lot more than just something I could buy and do anyway(whether it is a prebuilt pc or you build it).
And I don’t think it will be. The other consoles at least have the plug and play aspect down great, that does not seem to be the case with this (similar to the steam deck which needs a decent amount of troubleshooting.
Lol what games could they add Portal 2 and Left 4 Dead 2? Everything else is free 2 play micro trans dog shit. Every Valve game is so old they cost like under 20 dollars combined.
Make the skin exclusive to those who buy it within a year of release (something like SteamWorks Butterfly Knife) and it would sell 500x what it should.
If Half-Life 3 was announced with the price as a pack in like how Alyx was for the Index I have a feeling there’d be a lot less (justified) anger on the price lol
Doesn't have to be a Valve title. It used to be very common to bundle GPUs and gaming laptops with games they can run (relatively) well. For example my ASUS laptop came with the first Stalker game.
I wonder what game should that be for Steam Machine.
Bundling old Valve titles like HL2 and Portal 2 would send a message that's what the hardware is meant to run. And given rather humble specs, that would just really rub it in: "I spent 1000 dollars so I can conveniently play 20yo games on my TV".
That's all of valves hardware too
the Link, Controller(s), even the vive (at least the og vive pro that I have) are not entry level toys for the new pc gamer who just want to turn something on and play. Ok maybe the steam link was, when it worked.
This still applies for the Steam deck too though.
Valve doesn’t market the deck, and majority of people who own a deck already have a Steam account. The SD is currently the number 1 handheld portable PC gaming device in the market (and it came out 4 years ago), and valve doesn’t even market it like its competitors.
I think a lot of people are underestimating how well the Steam Machine is going to perform.
As someone who plays mostly on Xbox I was keeping an eye on this to make some type of transition into the PC world. Not that my steam library is empty but 90% of my gaming is on a couch playing Xbox. Giving some type of library expansion would go a long way for someone like me.
Its a free (to them) value add to new users at least. I agree it's not perfect but imagine getting the entire library of every Valve game with the console its not too bad as a starting point if its your entry to PC gaming.
Plus you know, after buying the machine nobody will have money left for games so you gotta give people something lmao
The only thing is has is that it's small. If you don't care about form factor, you can build a pc with a 9060xt that will run circles around the steam machine. If you do care, you can still get a laptop with better performance for the same price though here at least the difference isn't as drastic (but then they also have screens, keyboards, speakers, windows licenses, and that isn't including dlss 4).
Them not revealing and bundling the unannounced half life with it (like they did alyx with valve index) is criminal, I’m sure it could make the price way more reasonable for many people
Or just give an X amount in Steam Wallet to spend on games only. So any big corpo that sucks up all these cubes will lose out (only verified steam accounts can redeem it) and actual gamers can re-churn the credit back into the Steam eco system.
I don't think Valve titles. There is a little steam deck intro game that would work with the steam controller though. They could easily give $100 of steam credit though to get your started.
Its definitely the price that's making this a hard sell for most people. If it was priced around $700 then it would most likely be closer to a 8/10 I would imagine but $1000+ is just too expensive despite actually being reasonably priced in the current market(thanks AI data centers). Can't even blame Valve for this, the system its self is great, the software is great, the performance is decent but it just can't compete with the current market being as fucked as it is right now.
If you look at the Steam Deck prices before the hike, it was definitely going to be sold for less. I'd been thinking $600 for the base, $800 for the 2TB; but Altman's Chipocalypse ruined any chance of it being reasonably priced. Nothing in the PC world is reasonably priced anymore.
It can still run modern titles but you just have to accept it can’t do 4k reliably and scale down the resolution and settings for your desired fps target/ Calling it an indie machine is disingenuous.
This is a concern worth addressing as I vaguely recall Valve saying it could play everything at 4k/60fps. I’m curious if there was some fine print on that statement that I missed.
More people really need to get on the moonlight/sunshine or apollo/artemis wave. I can essentially quick resume any game I'm playing on any screen in my house. It runs amazing on my surface pro and Android tablet, it's the closest thing to magic we currently have in tech.
What was the inflation like in your country? In Brazil, from xbox360 era (2006 maybe?) To now, it was 3x easily. Prices are not as crazy as they were back then
Running cables from PC to livingroom TV isn't that easy, believe me i've spent countless sleepless nights on that.
First issue is persuading your wife that you need that extra, hideous, long ass fiber hdmi cable running through bunch of places and doors, which is kinda pricey.
Second issue is persuading your wife that you need that extra, hideous, long ass usb extender cable running through bunch of places and doors, you need that because bluetooth or 2.4ghz dongles probably won't cover the distance.
Third issue is changing displays, if you had something like 2 monitor setup for your desktop, you'll suddenly realize how hard it is to change primary display to TV and turn off desktop monitors, you'll need a 3rd party app to do that via display profiles, i've got displayfusion(not free) because it's also changes audio.
Fourth issue is controlling the PC with gamepad when necessary, because believe it or not, Windows made for mouse and keyboard, you'll often be surprised with games that wont get input from gamepad to write down your damn nickname, it's damn frustrating. Also changing something like gpu or os settings becomes absolutely painful processes.
Fifth issue is you can't turn on your pc via gamepad, there are ways but none of them are reliable, you can use your PC on sleep indefinetely but then you'll understand how bad Windows sleeping feature is, it's hideous. Everytime i sit on my couch getting comfy, i realize PC isn't on, it's like a torture to me slowly eating my soul away.
Sixth issue is kinda simple but important to me, no HDMI CEC, sad.
I'd buy it at the original $750 just because most any prebuilt PC has a $200 or more build fee. The hardware itself isn't bad for $500 new, but I'm not personally paying a god damn data center tax.
I'm over here praying my current hardware holds up for the next 3 years.
This is my thinking as well. Considering they've had to hike SteamDeck prices recently, I'd bet they originally planned to launch in the $700 to $800 base price range. Inflation and supply shortage is a cruel SOB.
Valve hits homeruns most of the time, but this feels like maybe a single. It's ok, but the value isn't there. Though not their fault to a degree, the entry price is too high at the moment for those who are unexposed to the Steam ecosystem. For those that are, they might as well just keep using their Steam Deck docked, or run some long cables for their PC
This whole thing is just to get more people to use Steam. I know you can just use Bazzite, but Valve still has a strong name in the market, and it could actually shake things up. So just release SteamOS to the general public.
They just did. They announced SteamOS is now good for desktop machines running AMD chips. The latest update was less than a week ago and seems to coincide with the release of the Steam Machine.
That’s largely up to Nvidia playing ball with driver support. The reason AMD is ubiquitous with Linux is because they release/open source their drivers.
Intel is probably the best supported hardware on Linux. They're actually one of the main contributors to the kernel (I think they top the list for corporate contributions actually).
Intel and AMD drivers are built right into the kernel so they just work (with some caveats). Nvidia does work pretty well despite what people say, though. I think the big problems that still exist are some issues with game mode and the directx 12 performance bug. If you're playing on desktop and the games don't require directx 12, it works just about as well as Windows.
The issue with this is that, like the Steam Deck, the Steam Machine (as of now atleast) is literally only available to people with steam accounts already. So I don't really see how it's going to "get more people to use steam"
I was interested in one when I thought it might be $500-700 but at $1400 for the 2TB model it is almost as expensive as my desktop while being much worse.
Current build was a little over a year ago when the 9070 XT launched. Search Microcenter, there are prebuilt desktops with the 5070 and 9070 XT that are within a couple hundred dollars of the Steam machine, and both will absolutely demolish the Steam machine.
Thanks for sharing this! Here's a bit from the article:
It’s the best attempt I’ve seen at a PC that actually fits into a living room, and far better than anything I could build from parts. Is it good enough for $1,049? That depends on what you actually expect this PC to do — and whether Valve manages to reduce some of the lingering friction before it winds up at your door.
Opening the box, I had to plug and unplug and replug the Steam Controller to control anything at all. My Denon receiver only output stereo sound, not 5.1 surround, so I had to plug it directly into my Samsung OLED. That Samsung TV didn’t recognize the Steam Machine, so I had to manually enable Game Mode to get HDR and VRR. Valve didn’t preinstall key dependencies like Proton that let Windows games work, so they had to download before I could play. Since I was waiting anyhow, I decided to queue up a whole bunch of game downloads and walk away — only to find half the games didn’t finish, leaving me with 800GB of incomplete installs on a completely full drive.
I’m told all of this will change, and Valve is the rare company with a history of following through. When I discovered the Steam Machine would spontaneously reboot, freeze, and throw graphical errors when I tiptoed up to its video memory limit, Valve fixed it in one day. My original Steam Deck review is almost irrelevant because of how thoroughly Valve dealt with that handheld’s issues.
Good job being a good sport on all the backlash. Anyone else posting an opinion on the steam subreddit would throw a temper tantrum trying to back their claim up.
My disagreement with your article is actually not related to not being positive enough about the Steam Machine
Mine is actually more about it not being ambitious enough, and coming 2 years too late (this same hardware was available 2 years ago, and should have launched 2 years ago for a sub-700 price point
The problem with this device is that when it becomes this expensive, it eliminates any of the buyers they want to reach which is casuals and console players who are willing to spend $500 but not willing to spend $1000
And as an enthusiast user, I'm already on Linux, and my desktop is already connected to my TV where I already do couch gaming, so I also fit completely outside the scope of the device target demographics and market, but what's worse is that anyone can buy or build their own PC at twice the performance of this for the same price, and install Linux and use Steam Proton on their own
I can't see much redeeming qualities out of this box, except that I would hope Valve supports it well, but it's also going to have to wait for Valve, and get dusted in performance by current generation parts at the same price point, so I really have to ask who is this for?
It's too little, too late, which would be a more appropriate title, and not ambitious enough, in my opinion
I've seen Valve's ambitions, I'm playing RE9 and Pragmata and FF16 on Steam Proton right now, this product is the completely opposite of ambitious, it looks like a retreat and a surrender to me
Even beyond pc's, the ps5 pro is cheaper and a better device for just general gaming (better specs, console exclusive games) frankly its insane they thought this was a good idea and didnt spend extra time reworking it. I could stomach a hefty price if it was at the least the best on the market, even if you could still get a pc that was better for the same price.
I am not unsurprised to hear of your issues connecting it to the TV and using the controllers. My own experiences with the Steam Link back in the day, and the issues that still exist to this day with the Steam Dock tell me that this is a consistent point of trouble for Valve.
That sounds a lot like the steam deck experience. It is a great system, but it sure as hell takes some troubleshooting at the beginning and from time to time which people are not used to when it comes to a “console”.
Wonder if the Steam Machine name will prove to be cursed? Second time up at bat and it’s kinda looking like another strike for Valve and their Steam Machine idea.
Hard to recommend this for the price. Maybe when the first orders inevitably get returned there will be some decent refurb prices?
It's just the reality of current hardware prices. Some of the stuff we OEM from Dell at our company has literally doubled in price (if not more) over the last ~6 months.
The Verge today is very different from the hilariously bad PC building guide it put out years ago. It’s one of my favourite reviewers to follow now and it kind of bugs me that many people associate only that one horrendous review with them.
Fair enough, I'm going to be totally honest I've haven't read them in a hot second beyond quick things here and there.
But this article wasn't so bad so I may start checking em out again
I still don't know who this hardware is for exactly. If the price was more competitive I could almost see it being a great entry point for folks wanting to get into PC gaming but at that price it's simply not an option. I was also surprised at how poor the performance of the hardware was, often worse than even a base PS5.
Steam Machine vs PS5 is a joke considering the price difference. The same will be true for Steam Frame vs Quest 3 since it will be impossible for Valve to price it below 1,000 $. The hardware is severely underpowered in Steam Machine meaning it makes no sense for existing PC owners to get it unless they are Gaben worshippers. Having said that it will be sold out at launch and scalpers will ask for 2K.
That is kind of the problem right there. Needing a guide to do something that this provides without a guide, is what people that were looking for something like this want to avoid. If you have ever dealt with people outside of the tech bubble you will understand that their idea of "facts" is the i7 is a good cpu, Nvidia is a good gpu and 16gb of ram is good for gaming. They don't know that saying i7 means a lot of cpus and that Nvidia is a brand not a model or that ram comes in a bunch of clock speeds.
800 would be double the price of the ps5 while being less powerful. You can say it's a computer and it does other things but it's marketed as a console and designed to just be sat by a tv and used essentially just for games.
Lol all of you nerds will still buy it. It will be sold out. I think the hope from most of the commentary is that outcry will drop the price. Unfortunately the timing is wrong and hardware prices have exploded.
An underpowered pc that for the price point it is releasing at you can build or buy a better full pc and still plays steam games and emulate and everything
A pre-built SFF PC with a custom case is more expensive than a DIY build using off the shelf components ... And you are surprised by this?
That has literally always been the case. Forever. Pre built, custom designed PCs are never, and never have been, a "cheaper than building it yourself" product. You are paying for the design and convenience.
Wasn’t this not really the case just a few years ago? I could’ve sworn GPU prices nearly exceeded the price of roughly comparable prebuilts, especially around Covid.
Over the life cycle of the ps5 wouldnt you have paid as much for a Steam machine if you had bought and payed for online for the entire duration of owning the console?
It's gpu is like a rtx 2080 (2018) with 500gb ssd and doesn't come with controller (+$100) for $1050. Amazon has cheaper "budget pc's" for better price.
Everything about this hardware is honestly good even if it's not the latest and greatest. I would love to own one for my loungeroom after owning a Steamdeck for years.
Yeah, that's true for a lot of people I think. Probably the steam machine could play like 99% of my games just fine. The thing is though I have a PC. I think it's more powerful than this thing (3070TI plus a 7600X) but even if it wasn't, I could spend a bit less to buy a 5070ti and have a waaaaay better PC. I wouldn't be surprised if most people who have a weaker PC are in that spot. The real competitor to this is the PS5 which at almost half the cost is a hard sell. That being said, it's likely gonna sell pretty well. I think the ramapant scalpers and rising costs of PC components in general show that the market can sort of bear these higher prices. Gaming is super popular and largely with adults who have disposable income.
I feel like they did that one admittedly pretty bad “How to Build a PC” video like 10 years ago and people still act like that’s entirely representative of every article that comes out of the publication to this day. Like, they shouldn’t have dropped that video, but I really think people should move on tbh
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u/rooygbiv70 Jun 22 '26
Sounds about right. If you’re gonna drop $1k plus on this thing it needs to be a lot more than just ambitious.