Is PC
Shock and awe when told it MAY cost similar to a PC
Facts people forget:
- Assembling your own Steam Machine with similar parts will cost around 800
- Even if you assembled it yourself you would be missing features, such as cec, wake by controller, sleep mid game, etc. LTT will try to build one, it will be interesting to see what they come up with, but I’m 90% it won’t have feature parity.
- There’s lots of engineering gone into this machine, they’re way more compact, less power hungry and more quiet than anything you can build yourself.
- Buying the same build as a prebuilt brings a premium and costs around 1000
- Valve purchases stuff in scale so they can diminish their margin and could potentially sell it cheaper than prebuilts, and possibly cheaper than building it yourself.
- Consoles are sold at a loss, and they recover it with games because the platform is closed.
- The Steam Machine is not closed, they can’t be sure they’re getting game purchases, because people might be buying this to be their work computer. So they have to price it as a PC, with margin on hardware, not promise of future returns.
- Price might fluctuate between now and announcement, RAM prices are going crazy nowadays.
With all of that being said, it seems to me it’s very likely it will be around 800 but less than 1000. For people saying you can build one for that price yourself, sure, go ahead, you’ll have a huge, power hungry loud box, without the same features and you would have saved only a small fraction of the value by having to assemble everything yourself.
Also people who like to DIY seem to forget that a lot of people want a turn-key solution, I even dare to say that most people prefer a ready made solution. Even a lot of people who work in tech when they get home want a just work solution.
And a lot of the prebuilts have a ton of cut corners. A well put-together machine that people can trust to play their games at a base performance could be great for those who don’t want or can’t DIY.
PCs suffer from massive hardware fragmentation. It’s about time someone made a standardized PC.
Eh, I dont want steam machine becoming a standardized PC.
having CPU and GPU baked into the board and unchangable will just increase e-waste cause it will age out much faster than a PC which you could, 3-4 years down the line, max out the CPU in, throw more ram into, or upgrade teh GPU, to keep it relevant for another 4+ years
It serves its niche purpose, but it should not become standard.
A good APU solution like in the consoles would be a nice option though. Especially now with RAM prices through the roof again.
Nail On The Head.
I work in tech. I also have terrible dexterity. While I love my gaming PC, I dread upgrades or things going wrong. I hate applying thermal paste, replacing a motherboard, etc. I’d gladly pay “prebuilt” prices for something from a company I can “trust” (as far as corporations can be trusted).
Yup, I love DIY, had tons of fun building my wife’s mini-itx gaming rig, my NAS and even my desktop (although it was the boring one of the three since it’s just standard). I love poking on my system, trying out stuff, etc. But I bought a Deck and my only mod was getting EmuDeck in it, it just works for what I want it to, and that’s worth a lot to me, it allows me to pour my time on stuff I want to be building and just game on my gaming boxes.
A thousand dollars seems fantastically reasonable for a well-engineered home-gaming machine that can play current gen PC games at high quality. I spend that much every several years on upgrading or building a new PC.
My complaint is not the price, I think the price is fair. Let’s talk wages.
Let’s talk wages.
Absolutely agreed, if every company had wages at the level Valve does it would be very good.
LTT will try to build one
Time for another video of Linus failing to follow basic instructions and going out of his way to break the OS because Linux gaming bad
Yeah, but to be fair that was a shitty thing the system did, anyone with experience would know not to do it, but honestly it should have never happened. On the other hand, Linus is a bit daft and lots of stuff blows over his head monumentally, in the same video where he said he would be building a Steam Machine he also couldn’t seem to grasp that this is just a computer and people would see it as a prevuilt. In short I don’t think he will acknowledge lots of the killer features in the Steam Machine just so he can claim his thing does the same. But at least it will be an interesting watch.
Yeah, I agree.
I detest Linus, but at least attack him for legitimate shit.
He was approaching linux as a basic idiot, like someone like me, and that is absolutely something a new average linux user would absolutely do.
iirc, that bug was known before hand, and no one bothered to fix it until famous man made video that got famous.
It was known beforehand and was fixed already by the time he released his video, he just happened to luck out and encounter it during the short spam it existed.
I disagree that he approached it as a complete idiot, he approached it as someone who knows what they’re doing, when he definitely doesn’t, and that was the issue. Anyone without technical know-how would have panicked at the system asking him to type “I know what I’m doing”, and anyone with enough technical know-how would have paused at that and read the message carefully and moped the fuck out. He had enough knowledge to think he knew what he was doing, but not enough to actually do, and the boldness to think he knew better.
That being said, I agree that there’s plenty of other stuff to bash him for, and that was not a great example, lots of people would have found themselves in that same situation, and I don’t think it’s unfair to say the fuck up there was not entirely on his part.
failing to follow basic instructions and going out of his way to break the OS
Otherwise known as a typical behaviour of majority of users
Good thing his team has a few linux nerds. So unlike that challenge where he was alone, here his team would work on it.
I hate LTT, but they did absolutely nothing wrong or anything a normal user wouldn’t do in that video.
I don’t think so, I think a normal user would pause when the system asks him to type “Yes, do as I say” as that is clearly a sign that you’re about to shoot yourself in the foot.
You are very far removed from a normal user then.
Most people rarely read warnings or signs. They’re used to needing to just click accept and move on. More than that, their entire experience thus far will have trained them to just type in the magic command line words and get it over with. This is what linux enthusiasts beat into them while pretending everything is a cake walk. “Don’t trust anything” while simultaneously telling them to use this and that script, and copy this and that text into the terminal. Its not at all a wonder to imagine that behaviour.
It wasn’t a standard accept/continue/yes prompt, it wasn’t something that he could just press enter or something easy and continue without noticing, he had to have read the message to know what to do, it was something akin to:
WARNING The following essential packages will be removed. This should NOT be done unless you know exactly what you’re doing! … You’re about to do something harmful, if you’re sure of what you’re doing type the phrase “Yes, do as I say!”
The message couldn’t have been more clear about it. Plus most users wouldn’t need to use the terminal, he just happened to use the distro during the brief window that that bug existed.
As a Linux enthusiast I can definitely tell you I never encourage people to just type words in the magic box and get it over with, and always tell them to understand what they’re typing.
It wasn’t a standard accept/continue/yes prompt,
Doesn’t matter. This is an opinion that is 100% formed in an echo chamber where you are far removed from what a regular user would think going through this process. All of these prompts you think look different, to a normal person might as well be literally exactly the same. “I don’t know what I am doing, but the program says to do the next thing, with some warning that probably doesnt matter because I’m not doing something hard or critically important”.
Of note:
WARNING The following essential packages will be removed. This should NOT be done unless you know exactly what you’re doing!
That is a message that would not impede a regular user at all, or would completely stop them from using the OS.
They’re trying to install steam. Why would they have any reason to believe that whatever programs are mentioned matter, or think that this message matters when they’re doing something that is in theory extremely simple?
Plus most users wouldn’t need to use the terminal, he just happened to use the distro during the brief window that that bug existed.
How does this negate the fact that the actions taken were reasonable and absolutely not the users fault? In fact, the fact that this was fixed and treated so urgently betrays what a flaw it was.
As a Linux enthusiast I can definitely tell you I never encourage people to just type words in the magic box and get it over with, and always tell them to understand what they’re typing.
Lets for the sake of not stating what I actually assume to be true take your word at face value.
What you recommend is simply incompatible with the majority of people. They don’t have the time or effort to devote into actually learning as much as you’d need to learn for this to actually be useful advice.
A great amount of information must be completely skipped over and ignored to be proficient in a reasonable amount of time.
I’ve used Linux at multiple jobs, and used it as my main desktop OS for more than a year. I know this to be true. For the average person to follow your advice, they’d need to have a firm grasp of BASH. Expecting people to learn even one scripting language, especially an old esoteric one with many gotchas and vestiges of its time is an absurd ask, so of course no one would listen to your advice as it is utterly unreasonable on its face, and completely incompatible with the level of user adoption people hope for.
So then, there is the other advice, from people who are also elitists, but in a different way. They believe these people must be stupid to not figure out the problems on their own, and casually tell them to just RTFM or use X, Y or Z script with reckless abandon.
Neither of these lead to anything remotely resembling the ease of use of operating systems these users will have come from, no matter how much Linux enthusiasts insist their weird edge cases where they feel those OSes are inferior mean that somehow, magically their opinions apply to the users they are appealing to.
I have a lot more to say honestly, as I have certainly thought about this a lot, but by this point and given the excerpt I am replying to, I’ve learned to never expect good faith discussion, so I’m just limiting my losses by stopping here as I expect toxic positivity as a response.
I agree with lots of what you’re saying, this was a serious bug, it wasn’t the user’s fault, and users can’t be expected to learn bash.
My point is that the message tried to be as scary as possible, because if that message shows then something is about to uninstall critical components from the system, the bug here was that trying to install steam triggered that. I agree that it wasn’t Linus fault, but I think that most users would stop at that message, he didn’t because he thinks he knows what he’s doing, but he doesn’t, he’s in that middle ground where he knows enough to be confidently wrong.
Let me ask you, how would you have given that message in a way that would make people stop?, remember that the message is valid, the bug was installing steam doing that.
…LTT will try to build one…
Jay already tried. It was bigger, didn’t have the custom OS, and cost $1700. He could have done better except he was part limited to what rhe Microcenter he was at had on hand. Doing a bunch or research and getting different parts would probably bring down the price.
Buying the same build as a prebuilt brings a premium and costs around 1000
For 1k you can get a 9600 9060XT 16gb system, which is waaaaaay more powerful, so this is quite an exaggeration.
A prebuilt plug-and-play device? Can you share a link to that?
Valve’s Pierre-Loup Griffais claimed that the Steam Machine price had not been nailed down internally, but that Valve’s aim was to offer a “good deal” in line with equivalently powered PCs.
“I think that if you build a PC from parts and get to basically the same level of performance, that’s the general price window that we aim to be at,” he said.
They’re going to be price competitive with building from parts, apparently.
The answer I’m replying to suggested you can get a prebuilt with a 9600 for 1000, since they’re replying to my point that a prebuilt with similar spec is 1000.
Oh, weird. I just read the whole chain going up and I don’t see any indication the figures were for prebuilt systems. Maybe someone edited their post or something isn’t federating?
Regardless, Valve is apparently going to be competitive just in hardware costs, which makes sense—they can’t expect to extract extra value from software sales, but they should still be able to have an acceptable profit margin with their scale and lack of layers in their distribution model.
This is the thing I’m replying to, emphasis on the prebuilt.
Buying the same build as a prebuilt brings a premium and costs around 1000
For 1k you can get a 9600 9060XT 16gb system, which is waaaaaay more powerful, so this is quite an exaggeration.
But yeah, I don’t think the machine will cost the same as a prebuilt, but that’s the high end of the price range.
prebuilt plug-and-play
Considering that building a pc isn’t more than plugging in all the parts, I’d say “building your own PC” very much is plug-and-play.
Not saying everyone can do it but “prebuilt plug-and-play” isn’t the wording I’d use.
It’s a lot more than that, it’s:
- Knowing what parts to buy, I don’t think most average people can cite every piece in a desktop
- Selecting parts that are compatible, try plug-and-play an AMD CPU on an Intel MOBO.
- Selecting parts that fit the chassis you selected, unless you went with a full ATX that’s a concern.
Now that you bought the components:
- Knowing to ground yourself before doing anything, currently I’m getting static shocks daily where I live, if I didn’t know about this I could very easily fry a RAM by picking it up wrong.
- Cable management is not easy, most cheaper chassis don’t have enough or dedicated space for it.
- Correct amount of thermal paste is something lots of people get wrong.
- Some pieces require strength to lock in place, others break if you even look at them sideways.
Now that you’ve assembled everything:
- Installing OS
- Installing drivers
- Installing Steam
- Depending on your OS and controller of choice pairing controller and getting it to work could be difficult
I’m not saying that assembling a computer is hard, but is definitely far from plug-and-play, and not something I would recommend for someone without technical knowledge who just wants something to play games.
That’s the wording a lot of other people would use, I’d say. I wouldn’t be able to put together a PC, and most people I know are like that. I have maybe two cousins that can. But we’d probably all agree that plug-and-play means that you buy something and it works just like that. For example, a refrigerator is likely plug and play, because you don’t expect to have to put together the components to make it work. You just plug it in and it works.
They could totally make money selling it at a loss. The reason so many people care is that there’s an opening in the console market for an affordable option
No, they couldn’t, have you read about the PS3? They were a lot cheaper than building a similar system so several companies bought thousands to build clusters, I personally worked at a relatively small university that had a cluster made of dozens of PS3s, since each Playstation costed Sony around $200 my university on its own costed thousands to Sony, and I imagine every other university and some private companies did the same.
You mean the same PS3 that still was profitable?
Only after they closed their system, which they did because they were losing money to every single enterprise in the world who wanted a cluster and PS3 were the cheapest option.
The PS3 was using a rare CPU that you could only get from it or from some enterprise dealer at a much higher price. The Steam Machine is a standard x86 computer that can’t match the ubiquitous ThinkCentres in price/performance.
If it’s sold at a loss like a console it would beat the price/performance of any other x86 chip on the market, which is why they can’t sell it at a loss, ergo my point.
Thry could absolutely do that. Valve makes a cut off every Steam game sold. If anything, it’d be MORE viable for them than any other console maker given the wider library
. The reason so many people care is that there’s an opening in the console market for an affordable option
The consoles are the affordable option.
I fully understand that it sucks that this is the reality, but sucking doesn’t make something less true.
Consoles are sold at a loss, and they recover it with games because the platform is closed.
Sometimes, but evidently not currently. Sources seem to indicate that only Microsoft seems to say they are selling at a loss, though it seems odd since their bill of materials looks like it should be pretty comparable to PS5…
I’ll agree with the guess of around $800, but like you say, the supply pressure on RAM and storage as well as the tariff situation all over the place, hard to say.
Assembling your own Steam Machine with similar parts will cost around 800
No, it won’t. $800 will get you a machine that’s around 50% faster. Controller included.
Even if you assembled it yourself you would be missing features, such as cec, wake by controller, sleep mid game, etc. LTT will try to build one, it will be interesting to see what they come up with, but I’m 90% it won’t have feature parity.
Fair enough.
There’s lots of engineering gone into this machine, they’re way more compact, less power hungry and more quiet than anything you can build yourself.
It’s literally a laptop CPU with a laptop GPU.
Buying the same build as a prebuilt brings a premium and costs around 1000
Also not true. A 1k prebuilt is around 70% faster. Controller not included, though.
Valve purchases stuff in scale so they can diminish their margin and could potentially sell it cheaper than prebuilts, and possibly cheaper than building it yourself.
Sure, but that’s an argument in favour of it costing less.
Consoles are sold at a loss, and they recover it with games because the platform is closed.
Yeah, and the best selling console of the generation is $450 for the digital-only version.
The Steam Machine is not closed, they can’t be sure they’re getting game purchases, because people might be buying this to be their work computer. So they have to price it as a PC, with margin on hardware, not promise of future returns.
Stop this delusion. If this was an actual possibility, it would already be happening with the Steam Deck. Yes, I know you know someone who did it. I know someone who bought a Surface to put Linux on it. There’s dozens of us!
Price might fluctuate between now and announcement, RAM prices are going crazy nowadays.
That I see happening. RAM/storage might triple in price tomorrow which would push the price of the whole industry up.
Facts
With all of that being said, it seems to me it’s very likely it will be around 800 but less than 1000
maybe more with the way ram prices are skyrocketing… because even though it comes out next year, they are probably being manufactured and stockpiled right now.
Yup, like I said, it depends on how prices will fluctuate, my guess is what the price would be if it was being sold now, if RAM increases they would have to compensate for it.
Yep, and since it has both system ram AND dedicated gddr graphics ram… its gonna be double dipped in the price gouging by the memory manufacturers
* Even if you assembled it yourself you would be missing features, such as cec, wake by controller, sleep mid game, etc.
I’ve been actively mass downvoted on Reddit for being excited for these features. People are really fucking stupid sometimes.
I have a significantly more powerful PC (in a tower case) currently hooked up to my tv surviving the same purpose and I will likely be getting the Steam Machine entirely for these features.
“But just use a dongle” they say. And I do. It works about half the time and I have to do this weird dance involving pulling up Kodi
I’ve been actively mass downvoted on Reddit for being excited for these features. People are really fucking stupid sometimes.
I’d bet it was more about the phrasing and it probably commented in a way that downplayed concerns other people had.
You’d be wrong then.
“Why exactly would anyone want this?”
“CEC, that alone sold it for me”
points -30
I just can’t take your word for it. It doesn’t pass my smell test and I haven’t seen it.
Neither phrase even turns up results.
Wait did you seriously put effort into searching for my posts just to try and be right?
Mate. I appreciate your absolute derangement here but it was like a week ago in a circlejerking thread and I got downvoted because it was a circlejerk. The same kinda post has probably happened like 2 million times at this point across reddit.
Wait did you seriously put effort into searching for my posts just to try and be right?
Its always amazing when people act like less than 15 seconds of effort is a monumental amount of when things arent going their way to try to attack someone for attempting to verify their claims.
Literally 2 searches, but apparently thats big effort to you. You spent more time typing out this comment.
it was like a week ago in a circlejerking thread and I got downvoted because it was a circlejerk
You said something not jerking in a thread that was openly for jerking, that also is not possible to find, and this proves that reddit has an unreasonable opinion on this box.
This all sounds ridiculous and now I just don’t believe you at all, especially with the ridiculous jump to hostility.
The worst thing about the hardware unveiling is the endless posts about pricing 😮💨
Not a number. Not interesting.
I went to PCPartPicker and tried to assemble a similarly spec’d PC, not with the absolute cheapest components, but definitely from the lower end sorted by price, it came out close to $800.
I guess if Valve can price it at that and be smaller it might have a market, but if much more than that people are better off just buying a PC.
P.S. Since Valve is not buying retail I think there is room for lower than that, and it’d definitely be welcome, but I’m not sure Valve will make that decision.
2x8 GB RAM for 130 dollars? What the fuck? I knew theyve gotten more expensive recently but that stings.
PCPartPicker has a general price tracker where you can see how much RAM has spiked in such a short time. It really emphasizes how crazy things have gotten
In the past decade, PC hobbyists have been the victims of the latest group of regards “getting the bag”. Crypto 1.0, 2.0 and now AI. It’s the biggest fool theory doing its thing. I fucking hate tech bros and crypto bros. They are the huma race’s macro analogy for cancer cells.
“more expensive” really is underselling it. It’s out of control. Some kits have tripled.
Yep. Everthing has at least doubled in the past ~ two months, because Nvidia’s AI bubble must not be allowed to pop.
Brother it’s so bad. I’ve been trying to help a friend do one recently, or at least plan it, and I’ve watched my previously $85 2x16 sticks of GSkill DDR5 (like the cheapest option I had) shoot up to like $260 in under a month has been insane. It’s not even good ram…
I recently (a few months ago) built a new high-end server for my homelab, and bought 512GB of DDR4 ECC RAM for around $510. I just looked it up, and those exact same modules are around $2.5k to $3.5k for the same amount. That’s more than I paid for the entire machine.
A friend of mine just dropped $700 on 2x64Gb for his upcoming editing rig. Most expensive part of the build.
That’s insanity lol
In the same boat actually. Helping a friend with a build and RAM is ridiculous right now. crappy slower 2x16 kits costing $350 and far beyond. Their desired upper end CPU is less than most RAM kits. I was trying to find a middle ground for them with 2x24 but I can’t even find those kits anymore. Doesn’t help that these days 32 is recommended for some games, let alone aminimum for productivity software. I got lucky when I built. Prices were bad (~150 for 2x24!!) but shot up not even days after I built last month and my kit hasn’t even been in stock since I got it.
This bubble can’t burst soon enough…
Yeah, the AI (manufactured) hype has caused RAM prices to skyrocket thanks to them buying out ALL the fucking RAM for those servers.
The 2x48GB kit (CMK96GX5M2B6000Z30) I bought in August for $300 is currently going for $1175, and it’s likely not getting better any time soon.
That’s almost the Apple fee
I just checked how much my 4x32gb costs. Guys, I’m focking rich
My guess is that maybe Valve was able to get a bunch of RAM before the price hikes.
“better off just buying a PC”.
It is a PC.
Most gamers don’t want to get involved with PC building and just want something as convenient as a console to play their Steam games with good performance on a big screen. This can be priced quite above what a nerd would be able to build by himself with PCPartPicker.
It would cost me about a grand to make a pc that still not up to par with a ps5 where I live.
I’ve seen estimates put the materials cost somewhere around the $425 - 500 USD range because of the specific, semi-custom hardware that they’re using. It’s also good to note that Valve will be able to get a better deal than any of us will because they can get bulk discounts and aren’t buying each part at a market rate profit from retail vendors.
Some people seem to be of the mind that it will be somewhere around the $500 - 800 USD range if tariffs and the RAM situation don’t screw with the price, and that it will probably price out the Xbox with Microsoft’s 30% profit demand and be slightly more expensive than the PS5 while having comparable but not quite as much power.
YouTube channel Moore’s law is dead priced it out at $425 including controller. For cost not price.
Smaller makes it more expensive. I hope it’ll be under $1000, but I think I wouldn’t be surprised if it were $1200.
They’re letting us discuss this ad nauseam just to understand what prices people consider acceptable for these devices
100%
But that’s not a terrible thing, I suppose.
Absolutely. I think 80$ for the full package seems fair.
$60? why do they want $50 for something that’s clearly $10?
$70 if you hand deliver it to me. It’s my final offer.
Fair pricing means a reasonable profit on the base cost. Trying to gauge what people are willing to pay means that you want to maximise your profit at all costs, consumers be damned.
I understand that’s what Americans consider “fair”, but I don’t fully agree.
In most cases, yes. But you have to remember, this is Valve and not some ordinary company. They have extremely deep wallets and a lot of responsibility and expectations on their shoulders (importantly, not the stock market!). If they charged what it cost for hardware and what it cost them to do r&d, it would likely not be in consumers favor.
Like even just get off the American-bad thing for one second: pricing it as a standalone pc basically just means “the cost of the parts”. They’ve put a lot of time and effort into this across their core employees and likely outsourced stuff because they couldn’t, in-house. Actually listening to people and charging relative to that is actually a great way to be fair and make people happy, guaranteeing positive impact of your product. I guarantee they’re paying attention to what people say ALL over the place. Like… Why do you think “it’s done when it’s done” is their pace?
They’re buying the parts directly from the manufacturers though, so cutting out the retailer middle-man could offset the R&D costs.
Research and development is probably very high when you consider Proton, SteamOS, and the semi-custom CPU and GPU. Something between $50 to $100 million would be typical. Silicone is famously expensive in R&D, Proton has continuous costs (and has for quite a while now) that rack up, and SteamOS is literally an operating system. That’s a lot of salaries to pay.
I reckon they’re taking advantage of being private and playing the long game. Very, very long game. They’re not really in danger as long as Steam is successful, but I can’t blame them for wanting a decent gross margin so they can at least cover hardware costs. Especially with memory prices right now, I wouldn’t be surprised at 1000€ here in Germany, though I wouldn’t be happy about it. I would happily buy at 900€ (≈$1040), and be ecstatic at 800€ (≈$920).
Personally, I wouldn’t include Proton in the costs of the Steam Machine. The Deck already is benefiting from it immensely, and I would consider it to be a cost of expanding into Linux gaming in general - especially with the Lenovo handheld and other devices starting to jump on the bandwagon as Microsoft continues to take repeated dumps on their userbase. Its R&D costs are being won back by the market % Steam takes on any games bought and played in Linux, which means that it can benefit from that continued revenue stream rather than the one-off hardware sale.
The hardware has to break even. The software already has.
Fair pricing means a reasonable profit on the base cost.
Under many circumstances, this is true. However, console makers have historically sold consoles either at or slightly below cost, expecting to make their real profits on game sales, online store sales, etc… In the business world, it’s called a loss leader. Meaning it’s something popular that the company takes a loss on, while expecting it to encourage more sales elsewhere.
The classic grocery store example is a rotisserie chicken. You can go get a whole rotisserie chicken from the grocery store deli for like $3. It’s so cheap because the store is selling it at a loss. It’s a loss leader. Very few people will simply buy the chicken by itself. Instead, they’ll buy a tub of potato salad, some roasted corn, a can of green beans, and a gallon jug of sweet tea to go along with it. By selling that chicken at a slight loss, they were able to get the customer to buy all of those other things at a profit.
That being said, Valve has already stated that they’re not planning on having the Machine be a loss leader. Which is why people expect it to cost as much as a prebuilt with similar specs.
I doubt it. I think they understand that the hardware market is volatile and what might cost $800 now might be $1000 in a few months.
Anything more than $500 and we riot!
Get ready to riot because there’s no way it’s that cheap. My money is on $800-1000.
If it is priced higher than $600 they won’t sell enough to justify their existence. It will just be a repeat of last time.
This is perfect for people wanting a new console with a large games library, but Valve seems to be trying to force the square block in the round hole by placing it in the PC market space.
Why? Look at how many people here say they want Steam OS, and Lemmy skews heavy toward Linux users. This is that, but OOTB.
I don’t think it’ll sell anywhere near as well as the Steam Deck, but it’s also a less exciting form factor. I do think it’ll sell a fair number of units though.
The cheapest equivalent prebuilt I can find with similar specs (RX 7600 is slightly better than the Steam Machine) is $850, and a DIY build is more like $900 (lots of corners cut), so there’s probably not much margin on the prebuilt. Valve is probably saving some cash with their custom CPU, and they’re probably shipping it with a Steam Controller, hence the $800 target. If component prices rise significantly before launch, I could see $1k.
It depends on how many Valve have already manufactured. If they were smart they’ll be quietly manufacturing these and only just now announced it. You don’t announce a product until you’ve got some units sitting in a warehouse somewhere, or else a competitor might see the opportunity to make things difficult for you.
You’ll have to deal with a cult that will defend their lord Gabe’s every move.
I suspect it’s because of the uncertainty over tariffs. Ironically making manufacturing in the US less appetising for businesses.
It’s a good idea, tout the market before doing anything controversial
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The top end Steam Deck was like $750 at release. Replace the screen with better CPU and GPU, and there’s your baseline for the Machine. Since it’s “6x” performance, price will probably be a bit higher. People thinking way less are smoking crack.
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How many of you have actually had a Linux PC connected to your living room TV? I built one about 13 years ago (and upgraded the guts occasionally) and it’s been awesome. With a regular web browser you can watch YouTube (with uBlock of course), Plex/Jellyfin, or any streaming service, in addition to gaming. Plus I’ve done stuff like vacation planning with my partner, where we can easily bring up maps and hotel listings from our couch without hunching over a laptop or tablet.
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While Linux hardware support is quite good these days, there’s still something to be said for buying a machine that you know is fully supported and targeted by game devs.
- Ooh! Me! My TV has been a Linux box since 2016, and I’m NEVER going back
Same, but I’m much more recent. Got a rpi 5 running Arch. Been happy with it for 2-3 years now
How is ALARM recently?
Did you mean ARM? As in arm cpu support?
Arch Linux ARM is sometimes called ALARM Last time I heard device support was limited
Ah gotcha. It’s pretty nice. Got everything to work for a media PC. Took some upfront effort, and the device is still technically not supported but it works!
Just set this up after the whole windows 10 support drop thing, and holy shit!!! This is awesome! Not only no ads but I can Strawhat everything! Just got a figure out how to do this for my phone now
- Personally don’t think it’s as easy to compare the deck to a box. It’s harder to stuff the power of a steam deck into such a small package. I’ve seen the compute of the machine be related to about 600$ if you purchased parts on your own to build the pc, but considering Valve have economies of scale, custom deals for customized chips with amd and having priced “painfully” in the past, there’s a good chance it’s less than 750$. All the Steam decks had the same performance too, the expensive ones just came with more storage and a case (so using the top end price in your example seems unjust?).
- Very true, those keyboard/mouse combo things that resemble a gamepad are the best!
(Not usually one to dive into speculation, but “priced like a pc” can literally mean anything so we really have no clue other than looking at the specs)
(I had another thought; i think it’s probably a blunder from a “get all the customers” perspective to have the machine cost upwards of 1k, but maybe they don’t care about that and simply want to set a high standard for linux pcs like they have done with the deck, so yeah i have no clue, based on the specs though, ~600 seems like a good base. The cheaper it is the more customers they stand to gain who have looked at pc gaming and sighed because they didnt know how to get started. Really feels impossible to know their motive rn tho, the machine could simply exist as a “gold standard” to get other oems making this stuff like they have done with the deck as i said above i think)
It’s harder to stuff the power of a steam deck into such a small package.
The new Steam Machine is very compact for a gaming PC of its caliber. That took some real engineering to find the right combination of component size, TDP, thermals and noise for such a small box. There’s obviously no screen and battery but otherwise it’s similar design work as on the Deck.
Makes sense, I haven’t seen dimensions, but the space for pure compute has definitely increased greatly.
It is still very small, but the deck (in comparison) is quite thin which I assume made it much harder to engineer. I’m sure a lot of knowledge has transferred over though and i’m not gonna act like i’d know anyways lol
If you look at a teardown of the Machine, it’s almost all heatsink inside. The remaining space isn’t really a lot bigger than a Deck. But the components run much higher wattage (not constrained by battery) and put out a lot more heat, hence the need for the sink.
Oh wow, I didn’t know they had teardowns yet, that’s kinda funny hehe
I had a PC connected to my tv for a while, main issue was I didn’t want to use a mouse or keyboard to interact with it. I tried desperately to get more ways of starting via controller or other lite interface devices, but nothing convenient. It was an old machine, so eventually I gave it away.
I use a Logitech K400 to control the PC connected to my TV and I generally find it to be much more convenient and responsive than using the remote on a smart TV or the controller for a console when over at someone else’s place. To each their own though.
Yep. Trying to type with anything but a keyboard sucks. I love my k400. I’ve had it for years and years. Not sure how old it is but I think I got it during the PS3/360 era for PC TV use and it still works. And batteries last so long on it.
I feel like a lot of these pointer devices miss the simplicity of a remote. A simple one will have a tough time entering passwords, but it’s perfect and simple for the most common actions: Turn on without walking across the room, open the most recent application, play the next episode of the series I was watching last, usually just by mashing confirm. (Nothing to tell it to go fullscreen: Because that’s an obvious assumption for everything)
Running it all on a PC just adds more steps, unless you follow a LOT of guides to configure it to get through those things easily.
I’d really like it if web standards were better at allowing a video website to be navigated with an “Up/Down/Left/Right/Confirm/Back” device, so that you didn’t need apps for everything. That would be good for consumer devices like Apple TVs as well as people running home PC setups.
That’s kinda why I said to each their own. I personally find a full fledged keyboard with integrated touchpad controlling a PC using a media center UI to be my control/interface preference. The keyboard is small enough and light enough that it sits on the couch or end table with the other remotes or controllers without any issue. Until Logitech decided to be cunts there was actually a great solution more on your end of the spectrum in the form of the Harmony remote, but well, they killed it. Luckily though, there are a couple of open source efforts to create equivalent hardware as well as to dump their database of IR codes.
I have one that I bought in 2013. Has fallen to the floor countless times, still works like day 1.
Typing anything like a website for the apple TV is the most excruciatingly annoying thing ever, it could only be described as torture. I would punch the executives that approved the design.
The shitty iOS input via annoying notification prompts when anyone in the house uses the TV are not a solution either, since they get so annoying you have yo disable them.
Something like ten years ago I got into a console vs PC argument on reddit, and everyone unanimously told me that starting up a PC with a controller was such an easy feature to add that it wasn’t even a consideration. I stuck with consoles.
That’s a tough one. The new Steam Controller will probably let you use the trackpads with an onscreen keyboard (as long as you’re running the Steam app), just like the Deck. But personally I can’t get used to that.
You generally need some kind of keyboard with a PC. I have a little handheld Rii i4 with a thumb keyboard, maybe that would be better for you?
The majority of the steam deck SKUs were produced prior to the AI memory crunch.
These steam machines are being produced in a market where memory is 3 or 4 times more expensive.
This box will be more than a steam deck. Probably 1000 bucks or so.
I’m happily running an Intel NUC as TV computer since 2013, and it’s awesome for exactly the reasons you state. I invested in it when I realized how fully crap the “smart” features of my Samsung TV are. The ultimate controller for it is a combo keyboard and touchpad, I have the Logitech K400r.
The NUC is starting to show it’s age now with its 4th gen i5, and I’m in the process of replacing it with a mini PC with an Intel N100.
Looks at my setup with Samsung tv, NUC, and wireless touchpad-keyboard combo… Huh? How about that!
It is a killer combo!
I’ve got a Linux machine attached to my TV right now. It’s basically a Steam, Kodi and Firefox box.
Did you get streaming services to stream 4k? That was some bullshit I discovered when I bought my first 4k TV, that streaming services artificially limit quality for browser and Linux streaming.
What is you solution for remote controlling? I used one of this mini keyboard+mouse combo in a shape of controller, but mine was really trash. Most of the time I used a good mouse that worked ok on the couch surface and some mouse binds to pop up a virtual keyboard. But I was never completely happy with the solution.
Never tried 4K, sorry. I’ve only had a 1080p plasma TV (which recently blew a capacitor so I may have to get something else).
For control, I use an old Logitech K830 which has a trackpad right on it. It’s a good step up from the K400 series (lithium rechargeable and backlit keys) but sadly appears to be discontinued 😞
- Yeah, I’m guessing $800-1000, and they’ll probably throw in a Steam Controller. That’s about how much a comparable PC would cost
- I’ve been debating it, but it needs to be something my 5yo can use.
- And that’s Valve’s target market here, those unwilling to DIY.
-
The discourse around this confuses the fuck out of me. Did people actually expect this to be <$500?
I think the problem is Valve lost control of the messaging, which led to bad expectations.
At least in the US, a computer hooked up to a TV to play games means it’s a “console” and not a computer. Maybe we can blame Nintendo back in the 80s for going out of their way to avoid calling the NES a computer (despite it’s name in Japan being Famicom, Family Computer), but the distinction exists today despite technologically no real difference. You know this, I know this, Valve knows this. So Valve wants to make a computer you hook up to your TV so they can get you to use
their money printing machineSteam in the living room too.If you read Valve’s marketing material on the Steam Machine, they don’t use the word “console” once. It’s always either by name or the terms PC, computer, or system. They likely don’t mention the word “console” because to date, video game consoles follow a different business model, one where the model subsidizes the shit out of the hardware and then make money on the back end with game sales/licensing.
Current “console” hardware starts in the <$500 price bracket, and with so much third party media marketing calling the Steam Machine a console, that got people’s mind set on pricing expectations of that market.
This confuses me. You can hookup ANY computer to a living room TV to be a “console”. How is this different?
My theory and point was that by thinking about that computer as a console, in the average consumer mindset it should be priced like a console. From a pure hardware product perspective there is no difference
Valve is thinking about it as a computer, and has stated they intend to price it like one and not like a traditional console
As someone who has hooked up computers to TVs all his life, I can tell you. Just turning on with a controller directly into game mode is a massive game changer as it is a pain to get it working today. Look for guides about it and see the batshit hacks people have come up with.
That and the overabundance of Bluetooth antennas. Oh, and it also comes with super fast WiFi 7 special connection for the frame inside the box. Also, heat and sound management. Gaming PCs are little space heaters, very efficient during cold weather and a pain in the ass in hot climates. Keeping them cool takes an assortment of turbines and makes the living room sound like an airport. If this thing is as power efficient, quiet and cool as advertised, it will be the gaming enthusiast’s dream.
A console is typically locked down; they can sell them at cost or a loss and make up the money selling games. A computer is typically not locked down, you can install games from wherever on it, so they can’t assume you’ll buy your games from them (even though you will)
When you turn it on it boots to a controller friendly UI that shows you all your steam games. No setup, no hunting for drivers, no bloat.
If you read Valve’s marketing material on the Steam Machine, they don’t use the word “console” once.
Doesn’t matter at all. Its clearly meant to operate in the position of one. They could have very well avoided that term to avoid implying the lock down that consoles come with.
A computer hooked up to a TV is considered a media center PC, or an HTPC, not a console
I think both of you are right but also wrong. It’s called “whatever you want” and there is no universal name for the practice. If you’re not using your PC for media, it certainly isn’t an HTPC.
You’re right, though games are also “media” 😋
Fair!
No, but the price points of the current consoles are hilariously optimistic.
Idk, $699 USD for the PS5 pro seems a bit closer to “PC pricing” than I would expect from Sony if they’re subsidizing the cost with future game sales.
I’d kind of expect them to be making consoles at break-even/no-profit, more than at a loss right now.
They can set the asking price to whatever they like but a lot of us cannot justify those amounts for what amounts to a toy. By this stage in a console generation I would expect a lot more games and a lot cheaper hardware. The reasons that haven’t happened aren’t of interest to me as a consumer (they’re of interest to me as a nerd!).
The reason is simple. Inflation.
The NES originally sold for $180 USD in 1985, which is worth $530 today. The SNES, circa 1991, was $199 USD or $459 today.
Fast forward a bunch…
The switch 2 is currently priced at $449 USD.
The literal price has gone up, but the cost is going down. Slightly, but still.
I’m sure I could repeat the same experiment for PlayStation, Xbox, or Sega’s consoles and see similar results.
I think it’s a little more complex than that.
Why do you think that?
Because corporate greed > all?
Because hardware, software, culture, incomes, demand, supply, and many, many other factors have all changed since the 1980s. It’s not a straight comparison. Inflation is a factor but it is not the only factor.
No, but there’s some unhinged people arguing it’s gonna be $800 or even $1k.
Sure, if it’s not as modular as actual PC.
Otherwise they’re just selling a “default spec” PC that developers can target for benchmarks.
That’s the confusing part for me because statements from the design team said they had the very optimistic goal of running most games at 4k 60fps, which is more like $1000 entry level imo.
“…with FSR.”
That there is a huge difference.
$1,000 is not entry level.
If you go on any website and look at entry level PCs they’re all around $600 to $800.
The lowest amount to run most modern titles AT 4K 60 FPS is around $1000, and thats only because graphics card prices have come down.
If 30FPS on 1080p is good enough I could build it for $400.
It’s not a 4K capable graphics card though it’s a 1080p capable graphics card that they’re saying is 4K because of the existence of AI upscaling which I think is a cheat. So you’re already overestimating the cards capability.
Fair prices are fair, the existence of billionaires is not. Tax Gabe Newell and the rest of 'em too.
Didn’t he buy a massive yacht on the same day steam announced these products? It can’t be easy to sneak a superyacht under the publicity radar, but he seems to have pretty much managed it.
I think he’s earned it. I will accept. 😅.
He’s one rich guy I feel isn’t a piece of shit and has good ideas.
There is no such thing as an ethical billionaire, don’t kid yourself.
You only become a billionaire by being a greedy bastard, there’s no exceptions.
I hope they release the price soon, the discourse on this has become incredibly tiring.
I doubt they will. The market for NAND and ram is insane at the moment, RAM has gone up 100% in the last 3 months. Announcing a price too early could lead to having embarrassingly increase price shortly before or after launch, or take a loss on the products.
That’s not to say I don’t share your sentiments. I too hope they announce it sooner rather than later, but understand why they may be apprehensive.
Additionally with how the USD is tanking and the ever looming risk of new tariffs being added on a whim, there is a real risk that even without global price increases the price needs to be increased for the US specifically
This is going to come off as shilling for Valve, but it isn’t my intention.
I could entirely see Valve pricing the Steam Machine relatively affordably and this statement is ultimately a dig at how overpriced pre-built PCs and consoles can be.
“The Steam Machine outperforms 70% of current user PCs…we neglected to say that the majority of user PCs are overpriced for what they deliver.”
The price really seems way too high if they are this scared to put out a number
I know speculation is fun, but until we know the price officially, all of this is moot. Wait until next year when they announce actual pricing and judge it then for its value.
I, personally, don’t think it’ll be a successful product if it isn’t less than $800. They don’t have to have it cost console prices, but it does need to be at least somewhat within spitting distance. If the price is the cost of an Xbox or Playstation plus, say…a year of their online service subscription, I think that could be marketable.
If it’s closer to a grand, it’ll be a flop like the first Steam Machines.
Even at 1000$ it will most likely outperform any 1000$ prebuilt you can buy. If they market it like this it can absolutely work at that price point.
Technically i believe that as long as it’s less expensive than the top consoles, it’ll have it’s market share, no?
I know speculation is fun, but
Then you can stop right there. This is just people having fun talking about announced tech.
No reason to over meta analyze it.
If they subsidized it, wouldn’t that risk businesses buying it as a cheap-for-its-specs option for their office computers? It’s not locked to being a gaming machine like consoles. You can just install windows on it.
That’s a tradition with gaming systems, see the Navy’s playstation supercomputer!
That’s a bit different IIRC, they purchased them directly from Sony and they didn’t have any of the OtherOS hardware lockouts like retail consoles did.
At launch and for a good while PS3 came with a boot to Linux enabled by default, some universities around the globe bought some “from the shelf” to make some server farm and such.
Retail units couldn’t access most of the RSX in OtherOS for Sony reasons, Geohot fixing that was why they killed OtherOS.
Apparently the DOD units never had any lockouts on the GPU.
Yeah, but in relatively small volumes and mostly as a ‘gimmick’.
The Cell processors were ‘neat’ but enough of a PITA is to largely not be worth it, combined with a overall package that wasn’t really intended to be headless managed in a datacenter and a sub-par networking that sufficed for internet gaming, but not as a cluster interconnect.
IBM did have higher end cell processors, at predictable IBM level pricing in more appropriate packaging and management, but it was pretty much a commercial flop since again, the Cell processor just wasn’t worth the trouble to program for.
I’m not entirely sure on the difference here, valve is selling them directly and by all the reporting we’ve seen, there aren’t going to be hardware restrictions on any of the models.
That’s the feel good warm marketing Sony spun for the thing. The PS3 sold around 88 million units. It flopped at first because it didn’t have any games for it. The Linux thing was a quirky fun but ultimately useless feature. You had to code custom software for the thing, it had no commercial software for Linux on a PS3. Its sales ballooned after it became the cheapest bluray on the market, and it was after the removal of otherOS support.
Less than 10 thousand were used for distributed computation clusters. The famous navy supercomputer only had 1.7 thousand units or so. Against the global sales numbers it was barely a rounding error.
I’m sorry, I’m not sure what your point is - yes it was a broadly impractical thing to do, that’s not in dispute.
I think it’s a response to the sentiment that Sony somehow got bit by selling PS3 at a loss because it triggered some huge supercomputing purchases of the systems that Sony wouldn’t have liked, and that if Valve got too close to that then suddenly a lot of businesses would tank it by buying too much and never buying any games.
Sony loved the exposure and used it as marketing fodder that their game consoles were “supercomputer” class. Just like they talked up folding@home on them…
Unlikely.
Businesses generally aren’t that stoked about anything other than laptops or servers.
To the extent they have desktop grade equipment, it’s either:
- Some kiosk grade stuff already cheaper than a game console
- Workstation grade stuff that they will demand nVidia or otherwise just don’t even bother
On servers, the steam machine isn’t that attractive since it’s not designed to either be slapped in a closet and ignored on slotted in a datacenter.
Putting all this aside, businesses love simplicity in their procurement. They aren’t big on adding a vendor for a specific niche when they can use an existing vendor, even if in theory they could shave a few dollars in cost. The logistical burden of adding Steam Machine would likely offset any imagined savings. Especially if they had to own re-imaging and licensing when they are accustomed to product keys embedded in the firmware when they do vendor preloads today.
Maybe you could worry a bit more about the consumer market, where you have people micro-managing costs and will be more willing to invest their own time, but even then the market for non-laptop home systems that don’t think they need nVidia but still need something better than integrated GPUs is so small that it shouldn’t be a worry either.
Fairly easy fix, there, given this is Valve who own the marketplace:
- Only initially sold via Steam
- Require a Steam account to buy, and the amount must be unrestricted (have bought some amount of games, I think is the way they do that)
- Optional: restrict sales to 1 per account initially, maybe open that up later
That’s the feel good warm marketing Sony spun for the thing. The PS3 sold around 88 million units. It flopped at first because it didn’t have any games for it. The Linux thing was a quirky fun but ultimately useless feature. You had to code custom software for the thing, it had no commercial software for Linux on a PS3. Its sales ballooned after it became the cheapest bluray on the market, and it was after the removal of otherOS support.
Less than 10 thousand were used for distributed computation clusters. The famous navy supercomputer only had 1.7 thousand units or so. Against the global sales numbers it was barely a rounding error.
Edit: replied to the wrong comment but I think it is still relevant. The risk of companies snatching steam machines in bulk is null, stop listening to LTT.
Remember, an Xbox series X now costs $600 for digital edition ($800 for 2tb + disk drive)
…and those are just flying off the shelves!
