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sailingparrot 5 hours ago [-]
> Why a randomized reservation order?
[...] we wanted to create a system that would be less frustrating and more fair for everyone. A launch that starts at a specific day and time tends to reward bots, people with fast internet connections, talented gaming fingers for quick F5/refresh reactions, and those who can schedule their life around that moment. By accepting reservation signups over the course of a few days, without any incentive to be first, we're hoping to take away some of that friction.
This is nice.
tmoertel 4 hours ago [-]
Yeah, this is a promising solution to scalping. Previously, if you had only small numbers of consoles available at launch, scalpers and their bots would claim a large share of them. With Valve's new policy, that share is reduced to s/g, where s is the number of verified Steam accounts controlled by scalpers and g is the number of legit gamer accounts. Since s is likely to be much less than g, s/g is close to zero, and scalping is dramatically curtailed. Almost all of the initial batch of consoles will go to legit gamers.
oh_no 3 hours ago [-]
so i think you're a bit off. it's s/g but g is legit accounts who want to buy the steam machine.
we could say it's 5000 scalper accounts, and 50000000 gamer accounts. but it's not 5000/50000000, it's like 4500/20000. which isn't bad! but scalpers will still be way over-represented, because they'll be trying to buy it when most steam accounts won't.
now one fuzz factor is the queue system, as you're not putting down money to get in line i expect a lot of people who wouldn't otherwise sign up will, in case they decide to buy one when given the chance. so we might have 40000 gamer sign ups, but only 50% will pull the trigger. this also gives scalpers an out should the resale not be worth it.
(obviously all numbers made up)
kbenson 2 hours ago [-]
The lower g is, the lower the profit margin for s is, so so the fewer resources they will put into it. Unless there's unlikely to be more releases later or g are not cost sensitive and want it at a premium, this neatly scales to lower numbers.
SXX 1 hours ago [-]
Scalpers can be damned because Valce might just deprioritize accounts in lottery unless they already spent money on Steam and play games.
munk-a 24 minutes ago [-]
I am sure that Valve has some analytics they can lean on to try and measure how likely it is for an account to be a scalper/trading bot and it's also quite convenient for them that if they're describing their system as random they can sneak in some biases to help steer towards real accounts without making it easy for scalpers to glean what specific attributes they're weighting.
hiccuphippo 4 hours ago [-]
This is also possible because they are only selling through their website, while other consoles go through retailers.
I'd actually prefer a retailer just for doing this over one that was first come first serve.
RandallBrown 4 hours ago [-]
When the Xbox 360 came out decades ago, the store I got mine from did this. They had like 10 consoles and there were like 200 people there. They did a raffle for the consoles and I got to buy one. It felt like I won the Xbox even though I still had to pay for it.
transcriptase 4 hours ago [-]
I never thought much of the need for trigger warnings until I read “the Xbox 360 came out decades ago”
Arainach 3 hours ago [-]
The XBox 360 release is closer to the (US) release of the NES than it is to the current day.
SpaceNoodled 3 hours ago [-]
Reading this was physically painful.
giancarlostoro 3 hours ago [-]
Dang. That wasn't supposed to be a challenge... That will have eventually become true no matter what tbh.
Keyframe 2 hours ago [-]
we're dead, practically.
mvcosta91 3 hours ago [-]
The original Crysis will be TWENTY YEARS OLD in 2027.
kube-system 2 hours ago [-]
And I still can't afford a GPU to play it
Hamuko 2 hours ago [-]
Don’t worry, you also can’t afford RAM to play it either. Not that it needs much.
Fuzzwah 57 minutes ago [-]
30th anniversary of Quake's release today.
teaearlgraycold 3 hours ago [-]
Casual reminder we're all mortal! :D
greggsy 1 hours ago [-]
It’s effectively closed off to new accounts too, which significantly reduces the effectiveness of bot campaigns
user142 1 hours ago [-]
> scalpers and their bots would claim a large share of them
Is there any actual data on this? I know people don't like scalpers but I wonder what the actual percentage is.
inigyou 4 hours ago [-]
Fusion Festival (happening this week), aka European Burning Man (but not exactly) does this.
arw0n 4 hours ago [-]
And the soccer WC went the opposite direction, by encouraging scalping, giving it an official avenue, and taking a cut of the profits. Now only rich people get to enjoy a sport meant for the masses, yay.
baud147258 3 hours ago [-]
> Now only rich people get to enjoy a sport meant for the masses, yay.
By and large, the masses have always experienced football on a TV screen. (though removing lower price tickets from such public sport events is still bad)
alaudet 3 hours ago [-]
Actually, rich people and not so rich people who don't mind borrowing more than they can afford. I'm not rich by any means and there are much worse of than me dumping a couple months salary for the "experience". Not that there is a problem with it if that's what you enjoy. A bit over the top for my taste though.
ajmurmann 3 hours ago [-]
Well, there is a genuine problem with the WC that reselling solves. It's unclear till a few days before what team will be in which match. That said, I'd prefer the solution where tickets don't go on sale till it's clear which teams are in the match.
3 hours ago [-]
greenavocado 2 hours ago [-]
They can keep it and society will be better off.
buellerbueller 3 hours ago [-]
FIFA is corrupt, so this shouldn't be a surprise.
ajmurmann 3 hours ago [-]
To be fair, if FIFA wanted to maximize profits, they should auction tickets off instead of allowing scalpers to eat the delta between sales price and real value.
inigyou 14 minutes ago [-]
To be fair, most of the scalpers are FIFA.
InitialLastName 2 hours ago [-]
To be fair, GP said that FIFA is corrupt, not that FIFA is either profit-maximizing nor out to light the goose that lays the golden egg on fire.
I know it's hard to imagine in the US, what with our quarterly-profit-maximizing corruption, but it is possible to be corrupt and still have to balance long-term concerns like "keep the graft flowing".
jmye 1 hours ago [-]
> Now only rich people get to enjoy a sport meant for the masses, yay.
I'm so tired of people trying to pretend that limited tickets to an event billions of people want to attend ought to be available to poor people just because. If they sold for a penny, the resale market would eat them up and they'd still cost what they cost. If you'd bought them for $10, you'd instantly turn around and sell them for a few thousand to someone else.
I'm sorry no one prepared you for the fact that rare things have value, but perhaps some introductory economics classes, instead of TikTok-trite-internet-rage would be helpful.
drdexebtjl 59 minutes ago [-]
Perhaps if you could find economics professsors that agree with each other, I would.
Not everything must be race to the bottom. Not everything should be a fucking market.
If only rich snobs and people with poor financial control can afford your tickets, that will be the type of fan you’ll retain.
scott_w 36 minutes ago [-]
Ironically it’s the thing that will destroy many sports. People worldwide watch the premier league for the atmosphere. That comes from working class people singing and following their team. There’s a reason Newcastle fans out-sing the home crowd at Old Trafford every year, even when we’re losing.
inigyou 13 minutes ago [-]
You assume a big assumption: that everything has to be run by efficient markets.
scott_w 39 minutes ago [-]
I’m going to straight up call this a classist view to hold. Things like sports events, music events became popular BECAUSE of the working classes watching and taking part. Football, the biggest single sport on Earth would be nothing were it not for the millions of working class people playing it, filling stadiums, following their teams through thick and thin around the world and stretching their budgets to do so.
And you think it’s ok for rich people to swoop in, appropriate the attire and vibe of the sport and working class people just need to suck it up because they’re poor? The people who made the sport what it is now can’t enjoy it? The people who STILL make the sport what it is?
Disgusting.
inigyou 12 minutes ago [-]
Why should poor people be allowed to enjoy things?
ajmurmann 3 hours ago [-]
Does it solve scalping? It seems like there is still money in sighing up with the goal to resell. Granted this is better in that I don't have to race the scalpers.
Till the sales price matches the market value scalping will exist. The best way to address that is a vickery auction. Till then scalping will continue.
Xirdus 3 hours ago [-]
"Customers must meet the following criteria to be able to sign up:
You must have a Steam account in good standing.
You must have made a purchase on Steam prior to April 27th 2026.
Limit one signup per household. We will use payment method, shipping address, and other information to eliminate multiple entries."
ajmurmann 3 hours ago [-]
That prevents flooding of tickets by a single person but doesn't prevent me from signing up even though I just want to resell
jack_pp 3 hours ago [-]
Sure but no one can do anything about your free will. This is about being fair, any ideas to make the system fairer?
ajmurmann 3 hours ago [-]
Scalping exists because the sales price is significantly lower than the market value. Just do a Vickery auction and scalping is gone. Because it's avickery auction the price likely wouldn't be totally ludicrous either. If there is a batch of 10,000 units sold the price would be the 10,001th highest bid.
chorizo 2 hours ago [-]
In Valve’s, they’re raffling the opportunity to make a purchase. For a generalized Vickery auction, it’s assumed the buyer will complete the bid, but that’s not so in valve’s case. What’s a good solution when there is a significant % of bids that do not complete the purchase?
ajmurmann 2 hours ago [-]
You pre-authorize the charge.
Xirdus 2 hours ago [-]
If the price is not totally ludicrous then the scalpers outbid pretty much everyone else. If you know MSRP, then normal people bid MSRP whereas scalpers take a million dollar loan and bid all 10,000 units at double MSRP, then sell at triple/quadruple MSRP. If you don't know MSRP, then most people won't know how much to bid, and won't bid at all, leaving just scalpers.
ajmurmann 2 hours ago [-]
Scalpers bid high because they know they can get when more. The people who pay more to scalpers on an auction side like eBay would just bid that directly to Valve
Xirdus 1 hours ago [-]
They wouldn't, because they wouldn't know how much to bid. People pay more on eBay because they see how much more they need to pay. The whole point of a Vickery auction is to eliminate this feedback. A tiny fraction of megawhales will overbid by an order of magnitude because they want the gadget at literally any cost - but the vast majority of people would underbid, specifically because scalpers haven't started selling it yet for inflated prices. The act of putting it on eBay itself increases how much people are willing to pay for it. The big winners would be scalpers, who, being both the professional appraisers and the market makers, are in the best position to bid well and are nearly guaranteed to resell at a higher price.
nehal3m 3 hours ago [-]
Well if you’re prepared to sell a kidney for a flux capacitor and a DeLorean, go for it.
mywittyname 3 hours ago [-]
I mean, go for it. Do you really want to risk getting stuck with a $1100 device that you have to now offload (and pay the associated fees)?
The corollary to this lottery will ensure that people who want Steam Machines day 1 actually get them at cost. So not only does this negatively impact the supply-side of scalping, but it also impacts the demand-side.
ajmurmann 2 hours ago [-]
That risk is exactly what scalpers have been carrying at everyone of these cases.
mywittyname 1 hours ago [-]
The difference being the lottery system. When scalpers know they are competing against other scalpers, they know they will corner the market and everyone will pay. Which is how they make money.
With the lottery, a good chunk of those systems are going those who would be willing to pay markup for them, but didn't. So the lottery does double-duty - it kills scalper supply and demand for scalped units.
unholiness 55 minutes ago [-]
It doesn't solve scalping, it solves putting everyone in a Red Queen race[0] against the scalpers.
I assume scalpers are often much better at getting through a heavily contested purchase flow (eg the recent steam controller release) due to tools like bots, general experience, and being able to dedicate 20 minutes or more to sitting at a computer constantly refreshing a browser window.
This way it's just a random draw and (I think?) the number of accounts scalpers can enter with is limited because they need to be established. So it might not solve scalping, but it could be a significant improvement.
elictronic 3 hours ago [-]
DDOS server when not making direct purchase. If there is a financial incentive the process is automated to generate maximum value for the scalper. In our modern age scalpers are not going to be waiting.
Biggest impediment would be changes to purchase process. Run one live user through and repeat for how many bots you want to buy more.
Agreed with your comment on random being better. I just found a scalper sitting at a PC for 20 minutes waiting to buy pretty funny.
nehal3m 3 hours ago [-]
I think account age and activity should be weighted into that equation.
gs17 2 hours ago [-]
I want to agree, but it's hard to figure out what's fair, and I doubt Valve has enough verified data to make it fair right now even if we had a good rule for it. Each way I can think of (account age, gameplay time, games owned, past event participation) has a big issue. Same issue for the Steam Frame, I'd personally love if they weighed my VR time to bump me up the queue, but at the same time it feels like a "the rich get richer" kind of unfairness.
noxvilleza 1 hours ago [-]
What type of activity? Just purchasing? There's thousands of bot accounts made every day which are active in the sense of playing games, but don't buy very much.
Gooblebrai 3 hours ago [-]
That crosses the line to elitism
nehal3m 3 hours ago [-]
Maybe weighted is the wrong term, it’s a threshold and that seems prudent.
gambiting 3 hours ago [-]
Maybe, but I don't think it's totally outrageous to say the very first batch of these you can only buy if you had an account for at least 15 years or you must have spent at least $1000 over its lifetime. Then after that first batch it's free for all.
fartcoin67 3 hours ago [-]
[dead]
ocdtrekkie 2 hours ago [-]
Scalping is much easier to solve, people just wouldn't like it: Lock the device to the purchasing Steam account for a year.
noxvilleza 1 hours ago [-]
Are hardware IDs reliable at all - I've seen so many companies using HWIDs in their anti-cheats over the years and it has never worked; so I wonder if this would easily be worked around.
ocdtrekkie 55 minutes ago [-]
So presumably if you make an account which didn't buy a Steam Machine unable to log in on one, you kill the scalping market. It doesn't have to be perfect to make it unpalatable for scalping. Is a scalper going to take the risk on buying a ton of hardware which they can't offload at a profit without also getting users to hack the thing to get it to work and risk a Steam ban?
drnick1 1 hours ago [-]
It's just a PC, you shouldn't be able to "lock" it. Either you own the hardware or you don't.
ocdtrekkie 1 hours ago [-]
It's a PC everyone expects to play games from a proprietary platform with an account system. They absolutely could lock how it’s used similar to how cell phones are locked with carriers today. And it would eliminate scalping.
But as I said, you don't like it. ;) Scalping is freedom, if you want to remove scalping, you have to remove some freedom.
gdhkgdhkvff 4 hours ago [-]
So what you’re saying is we should see an increase in account hijacks and spamming account creation as scalpers now try to optimize for max s.
Show me the incentive structure and…
abnercoimbre 4 hours ago [-]
Spamming account creation won't work, because accounts need to have been created in April or earlier. They also verify address, payment method etc. to reduce double-dipping.
10000truths 3 hours ago [-]
> Spamming account creation won't work, because accounts need to have been created in April or earlier.
Pre-creating "sleeper" accounts is a common way of circumventing this, though it does require a degree of long term thinking/planning.
themaninthedark 3 hours ago [-]
>You must have made a purchase on Steam prior to April 27th 2026.
>Limit one signup per household. We will use payment method, shipping address, and other information to eliminate multiple entries."
It's not just an account with an age, they have to have made a purchase.
And shipping address + payment info also help eliminate duplicates.
mywittyname 3 hours ago [-]
There's probably more to it than that, and Valve just isn't telling us all the details.
It's likely they are weighting accounts that have a lot of (recent) game activity and game purchases as well. Plus, they have access to hardware information via their hardware survey, etc.
abnercoimbre 3 hours ago [-]
Oh yeah I remember reading that in a book about botnets. Valve can only do harm reduction here, but calculating actors will seep through.
idiotsecant 3 hours ago [-]
Then s/g still applies
numpad0 3 hours ago [-]
It's surprising that the whole Western world is discovering the threat of organized or scripted scalping just now, when it's been a problem in places like Japan for over a decade. Account age requirements, lotteries, quick subject matter quizzes to chase away hired line-sitters, hidden ID code on tickets to ban scalpers on auction site pics, randomized queues for sales page etc etc has all been in use for years. It's been so commonplace that various city-run COVID free vaccine programs had different forms of them.
swiftcoder 3 hours ago [-]
It's been a problem in the West for decades too, for some reason we've only just decided to do something about it
chorizo 2 hours ago [-]
Organized/scripted scalping isn’t new at all in the Western world. Just look at concert/game tickets. It assumed that if you really need it, you’ll alarm clock the release and even then might end up paying a scalper.
baggy_trough 4 hours ago [-]
Scalping is a good thing, because it gets consoles in the hands of those who want them the most, as evidenced by willingness to pay.
AnthonyMouse 4 hours ago [-]
If that's what you actually wanted then Valve could just sell them at auction and at least have the money going to the company actually making the thing instead of a useless middleman.
Moreover, that's what happens anyway. If you get one of the slots and you value the difference between what you paid and the "real" (resale) price more than you value having the console, you can still sell it. But then more of the money goes to ordinary customers rather than rewarding people who snipe with bots etc.
I would also point out that you can build a PC to run SteamOS with approximately the same specs for approximately the same price, so it's not clear who is going to be paying a significant premium over the sticker price instead of doing that if they don't get a slot.
welshwelsh 3 hours ago [-]
That is precisely what Valve should do. It is unfortunate that we need scalpers, simply because companies are bizarrely unwilling to adjust their pricing based on market conditions.
mywittyname 3 hours ago [-]
> bizarrely unwilling to adjust their pricing based on market conditions.
When they do this, customers have a conniption.
This works fine for luxury goods, because the whole point is that they are expensive, thus exclusive (see: Porsche, Rolex). But for regular goods, this ends up being penny wise, pound foolish. Yeah, there's a short-term bump in revenues and profits, but it gives competition a massive attack surface, as they can pull away the most loyal customers who are angry over price gouging, and those customers are probably lost forever.
AnthonyMouse 1 hours ago [-]
> When they do this, customers have a conniption.
In general customers don't actually care. They want the product and are equally annoyed by it selling out before they can get one and it selling for a price they can't afford, both caused by the company not having enough supply to meet current demand.
The actual reason companies don't like scalpers in contexts like this has to do with why Valve is making a console to begin with. Is it because they want to compete with Dell and HP in the market for gaming PCs? No, it's because they want to compete with Microsoft and Sony in the market for distributing games. Which in turn means they want their device to have an attractive price so that more people get one instead of getting a competitor's console. Their expected profit is primarily from selling games rather than hardware.
Selling the initial batch for a higher price is bad for that, because who is going to pay the higher initial price? Their most dedicated customers, who would have bought one from the next batch anyway if they don't get one of these. The ones who would only pay the intended sticker price are the ones who would buy the competitor's console instead of theirs if they had to pay more, and those are the customers they most want to get one immediately before the competition gets their money first.
bjt 3 hours ago [-]
It's not that bizarre. Not everyone is trying to optimize for maximum profit. Some creators or companies want to build a community by increasing the consumer surplus received by their buyers. They are willing to trade profit for that. Scalpers slip into the middle, take the surplus for themselves, and prevent the community building or other social goods that the seller is trying to create.
WarmWash 2 hours ago [-]
The outcome is that only people with the means to pay a lot get a product, so the optics are extremely bad. The optics are much better with a lottery system, as it trades wealth disparity determination for a dumb luck determination.
I don't think we "need" scalpers though, but they are a fundamental part of markets, and arise when you are trying to break the natural flow of markets. Scalpers are the markets punishment for trying to have your cake and eat it too.
2 hours ago [-]
furyofantares 3 hours ago [-]
Not hard to imagine minimum wage workers wanting some gaming console quite badly and being outbid by tech workers who are vaguely interested.
As an adult I have rarely wanted things as badly as I did when I was a kid. But I can sure outbid them.
I think you might actually be maximally wrong, as those with means have plenty of entertainment options compared to those without.
Levitz 3 hours ago [-]
Scalping adds no value to the product.
Scalping also actively damages the pricing, which is part of the product. Valve wants to sell this product at a specific price, which is targeted to an audience. By scalping and ultimately changing the price, you are hurting both the consumer, who now pays more, and the company, who doesn't see a cent of this increase and is now failing its target.
Scalping also damages the demand for the product, since it creates a submarket that is volatile and unpredictable.
Scalping is a bad thing because by basically any measure, a market with scalping is worse for everybody involved than one with scalping. Except for scalpers, who make money off it by making it worse for everybody else. Which is why scalpers are bad people.
Ferret7446 3 hours ago [-]
Scalping provides the service of exchanging money for time, means, and/or luck. People who have no time to camp, no botting tools or skills, etc can exchange their money instead.
Scalping is a natural "black" market which always pops up to satisfy market demand whenever artificial restrictions are placed on the market.
Even in this case, there will be scalpers providing for people with more money than luck, who want a day one steam machine.
gs17 2 hours ago [-]
> People who have no time to camp, no botting tools or skills, etc can exchange their money instead.
But they only need to do that because of the scalpers! The scalpers aren't adding value, they're adding friction and expecting people to pay extra for it!
orangecat 2 hours ago [-]
But they only need to do that because of the scalpers!
Scalpers can only profitably exist when demand at the list price exceeds supply. If you could magically ban scalping, then some number of willing customers wouldn't be able to buy at any price even after jumping through all the hoops.
jorams 2 hours ago [-]
Yes, that is exactly what a reasonable outcome looks like when the seller doesn't want to increase the price to levels their target customers can't afford. Some people won't be able to buy, but that is because of luck and not privilege.
2 hours ago [-]
orangecat 2 hours ago [-]
by basically any measure, a market with scalping is worse for everybody involved than one with scalping
Scalpers benefit customers who are willing to pay the market price but missed out on the lottery and otherwise wouldn't be able to buy at all.
Scalping also damages the demand for the product, since it creates a submarket that is volatile and unpredictable.
Basically the opposite. If there are scalpers, there is a predictable price that I can pay. If there aren't, I have to be lucky or have connections.
Which is why scalpers are bad people.
They are not.
noxvilleza 1 hours ago [-]
Sometimes systems which reward luck are better than systems which purely reward money. If scalping exists, it often completely eliminates people who are too poor, even if they are true fans or interested parties (e.g. locals unable to attend sports games held in their cities, etc)
zmgsabst 1 hours ago [-]
Scalpers raise the price only to transfer who loses out — as per your example, where they receive a fee to manipulate which customer misses out (and do so contrary to the wishes of the original vendor).
If you entire business is helping the rich ensure the poor lose and raise the price in general, despite what the original provider may have wanted, you are undoubtedly a bad person.
numpad0 3 hours ago [-]
Some people argues that, but that's not how scalping works because it first chokes the supply to create a fake demand. The scalper listing prices don't represent the true price on supply-demand curve had there not been artificial meddling through published MSRP, but merely how forcefully they managed to choke the life of the product.
They buy up ALL the stocks. Then puts them on auction sites after supply had hit as close to zero as possible. That's not how economics work by the books.
jcurtis 4 hours ago [-]
This would only make sense if everyone has equal ability to pay.
welshwelsh 3 hours ago [-]
You're right. It's not just aboutwillingness to pay, but also how much someone deserves to own a Steam Machine, which we determine by their ability to pay.
It's not a perfect system, but money is how we as a society determine how to allocate scarce resources. People labor under the promise that having additional money will give them an advantage in this type of situation.
Escapado 1 hours ago [-]
Sounds like you love unregulated free capitalism but correct me if I am wrong. If that’s the case I wonder if you would see things differently if said system strongly disadvantaged you and your loved ones in other areas (health care, housing, education).
I think if we derive “deserving” solely by “ability to pay” we loose our humanity.
2 hours ago [-]
ranger207 3 hours ago [-]
If you can't see the human effects scalping has on the market, then, well, you might be a microeconomist
Snacklive 25 minutes ago [-]
That's just bad ragebait
krabizzwainch 3 hours ago [-]
Something that only benefits people with the most disposable income is a bad thing. I will preach from any platform that I have that scalpers are shit people.
nrb 2 hours ago [-]
Save some shade for people who are buying from the scalpers too.
geon 4 hours ago [-]
Absolutely no one needs a steam machine.
korse 3 hours ago [-]
You are right. Basic economic theory says nothing about distribution of value, only about creation of the most value. I don't know why your comment is grey.
But... perhaps these guys are playing a longer game? Reputation has value as well and from other comments this move seems to boost reputation significantly.
mattjoyce 2 hours ago [-]
Scalper:by increasing prices we add the value of enabling people to express their desire more faithfully.
plagiarist 3 hours ago [-]
A sound economic theory after we grant the assumption that all consumers have equal amounts of money.
Zenst 1 hours ago [-]
Interesting, as it sounds like a lottery reservation system, which is kinda a neat way to deal with many issues.
I'm always supprised that companies don't do a tiered price release, offer it at 200% price, you get it, 150%, you lower down the list and then 100% lottery time, that way they gain from those who can afford to pay more(maybe able to subsidise other sales later and price cuts down the line). Why feed scalpers when you can coin it directly and then offer a lower price to those who are prepared to wait a few more months or so.
In governance, sortition is the selection of public officials or jurors at random, i.e., by lottery, in order to obtain a representative sample.[1][2][3]
In ancient Athenian democracy, sortition was the traditional and primary method for appointing political officials, and its use was regarded as a principal characteristic of democracy.[4][5] Sortition is often classified as a method for both direct democracy and deliberative democracy.
e28eta 4 hours ago [-]
It also reduces the DDoS effect of telling all your customers to repeatedly hit your web servers at a specific day & time.
WarmWash 2 hours ago [-]
I would be curious how the public would react to a Dutch auction, where Valve launches the console at a $10,000 price tag, and every ~hour drops the price by $100 until they are sold out. It creates the illusion that buyers are "breaking the line" when buying high, so it's their fault (not valves) for the high selling price. This would also eliminate scalpers.
philistine 2 hours ago [-]
The problem with a dutch auction is if you don't know how a dutch auction functions, it looks like you're getting royally screwed. That's why they're usually reserved for professional settings.
racl101 14 minutes ago [-]
That's pretty cool!
d3Xt3r 1 hours ago [-]
> This is nice
But this is not nice:
> This item is not available for purchase in your region
annzabelle 54 minutes ago [-]
I moved to New Zealand recently from the US and am now seeing that everywhere. A lot of the time some local ecommerce platform imports the Australian version of most electronics with a markup, but we don't have official retailers for a lot of products, most notably Pixel phones. Also no Apple stores, though there are official retailers for Apple products.
throwaway21233 3 hours ago [-]
I don't get why companies don't take advantage of the demand.
For example: Start the bidding at BASE_PRICE (BP) + 2400. Then reduce the price by $1 every 3mins over the course of 5 days. Until the BP is met and then just carry on queuing.
You could buy it early if you want it that much or just wait an extra couple of days and end up in the queue at the BP.
I don't know if it would create pressure on that second it ticks over to the BP, so then its BP+1 - well I guess the nash equilibrium would be pushed up.
eximius 3 hours ago [-]
Holy fuck, not everything in this life needs to be profit maximized.
Self-Perfection 6 minutes ago [-]
You can get away from supply/demand laws. By pretending that something is not giverned by them and putting fixed price lower than real price (i.e. that price at which suppl equals demand) one leaves space for scalpers to exist and collect money that people are willing to spend over set price.
Given that people are going to spend money anyway it seems more honest and reasonable to direct this money to the party that makes the thing by letting it to run auction.
niwtsol 2 hours ago [-]
Ticketmaster does something very similar to this with their "demand weighted pricing" and it is just so sad that their solution to "scalping" is "let's bring that profit into our platform."
jhrmnn 1 hours ago [-]
The Dutch auction vs lottery are two ways to solve scalping. They differ in what one considers fair.
baq 2 hours ago [-]
market doing what the market does.
hatsunearu 44 minutes ago [-]
It's not really about money or profit.
Society has found out money is a good way to encourage/discourage certain behavior in a predictable, deterministic, and quantifiable way. It really sucks that it has to be money, and maybe this can be solved with some other universal token that cannot be bought with wealth but equitably distributed some other way.
For example the dynamic fees in express lanes in California aren't really for the purposes of paying for the roads. They dynamically adjust it such that the traffic in the lane is operating at peak efficiency. Too few people using it obviously reduces throughput, so the price cheapens to have people using it, and too many people using it causes a collapse in efficiency so the price increases. Having some kind of adjustable cost on it lets the control system appropriately change the demand to keep it efficient.
maerF0x0 3 hours ago [-]
Profit and premium models can be great if it's allocated to useful things. For example if it went as bonuses to the rank and file employees, or was as steam store credit, or went to a charity.
I get your cynicism it would just go to billionaire shareholders, but profit itself isnt the enemy, greed is.
baq 2 hours ago [-]
greed isn't even the worst. greed is a necessity if you have any competition. sometimes it's hard to tell greed from operational efficicency.
rent seeking however... rent seeking should be taxed to hell and back.
maerF0x0 24 minutes ago [-]
I think we define greed in a different manner, I presume what you call greed, I'd call self interest.
To me greed is being willing to take to the detriment of others.
2 hours ago [-]
speedgoose 2 hours ago [-]
Because it damages the brand and many people will remember the product as being heavily overpriced and never come back.
sowbug 2 hours ago [-]
It works only once per civilization, but Steam could run a dutch auction, then surprise! sell to the winners at list price.
wqaatwt 2 hours ago [-]
Because they want to maximize longterm profitability and believe (which makes sense to me) this approach would harm that
iamtheworstdev 3 hours ago [-]
because the less wealthy get mad about it
thatguy0900 3 hours ago [-]
Most companies need customers that don't hate their guts, that's why they don't do this
3 hours ago [-]
srmatto 4 hours ago [-]
I would love to see a generalized FOSS reservation system that could be used for just about anything that would help address the issues Valve listed. It could be as simple as a short lived deployment (1,3,7,14 days) that writes out the entries to a Google Sheets. I have encountered so many people trying to come up with their own approach to this problem that I think it would be worth solving. Maybe I can find time to work on it later this year.
wiether 3 hours ago [-]
Seems weird to base a FOSS reservation system on... Google Sheets?
srmatto 1 hours ago [-]
Fair point but I mean it eliminates state and would be familiar to just about anyone that might need something like this.
mannanj 2 hours ago [-]
Would love to know if you decide to work on this, or if otherwise, want to collaborate. feel free to email me hello@mannan.is - or maybe I'll begin work on this before you and we can share notes
edit: I don't particularly care for Google Sheets, just the idea of solving the underlying problem.
srmatto 1 hours ago [-]
Yeah I regret throwing that in the mix because it seems to have rubbed folks the wrong way for whatever reason. I just think avoiding storing state means it's a much easier project. Doesn't have to be G sheets.
iLoveOncall 5 hours ago [-]
It's not worse than a traditional launch, but it's also not much better. Make 1,000 Steam accounts, which are entirely free, and you get 1,000 times more chances of getting one than others.
To be fair I don't think they'll be scalped a lot because the price isn't attractive already and alternatives are plenty.
flutas 5 hours ago [-]
The account has to have bought something on steam before April 27th. They also are verifying addresses via the accounts.
> Are there any criteria for signing up?
> Customers must meet the following criteria to be able to sign up:
> You must have a Steam account in good standing.
> You must have made a purchase on Steam prior to April 27th 2026.
> Limit one signup per household. We will use payment method, shipping address, and other information to eliminate multiple entries.
charcircuit 4 hours ago [-]
The price of a Steam account is going to be less than the profit of ordering an additional Steam Machine by a lot.
kqr 4 hours ago [-]
But it's not an additional Steam Machine, it's a potential additional Steam Machine. In expectation, I'm sure it's more like 1/1000th of a Steam Machine.
brokencode 4 hours ago [-]
How are people going to get a Steam account with a purchase from before April 27th though?
I guess you could find somebody online and buy their account, but surely this would be a slow and unreliable process.
boofus 4 hours ago [-]
sadly there's sites dedicated to buying accounts of all sorts (reddit, x, steam, etc...) that use an escrow-type system so both parties have little risk
It's basically super easy and trivial to buy verified accounts for many many platforms
inigyou 4 hours ago [-]
How can I sell my old accounts?
fragmede 1 hours ago [-]
The trouble is getting caught, and you don't list contact info on your HN profile so any potential buyers would have to leave their email address here and tell you to email them and the people running. Steve are an idiot so any email address that appears there is gonna get blacklisted different connected to a Steam account so you might want to list your email address well throwaway that's not attached to your Steam account account. You might want to list that in your profile. Just saying. I already have a Steam account.
jerf 3 hours ago [-]
I'll be intrigued to see if this is true. The experience of the Steam Controller may not translate to the Steam Machine. The Steam Controller is a unique controller. The Steam Frame is a unique VR headset. Obviously not the only thing in their space, but at least a unique combination of features that may make it more valuable than other things in the space.
But the Steam Machine is really just a PC with a couple of neat features. If you are willing to overpay a scalper for a Steam Machine, it seems much more reasonable to suggest that maybe you should just take that same amount of money and buy a machine where that money translates into power rather than scalper profit. After it became clear that the Steam Machine was going to be hit hard by the price increases, I just bought a machine that was pure AMD. Where it is living I don't care if it's a little cube or not, nor do I care about the LED bar, and the integrated puck wasn't a big deal when I just use the current one as a charger too. For just a bit more money than the Steam Machine it's about 50% more powerful on all relevant fronts, and I may upgrade to a 9070XT (current latest-gen AMD card) which isn't an option on the Steam Machine. And since I bought that machine the same machine is now nearly $100 more expensive itself.
Paying a scalper for the controller at least makes some sense. Perhaps the same for the Steam Frame. But of the three things Valve is releasing this year, I'm not sure it makes sense to pay a scalper an extra 50% for a Steam Machine. In that scenario, you're not really paying that extra for the machine as a whole; you're paying extra for those "couple of neat features" alone, the form factor, the integrated controller puck, the LED on the front, whatever else is specifically about the Steam Machine and not a true statement about any machine with SteamOS or Bazzite installed. You need to want one of those things really, really badly to overpay that much. The value proposition is quite different.
Of course, this is a very analytical take on what may be a primary-emotional decision for some people. We'll see.
Hugsbox 3 hours ago [-]
How do they get around restriction on only one entry per address? Open 1000 PO boxes?
bspammer 4 hours ago [-]
Ok but organizing a separate address for each delivery is going to be a pain
Ekaros 5 hours ago [-]
>You must have made a purchase on Steam prior to April 27th 2026.
>Limit one signup per household. We will use payment method, shipping address, and other information to eliminate multiple entries.
Seems like they have chosen some reasonable options here. 2 months ago having purchase and trying to detect households. Likely also including phone number, Steam Guard client and family sharing.
5 hours ago [-]
xinayder 5 hours ago [-]
Steam accounts newer than April do not qualify, plus I think you need to have spent at least $5 to qualify for the reservation queue (i.e. not community limited)
garrettjoecox 5 hours ago [-]
Do you really think a fresh steam account will have equal footing? I'd be surprised if that was the case.
Even Nintendo has been setting fairly strict requirements to pre-order some of their products, like requiring 50 hours of playtime on the original switch to pre-order the Switch 2
himata4113 4 hours ago [-]
I am more surprised there's people lining up to buy this when it's genuinely cheaper to get a used PC off a local marketplace. I feel like this is unnecessary as I am pretty sure they'll be able to fill it in one shipment.
dghlsakjg 3 hours ago [-]
People value convenience differently.
A huge number of people would rather pay a few hundred bucks more to have a plug and play appliance with a warranty from a reputable company show up on their doorstep. They don’t have to learn anything about hardware, or how to install Linux. It just works.
Some people are happy to save the money and take the risk on used hardware.
The Steam Machine is for the former, Steam the platform is for the former and the latter.
himata4113 3 hours ago [-]
convenience and being an early bird is an odd combination, also there's plenty of builds although less power efficient on amazon and then there's the playstation 5.
dghlsakjg 3 hours ago [-]
Again, convenience is something that people value. Most people do not understand gaming PC builds. Even many gamers. They don’t want to. They want to play games, not build computers. A lot of people don’t want to get something from Amazon from some fly by night company that is going to need a few hours to configure, and might not run games they thought it would.
Convenience and being an early adopter are hardly at odds with each other. If anything, these people are early adopters because they want the convenience of not dealing with pc builds. People that already have gaming PCs and love that hobby aren’t going to line up to buy something that they enjoy making, or that they know enough about to feel comfortable buying used from Craigslist.
People are paying for a sure thing. Used PCs and no name Amazon machines are not a sure thing.
You and I might see it differently as people fluent with computers. Reseating a ram stick that got jostled in shipping isnt scary to most people on this site. It is terrifying to most of the world though. Steam is going after people that want to use PC games, but not play hardware tech.
Lwerewolf 4 hours ago [-]
I get to support people that are very involved in making sure that a long list of x86 win32 software that I want to be able to run plays well with linux and osx (not-quite-directly, but the crossover folks are on it) - regardless of whether it's on steam or not. Plus general linux desktop work in the "make games play well" department.
Meanwhile, MS is trying to push copilot again.
himata4113 3 hours ago [-]
I don't believe this is a lot of people, but I want to be proven wrong.
Lwerewolf 3 hours ago [-]
I'm just (occasionally) vocal - i.e. overall a minority. Pretty sure there's way, way, _way_ more people that just quietly do this. I'd even say that the current market makes you appreciate such companies even more.
p.s. a bit of a windows fanboy as well - used to do drivers for it, kind of like the internals / driver model / etc... but I really dislike the path they've taken, and there's nothing else like it.
Finally, I have an old projector setup with an x360/x1x on it right now (hc4000 + diy frame w/ dark energy abyss + 758 v3 + lsr305 + some subs - rag-tag), so I have a good excuse as well :P
jitl 2 hours ago [-]
if i was 10 years younger, sure I’d build my own. my roommates and i build our own gaming PCS, router, nas, home theater pc, we ran our own ethernet through the house. we ran openbsd on the router and freebsd on the nas, for fun.
i’ve changed. i really do not want to spend any extra time on yak shaving outside the job.
i am happy to pay $1500 for someone i trust with a fantastic track record to do it for me. plus its so cute!!! it will look great in my new apartment with the red faceplate. most gaming things are not cute.
gt0 32 minutes ago [-]
In Australia, it wouldn't even need to be a used PC. The Steam Machine is $1600 AUD here, you can get a brand new gaming PC for that. Not a particularly amazing machine of course, but you can walk into a shop and buy it right now.
fooster 1 hours ago [-]
It is neither cheaper or easier to get this build?
1 hours ago [-]
retired 4 hours ago [-]
For €1039 you can even get a mini-ITX PC that fits nicely in your living room. Install SteamOS to get a similar experience. Only thing you will not get is the HDMI CEC functionality.
kllrnohj 3 hours ago [-]
Or buy this and get the exact same thing, but without building and parting it our yourself? It's still an open computer, not a locked down console. The price reflects that reality. It's not subsidized because you actually just properly own it.
The price of this steam machine is a rounding error away from the build it yourself DIY price. It's not marked up, this is just what PC components actually cost these days :/
retired 56 minutes ago [-]
A DIY machine can be repaired or upgraded down the line with off the shelf components. The Steam Machine uses proprietary hardware with most components soldered on.
nomel 3 hours ago [-]
Interesting claim. Complete parts list please!
Every time I've seen a comment like this, the eventual parts list is about the same price, has large deviations, or re-uses existing hardware (or used hardware). Looking at all the subreddits, the general consensus seems to be the price is fine for the components, and (if you care) it's impossible to build anything with that form factor.
retired 34 minutes ago [-]
It will be difficult to build it that small, however you will end up with a PC that doesn’t use proprietary hardware and is easier to repair. There is something to say about that.
baq 2 hours ago [-]
show me a mini PC which has the radiator volume of this steam machine.
actually, show me any PC like that...
sudobash1 4 hours ago [-]
I am pleased to see hardware not being locked down as a selling point:
> Yes, Steam Machine is optimized for gaming, but it's still your PC. Install your own apps, or even another operating system. Who are we to tell you how to use your computer?
It feels very commonsense that you should be able to run whatever you want on the computer that you have purchased, but it is surprisingly uncommon.
willis936 4 hours ago [-]
Valve gets it. I very much want to support them and vote with my wallet. Unfortunately the Steam machine isn't a good fit for me. I will buy the frame in a heartbeat though. HMD with a FOSS OS? That's in its own class.
cryptoegorophy 2 hours ago [-]
One can still be a billionaire and not use shady tactics.
bnlxbnlx 1 hours ago [-]
unfortunately, not that straightforward in valve's case.
they created a nasty gambling system with their loot boxes that exists outside controlled casino environments and which impacts young adults a lot.
__MatrixMan__ 2 hours ago [-]
For at least a short while. I'm not sure it's a stable configuration.
asattarmd 4 hours ago [-]
They need to do that because, in some sense, they're competing with Gaming PCs, not really with Gaming consoles. Gaming consoles sell their consoles at a discounted price because they can recoup a lot of it when selling games. Steam can't have a markup on games because they share their marketplace with other PCs.
philistine 2 hours ago [-]
Can you point me to any statement that any current console is being sold at a loss?
All I've seen is that everyone is doing at cost nowadays. The PS4 Pro was the last subsidized console.
tuna74 3 hours ago [-]
Steam has a very high markup compared to its competitors like Epic Games Store.
dummydummy1234 3 hours ago [-]
But if they subsidize the hardware, non game users will purchase the hardware and use it for non game use-cases, where valve cannot recoupe the costs.
A interesting scenario would be to sell the hardware at cost, but include a 30% off ticket to the steam store (up to a few hundred dollars, in savings).
20 minutes ago [-]
3 hours ago [-]
k4rnaj1k 1 hours ago [-]
[dead]
basch 3 hours ago [-]
You could still offer this, similar to the ad tier and ad free tier of a kindle, or a carrier locked phone.
$799 for a locked down version, $1049 for an unlocked version. Opportunity to pay $300 to unlock it later at any time. 5% discount on purchases on a locked device.
echoangle 2 hours ago [-]
Fun fact about the kindle ad thing: I don’t know if they still do this but when I got mine, you could just write to the support and let them know you found the ads inappropriate (extra points for mentioning a child in the household) and they would just remove the ads for free.
Barbing 2 hours ago [-]
Some people then had to re-enable ads manually to use AdBreak, the Kindle jailbreak that abused ad delivery :)
jitl 1 hours ago [-]
they’re gonna struggle to meet demand at $1000 already, i don’t think they need a shitty ad version to support also.
(then again i always buy the most expensive SKU they offer so im very outside the target buyer profile for such)
poly2it 3 hours ago [-]
I would assume it also has to do with if not fundamentally manifesting from Steam being an organisation of technologists. They don't want to put out a project which has a worse operating system than their workstations.
tuyiown 3 hours ago [-]
I like that we can write the story that Microsoft sold their software with the home computer on the idea of productivity at home while the actual incentive was entertainment, and valve ends up justifying buying gaming hardware with the incentive that it can do productivity.
ThatMedicIsASpy 4 hours ago [-]
That is why the frame will be the most interesting to the people on HN.
A VR PC you can do whatever u want with.
ApolloFortyNine 4 hours ago [-]
You can install whatever apk you want on your Oculus Quest.
willis936 3 hours ago [-]
As long as you're running Zuck's spyware OS. The frame is a a linux box with fancy packaging and peripherals. You will be able to put arch on the frame and turn your new singular hobby into building drivers.
Dilettante_ 3 hours ago [-]
But can I uninstall Meta Horizon OS and install Gentoo?
sekh60 3 hours ago [-]
Gotta get that -O3 flag.
veber-alex 3 hours ago [-]
I don't understand, what is so special about this?
They are selling a x86 PC. All x86 PCs sold by everyone are open and you can install whatever you want.
It's commodity hardware packaged into a small box. There is nothing special here.
Trying to sell it as it if Valve are more consumer friendly here is nonsense.
a2128 2 hours ago [-]
Every console on the market right now is locked-down proprietary garbage, that's the basic reality. The PlayStation 5, the Xbox One, they are also technically x86 PCs as they run on x86 processors, but they are specifically locked down to prevent any use outside of their narrow use cases that are optimized to make them money. Valve is really the only company that's developing proper consoles with a custom operating system and custom AMD chips while not locking down the hardware, despite the strong incentives of locking people into paying them 30% forever and preventing access to competing game stores
ibero 2 hours ago [-]
to be fair, they subsidize the hardware costs. microsoft loses $100+ on each box they sell.
robocat 35 minutes ago [-]
So put the price up by $100 and include $100 of non-transferable digital credits on the XBox account to spend on games.
danhor 3 hours ago [-]
The PS5 and Xbox are also very close to being an x86 PC, but you're not installing your own OS on there even though there are few technical hurdles if the manufacturer removed the mechanisms to prevent that.
strix_varius 1 hours ago [-]
> All x86 PCs sold by everyone are open and you can install whatever you want.
What exactly do you think an Xbox is? PS4 & PS5?
archagon 2 hours ago [-]
I think what's special here is:
1) Full compatibility with SteamOS. You won't have to fiddle with drivers/hardware/whatever to get it working[1].
2) The physical hardware is maximally condensed, more so than you'd be able to do yourself with a SFF build.
I'd have definitely considered this if I wasn't already doing my own SFF stuff. Gaming on the Deck is a delight and I'd love that console-esque experience for my primary gaming PC as well.
> I'd love that console-esque experience for my primary gaming PC as well.
So does the typical gamer who's not a nerd like GP. I'm not framing it as an insult, more like a reminder: we infamously ignore the power of brands and sensible defaults chosen for you.
gorjusborg 1 hours ago [-]
I'd word your first point a bit more strongly:
The Steam Machine is the best of both worlds, yes, it is a plain PC and Valve is recognizing that. However, they are also selling a fully supported Linux gaming rig that plays many Windows games out of the box.
That might not excite everyone, but it does me.
AlienRobot 3 hours ago [-]
I think it's because if it was someone else (e.g. Epic), they would have locked down the hardware and sold it like a console or smartphone where you can only install things from their app store.
tonymet 4 hours ago [-]
And I like knowing that I will own the hardware long term. I have so many bricks at home with great hardware and locked boot loaders.
all2 4 hours ago [-]
The urge to tear down the stack of cellphones I have and pull the boot flash chip hits me occasionally. It would be a substantial project, though, so I haven't done it. Yet.
inigyou 4 hours ago [-]
You have to do things. You can't sit on project ideas forever while they become obsolete. A lot of things on my project ideas file became obsolete while I didn't do them, and that is sad. I even had enough time to do them but still wasted it on places like HN.
all2 3 hours ago [-]
I know. It hurts to let things die in my project backlog. But there's so much of 'life' outside the project log that I don't have time. I have to prioritize.
I feel the 'don't waste time on HN' thing. I'm working on it, minimizing social media usage, minimizing non-productive screen time.
tonymet 3 hours ago [-]
how far down the chain does the protection go? if you swap the flash chips can you just boot or do the other chips expect a signature upstream?
gruez 3 hours ago [-]
AFAIK there are signatures that are checked at the SoC level. In other words, it's not a write lock that can be bypassed by flashing the chips directly.
jitl 1 hours ago [-]
and it makes Steam Deck the best console ever made.
i picked up Darksiders 3 a few weeks ago to play on my deck. at some point i realized i was pretty underleveled but i didn’t wanna grind.
so, opened chatgpt in desktop mode and uploaded my save, asked it to write me a script to set my souls/xp/money to whatever number. it analyzed the save and spat out a bash/python script. after a chmod +x it worked flawlessly. done from bed took like 15 mins to figure it out end to end.
no other what other (handheld) console in history combines the depth of library, the slick console experience, and also lets you chmod +x.
lfkdev 1 hours ago [-]
chmod +x makes it executable. Also, at this point just use a trainer
Thaxll 2 hours ago [-]
I mean it's a PC, you can install whatever your want on a PC.
amelius 57 minutes ago [-]
Yes, a Personal computer as opposed to Apple's computer.
retired 4 hours ago [-]
I do hope they will release drivers for the Steam Machine, otherwise the openness isn’t very useful. Or at least make it possible for others to make drivers by publishing specifications.
Edit, reply to bjord as I am rate limited: HDMI CEC, the chipset, GPU drivers, controller receiver etc.
Edit, reply to robhlt: Thanks! Hope we can get that ported to Windows
Xbox Series S/X, PS5 and both Switches are pretty much commodity hardware.
Nobody has even hinted that it would be nice to have a 3rd party store or the ability to run whatever OS on them freely.
I keep wondering why.
ebbi 2 hours ago [-]
Probably because it's very niche. Talking to many friends, and an increasing number of posts on various console subreddits, there's lots of comments from PC gamers that embraced the console life due to it's simplicity. This has increased since the PS5 Pro released - "Close to PC-level graphics, without the PC-level costs and mucking around with settings"
There is a certain appeal to this for many people that hacking it to run your own OS isn't really sought after.
izacus 4 hours ago [-]
I guess you weren't listening because all of them have healthy homebrew communities and people defeating the DRM.
I'm not sure if you're being dishonest or just ignorant of the console hacking scene.
theshrike79 3 hours ago [-]
Mostly wondering about legislators being Super Concerned about Apple (and Google to a smaller degree) not allowing 3rd party software.
But for consoles it's just crickets.
We shouldn't need to "defeat the DRM", it should be allowed full stop.
bigfishrunning 3 hours ago [-]
Legislators *use* cell phones though; very few of them use video game consoles.
Lammy 2 hours ago [-]
You're the one being dishonest and ignorant comparing defeating DRM to something that is open from the start
izacus 31 minutes ago [-]
Nope.
andy_xor_andrew 5 hours ago [-]
This is a weird thing to call out, when there's so much else to talk about (price, specs, etc) buuuuuut-
Check out the gameplay video partway down the page, where the two people are on the couch playing Cuphead. Right under "Your Steam library in more places."
It's just... a real clip of real people playing a real game and reacting in a real way. It's funny. I know it's stupid to call out, but how many exaggerated versions of this scene have you seen before? And Valve is smart enough to say "Let's just film two people playing a real game and snip a nice, realistic reaction shot from it."
redox99 4 hours ago [-]
If you sampled 100 steam players at random, it would look nothing like that.
brechin 55 minutes ago [-]
Based on https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/ I would imagine out of 100 Steam players, most are playing at a Windows gaming computer with an Intel CPU, a bunch with Windows/AMD, then a few with a Mac, then one with a Steam Deck.
Most of those are probably NOT plugged into a TV, so in that way I agree that these are not typical Steam users. That's why the Steam Machine was developed, to bring gaming back to the couch in a way that the Steam Link didn't succeed at.
nearlyepic 40 minutes ago [-]
First time seeing an ad? If you sampled 100 F-150 buyers they would look nothing like the people in the commercials.
boca_honey 4 hours ago [-]
Yeah those people are definetly not a realistic sample of the average Steam user. I wonder why they chose them in particular.
tyre 25 minutes ago [-]
They want to expand the public's perception of who a gamer is, to make people feel more comfortable identifying as a gamer. If you included a sweaty CSGO player farming loot boxes with bloodshot eyes at 3am, that doesn't give you a new market. They're already going to buy.
Marketing is made so they you identify with the product or identify with an aspirational version of yourself. Gaming is seen as heavily male-dominated. Expanding that is smart.
(And yes, I know why you're asking and what answer you're looking for.)
skupig 3 hours ago [-]
Maybe you're out of touch, they pretty much look like the typical young nerd from Seattle.
hellosputnik 2 hours ago [-]
Isn't it ironic that you used anecdotal data as a rebuttal to anecdotal data?
skupig 2 hours ago [-]
Nope! That's just how a normal conversation works.
haunter 2 hours ago [-]
>typical young nerd from Seattle
Unfortunately I usually meet gopnik and niño rata in Dota and CSGO and not typical young nerds from Seattle
barbs 1 hours ago [-]
No, it's the children who are wrong!
malfist 3 hours ago [-]
Who says they're average? Why should they be average?
MrDrone 3 hours ago [-]
What leads you to that conclusion? What do you think the average Steam user looks like? What about them doesn't fit your idea of this?
piker 3 hours ago [-]
Average? Well, male for one.
It's not my point, but I don't think you're giving a strong rebuttal either.
eldaisfish 3 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
ffsm8 2 hours ago [-]
If what you said is true, then using gay people in marketing would be next level idiotic.
So what is it, are the people doing the marketing materials just straight up retarded or are you just living in a victim hood fantasy, unable to cope with the reality that you're the person people don't like, not your identity.
eldaisfish 1 hours ago [-]
every time i read people casually dropping the word "retarded" here, i thank my lucky stars that i do not work in the software industry and so can call people like you exactly what you are - bigoted.
Reported.
sltkr 3 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
OxO4 1 hours ago [-]
Are you suggesting that you can tell the types of games someone enjoys by just looking at them?
(Your reply is another example of right-wing discourse being around prejudiced assumptions instead of reality.)
eudamoniac 1 hours ago [-]
Are you suggesting that demographic trends between all genres of game are identical?
teolandon 1 hours ago [-]
none of your comment is good faith, try again
tshaddox 2 hours ago [-]
“Movie stars tend to be more attractive and better at acting than the median human. Really makes ya think doesn’t it?”
squigz 3 hours ago [-]
Do you and GP understand that it's not 1998 anymore and that many, many different types of people from all walks of life play games?
I'm very curious what you and others think the average Steam user really looks like.
ct520 2 hours ago [-]
Going out on a limb here, maybe they think the average gamer isnt trans?
squigz 1 hours ago [-]
Is the implication here that the people shown in that video are trans? How do we determine that?
eudamoniac 2 hours ago [-]
The average steam user is a mid twenties straight male. The average steam user in USA is a mid twenties straight white male. The average steam user nowhere on earth is anything resembling these marketed demographics
cwillu 51 minutes ago [-]
The average steam user is intersex, leaning male. The _median_ steam user is male. Neither is terribly representative of the market as a whole.
eudamoniac 44 minutes ago [-]
How representative of the market do you think a transgender person is? Probably less so?
malfist 41 minutes ago [-]
Why are we bringing trans people into this discussion? Are you accusing the people in the video of being trans? If so, why? How do you know?
cwillu 42 minutes ago [-]
whoosh
squigz 2 hours ago [-]
Do you have any actual data to back this up? Because it doesn't really line up with my experience.
dandellion 22 minutes ago [-]
Go on Steam, look at the most played games right now, look at the demographics for those games.
Or pick some player profiles at random, count how many girls vs guys you find (very easy to tell with high accuracy just by looking at the games they play, yes there are exceptions but they're actually quite rare, I promise you can get >90% accuracy after you do a few).
Steam user base is at least 3/4 male by user count, probably even more by play time.
squigz 19 minutes ago [-]
Clearing up confusion about a demographic by assuming things about other demographics seems like a bad idea.
dandellion 8 minutes ago [-]
I'm not clearing up confusion, I'm letting you know it's pretty easy for everybody to see that you're wrong. If you want to continue being wrong just because the method used doesn't meet your very rigorous standards, suit yourself. Emperor's new clothes and all that.
squigz 3 minutes ago [-]
It's just a bit strange how 'everybody' doesn't seem to include me - based on my own experiences gaming over 20 years not lining up with any of this silliness - as well as others in this thread.
In any case, I don't think "not wanting to make assumptions about people based on little to no information" really counts as "very rigorous standards".
2 hours ago [-]
poly2it 4 hours ago [-]
No average pilot.
_8L34K 2 hours ago [-]
I think your bigotry override got tripped - the person above never claimed they were representative of some imagined average, just that it was two people actually playing video games...
JMiao 4 hours ago [-]
those random players have gaming pcs
if you sampled 100 blackberry customers at random, they'd absolutely hate a software keyboard
and so on
MagicMoonlight 4 hours ago [-]
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raincole 4 hours ago [-]
I don't get it. It's a quite typical commercial clip. Just perhaps less dramatic. What's special about that clip?
Recursing 2 hours ago [-]
I also don't get it, looks like any other ad
Zenbit_UX 3 hours ago [-]
I wasn’t going to say anything until I read this comment but that clip of the gameplay and the clip of the two people playing are not from the same source. The one showing the gameplay has a tower of books or possibly a jenga tower on the coffee table that doesn’t exist when seeing the gamers. It’s just editing magic and stitched together to have exactly the effect elicited by your comment.
malfist 3 hours ago [-]
The books are beside the TV, not on the coffee table. You can't see them in the second shot.
Zenbit_UX 2 hours ago [-]
Ah, I think you’re right. That aside, there’s still no evidence of continuity between the two shots and I’m a cynic.
dandellion 17 minutes ago [-]
They're two separate shots that's for sure. I mean, otherwise you'd see the other camera taking the shot from the opposite perspective so...
abustamam 2 hours ago [-]
That's basically how I looked playing Cuphead with my wife except I think there was a bit more swearing coming from her
bowsamic 4 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
trueno 4 hours ago [-]
what
bstsb 4 hours ago [-]
what does that even mean in this context??
jayd16 4 hours ago [-]
The poster saw a side shave and felt a certain way about it.
4 hours ago [-]
imustbeevil 4 hours ago [-]
I'm not sure I understand, I'm just seeing a very clearly staged 2 second clip of product usage and reaction like you'd see in any commercial.
The Steam's clip is actually nowhere near like that.
PaulHoule 4 hours ago [-]
If you're good at acting you can go up on stage with somebody you met two weeks ago and people will believe that you're family.
It's funny how it works. I took an iPhone selfie of myself as the character that I go out to do street photography as and my wife and my son say "you staged that!" but then I hand out my business cards with it and everybody else tells me it is a great photo.
imustbeevil 4 hours ago [-]
I can appreciate that the direction for this commercial was "just play the game and we'll find a good 2 second cut". I'm just worried that I'm seeing people compliment an advertisement. It's the kind of overt emotional marketing I would hope we'd all scroll past looking for the technical specifications.
LgWoodenBadger 3 hours ago [-]
Idiomatically, it’s “WHAT something looks LIKE” or “HOW something looks.”
It’s never, in EFL, “HOW…LIKE”
Next up is “make” vs “take” a decision.
orphea 3 hours ago [-]
Noted, thanks! You can tell English is not my first language ;)
rustyminnow 4 hours ago [-]
In any other commercial they'd be laughing and grinning ear to ear with their fakest smile instead of wincing from dieing in Cuphead. Definitely still staged but refreshingly so.
4 hours ago [-]
debugnik 4 hours ago [-]
This one is admittedly very natural compared to how cringey they usually get in gaming ads. Which says more about the industry than about this particular clip.
draw_down 4 hours ago [-]
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prhn 5 hours ago [-]
I want to buy one just to raise the signal that Linux support is important.
When these machines were announced I switched to Fedora as a daily driver on my high end gaming rig.
It’s been awesome. I still have to go back to Windows for music production unfortunately. I may switch to Mac for that so I can completely abandon Windows.
I run an optical HDMI cable from my office to my TV and get to play games and use Linux in 77”.
Something feels awesome about that.
gonzalohm 3 hours ago [-]
You are lucky. A lot of the games I play with friends use kernel level anticheat crap that doesn't work on Linux
dijit 2 hours ago [-]
I work in AAA; more people using Linux means we'll actually get buy-in for working with Linux as a platform.
Right now Producers and HQ don't want to support it because "theres no money there" and they're bolstered by a crew of developers who have only ever touched Windows who will reinforce the notion that Windows is all you need (because they've sunk their entire career into the platform).
I remember bringing this topic up a decade ago and basically being laughed out of the room, slowly those laughs will become uncomfortable silences, then token support from the passionate, then proper initiatives.
It takes time, yeah, but we're so much further today already than we were 10+years ago.
Atotalnoob 6 minutes ago [-]
Even if AAA supports Linux, it’s got to be without kernel anticheat. That’s a non starter for myself and many others
connicpu 3 hours ago [-]
I'm somewhat lucky in that I didn't have to be the one to force that issue, another friend in my gaming group already made the decision that he would switch to Linux and no longer play any games that did not work on Linux/Proton. So it was pretty easy for me to just switch last year.
GZGavinZhao 2 hours ago [-]
*sad poro noises
bitmasher9 4 hours ago [-]
It’s always fantastic to read a success story of migrating to Linux gaming from Windows. As Windows gets worse and worse there will be more people joining us.
Even without buying you can send Linux gaming signals by playing on Linux and participating in the hardware survey.
d3Xt3r 1 hours ago [-]
I too want to buy one to support the ecosystem, but sadly, Valve doesn't want me to.
> This item is not available for purchase in your region
inigyou 4 hours ago [-]
Let me guess, DAWs? Have you tried Reaper (FOSS) or Bitwig Studio (commercial)?
Melonai 22 minutes ago [-]
As a sibling comment pointed out, Reaper is not FOSS, it's fully proprietary. What makes it stand out is its great Linux support, and very generous licensing.
If you want to venture into the FOSS DAW realm on Linux you have to go to LMMS and Ardour. I've played around with them, they're a little bare-bones, but they do work. Issue is I haven't been able to use them properly, because I just can't stand to look at them, they are afflicted with the medium-size open-source project curse of looking particularly horrid. I hope this isn't taken as an affront to any of the developers behind these projects, a DAW is a hard task, but I keep asking myself, out of the set of developers who work on these projects, is there really no one who feels the same way as me? Am I just afflicted with some weird pixel-peeping autism-esque disorder that makes me stare at the constantly-reocurring-throughout-all-FOSS-applications clump of jarringly gradient-ed grey buttons with white icons on them, their round corners contrasting with each other because they're clearly placed way too close together than they were meant to be? (I swear I see this in every mid-scale project using QT and older GTK!)
And I also need to confirm, this isn't just a "slight annoyance" for me, I have genuine issues when I have to concentrate on a project within some application that is suffering from the FOSS UI affliction, my mind wanders to looking at those buttons again, or those #00FF00 greens, or at some label that has clearly seeped a few pixels downwards out-of-alignment with the button it was placed in...
Ugh, I know I have some issues for sure, but I know someone else has to care about this too? It's the main reason why I fail at using non-textual FOSS software, and have to resort to Logic Pro or Ableton!
Sorry for the rant, I had to get it out of me. I wish I had more time in a day, then perhaps I could go to these projects and help out with UI, but I have a feeling my proposals will be rejected, even if I had the time to make them, I have found most FOSS developers are quite happy with how their UI usually looks like, including many people here on this forum.
intrikate 4 hours ago [-]
Reaper is neither Free nor Open Source.
tuvix 3 hours ago [-]
Seconding Reaper, great software. Renoise is also extremely fun to use if you’re comfortable with trackers (for midi input not that they track you) and you make electronic music
archagon 2 hours ago [-]
How do you use a controller with your TV? Do you route USB over there as well?
radium3d 5 hours ago [-]
I imagine Valve Software wanted to release the Steam Machine for $549-$699. The great RAM hoarding of 2025-2026 killed this product on arrival sadly.
xinayder 5 hours ago [-]
According to LTT the original price was in the $800 range, but thanks to Sam Altman it increased to what we saw today.
Insanity 4 hours ago [-]
LTT was only speculating, they did not know the actual price as far as I remember. (They had a video doing some educated guesses, or maybe a WAN show, can’t exactly recall).
No doubt the price was lower before this hardware shortage, but the $800 is not a reliable number afaik.
sambaumann 4 hours ago [-]
In their video today, they said they asked Valve the original pricing, and they said (paraphrasing) "we can't tell you exactly - but the increase we recently had on the steam deck is about how much the pricing for machine increased" - which is how they came up with the $800 number
kuschku 3 hours ago [-]
Depends on if the Valve employee meant percentage increase (+50%) or dollar increase (+$200).
That's set the steam machine at either $650 or $800, depending on which interpretation you're using.
I bought my own version of a "Steam Machine" i.e. a mini-PC powered by an AMD APU for just €676 right before the RAM prices exploded.
It is an AOOSTAR GT37 which actually outclasses the €1,039 Steam Machine in most areas except graphics. One cannot blame Valve here though, the hyperinflation of RAM prices is too blame here.
AOOSTAR GT37 (€676 a few months ago [now vastly more expensive if you can still get one at all]) vs Steam Machine (€1039 right now)
CPU: 12x Zen 5 vs. 6 Zen4
Graphics: 16x RDNA 3.5 vs. 28 RDNA 3
RAM: 32 GB LPDDR5X vs. 16 GB DDR5 + 8 GB GDDR6
HDD: 1 TB vs. 512 GB (both NVMe-SSD)
I expect the Steam Machine to run graphically demanding FPS games quite a bit better due to the extra RDNA cores and faster VRAM. However it might actually be the inferior gaming machine for CPU/main RAM intense strategy or simulation games (e.g. Stellaris).
mhitza 3 hours ago [-]
> However it might actually be the inferior gaming machine for CPU/main RAM intense strategy or simulation games (e.g. Stellaris).
On Stellaris: I remember having a pretty good experience (not stellar) playing on a 2012 AMD FX-8350 desktop cpu. The six year old midrange laptop cpu Ryzen 4650u smokes that desktop cpu.
Just to draw out the fact that with the Steam machine you will have a better Stellaris experience than what I had 7-8 years ago. (Because I assume even better performance than this laptop class cpu)
My thoughts go more on the question if 15GB ram 8GB VRAM is enough for the next 7 years. And if Steam verified will all be split up, and become more confusing, between the 3 different devices they have.
noxvilleza 51 minutes ago [-]
They show a 1080p/high benchmark of Stellaris on Gamers Nexus and it took 63.9s on Linux OpenGL and 67.4s on DX11 (https://youtu.be/66QzlDewigE?t=2021). I would guess the AMD R9 HX 370 in your GT37 will smash that.
bdavbdav 39 minutes ago [-]
That’s a beast for €676. Good buy.
MBCook 5 hours ago [-]
Plus GPU prices. They absolutely got screwed by their launch timing, unfortunately. And they’re not big enough to negotiate better terms though that probably isn’t really an option right now anyway.
I’m not sure I’d want this at $550, but maybe. At $1050 without controller it’s a solid no.
I’m sure some people will want it. I have no interest in maintaining a PC so if I wanted to play PC games this is probably how I would do it. But the price just absolutely kills it for me.
sarchertech 4 hours ago [-]
The original price target was $800, so you probably were never going to buy this thing.
MBCook 4 hours ago [-]
Oh was it? I remember some rumors but not that one.
Yeah I probably wasn’t going to then.
raincole 4 hours ago [-]
I don't know what you mean by 'killed.' It'd be sold out faster than hot cakes.
Forgeties79 4 hours ago [-]
No way. $1100+ to play games with medium/high settings at 1080p? You can probably buy a prebuilt tower that does better than that at that price.
raincole 4 hours ago [-]
No way people will buy more games when their libraries are full of unplayed games...
No way players will ever accept microtransactions...
Ok, Asia is doomed but no way western players will ever accept microtransactions...
No way...
mrzool 1 hours ago [-]
“There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance.” –Some Microsoft guy
reddalo 44 minutes ago [-]
"640k of memory ought to be enough for anybody" -Fake Bill Gates quote
kllrnohj 3 hours ago [-]
I think you need to check out what prebuilt PC prices are now. This is pretty much the same price as a DIY.
Just to pick on someone, iBuyPower's cheapest "RDY" prebuilt gaming PC has 6 performance cores, 16GB RAM, 8GB VRAM RTX 5050, 1TB NVME, and costs $1200. Basically same specs as the Steam Machine, for a very similar price, but in a typical midtower instead of a sleek, compact cube
ZekeSulastin 54 minutes ago [-]
> basically same specs
The RTX 5050 8 GB is 10-20% faster and the Intel 225F is significantly more powerful (a bit harder to get percentage ranges there since there aren't many 225 benchmarks).
The Steam Machine has been known to be roughly a Ryzen 5 3600 + RX 7600 M performance wise for a while and the release benchmarks have confirmed it; given Valve's statements that it would likely cost more than consoles before prices went haywire, I don't think the Steam Machine would ever have been priced competitively.
kllrnohj 26 minutes ago [-]
Steam Machine very clearly states Zen 4, so it has approximately a Ryzen 5 7600, not 3600. So no, the 225F is not going to be significantly more powerful.
> The RTX 5050 8 GB is 10-20% faster
yeah... like I said, basically the same? but if you're determined to split hairs, then that 10-20% faster is also 10-20% more expensive ($1050 vs $1200), so it's still a wash either way. But when "just" a 5060 Ti 8gb (supposedly a $380 GPU) is then 50% faster than the 5050... Clearly the steam machine and 5050 are playing in the same ball pit here. They're doing the same gaming experience
bluescrn 2 hours ago [-]
The people buying this will be a small niche who have a lot of disposable income, already have a high spec gaming PC and a Steam library, and likely already have a laptop or handheld before considering this as a third device for the living room.
At these prices, it's not going to convince console gamers/more casual gamers to move to Steam.
Steam Deck was also vastly more appealing at launch when the base model was £349 (64GB/LCD). It now starts at close to twice the price, £649 (512GB/OLED) despite the hardware being kind of old at this point.
neogodless 2 hours ago [-]
Could you please help me by listing one or two prebuilt towers with sufficient gaming performance for $1100?
The Steam Machine is $150 cheaper, less storage, and due to lower TDP going to perform more poorly. But... I want something I can hide behind my TV that is very quiet. Can you help me find towers like that?
fullstop 4 hours ago [-]
This is 6x6x6" and can sit on my desk, quietly.
jakeydus 1 hours ago [-]
Or next to the TV in the living room and not look conspicuous.
newdee 4 hours ago [-]
Yes, you could also buy a gaming console instead of a PC. These are not the same things. This will sell out.
Forgeties79 4 hours ago [-]
A steam machine is a PC in a small form factor. I’m not talking about consoles, I said PC.
newdee 3 hours ago [-]
Steam machine is a console:
- homogenous and standardised hardware
- vendor backed compatibility certification programme
- standardised OS with atomic, image based updates
- plug in, login and play your library potentially without touching a mouse or keyboard
- HDMI CEC out of box
- controller integration with instant sleep/wake (as seen on steam deck)
- operates quietly
Steam machine is a PC (not like a console):
- not priced as a loss leader
- runs any desktop OS
- it’s a PC
You can do all of this out of box, it’s turnkey, it’s primarily a console experience but a PC if you need it. My point was that comparing this to a prebuilt or BYO PC is like comparing a console to a PC. Different value prop.
Elidrake24 3 hours ago [-]
It isn't difficult to fact check this; the markup is ~$80 from what I can buy independently, not factoring in general extra cost for mini-pc parts.
willis936 3 hours ago [-]
You could have done that 12 months ago.
benoau 4 hours ago [-]
Mac Mini will handle 1080p very well.
lenerdenator 4 hours ago [-]
I have an M2 MBP. If only it'd just play my Steam library without emulation or compatibility layers.
maccard 3 hours ago [-]
A steam machine is running wine as a comparability layer, fwiw
rtkwe 3 hours ago [-]
There's a lot less emulation to do though because it's still running on x86 and the same graphics chips so the main emulation are the wine system calls and proton that handles the graphics calls. Running the same on the M* chips you're switching entire architectures and there's just not the history there to support the work. Proton drastically improved Linux gaming performance and it's largely from Steam investing money in it to avoid being locked into Windows if Microsoft ever tried to wall off the Windows garden to demand a cut of every store on the OS like Apple does with iOS and friends.
maccard 2 hours ago [-]
I don’t disagree with you but it’s still an emulation layer.
rtkwe 2 hours ago [-]
Sure but with all the work that's gone into it Proton is a VERY low friction emulation layer which is what matters more than the abstract idea of one being there or not. Proton works well enough it's largely invisible that you're running on an EMU layer outside of a few quirks like anticheat and more draconian DRM schemes not working.
lenerdenator 2 hours ago [-]
This is true, though it's Proton, IIRC and Valve is much, much better at writing software around games than most are.
I wish that Apple would throw a few nickels that way; Apple Silicon is almost wasted without a decent games library. It would realistically be my only computer if that were the case.
iAMkenough 4 hours ago [-]
> 4K gaming at 60 FPS with FSR
jgon 3 hours ago [-]
If you make 5 of a product and put a bunch of marketing behind it you can sell out too. People are going to use "selling out" as some sort of barometer of success but its like the lizard-man veto in politics. You'll always find some small percentage of people who will vote for the motion "the nation's leaders are a group of lizard people", but you can't use that as any sort of signal regarding the validity of the claim of the motion.
Valve could have priced this at 5k and probably found a couple thousand buyers, and if they only made a few thousand boxes they could claim it sold out then too. This thing is DOA in terms of having any major success or impact on the gaming market when I can walk down to my neighborhood PC store and either build a better PC myself for less money (at off the shelf markups no less!!!) or get a pre-built with better specs that costs less. I could buy a P5Pro and a Switch 2 combined for less money than the 2TB version, and the PS5Pro has 2tb as well!
Its actually mind boggling that Valve is coming in with a less economic product that a fucking hand-built premade at my local PC store.
koolala 3 hours ago [-]
It also killed their ability to make lots of units. They say so themselves. Selling out isn't a good thing.
wavemode 2 hours ago [-]
It's objectively a terrible deal. It has console specs for double the price of a console.
In fact you could literally just buy a separate PS5 and Macbook Neo and spend less than most Steam Machine configurations, so even the "it's also a computer" selling point is not that big of a deal.
philistine 1 hours ago [-]
Dear god, when Valve sells a computer that's twice the price of a comparable Mac, the world's turned upside down.
caconym_ 60 minutes ago [-]
> killed this product on arrival sadly.
Rather odd to talk about an as yet unreleased product failing in the past tense.
mixologic 5 hours ago [-]
"killed" is a bit of a stretch. High prices on all gear is here to stay. This is the new normal. Unless that simply means that nobody buys consoles/pc's.
But you cant compare the price point with what it used to cost and imagine that its overpriced now and that people will seek alternatives. There aren't any cheaper alternatives.
zamadatix 4 hours ago [-]
It doesn't have to be everybody or nobody, it can be as simple as "a lot of people buy lower end gaming equipment instead".
4 hours ago [-]
eudamoniac 4 hours ago [-]
There is no guarantee that these prices are here to stay...
thewebguyd 4 hours ago [-]
It almost certainly is. Once people get used to the higher prices, and the companies see that the units sell anyway, there is no meaningful incentive to lower costs again.
This has played out time and time again during every other supply-side shock. Once prices go up, they don't come back down.
tokai 2 hours ago [-]
Televisions literally feel in price every year for 40 years.
girvo 56 minutes ago [-]
They are one of the few tech segments that is still doing so, and that’s mainly down to “smart” TVs being able to get revenue in other ways.
philistine 1 hours ago [-]
That's like the one outlier in a sea of slow price increases over time.
jakeydus 1 hours ago [-]
It's also because television producers found alternative revenue streams that allow them to sell the TVs for less while still making more. If you look for a TV without all of the adware/bloatware/spyware you can see the true cost of a TV in 2026.
bigstrat2003 4 hours ago [-]
That's not true. We've seen prices from supply shock go back down (the increase in hard drive prices when there were floods in Asia 10-15 years ago comes to mind as an example). It does take a while, but it will happen eventually.
thewebguyd 4 hours ago [-]
Even then, prices stayed elevated for years. They never went back to pre-supply shock prices. Right around that time too the industry consolidated. WD bought Hitachi, Seagate bought Samsung's HDD business. It left a duopoly, so now there was no competitive pressure for a price war. Prices got locked in higher than pre-flood levels, intentionally.
For the current DRAM situation, I can almost promise we'll never see $60-$90 RAM again. Maybe, 32GB won't cost you $500 eventually, but it'll cost you $250-$350 instead of $500. If the market can bear it, why would anyone get into a price war that's just a race to the bottom where no one wins?
drstewart 3 hours ago [-]
How much are a dozen eggs at your local store? Curious to stress test your theory. I assume they're at least $10/dozen?
thewebguyd 3 hours ago [-]
For the eggs I buy, they are currently $7.99/dozen. Cheapest in my store is $5.99/dozen.
That doesn't disprove my point though. Prices are still higher as a baseline than before the supply side shock. Prices raise to a "new normal" and consumers adapt, removing pressure to lower back down to pre-shock levels.
wholesale egg prices have actually plummeted, yet retail prices have only drifted slowly downward incrementally, and have not reached the previous baseline. Its asymmetric price transmission, and its a documented economic phenomenon. "Prices go up like rockets, and fall like feathers"
eudamoniac 2 hours ago [-]
Eggs in USA literally hit a ten year low a few months ago. I don't know where you live, probably SF or something, but a dozen eggs here is under 3 dollars.
rootnod3 4 hours ago [-]
You really think the manufacturers or retailers will lower the prices now that people are used to the new normal? How often do you see that happen?
ssl-3 4 hours ago [-]
Yes, I really do think that.
Suppose you have a warehouse full of widgets. You bought them them for $450 each, and sell them for $500. You're really happy with this profit, and you can just keep selling them at $500...forever, right?
But then, I get my own warehouse and fill it with widgets that I bought at $400 each because I entered under better market conditions. And I really want to sell these widgets -- they aren't making me any money when they just sit there taking up space and burning rent.
So I price these widgets at $475, to attract customers. It works; the widgets are flying off the shelves. And they're being purchased by people who used to be your customers, and I'm making even more money per-unit than you are.
What's your next move? Do you want to keep losing customers to me, or do you want to adjust your price to be more competitive?
thewebguyd 4 hours ago [-]
Price wars are a race to the bottom that everyone loses. In reality, such oligopolies follow a kinked demand curve.
A new entrant isn't guaranteed to now price at $475. They'll see the incumbent being successful at $500. Now they price at $499 rather than trigger a destructive price war. Companies collude on this quite frequently. When everyone keeps their prices high, all get to enjoy the big margins.
Outside of that, ok so you have a warehouse full of widgets you need to move fast. So you undercut, and sell out. If demand is still bigger than your supply, you're now out of capacity, customers are going back to buying for $500 from your competitor. That means you've mispriced your limited inventory, so now you raise your prices up to closer to $500 because it helps you control your capacity, and also you know the market can clearly bear it.
Anyway, those are obviously overly simplified scenarios prices rarely fall down dramatically because of tacit collusion. Its asymmetric price transmission ("Prices go up like rockets, but fall like feathers")
maxglute 2 hours ago [-]
Some lose more, i.e. PRC manufacturers well incentivized to involute to drive competitors out of business. $500 for 10% marketshare is less than 100$ for 60%. Of course PRC being spoiler, at least under current geopolitics where they have less reason to align with existing memory cartel.
NBJack 4 hours ago [-]
SSD prices in 2018. GPU prices after the first crypto crash in 2018 and again after the Ethereum merge in 2022. The AMD Zen disruption of 2017.
Retailers are mostly free to offer things at whatever prices they want. But the market has more power than you may think to correct it.
timpera 4 hours ago [-]
It happens all the time. For a recent example, see Windows midrange laptop pricing since the MacBook Neo was introduced, despite the RAM crisis.
sarchertech 4 hours ago [-]
Look at TV prices over the last 20 years.
c0rruptbytes 4 hours ago [-]
TV is heavily subsidized from data collection and ads, not sure it's a perfect comparison
zamadatix 3 hours ago [-]
Prices have fallen far more than profit from data sale provides, so it's easy to view as a good enough comparison.
girvo 54 minutes ago [-]
Do we have data on that either way? I’m genuinely asking, not snarking: I tried to look it up a while ago but couldn’t find as much as I hoped
choilive 4 hours ago [-]
Yes. Absolutely. They will move more units and make more profit overall, and if they don't do it a competitor will.
tdhz77 4 hours ago [-]
You have evidence that they are going to go down? Not unless government policy steps in to pressure chip makers, or establish new markets. Corporations will use inflation, ai, et al to validate their record profits at the cost of the consumer. Monopolies or better put the mergers of companies over the last 40 years hasn’t lead to cheaper prices, it never was going to either.
Prices will continue to go up.
IsTom 4 hours ago [-]
If it goes on long enough new manufacturers will eventually spin up and sell RAM cheaper.
ChadNauseam 3 hours ago [-]
Can you point to an example of this happening in the past? Where a supply shortage leads to price increases and "record profits", and the price never goes back down?
girvo 53 minutes ago [-]
GPUs?
Though that’s kind of cheating considering it’s basically a monopoly at this point
rtkwe 3 hours ago [-]
There's a lot of money behind AI to try to make fetch happen but every attempt to capture the real cost of running these models has driven home to people that we're still deep in the "burn money to acquire customers" phase before the "start charging people gobs of money to make a profit" turn. All the stories of companies burning through their whole year of AI budget in the recent move from subscription to usage based billing is a big example.
If that bubble pops like it seems to be threatening to do memory prices could drop back to their old levels give or take some sticky inflation.
drstewart 3 hours ago [-]
>Monopolies or better put the mergers of companies over the last 40 years hasn’t lead to cheaper prices,
Good point. But only a few companies create these things. They can jack up the price and there is nothing we can do. Is there a mom and pop shop making memory yet? Nope, centralized power of commerce is a threat.
Unicironic 3 hours ago [-]
I still think it's a great concept and a really accessible way to get a great computer. But I agree, I thought this was going to land in the $500 to $700 range. That said, I also bought a mini PC for $250, and that same PC is now going for $600. So I don't really think steam can be blamed for that
Rekindle8090 4 hours ago [-]
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pseudosavant 5 hours ago [-]
I know the price for PC parts is terrible these days, but $1049 for a 6-core 16GB RAM, with a 512GB SSD, and no controller, is a terrible value.
For reference, the PS5 Pro has more than twice the number GPU CUs, an 8-core CPU, a 2TB SSD, a controller, and costs $899.
bryanlarsen 4 hours ago [-]
The PS5 Pro has 16 GB unified memory, the Steam Machine is 16GB + 8GB. That'll be where some of the price difference comes from. But most likely comes from Sony locking in long term contracts before price insanity.
legitster 4 hours ago [-]
Different value props. The target audience for this already has an extensive Steam catalogue. To buy a PS5 Pro is going to require re-buying all of your games for it.
Also, you can build a decent PC for $1049, but getting it into a decent form/noise factor is going to ratchet that price up. Add in the proprietary CEC stuff that Valve has done for it and it's not as terrible as it seems.
pseudosavant 41 minutes ago [-]
A slow gaming PC that is small and can turn on my TV is still... a slow gaming PC. And one of the main PC benefits, upgradeability is non-existent for the parts that matter (e.g. GPU, VRAM, etc).
reddalo 43 minutes ago [-]
>To buy a PS5 Pro is going to require re-buying all of your games for it.
Even if I didn't have a Steam Library, I wouldn't buy the PS5 anyway: no Steam Sales there. And Steam Sales are a godsend.
mwkaufma 44 minutes ago [-]
PS5 sells at a loss & makes up the difference collecting rent on a closed system. With Steam you're buying an open system.
njovin 34 minutes ago [-]
I would guess that users of the Steam machine would mostly be as locked-in to Steam purchases as PS5 users are to PS Store purchases.
I stopped PC gaming about a decade ago and my current daily driver is a Macbook. I periodically play games on my a PS5 or XBOX, but there are a ton of great games on my Steam wishlist.
I feel like I'm the exact target market for this (although I'm not going to buy at this price point at this time). I don't want to bother with Windows and would love a 'console' allowing me to play most Steam games without a lot of hassle.
smith7018 36 minutes ago [-]
Does Valve take a cut of software sales on Steam? If so, why do we expect Sony to sell its consoles at a loss, while not holding the same expectation for Valve?
Narishma 10 minutes ago [-]
Valve cannot do that because they can't guarantee that people buying the Steam Machine will even use it for gaming.
izacus 29 minutes ago [-]
PS5 NEVER in it's lifecycle sold at a loss. That hasn't happened for generations now.
littlecranky67 22 minutes ago [-]
And it is the first time in history where storage and RAM cost double or triple what it cost 6 months ago. So unknown if Sony makes a profit from todays sales.
littlecranky67 2 hours ago [-]
Well, and you pay 120$/year for the privilege to play games online on that PS5. That is one of the reasons SONY can subsidize the PS5 unit price and sell under cost. Valve is not in that position, because people would buy it as office PC replacement.
hbn 1 hours ago [-]
Also a PS5 only runs PS5 games which Sony gets a cut of whenever you purchase one.
With this thing you could buy it and then install your favorite Linux distro on it and never give Valve another dime. If they ate the cost, businesses would buy them up as the best value for the compute and they're not buying Steam games.
quacker 2 hours ago [-]
This more a dig at Sony than a reason Valve can’t also sell their hardware as a loss leader. They are massively profitable from their cut of Steam sales anyway. And part of PS Plus is a catalog of games and monthly games, similar to Gamepass. Valve could easily have a profitable subscription model for games or services if they wanted to.
viktorcode 1 hours ago [-]
> That is one of the reasons SONY can subsidize the PS5 unit price and sell under cost.
PS5 hardware sales started generating profit in the first year. Only for the first few month the sales were "subsidised".
littlecranky67 29 minutes ago [-]
> Only for the first few month
Yes, but we are in the unique situation that we saw actually increasing prices for RAM and storage over time due to AI craze. You (or me) have no idea what Sony's markup on consoles is right now.
balls187 2 hours ago [-]
Valve very much is in the position to subsidize the costs; they charge 30% royalty per game sold.
Valve often boasts that they have a very high Rev / Employee number.
IshKebab 1 hours ago [-]
Yeah but then people would buy them for non-gaming use. Remember the PS2 supercomputers?
Rohansi 4 hours ago [-]
Not that it matters as much for a gaming console but the PS5 Pro CPU is definitely the slower one.
sowbug 2 hours ago [-]
It makes more sense to focus on its value as a console platform than its price as a PC.
The lower the price, the more boxes sell, hopefully making the platform large enough for publishers to target.
The higher the price, the better specs the box can afford, increasing the platform's longevity.
The hidden value you don't see in the specs is that publishers will target this platform specifically for a certain amount of time.
koolala 3 hours ago [-]
For reference compare it to a PC.
seanalltogether 2 hours ago [-]
If Valve wants users to compare the Steam Machine to a PC, then it's going to be outdated in 6 months.
pseudosavant 2 hours ago [-]
It is already outdated I think? 8GB of VRAM, and CPU and mobile GPU from 3+ years ago. Nobody would build a gaming PC right now with a GPU that anemic and 8GB of VRAM.
Gigachad 57 minutes ago [-]
No one would build a gaming pc right now at all.
koolala 2 hours ago [-]
I wish PCs were still advancing that fast...
IshKebab 1 hours ago [-]
Dude still thinks it's 2003.
cowpig 39 minutes ago [-]
Can I serve my media library off of my NAS with the PS5? I am legit asking because I just got on the list hoping to use this thing as my home entertainment system
izacus 4 hours ago [-]
> For reference, the PS5 Pro has more than twice the number GPU CUs, an 8-core CPU, a 2TB SSD, a controller, and costs $899.
Will it run my Steam library of games or do I need to also pay 5000$ again with inflated prices?
Narishma 8 minutes ago [-]
It will run your PS4 and PS5 libraries.
pseudosavant 2 hours ago [-]
The irony there is that the Steam Machine can't actually run the full Steam library since most games aren't made for Linux. Most run on it via Proton, many even run well, but it is very far from "all the games play without issues".
Can you imagine if the PlayStation Store sold games on the PS5 that you couldn't play there because they were actually Windows games?
Gigachad 55 minutes ago [-]
Steam clearly shows a badge showing if it runs on Linux. You can filter out stuff that won’t run.
pseudosavant 9 minutes ago [-]
Just filter out: Fortnite, Roblox, GTA Online, Call of Duty, Destiny, Valorant, PUBG, etc...
It isn't a short list of AAA games that don't run on SteamOS.
izacus 28 minutes ago [-]
Steam Deck works just fine, so I guess the Machine will too.
taffydavid 2 hours ago [-]
Since it's not locked down I assume you could install windows on it
1 hours ago [-]
mock-possum 4 hours ago [-]
Right, but it’s a PS5, not a PC - you’re paying less for the privilege of letting Sony 100% control what you use the device for, including not being able to play your own games that you’ve paid for. Try doing that on a PC. Try checking your email on your PS5, or steaming the media of your choice.
Rohansi 4 hours ago [-]
Even if you only used your Steam Machine to play Steam games it's still probably a better deal. Multiplayer and cloud saves are free so you don't need something like PlayStation Plus. Games are generally cheaper and Steam sales make them even cheaper. You also don't lose access to older games if you get a better system.
hbn 1 hours ago [-]
> You also don't lose access to older games if you get a better system.
To be fair, all the latest generation consoles are near 100% backwards compatible with their respective last gen. This has historically been more tricky due to architecture changes but it seems like all consoles have converged into more or less bog-standard prebuilt computers so it's less of an ask.
But still, I trust my Steam library to last longer than anything I've bought digitally on consoles.
threetonesun 4 hours ago [-]
Sure, I have to use my gaming console as a gaming console, much like I use my smart thermostat as a thermostat and don't check email on it.
efskap 3 hours ago [-]
It's doesn't have to be non-gaming purposes. Say you want to install something not sold on Steam like I dunno, World of Warcraft, or Minecraft.
threetonesun 2 hours ago [-]
True! The Steam Deck LCD is a great retro gaming / emulator device and has outclassed many more focused competing devices for a while now.
keithxm23 4 hours ago [-]
And all you use your IPhone for is to make phone-calls, right?
threetonesun 3 hours ago [-]
You missed the point. If all I did was make phone calls on a $100 flip phone why would someone saying "oh but the $1000 iPhone can do so much more!" matter to me.
celsoazevedo 4 hours ago [-]
But in this case, they even say:
"...and it's a PC
Yes, Steam Machine is optimized for gaming, but it's still your PC. Install your own apps, or even another operating system. Who are we to tell you how to use your computer?"
It's not just a gaming console.
threetonesun 3 hours ago [-]
I know what the Steam Machine is, I'm saying the compromise of the PlayStation being cheaper isn't a compromise because I simply don't care that my game console isn't a PC. I have a PC, and I don't want one connected to my TV anyway. I don't think I'm unusual in that regard and the market of people who want to check their email on their TV is pretty small!
robmccoll 5 hours ago [-]
For reference, a PlayStation 5 is $600-650 for the base models (lower performance than Steam Machine) and $900 for the Pro model (likely higher performance). I know this is a PC and thus an open platform, but for most buyers in living room gaming, that's the competition. I don't think this will reach mass market success, but I'm not sure that was the goal. Who are they selling to?
Note: I ask as someone with a Steamdeck sitting on the desk in front of me and a custom-built computer under my TV running Linux.
mrec 5 hours ago [-]
I'm sure they were originally hoping for mass-market success, but given the RAM drought and ensuing pricing, I'm guessing the best possible outcome at this point would be to break roughly even and learn, so that they can put out a more competitive revision if and when prices ever return to Earth.
With Windows becoming increasingly hostile, I do think there's room for a hardware/software integrated "just works" offering in the Linux PC space. Plus software pricing is probably a lot more competitive than console (dunno, never had anything to do with consoles, but my impression has always been that hardware is a loss-leader there).
TiredOfLife 21 minutes ago [-]
The only thing about price mentioned during announcement, before rampocalypse, was that it would cost much more than a console.
mohamedkoubaa 4 hours ago [-]
Mass market success doesn't mean overnight success.
kiernanmcgowan 5 hours ago [-]
My guess are people who want to PC game but don't want to deal with building a PC themselves - there's a decent market of pre-built gaming PCs that this would be competitive with.
And there's a valid market there, but as someone who just spent half my Saturday morning debugging a CPU throttling issue on my kid's 2020-vintage Lenovo Legion laptop, I feel like a pre-built is in some ways the worst of both worlds, like you don't get the savings and fine-tuning that is something you assembled yourself, but you still get all the fun of debugging driver issues, weird performance stalls, and who knows what else.
That said, I've never had a Steam Deck or tried to seriously game on Linux, so I may be out of touch with how much smoother the picture is in an all-Proton world.
(the laptop issue turned out to be something in the firmware asserting BC PROCHOT for some reason; for now we can periodically clear it with the ThrottleStop utility, but who knows what the actual underlying problem is)
8note 4 hours ago [-]
the benefit here is that the game developers know this device as a standard target, and steam will tell you how well a game works at purchase time.
valheim started with extremely poor steam deck performance, but at some point, the team did steam deck optimizations that got it humming nicely enough
Philpax 4 hours ago [-]
The Steam Deck is the closest thing the PC world has to a console (barring the Steam Machine, of course), and features near-console levels of hardware/software integration.
theshrike79 3 hours ago [-]
Way too many prebuilts use fully custom components making it (intentionally) hard to upgrade them piecemeal.
mikepurvis 2 hours ago [-]
Sounds like a further disadvantage of going that route, like maybe you get a swappable GPU and RAM, but your motherboard and power supply are custom to the case it came in or something.
amunozo 4 hours ago [-]
Custom gaming PCs are huge and ugly, which is a concern for me (and my partner). Size and comfort are the main advantages.
dagmx 2 hours ago [-]
They’re just as ugly and huge as you spec them out to be. There are tons of ITX / SFF builds that look just as good or better.
theshrike79 3 hours ago [-]
I have about 500 games in my Steam library and maaaybe 20% of them are available for the PS5 (which I own).
And I've paid full retail price for maybe two of them, the vast majority is from 50-90% sales. You don't get those for the PS5 that much.
I also don't have any need for a "Gaming PC", what I've always wanted is a console but with my Steam games. This is it.
protimewaster 2 hours ago [-]
Games at a certain point in their life are cheaper on console. At least, physically. I remember being shocked at this years ago, because I expected PC to be cheapest. But, a few years back, I went through and looked up a bunch of AAA games that were about 6 months old, and a lot of them were cheaper to buy physical, on console, from Amazon or another retailer. Cheaper than they'd ever been available for on PC, according to IsThereAnyDeal.
I think it's partly because, on console, the sellers / devs have an incentive to reduce the price of physical copies, because they need to compete with used copies. They killed used copies on PC, so they don't need to compete with that market.
izacus 27 minutes ago [-]
Physical games are on the way out for consoles and the proces quotes for PlayStations are the models without the drive.
aNapierkowski 3 hours ago [-]
yeah i wonder if SteamOS gets a more official generic release or if it stays pointed at Steamdeck and Steam machine directly
the only differences between this and a "Gaming PC" are the OS & tiny form factor (which are both quite relevant)
but youre exactly the target market for this it sounds like
I think you could kind of get there with a gaming pc that boots up steam big picture immediately? but it would feel hacky vs this for sure
ErneX 4 hours ago [-]
Reviews are saying it’s actually similar to base PS5 in performance.
inigyou 4 hours ago [-]
They make different performance playstation 5s?! What happenes to the console compatibility story? You used to expect any game to work on any console because they were all near identical.
maccard 3 hours ago [-]
It got messy but pretty much all ps4 games work on ps5, and all ps5 games run on the ps5 and ps5 pro. On Xbox, everything runs on series S and series X.
Creamsicle47 4 hours ago [-]
Playstation price is also increasing FYI
vablings 3 hours ago [-]
I think it was supposed to be priced in below the PS5 Pro but due to ram supply issues and just general silicone allocation issues it was not to be. The steam decks $200 price bump tells as much
gymbeaux 2 hours ago [-]
The Steam Machine makes sense if it costs the same or less than a current-gen console, but a whole grand for this feels icky. I paid around $300 for the original Steam Machine (Alienware Alpha) in 2014. It played Fallout 4 better than the PS4 and Xbox One which cost about the same. The "tradeoff" was that you had to maintain the PC's OS, which at the time had to be Windows 10.
vablings 30 minutes ago [-]
Well, the steam machine was supposed to be 850 dollars (mentioned on LTT) which is 50 dollars cheaper than the PS5 Pro, you get a smaller machine that you can do whatever you want with and are not required to pay any online subscription fee ($80) a year.
If the price was not upset by the RAM debacle it would have been a very attractive offer, no subscription and more upgradable. I still think in time when the market calms down and supply is less constrained it will reach that price point, even at its current price it's not a completely unreasonable offering for a family member especially with the ability to share your existing steam library.
rgreekguy 2 hours ago [-]
A PlayStation 5 also requires you now to be online every so often (30 days?) for even your single player games.
protimewaster 2 hours ago [-]
Doesn't Steam do that too? For a long time, offline mode in Steam didn't work for many people, and, when it did, it wasn't reliable for being offline for long periods of time. Is that all sorted?
lreeves 2 hours ago [-]
This is completely untrue and was based on some weird TikTok rumors.
ygouzerh 5 hours ago [-]
Indeed, they are hitting a weird spot, their pricing category is stuck in between people who just want to play without breaking the bank account, who will go for a PS5 or XBox, and hardcore gamers who will go directly for their own custom build PC
lunar_rover 4 hours ago [-]
At best it'll take over Steam hardware survey as the standard spec of PC gaming.
I can't see anyone other than enthusiasts buying it over a normal console or Windows laptop.
mock-possum 4 hours ago [-]
More properly, this is competing with prebuilt gaming PCs, surely?
gymbeaux 2 hours ago [-]
The PS5 base has 2 more physical cores (4 more threads) than this Steam Machine so I'm not optimistic that the Steam Machine outperforms the PS5.
(both "semicustom AMD" so probably effectively the same architecture)
lowbloodsugar 2 hours ago [-]
Zen 2 vs Zen 4 though. pS5 probably slower for CPU tasks
pjerem 4 hours ago [-]
Except that unlike a PS5, games are plenty, cheaper, and you probably already have a huge library even before buying it.
I’m not the target but I can see the point.
yieldcrv 4 hours ago [-]
has that still been accurate in the last half decade?
indie devs have easy access to release on PS5, latest Xbox, Switch alongside Steam simultaneously
the subscription any of those users have (a prerequisite for online or multiplayer access) also comes with many many free games, games that are otherwise $4 - $25 without the subscription
people already in those ecosystems have been accumulating (unplayed) titles just like Steam users meme about, and as soon as they sign in on their new console all are available
wetpaws 1 hours ago [-]
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kibwen 5 hours ago [-]
Unlike a PS5, a PC has all the games that I want to play. And to drive home the irony, right now I'm actually using my Steam Deck to play a game that was originally for the PS3 (Valkyria Chronicles). Legitimately purchased, even!
bigyabai 4 hours ago [-]
Now that Bloodborne is "on PC" (wink wink) there's kinda no reason to own a PS4 or PS5 in my opinion. Persona 5 was the only other holdout, but now P5R has a great PC-native release.
branon 2 hours ago [-]
I respect what Valve is doing here and I loved the Steam Deck but a prebuilt desktop PC with 16 GB system memory and 512 GB storage for $1,000+ is insulting. Those are specs that belong on a laptop or a lowend console offering like the Series S.
I think this product is going to be hamstrung by its attempts to present as a midpoint between a PC and a console. The way this is being achieved seems to be by selling a device with the specifications of a console but the price tag of a PC.
Valve already did the "this is a lowend device and that's okay" thing with the Steam Deck, and got away scot-free because nobody expected a handheld and people didn't have a ton of preconceived notions. The Deck was also a better value since it was (prior to the price hike) priced reasonably for its specifications.
The desktop PC and/or living room console modalities are both significantly more stratified. People have solidly defined expectations about price-to-performance-to-usability ratios in both of these sectors, and I worry this doesn't go far enough in any particular direction to meet the demands of either market.
Leaves me wondering who exactly this is for.
aeturnum 2 hours ago [-]
This device does sit between mac-mini-esq lower power devices and compact enthusiast builds and, like the Steam Deck, it's an attempt to build a new segment. That said, if you think paying $1000 for this kind of hardware is some kind of exception, I think you should go take a look at what you can get on the prebuilt gaming PC market. You get a little less because the Steam Machine has a small footprint, but if you're looking for a nice little machine you don't overpay by much.
user43928 2 hours ago [-]
No it does not. The Late 2024 M4 Mac mini benchmarks x1.6 faster in ST and 2x in MT.
The Mac mini costs $600.
aeturnum 1 hours ago [-]
The mac mini is a wonder but it's not a great gaming machine[1]. You can see that these stats are about 1/2 of what the Steam Machine does, so I think the comparison is pretty apt.
Yes, for gaming specifically, the Mac mini is often limited to 2D games.
However, at the price of $1130 for Steam Machine + controller, you might as well buy the Mac mini and a PS5 on top for $1250.
It just seems like a poor deal.
The best argument I have heard is that people already have large Steam libraries, but then again, those people typically already own a gaming PC.
aeturnum 1 hours ago [-]
Buying a gaming pc is always a bad deal compared to a PS5! Even though anyone buying a gaming PC is getting a "bad deal" - many people prefer it. You can do lots of things on a PC that you can't on a PS5 - and there are reasons someone might want a 6" cube instead of a full PS5 and a mac mini. None of them are low price but they are reasons nonetheless.
A great example of the target audience are the people who've been playing games on the Steam Deck, but want something with a bit more oomf without the hassle of building a PC. I am not in that demographic! But I have a friend who is. He's quite happy to pay more for convenience. He already has a gaming laptop, but I can see him getting this to replace his ancient Steam Link.
fragmede 1 hours ago [-]
what makes a great gaming machine? It plays Dwarf Fortress amazingly. And nethack. I'm running factorio on my Mac. The older Mac mini's run windows. Game of Thrones a ton of money at proton so anything that runs Linus and X86 has a shit ton of games yeah even if it doesn't have your pet game.
aeturnum 59 minutes ago [-]
> what makes a great gaming machine?
A piece of hardware that runs a basket of popular higher-end games at close to 60fps is generally what people look for. If you know you wanna run DF you can use much cheaper hardware, but if you wanna run "games" you wanna check that your target pc performs good enough on a selection of games.
mywittyname 46 minutes ago [-]
What makes a gaming machine...
Good - at parity with a PS5 Pro or XBSX in the latest AAA titles.
Great - better than PS5 Pro or XBSX in the latest AAA titles.
mft_ 56 minutes ago [-]
The lowest spec M4 Mac Mini on apple.com is $799 today. The next generation Mini will likely be more expensive due to memory pricing, and as the Steam Machine already includes current higher memory pricing, that would be a fairer comparison, no?
girvo 1 hours ago [-]
Now play games on it and show me the benchmarks.
I mean that for real: I’ve been impressed by the performance of the M4 Mini I own, but a gaming machine it is not
user43928 1 hours ago [-]
That is true.
Maybe in the future. There should be a new generation of Mac Mini's soon, further extending the performance lead of Apple chips.
Maybe once Fable is back or the next OpenAI model releases, we could take a look at implementing a compatibility layer to translate DirectX games to Metal.
Even if that should yet be out of reach, such a project may become more feasible if AI progress keeps up.
izacus 25 minutes ago [-]
We've been hearing about future Apple gaming wins longer than we've been waiting for Star Citizen launch.
At some point you need to face the reality of it not happening.
WithinReason 2 hours ago [-]
Here, try your hand at assembling one much cheaper at the same performance:
I just did one [0], mostly with regards only to specs and price (rather than quality). It comes out to $150 more, roughly 4X the volume, and about 3 hours more of my time in effort, all to get something that won't be as well-supported by games. What am I missing?
I don't recognized the CPU/GPU and PC building isn't my field so I could way off. But here's my honest attempt at it without paying a premium for the form factor which isn't an important feature for me:
Yeah. That's great,but I think it gets a bit expensive if you try to go small form factor and silent. You need more premium parts for that.
So if you want something small, it's a bit more expensive
ajs1998 2 hours ago [-]
It's been a while since I built a PC but that price seems very fair
elAhmo 2 hours ago [-]
My 15 year old Mac Mini has the same amount of RAM as this machine in 2026. I bought it used around 7-8 years ago for 200 EUR.
0x073 55 minutes ago [-]
Was 16gb planned since the beginning?
Maybe they lowered to 16gb to reduce the price.
deburo 2 hours ago [-]
The disk and memory prices are very high right now. Perhaps they could do a disk-less, memory-less variant.
bitmasher9 1 hours ago [-]
I was a bit confused by the term “disk” until I realized you’re talking about NVMe.
A relic from “Hard Disk Drive”, which was about two persistent storage technologies ago.
robotnikman 5 minutes ago [-]
I blame Sam Altman and all the other AI bros for this and everything else in consumer tech increasing in price
Peaches4Rent 1 hours ago [-]
Nope. Just built a pc this Jan. Ram and GPU prices are insane.
This is what you get for the price. Maybe a 100-50 max difference.
I've been looking at building a TV box for a while and this was the number it was hitting
ZekeSulastin 50 minutes ago [-]
You did look at the Steam Machine's specs/benchmarks, right? I'm fairly certain that the build you just made well exceeds what Valve put out.
notnmeyer 51 minutes ago [-]
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dcchambers 1 hours ago [-]
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singingtoday 5 hours ago [-]
I understand why it costs that much, but it's too much.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not commenting on the value, but rather the markets ability to handle it.
patmcc 4 hours ago [-]
Yeah. I don't think they're gouging, I totally understand how expensive RAM and storage and GPUs are, but...oof. I just can't justify it as a 'fun' purchase.
MBCook 5 hours ago [-]
Yeah. But they’re only other choices to just sit on it for a few more years, which point they would need to put different hardware in and it would just increase costs.
This may be the best option of a couple of terrible ones.
YuechenLi 5 hours ago [-]
Surprised that they have 4 USB-A and only 1 USB-C. With their power profile, Steam Machine should be powerable by a single USB-C cable on extended power range which should reduce the need for the power supply altogether and greatly simplify mechanical as well as thermal design, although the power electronic design would be more complex as a result.
I would also be expecting Wifi 7 support as well as unified memory considering they ordered custom AMD silicon. Understandable that it is a rather conservative design for their first generation though.
OkayPhysicist 47 minutes ago [-]
Xbox 360 controllers (and their knock-offs) are still extremely common choices for PC gamers who want a controller. Xbox because they have good windows plug-and-play, 360 because there are still plenty of $20-ish dollar ones available, as opposed to the ~$40-50 range for the Xbox One controllers.
Wired Xbox 360 controllers (and most of their off brand alternatives) have a non-removable USB-A cable.
diath 4 hours ago [-]
Why is it surprising? This is essentially a pre-built PC in a small form factor and most PC peripherals are USB-A.
Reubachi 4 hours ago [-]
My 4 year old (maybe 5?) work laptop has 3 usb C ports. My macbook is all usb c, and my home media/gaming PC has a mix and match.
All my cables I would connect to my home PC/macbook are USB C. IE bluetooth adaptor, sd card adaptor, external ssd, mouse/keyboard, a soundbar etc.
I have several chinesium clones of dewalt batteries/tools, IE lights, compressors etc. They all have USB c output.
"most pc perihpials are USB-A" is not exactly correct for some time now. (not that I'm a fan.)
inigyou 4 hours ago [-]
USB C ports cost a lot more, needing extra controller chips and special HCIs. USB-A, especially 2.0, is dead cheap. I would've expected more than 3 though? Standard consoles used to support 4 controllers, plus you'd probably want a mouse and keyboard at the same time if it's also a PC. I guess it's fine if you're assumed to be using wireless controllers.
YuechenLi 2 hours ago [-]
Not quite right, USB-C ports are generally cheaper nowadays because they are smaller, consumes less material for plastic/metal, more easily automatable production wise in terms of tooling, and scale for them is a lot higher because of mobile usage. You don't really need extra production chips since the console USB-C ports are designed for PD and crippled 14/16 pin versions that only supports the USB 2.0 speed, because the high-speed pins literally do not exist on those.
inigyou 17 minutes ago [-]
You forgot all the extra signaling that type C ports have? Nobody wants a type C port that only does USB 2.0.
YuechenLi 4 minutes ago [-]
They are extremely common actually. Why do you think the standard iPhones only does USB 2.0 transfer speed? The high-speed signal pins are simply not there, but the connectors themselves are still standard compliant.
Lower transfer rate means less shielding is needed for the cable as well as the overmold, and enables longer and more flexible cables, as extra shielding stiffens the cables.
Eric_WVGG 3 hours ago [-]
I haven’t seen a new product with USB-A in years. It’s long past time to move on.
topgrain2 1 hours ago [-]
I just bought a few 8bitdo controllers, wired and bluetooth, both. These are basically the best-bang-for-the-buck low- to mid-priced controllers around, super-popular in gaming circles. Best you'll get without bumping up to modern 1st party console controllers at $70+ each. I bought these within the last 30 days.
The wired controller is USB-A. The bluetooth controllers "are" USB-C... but came with A-to-C cables, not C-to-C.
Approximately every time I want to plug something in to my laptop that's not a charging cable for another device, it's USB-A.
NikolaNovak 34 minutes ago [-]
Keyboard, printer, mouse, joystick, scanner,color calibrator, steering wheel, game controller , everything I bought recently other than external ssd was usb a. Even, shockingly, a nice Scarlett audio interface!
More to the point, anything I'd want to plug in to a gaming machine, is usb a.
jabroni_salad 2 hours ago [-]
This past calendar year I bought a new document scanner, controller, mouse, and DAC that all came with usb-A on the computer end of the included cable. On the peripheral side, I must not have done enough research on 'new' products because only the DAC and mouse have USB-C. Brother's document scanners in 2026 ship with the incredibly horrible usb-3-micro-b and the controller uses a low latency wireless dongle on usb-a.
asdff 59 minutes ago [-]
Tell that to logitech.
whyoh 3 hours ago [-]
You must be living in some (Apple?) bubble.
Most new gaming mice and keyboards sold in 2026 use USB A. Not to mention all the older ones that still work.
topgrain2 1 hours ago [-]
I can vouch for this still not really being true even in Apple-land, since almost any peripheral, external disk, printer, whatever, that I'll want to plug in isn't gonna be from Apple.
In 2026 the single most useful port to add to my Macs would be USB-A, with no close competition. On any device with 2+ USB-C ports, it'd easily be worth sacrificing a USB-C to get a USB-A.
Gigachad 48 minutes ago [-]
Pretty much the only things I plug in to my computer are a monitor which is usb c. And my external ssd which is usb c.
Most devices have a cable that’s fully replaceable so you can choose to use C to C or C to A but basically everything has usb C on the device end.
whyoh 18 minutes ago [-]
>basically everything has usb C on the device end
Yes, but we're talking about the ports on the Steam Machine, so the host end is what matters. And gaming peripherals are likely even more skewed towards USB A, because Macs are not the main target for that.
krzyk 2 hours ago [-]
No?
The only PC peripheral I have with USB-A is a mouse dongle when I'm lazy and don't connect bluetooth - and that one I connect to the monitor.
All others are usb-c.
whyoh 25 minutes ago [-]
That might be the case for you. But if I search for USB mouse or keyboard on Amazon they're mostly USB A on the host end. And desktop PCs still have way more USB A than USB C ports. Macs are an exception.
mort96 4 hours ago [-]
A USB-C PD power supply which supports 130W is probably gonna be more expensive than whatever power supply they're using now...
Gigachad 50 minutes ago [-]
There’s also the issue that users would plug in their own random usb power supplies and most of them wouldn’t work. Some would work for 15 minutes before overheating and lowering the power output.
TiredOfLife 13 minutes ago [-]
And steam machine uses almost double that.
TiredOfLife 14 minutes ago [-]
Steam machine uses about 200W. Can you even buy any 240W pd power bricks. Quick search on amazon shows that all that advertise 240w can only output 140w max on single cable
legitster 4 hours ago [-]
I'm tempted even at this price.
I've tried various iterations of a gaming HTPC over the years, and they've all been pretty miserable. That lack of any reasonable or stable CEC solution this whole time so far has honestly been an oversized anchor this whole time. And I think Valve is doing a bit of a disservice not advertising it more.
diseasedyak 1 hours ago [-]
Same here, I know why it costs as much as it does, and that doesn't deter me. I want it for my living room, and to just mess around with. Will enter the lottery and hope my number gets picked!
HeavyStorm 5 hours ago [-]
> who are we trying to tell you how to use your computer?
Valve is still great.
retired 4 hours ago [-]
Isn’t this industry standard? How many PCs have locked boot loaders?
Edit, reply to Rohansi as I am rate limited, I’m talking about gaming PCs not consoles.
inigyou 4 hours ago [-]
A lot of machines ship with secure boot locked to Microsoft's key. Usually there's a way to turn it off, otherwise you need the shim loader Microsoft signed in 2015 whose signature has just expired and who knows if Microsoft will sign it again.
koolala 3 hours ago [-]
I can't believe all the replies who see no problem with a company completely controlling their device like it makes no difference.
mort96 4 hours ago [-]
This is more competing in the game console market than the PC market though.
Rohansi 4 minutes ago [-]
Yup, even though this is just a gaming PC, most people are going to be using it as a game console.
Rohansi 4 hours ago [-]
PS5, Xbox? They're almost PCs and are in the same space as Steam Machine.
Insanity 4 hours ago [-]
Hope the Frame is available for pre-order soon as well! I know I’m going to pay more than the HW was worth a year ago because of “AI”, but I’m really looking forward to that one.
LoveMortuus 2 hours ago [-]
Since it’ll have a mobile SoC with baked in memory I’m hoping that the price won’t be too inflated!
byteflip 4 hours ago [-]
My steam deck is underpowered as a living room gaming PC.
Wish it was cheaper but would look forward to a “just works” experience including sleep/instant game resume.
Add my thousands of already owned Steam games and it makes me excited for a great couch gaming experience. It’s the reason I don’t get a PS5/Switch cause I don’t wanna rebuy all the games and they are not on sale as much.
bsimpson 2 hours ago [-]
I was wondering if this would be a worthwhile upgrade to my Legion Go Z1 Extreme.
Sounds like it's in the same vicinity for graphics power. Not worth $1k for a tiny bit more RAM.
I do wonder if this will give me any useful presets, in the same way the Steam Deck does. I have no interest in tweaking graphics settings one at a time.
skupig 4 hours ago [-]
If you already have a powerful desktop PC in your house, streaming via Sunshine/Moonlight is pretty much perfect these days.
cassianoleal 4 hours ago [-]
I honestly can't understand this. It's ok for games where latency and lag don't matter much but otherwise it's pretty bad.
I have even connected 2 computers directly with an ethernet cable to rule out my networking gear and it was ok but very very far from perfect!
Not to mention the experience is clunky at best. Switching resolution, losing settings, dealing with encoding/decoding, etc.
skupig 3 hours ago [-]
I'm looking at the performance stats streaming a game to my living room PC right now, and total latency is about 4-5ms, which would be unnoticeable even on a 120hz TV.
prism56 3 hours ago [-]
Yeah i've used moonlight/sunshine a handful of times and it's absolutely perfect, I couldn't even tell in most cases it was streamed.
jddecker 3 hours ago [-]
I played Celeste using Steam Link from my PC over wifi to an Nvidia Shield and it worked good about 99% of the time. Is the tech perfect? No, but it does work great a lot of the time.
Hikikomori 3 hours ago [-]
Its not too bad. I played through animal well, a platformer, which requires quite a few tricky jumps, but I did connect the controller to my PC instead. Adequate for most couch gaming but I wouldn't play cs2 or similar competitive game with a controller anyway.
no_news_is 5 hours ago [-]
No need to rush:
> In an effort to improve the purchase experience and limit resellers, we're implementing a reservation system.
> Starting right now, you can sign up for the Steam Machine model/bundle you're interested in.
> If you're busy now, no problem: You can sign up anytime before Thursday June 25th at 10 a.m. Pacific.
> At that time, we will close signups and do a one-time randomization to determine the reservation and waitlist order.
kryllic 2 hours ago [-]
My first thought was "I wonder how this would work as a small-factor game dev machine" and lo and behold, there is a clip of someone working in Godot running a debug version of their game. Very cool to see Valve market this as Linux PC rather than strictly gaming.
fluoridation 1 hours ago [-]
It's even worse value for productivity, though, because the CPU is purposely throttled to prevent overloading the thermal solution and the PSU.
morserer 1 hours ago [-]
I can't find evidence for this anywhere. Can you provide a source?
The CPU hard-throttles to 4 GHz after exactly 8 minutes of sustained load.
everdrive 5 hours ago [-]
The prices I think a lot of us expected. I know Valve is being pressured by the market, but I can't imagine buying one for this price, even if I'm really excited for the Steam Machine. That said, the Steam Deck is now so expensive I don't think I can justify replacing mine when it breaks.
BadBadJellyBean 4 hours ago [-]
At least it's repairable so unless you break the motherboard you can probably fix it.
tpurves 3 hours ago [-]
An unfortunate series of events that this thing ended up with these specs at 1,049.00. It was supposed to be cheap and cheerful. At first Steam took an opportunistic deal to buy up a bunch of near-obsolete-already chips from AMD to build a low-cost box around. Then years of delays and an explosion in DRAM and SSD prices and here we are.
4 year old chip design on an equivalently old process node, not that unlike nvidia selling 2-3 year old chips as the spark. Thanks to AI boom, consumer market really just getting the warmed-over leftovers here from AMD and NVDIA.
Venn1 5 hours ago [-]
I was expecting $1200 for the base model, so $1,049 without a controller is nice to see.
Having to enter a lottery to buy one makes it feel like Valve doesn’t have new stock in the pipeline for the foreseeable future.
red_hare 5 hours ago [-]
Eh, it was the exact same system for the Switch 2 and no one I know waited more than a week for theirs.
Given it requires a Steam login of a certain age to register, I suspect this is just to limit the scalpers.
Venn1 5 hours ago [-]
I hope that's the case. Seeing Steam Controller reservations pushed into 2027 tempers my optimism.
Fraterkes 3 hours ago [-]
It's funny how this (imo) almost feels like an inherently inert topic to discuss:
Is it dumb of them to do this? Not really, they got unlucky with the timing and they already designed the machines. Selling them below cost to subsidize steam-sales would probably create bad incentives for them.
What will this mean for Valve's future? Nothing, they're still a relatively lean company with a money machine.
Will this dissuade them from creating hardware in the future? Probably not, the Steamdeck was really succesfull and they've got more than enough resources to do a few failed experiments.
fluoridation 1 hours ago [-]
>Selling them below cost to subsidize steam-sales would probably create bad incentives for them.
They could have sweetened the deal somehow, though. Maybe owners get a discount on games or something. It was bad timing, but it's not like they can't afford to take a bit of a hit for good will.
panicinducer 28 minutes ago [-]
You could build the equivalent PC for quite a bit cheaper or a PS5 and 7 full price AAA games for the same price. No way this is a console-killer, but will be a nice novelty for Gaben fans for whom $1049 is not a significant amount of money.
SoMomentary 11 minutes ago [-]
Just today I was thinking about threading the needle on that and making my own Steam Machine with an AMD BC-250 board. Maybe I still will, it'd be a 10th the price and I do love to tinker.
Tiberium 5 hours ago [-]
I think a lot of people expected it to be in the ~$600 price range, maybe ~$800 at worst. RAM prices made it quite expensive...
ErneX 3 hours ago [-]
It’s not just the ram now, it’s also the storage. A double whammy.
LukaD 5 hours ago [-]
Yes, so many people were claiming that it will be around that price point. That seemed straight up delusional to me. Memory price has roughly quadrupled and 32GB DDR5 basically cost the same as the original cheapest steam deck.
jhack 3 hours ago [-]
The pricing is all out of sorts. Close to $500 more expensive than a PS5 for worse performance. I understand this is a PC and you can do other things with it, but if you're buying a gaming device to play games this is a horrible value.
godshatter 1 hours ago [-]
If you have hundreds of Steam games you bought through sales events, then that changes the calculus a bit.
sedatk 3 hours ago [-]
Insant buy for me because as an owner of a PS5 and Xbox One X, I’ve been using my Steam Deck a lot for gaming on TV using the dock. It works really well. This is just the dream version of that setup.
butlike 4 hours ago [-]
The only thing that I get with consoles that I don't get with the Steam Machine is a guarantee; a GUARANTEE that the games I buy will play on the system. If I but a game and it says PS5, I know it will play. A list of specs on the Steam Machine landing page does not absolve this for Valve.
legitster 4 hours ago [-]
On the Steam store they've done a great job with their certification program for the Steam Deck.
Also, I don't think their target market is people who don't own any Steam games yet. It's going to be people with already extensive back catalogues on Steam.
butlike 4 hours ago [-]
I disagree. I see this becoming an Xbox/PlayStation killer/contender.
layer8 56 minutes ago [-]
They currently don’t accept orders from people without an existing Steam purchase from before May. (Otherwise I might have been interested.)
kevincox 31 minutes ago [-]
I imagine that this is primarily for preorders and will be dropped as soon as there is sufficient stock.
Peaches4Rent 52 minutes ago [-]
True. But if it doesn't work, a refund is quick and easy
flocked 2 hours ago [-]
Crazy. A Mac Mini costing nearly half as much as based on the released benchmarks, the same performance playing games with Crossover.
asdff 54 minutes ago [-]
Not a lot of games play nice with crossover. I wish I could dual boot windows on this m3 mbp like I could on my old 2012 model. I feel like tf2 performance is actually worse on kegworks with the m3 pro than it was when I would dual boot windows 10 on the 2012 computer. So many lag spikes. A bunch of explosions will go off and the game will stall for a moment and you just get fragged. There are plenty of games that also won't let you play multiplayer at all due to anticheat not playing nice with wine.
"native" macos games on the m series aren't even that much better because they usually just run through a rosetta layer that seems to lock FPS at only 40. Fans will spin full bore because the game is so unoptimized.
smcleod 50 minutes ago [-]
Yikes twice the price of a PS5 in Australia! I will still be buying one though. I'm looking forward to moving away from Sony after having a PlayStation in my living room for 16+ years. I really like Steam's ethics / how they treat their customers - and the steam deck (while under powered) has been fantastic.
curvaturearth 3 hours ago [-]
Yes, Steam Machine is optimized for gaming, but it's still your PC. Install your own apps, or even another operating system. Who are we to tell you how to use your computer?
This is glorious
alecsm 4 hours ago [-]
What a great machine it would've been without these stupid prices we have now...
charcircuit 2 hours ago [-]
If Valve learned to operate on a proper schedule instead of Valve Time they would have been able to stockpile these parts and release with better prices.
baby 39 minutes ago [-]
The deck is such a good console compared to the switch and switch 2 that I can’t be stop being happy that they released this now. How is Valve, a tiny company, doing so much better than Nintendo?
chrisco255 27 minutes ago [-]
They're not. The Deck is hundreds of dollars more expensive than the Switch 2. The Switch 1 sold 155 million units, making it the second most popular console of all time. Switch 2 is also selling very well.
bigyabai 6 minutes ago [-]
I don't think by "better" they meant financially. It sounds like they own both consoles and are surprised to replace their Switch use with a Deck.
Which tracks, to my wit; my Switch 1 is a buyers remorse product. If I knew that a Linux x86 handheld was eventually getting made, I'd have never bought it.
TiredOfLife 9 minutes ago [-]
Switch 2 is faster, lighter and cheaper than Steam Deck.
Rooster61 5 hours ago [-]
$1049 for the base package? Much better than I thought it was going to be. I figured minimum $1200.
itsrobreally 5 hours ago [-]
I mean, it is $1200 if you want a controller included
littlecranky67 5 hours ago [-]
If you want a steam controller included. You can use also PS4/PS5 or Xbox controllers easily on linux (and thus steamOS) nowadays. I use a Ps5 controller on my setup, even though I never had a ps4 or ps5.
danielodievich 4 hours ago [-]
back in 2019, I was thinking of getting an MBA and as part of the exploration, shadowed an MBA class at University of Washington for a day. It was so fun. One of the things they were discussing in the class that day was a case study of Valve, specifically around the Steam Machine. The team's consensus was that Valve was carefully arranging money in a barrel, lovingly soaking it in high octane gasoline, and was about to light a match.
jsiepkes 4 hours ago [-]
Proton, the Steam machine, the Steam deck, etc. were probably never about making money. It's Valve's "Plan B".
They started with Proton after Microsoft suddenly made a move with the Windows store and also started bolting down Windows a bit. As with most things Microsoft that initiative quietly died over time. But at that time Valve probably couldn't afford to take any chances. It probably also made them realize they had build a castle on someone elses land.
If you are making money in the amounts Valve is, then even the simplest risk analyses is going to show that "Microsoft rug pulling you" is one of your few existential threats. Even though the probability is low or medium-ish at best, the impact is massive. Even anti-trust isn't going to save you. By the time Microsoft gets convicted, you are already dead. Just look at Netscape.
ndiddy 3 hours ago [-]
Yeah people forget about it now because it ended up being a failure and Microsoft rolled it back a couple years later, but Windows 8 was basically an attempt by Microsoft to take over software distribution on Windows. They made an entirely new API (WinRT) as the main API for the platform, and all WinRT software had to be distributed via the Windows Store. The existing Win32 software could only be run inside the "Desktop" app, and the flagship Windows 8 device, the Surface, could only run WinRT software. This is when Valve started supporting Linux and came out with the first generation of Steam Machines.
kibwen 4 hours ago [-]
This only goes to show how MBAs are destructively myopic.
Valve understands that inextricably tying themselves to Windows is a long-term death sentence. SteamOS represents a lifeboat for when Microsoft goes full iOS and decides to lock down Windows in exchange for taking 30% of all software purchases. Valve has been taking this threat seriously since at least 2010, which is why they've been investing in Linux gaming. Both Steam Deck and the Steam Machine are further steps toward complete independence from Microsoft.
iknowstuff 4 hours ago [-]
this Steam Machine hadn’t been announced back then? Not even the steam deck, which has been a massive success.
stryan 4 hours ago [-]
We know they've been kicking the idea around since the first line up and I believe pretty decent leaks saying they were working on it were out around 2019.
hilariously 4 hours ago [-]
Yeah there was the steam link, but that was also way before 2019, so not sure what they could be referring to.
drnick1 5 hours ago [-]
Can't you build or buy an equivalent (in performance) PC for cheaper? All with upgradable standard parts? I get the appeal of a small form factor, but I am afraid it may not sell well at this price.
vachina 5 hours ago [-]
You pay a premium for “it just works”.
vaylian 5 hours ago [-]
This. Game companies will probably test their games on a steam machine.
copx 4 hours ago [-]
This is the #1 argument for buying a Steam Machine IMO.
You can achieve a lot by specifically optimizing your game for a particular machine and Valve has such extreme market power that every game studio releasing on PC will make sure that their game looks and runs great on the Steam Machine.
This machine is more limited than I expected e.g. only 8 GB VRAM, however because of Valve's market power all game studios will see 8 GB VRAM as the new limit. Every game will now aim to look and run great with only 8GB VRAM.
As a poor gamer, I truly appreciate Valve setting such a low standard for gaming PC hardware. Game studios were certainly already looking at 16 GB VRAM + 32 GB RAM as the new standard for AAA games. That is now history.
OkayPhysicist 4 hours ago [-]
Not being able to run adequately (even with tuned down graphics options) on 8GB of VRAM was already going to be an issue for most PC game devs. According to Valve's last hardware survey, a quarter of players only have 8GB, and another 15-20% of players have less than that.
emkoemko 3 hours ago [-]
valve i think helped linux fix the 8GB VRAM issue somewhat, you get way way more fps on 8GB VRAM on linux then you do on Windows
emkoemko 3 hours ago [-]
there is patch on linux where you can mark which allocated vram is important or something and then when you do it with games they have the full 8GB the rest goes to system ram i think, this makes games on linux run like 30+ fps vs Windows on systems with only 8GB VRAM,
I would be extraordinarily surprised if this were true. Let's be real: This is going to be a tiny volume product. Big for Linux gaming, but tiny in the grand scheme of things. Certainly minuscule compared to Windows gaming, or the PS4/5.
It could have been something, but the target market is precisely the market that will look at the price and say "Nah".
And as one point of clarification, game makers by and large still aren't targeting Linux. This machine works via the absolutely excellent, almost magical Proton (https://github.com/valvesoftware/proton) that lets you run most of your Windows library on Linux, largely seamlessly.
copx 3 hours ago [-]
Of course my prediction depends on the success of the Steam Machine, but I expect it to be highly successful, just like the Steam Deck, another piece of Valve hardware game studios have been pretty much forced to optimize for due to its success.
I disagree that the target market won't accept the price. I see the target market as less technical people, who don't care about hardware specs, but just want to play Steam games without issues.
The price is in the same region as an iPhone, and if you care enough about PC gaming to buy a gaming PC at all, you are certainly willing to spend at least as much money on it as you spent on your phone.
zerreh50 4 hours ago [-]
Except due to Linux, the biggest games not only won't just work, they will not work at all.
Peaches4Rent 46 minutes ago [-]
> Except due to windows allowing kernel level anti cheat
Ftfy
MBCook 5 hours ago [-]
Plus support and packaging. Can you make your own PC of equivalent specs in that size case? Would it have swappable face plates you’ll probably be able to buy on Amazon?
retired 4 hours ago [-]
If you stay in the Steam ecosystem. Similar to the Steam Controller. Works great with Steam, not so great outside the ecosystem.
tracerbulletx 55 minutes ago [-]
Only about 65 dollars cheaper for a comparable build and it wouldn't be small.
Ekaros 5 hours ago [-]
I think with reasonable and somewhat common sales and picking right machine probably could find even better prebuild. Size not withstanding.
inigyou 4 hours ago [-]
Can you still, in 2026?
iLoveOncall 5 hours ago [-]
I think you would struggle to NOT build a more performant PC for the same price.
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/brbFsK This is $50 more but it has 1TB of storage and a newer generation of both CPU and GPU and will absolutely destroy it.
I'm sure you could get actually easily cheaper and better even, I haven't followed the market a lot lately.
Prebuilt are likely to be even better deals because they will use some cheap noname parts for the RAM and the PSU, which is mostly fine.
drnick1 1 hours ago [-]
I would have probably picked an Intel B580 for the additional VRAM (at $250), and a case with better airflow like the Bequiet Pure Base 501, but your point stands.
amunozo 4 hours ago [-]
For me, size and aesthetics play a role. A PC like that is huge and, imo, much uglier. I know a lot of people do not care but I am sure I am also no the only one.
drnick1 3 hours ago [-]
> A PC like that is huge and, imo, much uglier.
It's not huge, it's a mid-tower (admittedly, not a pretty one). But the real benefit is that it is upgradable. Basically you are trading off user serviceability for "it just works" and the form factor.
Another thing the Steam machine has is HDMI-CEC support, which is nice if you intend to use this with a TV, perhaps with KDE Plasma Bigscreen. But $1000 is rather steep for a console/HTPC.
amunozo 3 hours ago [-]
Yeah, I know that for a lot of people that does not make sense, and I understand, but it does for me.
xinayder 5 hours ago [-]
Even with similar specs you can still get more performance from a PC because Valve is throttling the Machine to keep thermals down.
ErneX 3 hours ago [-]
“starting with the SteamOS 3.8 release, you can put together your own Steam Machine using whatever PC parts you want”
That’s great.
ErneX 4 hours ago [-]
The Verge: Nearly twice the price of PS5 for PS5 performance.
That’s rough.
chrishare 3 hours ago [-]
Rough but true. This has PMF but not at this price.
randomstate 4 hours ago [-]
What a sad time to be buying a gaming PC, it seems that my 7yo rig bought for the same price is just as powerful.
Peaches4Rent 44 minutes ago [-]
I say, be happy this means your 7 year old pc will be future proof for longer!
aranelsurion 5 hours ago [-]
So unfortunate with the timing, I wish they shelved it for a few years instead. At any other time this could've been the thing to entrench Steam, PC and Linux as finally THE gaming platform.
At this price and features it'll probably just be a footnote.
BadBadJellyBean 5 hours ago [-]
Sad about the price. Maybe it comes down some day.
dgellow 5 hours ago [-]
Given the current state of the global market it will likely take a few years for prices to come down
inigyou 4 hours ago [-]
Semiconductors always go through boom and bust cycles - so say stock market analysts. But I'm not sure how long they typically are? (This is a boom not a bust for them)
dgellow 2 hours ago [-]
There is nothing typical about the current boom, I don’t think we can predict much based on past cycles
inigyou 18 minutes ago [-]
For the AI industry it's once in a lifetime. For the RAM industry, apparently, it's typical and happens every ten years or so. You probably weren't alive for the last ones.
haunter 4 hours ago [-]
Prices and I mean the price tag will never come down again. That was an exception for technology and gadgets for a few decades but I'm not sure it will happen again.
BadBadJellyBean 4 hours ago [-]
Yeah I think so too. It's a shame. For maybe around $300 less it would be an awesome product. At least I have a good gaming PC at the moment.
inigyou 4 hours ago [-]
Well, that's how prices solve shortages. Less people buy, and the ones who want it more get one
Interesting with the memory. It is 16GB plus an additional 8GB for graphics, or is it just 16GB with 8GB reserved for graphics?
Rohansi 5 hours ago [-]
16GB DDR5 + 8GB GDDR6
andruby 5 hours ago [-]
It is 16GB plus an additional 8GB for graphics.
postepowanieadm 3 hours ago [-]
It's GPU's VRAM or some sort of shared memory? I have never seen mixed ram before.
fluoridation 1 hours ago [-]
>I have never seen mixed ram before.
What do you mean? Most PC's have mixed memory configurations.
deng 3 hours ago [-]
Well, when they announced it (7 months ago) I got laughed out of the room when I said this will be at least 1k$ because of the RAM crisis, and people quoted famous Youtuber "Moores Law is Dead" that this thing has a 300$ BOM and will be 600$ max, probably just 450$...
let_rec 2 hours ago [-]
> Yes, Steam Machine is optimized for gaming, but it's still your PC. Install your own apps, or even another operating system. Who are we to tell you how to use your computer?
Valve gets it
delbronski 1 hours ago [-]
Dammit, I don’t think this is going to be as popular as the Steam Deck at this price. I hope they don’t shelf it and I can buy this in a few years for a reasonable price once the big AI labs go bankrupt.
simpaticoder 3 hours ago [-]
Most people don't know if they'll like the living-room PC gaming experience and at this price not enough people will even try. That's sad to me. It could be that with the right hardware and software the experience would be even better than a console, and if that happens then all the other good features of the Steam Machine (it's relative openness, the fact that you own it, etc) could shine. But without proving that people really like the experience, the rest is irrelevant, and lots of early adopters were just priced out of the experiment.
notnmeyer 49 minutes ago [-]
anyone talking about hw performance is not the intended market. if you have a gaming pc, like building systems, etc, you are not the intended market.
this is for folks who want steam games in their living room and dont want to build their own system.
xtracto 41 minutes ago [-]
I've built my own PC several times and am a hardcore Linux enthusiast.
However at this point in my life, the best gaming experience i get is from XBox live/online subscription. I got to the browser, click on a game and start playing without caring for anything else. The most complicated thing i have to do is connect an Xbox gamepad for games that require it (I prefer keyboard +mouse whenever possible).
I wish Steam had something like that for the games I've bought. I've got several games in the library, I cant play some of them because currently I have a Mac m4.
Ekaros 5 hours ago [-]
Component pricing is bad. As even Valve can't get half of the hardware while other half is semi-custom...
And this likely goes on until AI really dies or stabilises...
panikal 5 hours ago [-]
[dead]
asmnzxklopqw 5 hours ago [-]
Are they crazy to ask for this price? Few months ago I have bought a minipc with amd 8845hs 8/16c, 32GB RAM, 512GB NVME for €519
MYEUHD 5 hours ago [-]
Can you check how much that mini pc costs today?
vondur 4 hours ago [-]
You can get a Miniforums PC with the Radeon 780m for $699 US, but I don't think the graphics performance is on par with the SteamBox. I'm not sure on the reliability of these tiny PC's either
I wish they had a few different options with better specs. Or maybe a shell with the case/fan/mobo etc.. where you can just add CPU/GPU/RAM. I'd love that, and would be willing to pay extra to get something a bit more modern.
I want a Steam Machine for my living room, but these specs are just terrible for 2026. According to Digital Foundry, this $1200 machine is worse than a $500 6-year-old base PS5.
j2kun 2 hours ago [-]
> Yes, Steam Machine is optimized for gaming, but it's still your PC. Install your own apps, or even another operating system. Who are we to tell you how to use your computer?
Indeed, thankful for that.
dtj1123 2 hours ago [-]
Is there anything actually worth playing in the steam frame? The hardware looks incredible, but my understanding is that the current state of VR games is less than brilliant.
jrepinc 1 hours ago [-]
I would love to see Valve release a cheaper bare-bones edition without RAM and SSD.
4 hours ago [-]
Peaches4Rent 36 minutes ago [-]
The big problem isn't that this pc is weak, it's that games aren't well optimized
oliver66677 1 hours ago [-]
This is Framework level pricing.
Provides some of the worst value for money on the market ($1,049 with no controller, additional $70 for controller):
worse than the PS5 ($599), Xbox Series X ($599), Switch 2 ($449), and DIY PCs.
Peaches4Rent 51 minutes ago [-]
Framework provides adequate price to value, what are you saying?
This doesn't have the best value
Gigachad 44 minutes ago [-]
The MacBook neo is cheaper, faster, and higher quality in every way.
otto-riz 1 hours ago [-]
I can't find anything that indicates the expected wait if you get in the reservation queue. Maybe I've been burned by too many Kickstarters.
I'm not convinced this hardware is "an extension of PC gaming, not a console" when the hardware is generations out of date. To credit Microsoft, Sony, and other players, the reality is that unless you are "in the game" for decades, you HAVE to provide a convincing differentiator from the other console markets.
Steam had this with the Steam Deck and personally, I see the world moving to thin clients that play games via some remote desktop infrastructure. It makes no sense to buy this hardware even if it was 500-700 dollars.
In my opinion, it would've been worth the money to just buy a gaming PC, put it in a garage, hidden room, etc with the networking gear, then stream it over the network to a Steam Link or using Apollo/Artemis/Moonlight/Parsec; anything.
Tangential to this discussion: Steam is in the unique position to create a kernel anti-cheat. I know that's not popular. But they are the only ones with the install base AND ability to pull it off in a such a fashion that wouldn't be so god-awful. It's clear that multiplayer gaming isn't going to go away from kernel anti-cheat. It's also clear that developers are still going to target Windows-only with Steam Deck support as a best-kept basis.
I don't see the Steam Machine/Deck as a competitor until they solve the kernel anti-cheat portion. Until then, it can play games that are older, not popular, or single-player which is a valid market but not one that I am a part of, anyway.
EDIT:
S) It's not meant for you.
A) Sure. But you're telling me people are going to pay $1,050 to couch-potato games? I don't see that market and I'm not really sure how you would swing that.
S) But it's on-par with the PS5.
A) Which isn't a valid differentiator. The PS5 is 6 years old and not $1,050. Even if it was $600, that's not a good deal.
S) It can be a regular PC.
A) Sure. But you could also save money and put a regular PC behind or near your monitor or TV.
S) I just want to game on hardware that's good enough.
A) I get it, but there's so many cheaper options out there. Honestly, it'd be better value to get a Steam Deck, get a docking station, then hook that up to your TV than to buy this.
Dead-on-arrival doesn't mean that this doesn't serve a niche. The niches this serves just really cannot be this compelling. You cannot tell me you have $1,050 laying around just to spend on this machine that comes with 512GB of storage.
I don't get it. I don't get the market segment that does want this when there's so many better options on the market.
dylanz 3 hours ago [-]
I think it's far from dead-on-arrival. I don't want to buy a PC, put it in a garage, etc. I want a little box I can easily hook up to my TV and play Steam games on. This scratches that itch. I'm old and want convenience. I know a lot of other people in my peer group who are going to pick one up too. Also I don't play any competitive games where I care about anti-cheat. I just want to play my RPG/JRPG's on a big screen and I want it to be plug-n-play.
treis 3 hours ago [-]
I think dead on arrival is too extreme but the niche is certainly hard to see. The "just works" crowd will buy consoles and the "max performance" crowd won't be happy with this value. The niche is something like "willing to tolerate some headaches but not so much as to build my own PC". That exists but seems small.
Feels like they should have gone cheap. Undercut the switch and be the cheapest way to play games on your TV. We're pretty far past performance equalling more entertainment. A 150-200 box to play indie side scrollers is a niche that exists.
iteria 3 hours ago [-]
I don't buy consoles because I have been a PC gamer for over a decaded. But you know, I'm a parent now. And I want couch gaming with my family. That's the use case for me my family. I got mu child a steam deck (I have one too). A steam deck is a terrible idea for an elementary schooler. It has to stay docked now because she's already broken parts of it.
But even docked, it's a winner for her and all her friends. She's converting more parents over via her friends. The well off ones are just buying from Valve like me. The less so, are using whatever PC is around to mixed results. I'll see how it goes as the kids get older, but I think there's a bigger case than you think and I think it's mostly years long PC gamers who want a more communal experience be it with partners, kids, or friends.
treis 2 hours ago [-]
I think the market exists but I don't think it's that big. I think the "play boomerang fu on my TV for cheap and little hassle" is a gigantic one.
saltamimi 3 hours ago [-]
There's better options at this price point, I'm afraid.
Even buying an old tiny micro PC that's 10th gen Intel would've been a cheaper buy.
hbn 3 hours ago [-]
This runs SteamOS and is an officially supported platform that, if it has legs, will be something developers may want to target as a platform and make sure their games work a la Steam Deck verification.
There's also potential for community fixes for older games with issues. And easier troubleshooting cause you can just look up "fix for X game Steam Machine", or "does X game work on Steam Machine"
There are advantages to this over something generic, or building your own machine.
dylanz 3 hours ago [-]
Yeah I understand I can get a much better gaming PC at much lower price point but that was kind of the point I was trying to make. I'm in a position where I'd happily pay more for convenience and I know many other people who feel the same way. I think there is a huge market here and this isn't a dead-on-arrival situation at all. Valve knows this.
rapind 2 hours ago [-]
Yeah, for sure people will buy this for those reasons. Some people also bought an nvidia shield and other gimped android boxes. It's honestly really disappointing though. I would love a steam machine to be competitive and cost less and eventually phase out windows gaming. This hardware launch falls really short though. The appeal is going to be limited. Oh well, maybe next time.
saltamimi 2 hours ago [-]
I don't think that market is as big as you think it is and if anything, it's only going to push people away from the Steam Machine into another micro PC platform that will be able to run Steam OS.
Scroll_Swe 3 hours ago [-]
Put it in a garage?
lmao bring up the wife factor, please.
We are devs here. We can have and build gaming PCs I hope?
Yes I will gatekeep.
Yes it is the best as I can get and play anything I want.
nazgulsenpai 3 hours ago [-]
There's also the kid factor if you're playing on the TV in the living room. Kids have a way of walking in at the worst time. As someone who enjoys violent titles, I get it.
zemo 3 hours ago [-]
Hacker News is not a representative sample of the addressable market
throw10920 3 hours ago [-]
This line should be auto-pinned at the top of every single HN thread where the topic crosses over into target markets for products. (I'm joking, but the point stands - HN is both wildly different than the average individual and many of those on HN overlook that fact)
Scroll_Swe 3 hours ago [-]
Normal people will not know what Steam even is.
They will buy a PS5, Switch or Xbox.
If you know PC gaming you will just get a gaming desktop. With newer hardware.
arbll 3 hours ago [-]
Same here. My home computer only runs Windows because I play competitive online games. It would be incredible if Valve built some kind of certified, locked-down kernel, but I doubt that will happen.
The online discourse around this is also incredibly toxic, filled with utopians who don’t understand how serious cheating is in these games, or that kernel anti-cheat, while not perfect, is the best solution available today.
throw10920 3 hours ago [-]
> filled with utopians who don’t understand how serious cheating is in these games
FWIW, the easiest way to dispel the fallacies pumped out by these individuals is to ask how much time they've sunk into a reasonably contemporary competitive online game. I almost never meet people who have these delusions about anticheat being ineffective that also has actually invested significant (>500) hours into the games that they're appropriate for.
(people who work with spam and fraud/abuse prevention also usually don't have these delusions, because the underlying economics are similar. turns out that actually having experience with a thing is enough to disillusion most people of stupid ideas about that thing, who know?)
Peaches4Rent 37 minutes ago [-]
Counter.
As a group of 4 dota players who are software engineers, we have a collective 20k hours.
All of us refuse kernel level anti cheat.
Dota overwatch is the best we have available for anti cheat. It's better than kernel level anti cheat
bigyabai 2 hours ago [-]
"effective" and "solved" are too easily conflated, here. Consoles have the solution, if you enforce hardware attestation then you reduce the attack surface to people using XIM, Cronus and other detectable exploits. When you allow PCIe/ReBAR, hypervisors, custom bootloaders, custom mobo firmware, third-party hardware drivers, firmware macros, lagswitches, and whitelist process injection, people will always exploit you. Cheating is inherent to the architecture of PC gaming.
Ring 0 anticheat is a mitigation, and just one step down the road of enforcing fairness. The goal of erasing cheaters quickly becomes a Procrustian bed that alienates fair players and funds cheat developers, there's nothing that gamedevs can do client-side to solve this problem without redefining how PC gaming works. Out of all the games I've put 500+hrs into, votekick is the only working anticheat that I've encountered.
Lwerewolf 3 hours ago [-]
...and then you have hypervisor-based cheats, hardware cheats and whatnot. I'd say that AI flagging of suspicious cases + additional targeted scrutiny is the way forward - for competitive platforms, that is. That, and trust factor - I practically never get bad games when I play alone in cs:go/cs2 (~20k mmr eu, lem/smfc prior to that) - both in terms of somebody cheating and in terms of people that are full of themselves in one way or another. I'd say that combining these techniques should be very effective.
arbll 6 minutes ago [-]
The only effective approach is to use as many layers as possible to increase the cost of creating and using cheats. Kernel anti-cheat is an effective layer because it forces cheaters to either buy specialized hardware or gamble that their hypervisor won’t be detected through heuristics.
Competitive games will likely add AI-based flagging into the mix, but it still doesn’t make sense to make cheating as trivial as adding a few uprobes/kprobes on a Linux box.
terribleperson 3 hours ago [-]
I think calling the hardware generations out of date when it performs on par with a PS5 on new games is a bit inaccurate.
I would, admittedly, be interested in an anticheat that reboots the machine for deck into a secure mode.
saltamimi 3 hours ago [-]
The Zen 4 cores in it is Ryzen 7000 Series, we're on 9000 series.
The GPU is on par with the 3060 12GB and RX 7000 series GPUs which are older.
The PS5 is six years old! This is a brand new machine!
rtkwe 3 hours ago [-]
The age of hardware is getting less and less relevant though as time goes on. The differences between generations visually is getting pretty small and good enough doesn't need the latest most powerful features. It was designed to a benchmark of good enough graphics for a reasonable price then the price got blown up by AI datacenters prebuying years worth of production of memory with the insane firehose of money they're able to access.
saltamimi 3 hours ago [-]
I just don't see a Linux gaming machine being a reference piece of hardware for big name publishers when they are making Windows-only games.
The Steam Survey is a better indicator of what you should target vs. something like the Steam Machine or Deck IMO.
rtkwe 2 hours ago [-]
It's not about a consistent target like consoles and more that even older hardware performs acceptably with minor concessions to graphics these days. People were already primed to accept that trade off before the AI boom exploded memory prices because crypto miners were buying up loads of cards for alt coins that didn't have ASICs available.
I can get something like 80% of the graphics with 20% of the GPU because the places where games are really pushing graphics out now are really resource intensive. Ray tracing is amazing but we got REALLY REALLY good at making games look good without it too.
pkulak 3 hours ago [-]
> it performs on par with a PS5
Wait, really? I looked at the specs and saw like 2/3 the CUs of a PS5.
ErneX 3 hours ago [-]
But better CUs I assume, Steam Machine is RDNA3, PS5 is RDNA2.
lowbloodsugar 2 hours ago [-]
Price point is PS5 Pro which technically is RDNA2 but has back ported features from RDNA3 & 4. It has 60 cores. Consensus is PS5 Pro outperforms steam machine by 20-30% on graphics.
a2dam 3 hours ago [-]
"For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially..."
"No wireless? Less space than a Nomad? Lame"
maxglute 3 hours ago [-]
>In my opinion, it would've been worth the money to just buy a gaming PC, put it in a garage, hidden room, etc with the networking gear, then stream it over the network to a Steam Link or using Apollo/Artemis/Moonlight/Parsec; anything.
During covid, instead of getting second budget gaming PC, I setup janky multi-seat program (Aster), to split single windows machine where I could play locally and someone else could play on steamlink. There's so many games out there that you can run multiple instances simultaneously. Or simply stream desktops to media room paired with a good remote.
It was very janky, setup, streaming DRM (or not). But justifies world of spending on one highend system than multiple mid / tier. The Aster program was designed for low income nations where you split a single workstation into like 8+ substations (i.e. education). TBH if Valve sold a 2-3k steammachine super host that can stream multiple games to different thin client, and value proposition is this is the only entertainment unit for your entire house, I think it would pique interests. Maybe tile different streams into one client for splitscreen playing. Sell those controllers.
tuyiown 3 hours ago [-]
The hard truth is that as much as you think yourself as a "proper" gamer, this segment always has, always will, _not_ be the proper target segment. Don't forget that mobile gaming has more revenue than everything else… combined. They have a play on this, and as much expansive as it looks, it's mostly due to the hardware inflation, and compared to alternatives, it won't look bad at all. For the segments that matters.
saltamimi 3 hours ago [-]
I don't see a market of people who want to pay Valve $1,050 to play Steam games on a custom Linux machine with old hardware that won't support big name games that have kernel anti-cheat on them.
I really don't see the vision Valve is looking for here.
baud147258 3 hours ago [-]
> In my opinion, it would've been worth the money to just buy a gaming PC, put it in a garage, hidden room, etc with the networking gear, then stream it over the network to a Steam Link
Well if you scroll down the page, it's presented as a selling point of the machine
ecshafer 3 hours ago [-]
> I see the world moving to thin clients that play games via some remote desktop infrastructure.
You can barely code in such an environment to a satisfactory degree. You want to stream 4k games with low latency?
aerhardt 3 hours ago [-]
Google Stadia worked like a charm. I put hundreds of hours into it without a single problem. The tech felt like magic.
saltamimi 3 hours ago [-]
What are you coding over the network such that the network is a bottleneck?
neogodless 3 hours ago [-]
> In my opinion, it would've been worth the money to just buy a gaming PC, put it in a garage, hidden room, etc with the networking gear, then stream it over the network to a Steam Link or using Apollo/Artemis/Moonlight/Parsec; anything.
I'm someone who has built dozens of gaming PCs, and wired my house. I also have zero interest in doing the above... if I have to pay few hundred extra to get a Steam machine hooked up to a TV without all that hassle... I'll do that.
It's not the absolute best value for gaming. It's not horrible in current market conditions but it's also not targeting "best value for gaming" anywhere in the marketing materials. It's hardware that can play your Steam library on your TV. There are harder, less expensive ways to do that, as there have been for ages.
If you're a console gamer, there are less expensive, just as easy options to play console games, so it's definitely not suited for that market.
It's really only catering to people with disposable income that want a cute way to hook up a Steam-capable machine to a TV. It's not a huge market, nor is it a non-existent market.
It was probably a bigger market at $750 than $1050, but we can't have nice things.
buellerbueller 3 hours ago [-]
>It's just dead-on-arrival...the hardware is generations out of date
Some people say this same thing about the Nintendo Switch and its successor, but here we are, with the former closing in on highest selling console of all time, and the latter tracking above that.
CobrastanJorji 3 hours ago [-]
Sure, but I didn't buy a Switch because of its power or because of its form factor. I bought it because that was the way to play Zelda.
croes 3 hours ago [-]
So why do people buy a Switch 2?
toast0 3 hours ago [-]
I don't have one, but I assume it's a better Switch. All the existing games work on it, some with enhanced versions (but probably load times are better anyway, right?), and there's new games that only run on the Switch 2. Switch 1 releases are likely to dry up over time.
crookedview 3 hours ago [-]
For all the new Nintendo first-party games.
croes 3 hours ago [-]
The best at the moment is DK Bananza but it’s nowhere near a Zelda game.
The rest are updates and remaster of previous games.
There isn’t teal system seller at the moment
rjh29 3 hours ago [-]
Who thought that? The switch was an explosion when it launched.
iteria 2 hours ago [-]
So many people (hard-core gamers) thought the switch would be DOA when it was announced. Nintendo just doesn't target those. I assume the same here. People also thought no one would be interested in the steam deck either. You know, because it was just a slightly better switch. People really don't understand how small the hard-core competitive gamer market is. Literally no one I know plays competitive online games and we all spend hundreds of dollars on steam a year. Valve is targeting us.
ilivethere 3 hours ago [-]
Not OC, but I believe the RAM price surge is what will kill the Steam Machine. For the same price, you can get a gaming laptop with better specs.
triveal 3 hours ago [-]
[dead]
saltamimi 3 hours ago [-]
I don't remember anyone saying this about the Switch and at the time, the reviews for North America at least were very positive.
Scroll_Swe 3 hours ago [-]
Because a console is a console.
Look at the PS2. Incredible games on bespoke custom harware.
We didnt know how good we had it.
veber-alex 2 hours ago [-]
Nobody cares about the Switch hardware, they but it to play Nintendo games.
This is just a x86 PC.
3 hours ago [-]
triveal 3 hours ago [-]
[dead]
neko_ranger 5 hours ago [-]
Unfortunate for them on the pricing of components. This won't do so well (right now), but I think the Frame will exceed expectations.
metamet 4 hours ago [-]
Naw. I think they'll sell every single one they're able manufacture for the next couple years. The pre-order list will probably fill most of those.
nottorp 4 hours ago [-]
16 Gb system ram... i'd bet that they originally planned it with 32.
Note that you can order more storage but not more RAM. Although that may also be to force vendors to target this exact architecture.
Also: oooh internal power supply! Someone thought about elegance too.
koolala 3 hours ago [-]
You can upgrade the ram yourself.
lowbloodsugar 2 hours ago [-]
You probably can. Not sure target market can.
trashface 5 hours ago [-]
Interesting that they went with AMD for GPU, but not too surprising. My experience with a nvidia 5060 on my laptop is that nvidia's drivers on linux still have no idea how to reliably wake from sleep. Fixing that just not the priority for them I guess - datacenter GPUs doing AI probably never sleep and just idle at 50 watts or whatever.
Tiberium 5 hours ago [-]
It was kind of expected since Steam Deck (obviously) had an AMD APU, and AMD works much better with mainstream Linux projects in general.
bjord 4 hours ago [-]
valve themselves also personally employ multiple major contributors to the amd linux drivers
The biggest win for me from this product is pushing developers to release on Linux.
mariusor 3 hours ago [-]
Sadly I don't see that happening. Game devs have gotten used to having their cake and eating it too by developing for Windows and using Proton as a crutch to get the the Steam OS certification too. flibitijibibo was right: linux porters have probably gone out of business.
LoveMortuus 2 hours ago [-]
I was hoping that Steam Machine + Steam Frame would be around 1000€ or there about.
GL26 5 hours ago [-]
This seems very expensive for what a PC can do :(. A PC can be fully customizable with price ranges that are lower than the steam machine. The "hardcore console gamers" live on PS, and Xbox, and for "casual gamers", a Nintendo Switch would provide much better bang for you buck.
bigyabai 5 hours ago [-]
You can install a SteamOS-style console experience on any old PC, including handhelds or mini-pcs with integrated graphics. Bazzite is a great choice for that, even my RX560 handles it without issue.
> a Nintendo Switch would provide much better bang for you buck.
A secondhand Steam Deck would also be better value, but this isn't a value-focused product. The Steam Machine is Valve's second stab at the premium couch-based PC gamer market, this time with Proton and a bigger focus on controller usability for ordinary PC games.
panikal 5 hours ago [-]
Find me a PC in this form factor that is as well tested and supported as the steam boxes are, with the specs they are claiming to have, at this price. Its a little above the curve but a little is not a lot, and you get a fully supported Linux box at that price.
.....and if you think this is expensive just wait until the PS6 and new Xbox are released.
tough 4 hours ago [-]
I lost access to my 10y old steam account due to their 2fa app getting auto-removed from my iPhone.
I couldnt produce 10y visa statements from another country i lived in.
Since then I just dont use steam, shame cause i like the hw
minraws 1 hours ago [-]
1050$ I am very sad about the price. Like orders of magnitude sad.
I would have hoped for ~600$ with the economic realities maybe 800$, but 1000$+ just feels like too much doesn't valve have like a multi-billion dollar muscle couldn't the folks make it a tad cheaper...
I guess we can only blame the current market conditions at the end of the day.
rootsudo 4 hours ago [-]
They released it. Companion cube.
emadabdulrahim 4 hours ago [-]
I'm not familiar with SteamOS and Valve hardware in general. Could I play something like Overwatch on this, and connect keyboard and mouse? Could I play other PC games like World of Warcraft?
It's just a Linux box, you can do anything that you can on any other Linux machine (including install Windows).
Linux more or less runs most Windows games. The ones that don't run are ones where the developer is going out of their way to make them not run - mostly with kernel-mode anti-cheats that just find themselves staring at the wrong kernel.
Steam makes that pretty seamless and Steam games "just work". For non-Steam games you need to do some tinkering, it's stuff that most people browsing this forum can do.
crooked-v 3 hours ago [-]
Note that the "just" is overlooking that it's more locked down than a typical Linux box, in that the OS filesystem is read-only and all app installs live in userland (though you can turn off the read-only behavior). For what it's worth I'm very much a fan of it as a default for a mass-market machine, but you'll run into weird gotchas if you want to do "programmer stuff" with it.
Peaches4Rent 31 minutes ago [-]
"Locked down" is an incorrect way to look at it.
It follows a different philosophy. I've been using atomic systems for the past year or so as my main driver.
If you want to install something that needs superuser access, you do it inside a container. This protects your OS from breaking.
The number of times I've accidentally installed something which broke my window manager or compositor is now zero
sparkling 4 hours ago [-]
Dual-booting SteamOS for gaming and some regular Distro for daily work would be neat.
koolala 3 hours ago [-]
It's pretty good for daily work. You can use Distrobox to do any software dev without dual booting.
Interesting that its HDMI is 2.0 and not 2.1. Hopefully it's still possible (for those that really want) to connect modern 4K TVs at 120 hz via the DisplayPort 1.4 output.
cassianoleal 3 hours ago [-]
That's likely because the HDMI Forum don't allow open source HDMI 2.1. [0]
That said, there are signs that it's coming to the AMD drivers. [1] [2]
What's the competition in the gaming-capable pre-built mini-PC category? How does it compare to these on price/performance?
SkitterKherpi 4 hours ago [-]
I like the idea, but I am worried that it's yet another step on the road towards personal multi-purpose tower PCs built part by part no longer being a thing.
LoveMortuus 2 hours ago [-]
I don’t understand why it doesn’t have a headphones jack…
iLoveOncall 5 hours ago [-]
I know they will sell, but at this price point I don't understand who is supposed to be the target for this.
Either you want a gaming computer, and you'll get a much better one that can be upgraded in the future for the same price, or you want a console, and you'll never pay a grand for it.
4 years old hardware and poor connectivity.
pendenthistory 5 hours ago [-]
I'll probably buy one. It's small so it fits under my TV, fits in with my furniture. Since it's all vertically integrated I know I can just connect it to the TV and it'll boot quickly and work well, and it has all my Steam games. I value my time and lack of frustration more than a few hundred dollars.
sanskritical 3 hours ago [-]
I want a simple UNIX workstation that "just works". Apple broke this promise to me with Tahoe, where horrific design decisions compounded the bugs on essential peripherals (Tahoe began spinning up and down my external raid array to sleep constantly, for no reason, making extremely loud noises as the drives repeatedly if it's idle, forcing me to constantly touch files in a while loop over dozens of partitions -- also I have a few petabyte of storage and it now takes ages to mount every reboot, as now with Tahoe Spotlight indexing is done as part of the mounting process and I can't opt out of this behavior and I'm in a warzone where power outages necessitating shutdowns are frequent). I have since used a docked Steam Deck as my daily driver and everything I want just works! It's now my UNIX desktop OS of choice. I've been on the Mac since OS X but Tahoe was so bad that now I consider an operating system designed for wasting time gaming a more serious and less disruptive option to my daily workflow. Heck of a job you're doing, Tim Apple!
calebio 5 hours ago [-]
I think there's a middle ground of people who just are not interested in building or upgrading a gaming computer (or just don't like their typical form factor in the ready to go out of the box gaming PCs) but also don't want the completely closed off ecosystem of a console.
I think if the Xbox ended up being more like the Steam Machine (i.e. more like a PC) then this middle ground that the Steam Machine sells to would probably go away as I don't think the group of folks who care that it's Linux based is high enough to support production.
vessenes 4 hours ago [-]
I thought about it, but don't think I'll push the button. I have a falcon nw gaming rig in my living room right now running windows / steam big picture and an NVIDIA 3060Ti -- and it's .. fine, but long in the tooth. I wouldn't mind a more console-ish hardware experience for steam gaming, and compared to a new falcon box, this thing is cheap. I experimented with just running SteamOS on the falcon hardware a few years ago, but it was a little fussy, and I wanted to also use the system for local inference, and, and, and.
All that said, I don't think this is a good value. I'm presuming if I did a little work SteamOS 3 would be workable for me, and I have significantly more RAM, and possibly a better GPU? Not exactly sure where the GPU falls out, but I definitely believe I could buy a better GPU for less than the new box.
If it gets preferred shipment for the controller, you could buy it and sell the box and keep the controller. :) I think my controller ship date is estimated in 2027 right now.
mercwear 34 minutes ago [-]
Falcon gaming computers start at $3K, I don't think Valve is after that level of consumer with this, it's more of a "Bring the console players into Steam" move imho.
twoquestions 5 hours ago [-]
Prebuilt machines have a terrible reputation, I could see people wanting this for a PC that you don't need hardware expertise to boot up. If you're reading this you could probably pick out your own parts and assemble them for cheaper, but for people who want a console-style plug-and-play type experience I could see the market for it.
Pricey, but so is any other sort of electronic entertainment hardware these days.
luqtas 5 hours ago [-]
do you know fans or people who don't like to tinker computers?
take a sip at GamingOnLinux community... they don't seem to care about stuff running perfectly on Proton and not natively or that Gabe is buying another 600 million USD yatch. they love the Steam ecosystem more than developers crafting games and abiding to 30% of fees that are a clear sign of monopoly power
jrm4 5 hours ago [-]
I feel like there's a midrange of "not particularly techy" gamers who will strongly appreciate - "I don't care about putting anything together, I just want to place PC games like a console."
kibwen 5 hours ago [-]
I wanted a gaming computer (read: an airgapped system that I could install arbitrary software on without fear), and I was sick to death of Microsoft's bullshit and resolved to never buy a Windows machine again, so I've been using a docked Steam Deck as my main gaming rig. It's performed far better than I imagined on the software side (has never failed to run any game in my library, though some have required minor settings tweaks), though the hardware is a little on the lighter side, which is perfectly acceptable for a handheld, but if the Steam Machine had been available at the time I'd probably have gone for that instead.
iLoveOncall 5 hours ago [-]
Ok but why not buy a cheaper or more performant machine and install SteamOS on it?
pendenthistory 5 hours ago [-]
As an adult with kids, why would I want to spend my scarce time and energy building my own machine, installing and configuring shit when I can just buy this that is guaranteed to work well. Yeah, when I was 18 I'd probably do it myself, but I just don't have the patience for bullshit anymore.
alashow 2 hours ago [-]
I'm sure you don't need to build your machine just to install SteamOS on
sssilver 1 hours ago [-]
I don't understand the specs of this computer. At the end of the day, will this "Semi-custom CPU" and "Semi-custom GPU" run modern AAA games at 4K?
Peaches4Rent 41 minutes ago [-]
4k with upscaling is the promise.. don't know if it will hold
janaagaard 3 hours ago [-]
Why all USB-A ports instead of USB-C? (I counted 4 USB-A and just one USB-C.)
They should include the (entire) Valve game library for free with purchase for the first 6 months to drive adoption.
ElijahLynn 4 hours ago [-]
Why so many USB-A ports and only one USB-C?
ReliantGuyZ 4 hours ago [-]
Because most PC peripherals (mice, keyboards, microphones, controllers, USB headphones, detachable hard drives) are still USB-A on the other end of their cable. Yes this is changing, but in this case I appreciate them acknowledging the reality on the ground and not creating a situation where there are many dongles afoot.
vachina 5 hours ago [-]
I have a Series X with a very similar spec just sitting there collecting dust. I hope one day it will run linux like the PS5 and run Steam lol.
CagedCoder 5 hours ago [-]
For some reason I never considered this route, despite following the PS5 Linux developments... is there a specific reason that the XSX is harder to homebrew than the PS5?
It would be incredible to convert my dusty XSX to a linux box
xlmnxp 4 hours ago [-]
I think Apple Mac Mini's prices make since now, only if you can install Linux on them
raffael_de 4 hours ago [-]
What is the appeal of Steam Machine as a dedicated gaming device? Isn't it going to be old in a few years and then you have to get rid of it because upgrading components isn't a viable option? Isn't that quite the opposite of anything that deserves to be associated with them term "hacker"?
benoau 3 hours ago [-]
> Isn't it going to be old in a few years and then you have to get rid of it because upgrading components isn't a viable option?
I expect to get the rest of this decade out of my Steam Deck so IDK, very different to my normal expectations for a computer. The Steam Deck also defines a floor that will allow compatible games to be very performant on the Steam Machine so I think that will help the Steam Machine have a decent lifespan.
I also think on some level we need to start resigning ourselves to getting 10+ years out of our computers!
d3Xt3r 51 minutes ago [-]
I doubt anyone's associating the Steam Machine with the term "hacker". The "hacker" type crowd already game on Linux, they're not the target audience here. This is for the normies, for people who want to play PC games with a console-like experience, without any hassles of manual setup and tweaking that the hacker crowd normally are into.
jpk2f2 3 hours ago [-]
Compact, convenient, console-like experience that pulls games from your existing steam library. Same niche as a normal console, just not locked down in the same sense. If it weren't for the price I'd consider one, but I'd rather limp along my existing systems for as long as possible (and it sounds like SteamOS support for broader systems is improving).
terribleperson 3 hours ago [-]
With current hardware prices, I'm not sure it'll be 'old' in gaming terms in a few years. I'm expecting the PS6 to be only a moderate upgrade over the PS5, not arrive for another year at least, and probabky take 5 years to overtake the PS5.
theshrike79 3 hours ago [-]
Do you usually want to upgrade components in a console?
raffael_de 2 hours ago [-]
I'm pretty sure you got my point.
x______________ 2 hours ago [-]
Does anyone have a rundown of Steam OS?
hari1123 4 hours ago [-]
Steam Deck is probably better value
seam_carver 5 hours ago [-]
Starts at $1049
saidinesh5 5 hours ago [-]
$1049 .. Damn.
Here's hoping my $135 BC-250 arriving tomorrow works without any issue.
Either way, congrats to Valve!
keoneflick 2 hours ago [-]
Disappointing to see the release and still no implementation of multi-user sign on for local multiplayer games (like all true consoles).
As I noted when announced, it's something that doesn't get headlines, but a real barrier for enjoyment for a console-like PC. Hate being stuck with 'guest 1' and 'guest 2' or whatever. Many games want each player to progress and without true multi sign on, it just doesn't work. Hence games dropping local multiplayer on PC.
binarycleric 4 hours ago [-]
I was interested until I saw the price. Gonna pass on that.
zzixp 5 hours ago [-]
congrats to Valve on the launch!
scuff3d 5 hours ago [-]
Oof, that price point is rough. I hope this does well for them, but I'm not sure who this is for.
CafeRacer 2 hours ago [-]
Is this US only?
d3Xt3r 54 minutes ago [-]
According to Tom's Hardware, it's North America, the United Kingdom, the European Union, and Australia.
Yeah, I don't see this succeeding at these prices. Succeeding in a sense to come close to Switch 2 / PS5 (Pro) levels.
kipchak 3 hours ago [-]
I don't think the goal here is to necessarily sell a bunch of hardware units, but to create a new product category of devices which buy games from steam, like the steam deck did with handheld gaming PCs.
mathgeek 4 hours ago [-]
I don't think we could ever expect a specific gaming PC to compete with the volume sold of gaming consoles that have exclusives people really, really want to play.
Forgeties79 4 hours ago [-]
Wow that LTTlabs article was damning. The language is optimistic but this thing can’t possibly move steamdeck-numbers of units at $1100+ with that performance. DOA if you ask me.
pphysch 4 hours ago [-]
Valve could have made a $2-$3K rig that outperforms other consoles for 4K gaming but I'm glad they didn't. It's genuinely unfortunate the components market went crazy at the same time.
I hope this and the steam deck-likes continue to be successful and incentivize developers to optimize their games for last-gen and portable hardware. I think the "steam deck compatible" certification has already been fairly good for that.
sergiotapia 5 hours ago [-]
Thanks to Valve, I've now been using Omarchy as my operating system for months now. Gaming just works on Linux now. It's crazy, used to be a pipe dream!
I'm buying the Steam Machine as well to game on the couch. Give me 4k 60fps and that's all I need. The Steam Controller is also fantastic shape on my hands, very comfortable.
john-titor 5 hours ago [-]
Care to explain what Omarchy has to do with Valve?
getcrunk 5 hours ago [-]
I assume they are referring to the general tide of improvements valve has brought to gaming working generically on linux, and that they are using omarchy to experience it
5 hours ago [-]
erxam 5 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
furyofantares 5 hours ago [-]
> D14HH
How'd the 14 sneak in here
nosioptar 4 hours ago [-]
Considering his support of Tommy Robinson, I'd assume the 14 is there to make sure people know the HH is also a dogwhistle.
weaksauce 4 hours ago [-]
1488 is a white supremacist racist dogwhistle.
dhh has been parroting tony robbins stuff and other vaguely white supremacist stuff on his blog.
His blog is a mix of zealous out-of-touch and unloved techbro shit and the most rancid far-right essays possible. Trust me, he's earned it.
It makes me feel insane that people just skip over this stuff. The guy is openly citing "people" like Tommy Robinson yet he's still a popular and respected distro guy? I'm going to commit a crime.
rafterydj 2 hours ago [-]
Oh dear. I've been using Omarchy! Had no idea. Thanks for the info.
Was already kind of annoyed at the "manual" not being very comprehensive - think I'll switch to another distro or fully yank control away from Omarchy and just roll my own Arch, I guess. Depends on how much work it'll take.
furyofantares 4 hours ago [-]
Oh I see, sibling comment suggests you added 14 as a like "Micro$oft"-style slur, but to call him a nazi.
erxam 4 hours ago [-]
Yeah. Sorry if it wasn't clear, it's a stupid habit I picked up from Twitter that I can't quite get rid of.
furyofantares 4 hours ago [-]
All good, not knowing this stuff about the guy I didn't connect it to 1488. It parsed as a strangely botched i18n or a16z type of abbreviation. Searching also gave me nothing but I might have X blocked.
I'm glad I asked!
sergiotapia 4 hours ago [-]
Be a little more fair to Omarchy's strengths. It stitches together many things that work really well together. Hyperland is terrific for example and going back to windows/mac feels ancient in comparison. It's a good thing someone built omarchy.
erxam 4 hours ago [-]
That's the exclusive work of the Hyprborean dev (who himself is another giant crock of shit who I wish just wouldn't wake up ever again one day).
You can install it on your normal, average Arch installation anyways. Don't need to rip everything out from the root just for a pre-configured meme distro. It's not as if Omarchy had hard forks of all the software it steals, anyways. It really is just dotfiles.
sergiotapia 4 hours ago [-]
it seems you're just very angry in general. maybe step away from the keyboard.
bigyabai 4 hours ago [-]
Omarchy is a fine starting-point for ricing, but I generally agree with the sentiment that it's a LARP distribution for people that feel warm-fuzzies when they use a TWM. I don't think I could recommend Omarchy to other developers without insulting their intelligence, it's very much on the same level as other novelty distros like Regolith and Archlabs.
5 hours ago [-]
the_af 4 hours ago [-]
Gaming just works for me with Steam and Ubuntu. Steam no longer filters out Linux games to its own category, it simply assumes most games work now (and they do!).
thelonelyborg 2 hours ago [-]
would be amazing.
bravetraveler 5 hours ago [-]
Mildly disappointed to see 1GbE when spending [at least] a thousand dollars. Stupid datacenters squeezing all the chips.
littlecranky67 5 hours ago [-]
Interested in hear the justification why you would need more than 1GbE in a machine built specificly for gaming.
robhlt 5 hours ago [-]
It's a bit niche, but Steam can download games from another PC running Steam on your local network. 2.5GbE on both PCs makes that a lot faster.
craftkiller 4 hours ago [-]
I did some math, supposedly the complete install of the latest Call of Duty game is a 200GB download[0]. At 1gbps we're talking 26 minutes of downloading. At 2.5gbps we're talking 10 minutes of downloading. I'm honestly surprised game downloads have become so massive but are those 16 extra minutes really going to change anything?
Personally, I'm rarely "surprised" by a need to play a specific game that I don't already have downloaded/installed so I can just tell Steam to download the game in advance. But if I were to be in such a surprise scenario, we're talking the difference between popping on one youtube video while I wait or popping on two youtube videos while I wait. In both scenarios, I am waiting for a small but not insignificant amount of time... now if we could get 10gbps that'd be a game changer. I wouldn't even context switch for a 2.6 minute wait.
If given the option I would trade the LED strip to not wait any longer than absolutely necessary. That's approximately the difference we're talking in BoM cost.
Now, I don't want to overstate it: it's simple disappointment. I'm still interested in the machine, as is.
craftkiller 4 hours ago [-]
Oh absolutely, I'm with you there. LED strips are so unnecessary. I'd much rather the money go towards something functional.
littlecranky67 4 hours ago [-]
> At 1gbps we're talking 26 minutes of downloading. At 2.5gbps we're talking 10 minutes of downloading
Now I envy you living in a country where an internet uplink speed of > 1GbE exists for typical private households.
4 hours ago [-]
mdavidn 4 hours ago [-]
I use this feature to reduce Valve's egress bill, but local transfers do seem slower than downloading from the internet. I'm not sure why. I have one device hardwired to my network switch. Maybe Steam is bottlenecked on poorly optimized disk IO code?
bravetraveler 5 hours ago [-]
This is it, basically. It's a little annoying having to plan installations or wait [for ~$5 reduction in BoM]. 2.5GbE is very accessible; my LAN is 10 and WAN is 2.
kube-system 4 hours ago [-]
$5 here and there adds up... and this thing is already $250 over the target price due to component prices increases.
bravetraveler 4 hours ago [-]
I would trade the LED strip! Kidding, I understand SKUs have a cost too.
corndoge 5 hours ago [-]
It's a living room pc - using it to stream from a media NAS is one application that comes to mind
kube-system 5 hours ago [-]
You could stream 5 bluray videos and hold a zoom call at the same time with 1 gbps.
5 hours ago [-]
Keyframe 5 hours ago [-]
Downloading those giant game installs and updates
littlecranky67 4 hours ago [-]
Where do you live and how much do you pay for that Internet uplink that is > 1GbE?
Keyframe 2 hours ago [-]
Telemach, 2Gbps symmetrical - 34,90 EUR, Croatia. Flat rate, also includes flat rate landline to in-country mobile and other phones, but haven't bothered to even install that.
bravetraveler 4 hours ago [-]
With the 'Game File Transfer over Local Network' feature in Steam, you don't need a fast internet connection; 'just' another system on the LAN that can serve the files.
Fairly common for those with full-powered gaming desktops and Steam Decks, and soon, Steam Machines.
iso1631 4 hours ago [-]
The UK isn't exactly cheap, but the >1gbit packages tend to be in the 70 USD per month range, maybe uptowards $100 a month by the time you get to 5Gbit on the more traditional providers (sky for example)
neogodless 2 hours ago [-]
I bet at least 90% of people buying this connect it to WiFi and never think about connection speed again!
Personally... my internet is only 300 Mbps. My WiFi connection is roughly on par with 1GbE. I have a very small pool of 2.5GbE capable devices, but overall I'm just not fussed about making the switch.
bravetraveler 2 hours ago [-]
Probably :) However, as I mentioned elsewhere, one doesn't need fast internet to benefit. The 'Game File Transfer over Local Network' feature in Steam has been a boon, personally, even with 2G Fiber.
gigatexal 3 hours ago [-]
Small, quiet, underpowered and some games you can’t play because of stupid kernel level anti cheat and expensive. Not quite DOA but not the hyped thing I was looking for.
wxw 3 hours ago [-]
Eagerly awaiting the steam engine release.
IOT_Apprentice 3 hours ago [-]
I’d just like to buy steamOS and install it on my ryzen 9 desktop and my Ryzen laptop.
snootypoot 4 hours ago [-]
thanks to sam altman and jensen huangs bubble this will cost 2500$ next year at this time
IAmGraydon 4 hours ago [-]
Man...I'm certainly glad a happened to build a gaming beast rig in January of 2025. The RAM alone (64GB DDR5) would cost nearly as much as the entire rig now.
tonymet 4 hours ago [-]
A question for both developers & gamers – why are we continuing to push hardware capacity upward to untenable costs? 2013 games are awesome, I still play them. Why not continue targeting that capability and sell $250 consoles instead of $1250 consoles?
OkayPhysicist 24 minutes ago [-]
The problem is that the market has basically bifurcated. In the Indie space, people want novelty, and that's too risky for AAA (even 10 year old AAA) scale games. Over in the modern AAA space, you've got a more reliable user base (in that they're more eager to buy slight changes to the same game over and over), but you're competing more on "Wow" factor. And ever-better graphics have been a pretty easy way to convert investment into "wow", without much risk (compared to changing game mechanics more, which might kill your golden goose).
I find it far more plausible that AI-assisted game dev will help indies catch up in scale to 10 year old AAA than the modern AAA studios deciding to throw in the towel on the graphics arms race.
tonymet 2 minutes ago [-]
I would argue AAA are avoiding the safe bets by forcing "new experiences" into safe money-making genres.
At Xbox Showcase, many of the popular beats were bringing back elements from Halo or Gears of War that fans missed.
The formula for making hits seems to be pretty clear, but the studios are bucking it.
pelotron 3 hours ago [-]
A question for the ages.
indie games community has joined the chat
dude250711 3 hours ago [-]
You are describing indie games.
tonymet 3 hours ago [-]
not quite. Indie games don't yet publish titles with the scope or ambition of 2013 AAA titles.
I mean publishing titles with the polish & breadth of content of Arkham City , 2013 Tomb Raider , Titanfall 2 etc.
d3Xt3r 25 minutes ago [-]
Indeed. I guess one reason is that PC gaming hardware was always a moving target, and so newer games and graphics APIs exploiting features found in newer hardware, and hardware makers enabling them (driven by capitalism) created a vicious cycle.
Luckily the market did find a sort of stable target to aim for with the Steam Deck; many modern titles do aim to work well with those modest specs, such as Cyberpunk 2077, Baldur's Gate 3 etc. And when Blizzard launched Diablo IV on Steam, they explicitly announced that they had partnered with Valve to ensure the game was heavily optimised for the Deck and very playable on Day 1 (and if was, from my experience).
Hopefully we see more such examples with the Steam Machine. And I do agree with you that they could've gone with specs worth $250, but sadly with the current pricing crisis, $250 won't get much and I bet many people would've laughed at the specs. Even the Switch 2 now costs $500. :(
tonymet 6 minutes ago [-]
that's what I'm working to figure out. The business model worked until around 2018 . Software could target gen + 1 , and things would balance out as hardware got cheaper. Now we have the inverse, where hardware is only going up, so why are software developers still pushing hardware into unattainable territory?
The capitalism part actually made sense until it didn't
I hope they will release a version with a replaceable CPU and GPU. For a company that does so well on repair ability I don’t understand why they solder everything on the board. I prefer a mini-ITX system where I can easily change the components.
evanjrowley 5 hours ago [-]
RIP
zerolines 3 hours ago [-]
no thank you.
lowbloodsugar 2 hours ago [-]
PS5 performance at PS5 Pro price to target Nintendo Switch demographic?
c0rruptbytes 4 hours ago [-]
i'm in, i think prices are gonna suck anyway, i own a playstation and that shit sucks, i want to do more couch co-op with my partner and the steam library opens up so much indie games
can i build a mini pc myself? probably but meh
grahar64 3 hours ago [-]
"This item is not available in your region" :(
catigula 2 hours ago [-]
Honestly seems kind of pointless in an era of cloud gaming :)
Honestly tempted to buy a couple for relatives, who do some phone gaming and one who owns a 3DS they use, and see if they find anything interesting in PC gaming. Also make it a decent media center of course too.
ThatPlayer 5 minutes ago [-]
Last I checked the idle power consumption of the BC-250 was on the higher side to make me not want to use it as a media center, though that could be my PSU. No hardware decode/encode (yet) either.
And lack of DRM makes a PC in general a mediocre experience for official streaming services if you want more than 720p streaming. If you care about that.
lucius_verus 1 hours ago [-]
I got impatient waiting for the Steam Machine to come out and grabbed a BC-250 on ebay that was already set up with a case, fan, and power supply. Works great for reasonably demanding games (CONTROL, Elden Ring, etc.).
Now that I see the final price of the Steam Machine, I'm gonna be recommending the BC-250 more strongly.
tylerflick 5 hours ago [-]
Are you using the stock cooler? I’m going with an AIO for the APU, but I worry that the little heatsinks I’m planning for the VRMs aren’t going to cut it.
alexashka 4 hours ago [-]
For comparison - cloud gaming such as Nvidia's Geforce NOW is at ~20$/mo for 4k resolution with a monthly subscription one can cancel anytime.
That's what, ~4-5 years of gaming on a superior GPU without the headaches of hardware failures or upfront cost of 1000$?
Yikes Valve. The only folks buying gaming PCs these days are people eeking out an advantage in competitive 3D shooters or folks unaware of how far cloud gaming has come.
punpunia 3 hours ago [-]
Cloud gaming is nowhere near the same experience as playing locally. There are a lot of games where milliseconds matter; it's big enough for me and my friends to try Geforce NOW and say, "No, this isn't good enough for a lot of games." You are kind of saying, "the bus only costs $4 a day, that's 30 years of using a car."
xboxnolifes 3 hours ago [-]
No matter how superior the GPU, the latency from streaming will never be able to compete if you're outside of a major hub.
I couldn't imagine playing a game by streaming inputs to a server 30ms away, which then streams those inputs another 30ms to the game server, and then having that round trip.
60ms screen delay and 120ms total delay.
alexashka 2 hours ago [-]
Fair. There's a free 1080p Nvidia Geforce NOW tier anyone can try to see if latency is an issue for them and the games they play.
One more data point - you're getting 1080p medium settings (for latest games) with a Steam Machine at ~1000$ upfront vs 4k max settings but 20-50ms added latency (for most people) for ~20$/mo without any longterm commitment.
That's where we're at. I'm in the 2000$ upfront to get max settings, minimal latency camp myself but I consider that to be a niche, luxury purchase category.
snootypoot 4 hours ago [-]
yikes, you will own nothing and be happy.
lawn 4 hours ago [-]
It's interesting how so many are complaining about price and how it's dead etc.
Yet it will still be out of stock for a long time.
mrguyorama 4 hours ago [-]
The repeated insistence that a company can only possibly be successful if it reaches every human being on earth is killing the world.
A company that spins up a division, builds a product, sells 100k of them, and winds down is a success
Keep in mind this entire venture from Valve is also about ensuring they can't be made a vassal of Microsoft.
nekusar 2 hours ago [-]
Sigh. I've been in line for a Steam controller since May 8. Not a peep.
I dont have much hope in getting that, let alone this.
gymbeaux 2 hours ago [-]
Circa 2013 you could get a Steam Machine (made by Alienware/Dell) - the Alienware Alpha - for something like $300. Granted they were clearing them out at that time, but $300 was a no-brainer when consoles cost about the same and had significantly weaker hardware.
Now we're expected to pay almost 2x the cost of a current-gen console for what is probably near-identical console performance? Doesn't make sense. I appreciate Valve being in the hardware business and I understand that inflation/the AI bubble are hurting PC components but a grand for this is a terrible value. I mean let's see what the benchmarks look like, but "Semi-custom AMD Zen 4 6C / 12T" sounds like what's in the PS5 and Xbox One. Actually those have 8C/16T CPUs.
tsouth2 3 hours ago [-]
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matthew_hre 5 hours ago [-]
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lksaar 5 hours ago [-]
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ctdinjeu5 3 hours ago [-]
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Lapsa 4 hours ago [-]
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pursuitofugly 5 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
calebio 5 hours ago [-]
Did you just stop scrolling at the first group of people to come and make this comment?
pursuitofugly 5 hours ago [-]
Yes
zzixp 5 hours ago [-]
> created 2 minutes ago
lol
axus 4 hours ago [-]
Can we use it for AI?
dude250711 4 hours ago [-]
You have my permission. Just do not share any learnings. There is enough LLM trash around as is.
etchalon 4 hours ago [-]
Summary - Get a PS5 Pro.
alecsm 4 hours ago [-]
But I don't want a PS5.
I think most of people who wanted (me included) a steam machine are now between buying it or not buying anything at all.
ErneX 4 hours ago [-]
The good news today is that Steam OS will be available for any PC soon.
etchalon 4 hours ago [-]
Fair.
rvz 54 minutes ago [-]
As I was saying. With those specs, you might as well get a PS5 [0] even with a PS5 Pro it would still be cheaper than the Steam Machine.
This is nice.
we could say it's 5000 scalper accounts, and 50000000 gamer accounts. but it's not 5000/50000000, it's like 4500/20000. which isn't bad! but scalpers will still be way over-represented, because they'll be trying to buy it when most steam accounts won't.
now one fuzz factor is the queue system, as you're not putting down money to get in line i expect a lot of people who wouldn't otherwise sign up will, in case they decide to buy one when given the chance. so we might have 40000 gamer sign ups, but only 50% will pull the trigger. this also gives scalpers an out should the resale not be worth it.
(obviously all numbers made up)
Is there any actual data on this? I know people don't like scalpers but I wonder what the actual percentage is.
By and large, the masses have always experienced football on a TV screen. (though removing lower price tickets from such public sport events is still bad)
I know it's hard to imagine in the US, what with our quarterly-profit-maximizing corruption, but it is possible to be corrupt and still have to balance long-term concerns like "keep the graft flowing".
I'm so tired of people trying to pretend that limited tickets to an event billions of people want to attend ought to be available to poor people just because. If they sold for a penny, the resale market would eat them up and they'd still cost what they cost. If you'd bought them for $10, you'd instantly turn around and sell them for a few thousand to someone else.
I'm sorry no one prepared you for the fact that rare things have value, but perhaps some introductory economics classes, instead of TikTok-trite-internet-rage would be helpful.
Not everything must be race to the bottom. Not everything should be a fucking market.
If only rich snobs and people with poor financial control can afford your tickets, that will be the type of fan you’ll retain.
And you think it’s ok for rich people to swoop in, appropriate the attire and vibe of the sport and working class people just need to suck it up because they’re poor? The people who made the sport what it is now can’t enjoy it? The people who STILL make the sport what it is?
Disgusting.
Till the sales price matches the market value scalping will exist. The best way to address that is a vickery auction. Till then scalping will continue.
The corollary to this lottery will ensure that people who want Steam Machines day 1 actually get them at cost. So not only does this negatively impact the supply-side of scalping, but it also impacts the demand-side.
With the lottery, a good chunk of those systems are going those who would be willing to pay markup for them, but didn't. So the lottery does double-duty - it kills scalper supply and demand for scalped units.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Queen%27s_race
This way it's just a random draw and (I think?) the number of accounts scalpers can enter with is limited because they need to be established. So it might not solve scalping, but it could be a significant improvement.
Biggest impediment would be changes to purchase process. Run one live user through and repeat for how many bots you want to buy more.
Agreed with your comment on random being better. I just found a scalper sitting at a PC for 20 minutes waiting to buy pretty funny.
But as I said, you don't like it. ;) Scalping is freedom, if you want to remove scalping, you have to remove some freedom.
Show me the incentive structure and…
Pre-creating "sleeper" accounts is a common way of circumventing this, though it does require a degree of long term thinking/planning.
>Limit one signup per household. We will use payment method, shipping address, and other information to eliminate multiple entries."
It's not just an account with an age, they have to have made a purchase. And shipping address + payment info also help eliminate duplicates.
It's likely they are weighting accounts that have a lot of (recent) game activity and game purchases as well. Plus, they have access to hardware information via their hardware survey, etc.
Moreover, that's what happens anyway. If you get one of the slots and you value the difference between what you paid and the "real" (resale) price more than you value having the console, you can still sell it. But then more of the money goes to ordinary customers rather than rewarding people who snipe with bots etc.
I would also point out that you can build a PC to run SteamOS with approximately the same specs for approximately the same price, so it's not clear who is going to be paying a significant premium over the sticker price instead of doing that if they don't get a slot.
When they do this, customers have a conniption.
This works fine for luxury goods, because the whole point is that they are expensive, thus exclusive (see: Porsche, Rolex). But for regular goods, this ends up being penny wise, pound foolish. Yeah, there's a short-term bump in revenues and profits, but it gives competition a massive attack surface, as they can pull away the most loyal customers who are angry over price gouging, and those customers are probably lost forever.
In general customers don't actually care. They want the product and are equally annoyed by it selling out before they can get one and it selling for a price they can't afford, both caused by the company not having enough supply to meet current demand.
The actual reason companies don't like scalpers in contexts like this has to do with why Valve is making a console to begin with. Is it because they want to compete with Dell and HP in the market for gaming PCs? No, it's because they want to compete with Microsoft and Sony in the market for distributing games. Which in turn means they want their device to have an attractive price so that more people get one instead of getting a competitor's console. Their expected profit is primarily from selling games rather than hardware.
Selling the initial batch for a higher price is bad for that, because who is going to pay the higher initial price? Their most dedicated customers, who would have bought one from the next batch anyway if they don't get one of these. The ones who would only pay the intended sticker price are the ones who would buy the competitor's console instead of theirs if they had to pay more, and those are the customers they most want to get one immediately before the competition gets their money first.
I don't think we "need" scalpers though, but they are a fundamental part of markets, and arise when you are trying to break the natural flow of markets. Scalpers are the markets punishment for trying to have your cake and eat it too.
As an adult I have rarely wanted things as badly as I did when I was a kid. But I can sure outbid them.
I think you might actually be maximally wrong, as those with means have plenty of entertainment options compared to those without.
Scalping also actively damages the pricing, which is part of the product. Valve wants to sell this product at a specific price, which is targeted to an audience. By scalping and ultimately changing the price, you are hurting both the consumer, who now pays more, and the company, who doesn't see a cent of this increase and is now failing its target.
Scalping also damages the demand for the product, since it creates a submarket that is volatile and unpredictable.
Scalping is a bad thing because by basically any measure, a market with scalping is worse for everybody involved than one with scalping. Except for scalpers, who make money off it by making it worse for everybody else. Which is why scalpers are bad people.
Scalping is a natural "black" market which always pops up to satisfy market demand whenever artificial restrictions are placed on the market.
Even in this case, there will be scalpers providing for people with more money than luck, who want a day one steam machine.
But they only need to do that because of the scalpers! The scalpers aren't adding value, they're adding friction and expecting people to pay extra for it!
Scalpers can only profitably exist when demand at the list price exceeds supply. If you could magically ban scalping, then some number of willing customers wouldn't be able to buy at any price even after jumping through all the hoops.
Scalpers benefit customers who are willing to pay the market price but missed out on the lottery and otherwise wouldn't be able to buy at all.
Scalping also damages the demand for the product, since it creates a submarket that is volatile and unpredictable.
Basically the opposite. If there are scalpers, there is a predictable price that I can pay. If there aren't, I have to be lucky or have connections.
Which is why scalpers are bad people.
They are not.
If you entire business is helping the rich ensure the poor lose and raise the price in general, despite what the original provider may have wanted, you are undoubtedly a bad person.
They buy up ALL the stocks. Then puts them on auction sites after supply had hit as close to zero as possible. That's not how economics work by the books.
It's not a perfect system, but money is how we as a society determine how to allocate scarce resources. People labor under the promise that having additional money will give them an advantage in this type of situation.
But... perhaps these guys are playing a longer game? Reputation has value as well and from other comments this move seems to boost reputation significantly.
I'm always supprised that companies don't do a tiered price release, offer it at 200% price, you get it, 150%, you lower down the list and then 100% lottery time, that way they gain from those who can afford to pay more(maybe able to subsidise other sales later and price cuts down the line). Why feed scalpers when you can coin it directly and then offer a lower price to those who are prepared to wait a few more months or so.
In governance, sortition is the selection of public officials or jurors at random, i.e., by lottery, in order to obtain a representative sample.[1][2][3]
In ancient Athenian democracy, sortition was the traditional and primary method for appointing political officials, and its use was regarded as a principal characteristic of democracy.[4][5] Sortition is often classified as a method for both direct democracy and deliberative democracy.
But this is not nice:
> This item is not available for purchase in your region
For example: Start the bidding at BASE_PRICE (BP) + 2400. Then reduce the price by $1 every 3mins over the course of 5 days. Until the BP is met and then just carry on queuing.
You could buy it early if you want it that much or just wait an extra couple of days and end up in the queue at the BP.
I don't know if it would create pressure on that second it ticks over to the BP, so then its BP+1 - well I guess the nash equilibrium would be pushed up.
Given that people are going to spend money anyway it seems more honest and reasonable to direct this money to the party that makes the thing by letting it to run auction.
Society has found out money is a good way to encourage/discourage certain behavior in a predictable, deterministic, and quantifiable way. It really sucks that it has to be money, and maybe this can be solved with some other universal token that cannot be bought with wealth but equitably distributed some other way.
For example the dynamic fees in express lanes in California aren't really for the purposes of paying for the roads. They dynamically adjust it such that the traffic in the lane is operating at peak efficiency. Too few people using it obviously reduces throughput, so the price cheapens to have people using it, and too many people using it causes a collapse in efficiency so the price increases. Having some kind of adjustable cost on it lets the control system appropriately change the demand to keep it efficient.
I get your cynicism it would just go to billionaire shareholders, but profit itself isnt the enemy, greed is.
rent seeking however... rent seeking should be taxed to hell and back.
To me greed is being willing to take to the detriment of others.
edit: I don't particularly care for Google Sheets, just the idea of solving the underlying problem.
To be fair I don't think they'll be scalped a lot because the price isn't attractive already and alternatives are plenty.
> Are there any criteria for signing up?
> Customers must meet the following criteria to be able to sign up:
> You must have a Steam account in good standing.
> You must have made a purchase on Steam prior to April 27th 2026.
> Limit one signup per household. We will use payment method, shipping address, and other information to eliminate multiple entries.
I guess you could find somebody online and buy their account, but surely this would be a slow and unreliable process.
It's basically super easy and trivial to buy verified accounts for many many platforms
But the Steam Machine is really just a PC with a couple of neat features. If you are willing to overpay a scalper for a Steam Machine, it seems much more reasonable to suggest that maybe you should just take that same amount of money and buy a machine where that money translates into power rather than scalper profit. After it became clear that the Steam Machine was going to be hit hard by the price increases, I just bought a machine that was pure AMD. Where it is living I don't care if it's a little cube or not, nor do I care about the LED bar, and the integrated puck wasn't a big deal when I just use the current one as a charger too. For just a bit more money than the Steam Machine it's about 50% more powerful on all relevant fronts, and I may upgrade to a 9070XT (current latest-gen AMD card) which isn't an option on the Steam Machine. And since I bought that machine the same machine is now nearly $100 more expensive itself.
Paying a scalper for the controller at least makes some sense. Perhaps the same for the Steam Frame. But of the three things Valve is releasing this year, I'm not sure it makes sense to pay a scalper an extra 50% for a Steam Machine. In that scenario, you're not really paying that extra for the machine as a whole; you're paying extra for those "couple of neat features" alone, the form factor, the integrated controller puck, the LED on the front, whatever else is specifically about the Steam Machine and not a true statement about any machine with SteamOS or Bazzite installed. You need to want one of those things really, really badly to overpay that much. The value proposition is quite different.
Of course, this is a very analytical take on what may be a primary-emotional decision for some people. We'll see.
>Limit one signup per household. We will use payment method, shipping address, and other information to eliminate multiple entries.
Seems like they have chosen some reasonable options here. 2 months ago having purchase and trying to detect households. Likely also including phone number, Steam Guard client and family sharing.
Even Nintendo has been setting fairly strict requirements to pre-order some of their products, like requiring 50 hours of playtime on the original switch to pre-order the Switch 2
A huge number of people would rather pay a few hundred bucks more to have a plug and play appliance with a warranty from a reputable company show up on their doorstep. They don’t have to learn anything about hardware, or how to install Linux. It just works.
Some people are happy to save the money and take the risk on used hardware.
The Steam Machine is for the former, Steam the platform is for the former and the latter.
Convenience and being an early adopter are hardly at odds with each other. If anything, these people are early adopters because they want the convenience of not dealing with pc builds. People that already have gaming PCs and love that hobby aren’t going to line up to buy something that they enjoy making, or that they know enough about to feel comfortable buying used from Craigslist.
People are paying for a sure thing. Used PCs and no name Amazon machines are not a sure thing.
You and I might see it differently as people fluent with computers. Reseating a ram stick that got jostled in shipping isnt scary to most people on this site. It is terrifying to most of the world though. Steam is going after people that want to use PC games, but not play hardware tech.
Meanwhile, MS is trying to push copilot again.
p.s. a bit of a windows fanboy as well - used to do drivers for it, kind of like the internals / driver model / etc... but I really dislike the path they've taken, and there's nothing else like it.
Finally, I have an old projector setup with an x360/x1x on it right now (hc4000 + diy frame w/ dark energy abyss + 758 v3 + lsr305 + some subs - rag-tag), so I have a good excuse as well :P
i’ve changed. i really do not want to spend any extra time on yak shaving outside the job.
i am happy to pay $1500 for someone i trust with a fantastic track record to do it for me. plus its so cute!!! it will look great in my new apartment with the red faceplate. most gaming things are not cute.
The price of this steam machine is a rounding error away from the build it yourself DIY price. It's not marked up, this is just what PC components actually cost these days :/
Every time I've seen a comment like this, the eventual parts list is about the same price, has large deviations, or re-uses existing hardware (or used hardware). Looking at all the subreddits, the general consensus seems to be the price is fine for the components, and (if you care) it's impossible to build anything with that form factor.
actually, show me any PC like that...
> Yes, Steam Machine is optimized for gaming, but it's still your PC. Install your own apps, or even another operating system. Who are we to tell you how to use your computer?
It feels very commonsense that you should be able to run whatever you want on the computer that you have purchased, but it is surprisingly uncommon.
they created a nasty gambling system with their loot boxes that exists outside controlled casino environments and which impacts young adults a lot.
All I've seen is that everyone is doing at cost nowadays. The PS4 Pro was the last subsidized console.
A interesting scenario would be to sell the hardware at cost, but include a 30% off ticket to the steam store (up to a few hundred dollars, in savings).
$799 for a locked down version, $1049 for an unlocked version. Opportunity to pay $300 to unlock it later at any time. 5% discount on purchases on a locked device.
(then again i always buy the most expensive SKU they offer so im very outside the target buyer profile for such)
They are selling a x86 PC. All x86 PCs sold by everyone are open and you can install whatever you want.
It's commodity hardware packaged into a small box. There is nothing special here.
Trying to sell it as it if Valve are more consumer friendly here is nonsense.
What exactly do you think an Xbox is? PS4 & PS5?
1) Full compatibility with SteamOS. You won't have to fiddle with drivers/hardware/whatever to get it working[1].
2) The physical hardware is maximally condensed, more so than you'd be able to do yourself with a SFF build.
I'd have definitely considered this if I wasn't already doing my own SFF stuff. Gaming on the Deck is a delight and I'd love that console-esque experience for my primary gaming PC as well.
[1]: Incidentally, it looks like they're working on broader support. Sweet! https://www.theverge.com/games/953411/valve-steamos-desktop-...
So does the typical gamer who's not a nerd like GP. I'm not framing it as an insult, more like a reminder: we infamously ignore the power of brands and sensible defaults chosen for you.
The Steam Machine is the best of both worlds, yes, it is a plain PC and Valve is recognizing that. However, they are also selling a fully supported Linux gaming rig that plays many Windows games out of the box.
That might not excite everyone, but it does me.
I feel the 'don't waste time on HN' thing. I'm working on it, minimizing social media usage, minimizing non-productive screen time.
i picked up Darksiders 3 a few weeks ago to play on my deck. at some point i realized i was pretty underleveled but i didn’t wanna grind.
so, opened chatgpt in desktop mode and uploaded my save, asked it to write me a script to set my souls/xp/money to whatever number. it analyzed the save and spat out a bash/python script. after a chmod +x it worked flawlessly. done from bed took like 15 mins to figure it out end to end.
no other what other (handheld) console in history combines the depth of library, the slick console experience, and also lets you chmod +x.
Edit, reply to bjord as I am rate limited: HDMI CEC, the chipset, GPU drivers, controller receiver etc.
Edit, reply to robhlt: Thanks! Hope we can get that ported to Windows
for example: https://www.phoronix.com/news/Valve-Old-AMD-Linux-Love-Song
Nobody has even hinted that it would be nice to have a 3rd party store or the ability to run whatever OS on them freely.
I keep wondering why.
There is a certain appeal to this for many people that hacking it to run your own OS isn't really sought after.
I'm not sure if you're being dishonest or just ignorant of the console hacking scene.
But for consoles it's just crickets.
We shouldn't need to "defeat the DRM", it should be allowed full stop.
Check out the gameplay video partway down the page, where the two people are on the couch playing Cuphead. Right under "Your Steam library in more places."
It's just... a real clip of real people playing a real game and reacting in a real way. It's funny. I know it's stupid to call out, but how many exaggerated versions of this scene have you seen before? And Valve is smart enough to say "Let's just film two people playing a real game and snip a nice, realistic reaction shot from it."
Most of those are probably NOT plugged into a TV, so in that way I agree that these are not typical Steam users. That's why the Steam Machine was developed, to bring gaming back to the couch in a way that the Steam Link didn't succeed at.
Marketing is made so they you identify with the product or identify with an aspirational version of yourself. Gaming is seen as heavily male-dominated. Expanding that is smart.
(And yes, I know why you're asking and what answer you're looking for.)
Unfortunately I usually meet gopnik and niño rata in Dota and CSGO and not typical young nerds from Seattle
It's not my point, but I don't think you're giving a strong rebuttal either.
So what is it, are the people doing the marketing materials just straight up retarded or are you just living in a victim hood fantasy, unable to cope with the reality that you're the person people don't like, not your identity.
Reported.
(Your reply is another example of right-wing discourse being around prejudiced assumptions instead of reality.)
I'm very curious what you and others think the average Steam user really looks like.
Or pick some player profiles at random, count how many girls vs guys you find (very easy to tell with high accuracy just by looking at the games they play, yes there are exceptions but they're actually quite rare, I promise you can get >90% accuracy after you do a few).
Steam user base is at least 3/4 male by user count, probably even more by play time.
In any case, I don't think "not wanting to make assumptions about people based on little to no information" really counts as "very rigorous standards".
if you sampled 100 blackberry customers at random, they'd absolutely hate a software keyboard
and so on
This is how staged reaction looks like: https://www.residentialsystems.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/0...
The Steam's clip is actually nowhere near like that.
It's funny how it works. I took an iPhone selfie of myself as the character that I go out to do street photography as and my wife and my son say "you staged that!" but then I hand out my business cards with it and everybody else tells me it is a great photo.
It’s never, in EFL, “HOW…LIKE”
Next up is “make” vs “take” a decision.
When these machines were announced I switched to Fedora as a daily driver on my high end gaming rig.
It’s been awesome. I still have to go back to Windows for music production unfortunately. I may switch to Mac for that so I can completely abandon Windows.
I run an optical HDMI cable from my office to my TV and get to play games and use Linux in 77”.
Something feels awesome about that.
Right now Producers and HQ don't want to support it because "theres no money there" and they're bolstered by a crew of developers who have only ever touched Windows who will reinforce the notion that Windows is all you need (because they've sunk their entire career into the platform).
I remember bringing this topic up a decade ago and basically being laughed out of the room, slowly those laughs will become uncomfortable silences, then token support from the passionate, then proper initiatives.
It takes time, yeah, but we're so much further today already than we were 10+years ago.
Even without buying you can send Linux gaming signals by playing on Linux and participating in the hardware survey.
> This item is not available for purchase in your region
If you want to venture into the FOSS DAW realm on Linux you have to go to LMMS and Ardour. I've played around with them, they're a little bare-bones, but they do work. Issue is I haven't been able to use them properly, because I just can't stand to look at them, they are afflicted with the medium-size open-source project curse of looking particularly horrid. I hope this isn't taken as an affront to any of the developers behind these projects, a DAW is a hard task, but I keep asking myself, out of the set of developers who work on these projects, is there really no one who feels the same way as me? Am I just afflicted with some weird pixel-peeping autism-esque disorder that makes me stare at the constantly-reocurring-throughout-all-FOSS-applications clump of jarringly gradient-ed grey buttons with white icons on them, their round corners contrasting with each other because they're clearly placed way too close together than they were meant to be? (I swear I see this in every mid-scale project using QT and older GTK!)
And I also need to confirm, this isn't just a "slight annoyance" for me, I have genuine issues when I have to concentrate on a project within some application that is suffering from the FOSS UI affliction, my mind wanders to looking at those buttons again, or those #00FF00 greens, or at some label that has clearly seeped a few pixels downwards out-of-alignment with the button it was placed in...
Ugh, I know I have some issues for sure, but I know someone else has to care about this too? It's the main reason why I fail at using non-textual FOSS software, and have to resort to Logic Pro or Ableton!
Sorry for the rant, I had to get it out of me. I wish I had more time in a day, then perhaps I could go to these projects and help out with UI, but I have a feeling my proposals will be rejected, even if I had the time to make them, I have found most FOSS developers are quite happy with how their UI usually looks like, including many people here on this forum.
No doubt the price was lower before this hardware shortage, but the $800 is not a reliable number afaik.
That's set the steam machine at either $650 or $800, depending on which interpretation you're using.
https://bsky.app/profile/papapishu.bsky.social/post/3movfklq...
https://bsky.app/profile/papapishu.bsky.social/post/3movfklq...
It is an AOOSTAR GT37 which actually outclasses the €1,039 Steam Machine in most areas except graphics. One cannot blame Valve here though, the hyperinflation of RAM prices is too blame here.
AOOSTAR GT37 (€676 a few months ago [now vastly more expensive if you can still get one at all]) vs Steam Machine (€1039 right now)
CPU: 12x Zen 5 vs. 6 Zen4 Graphics: 16x RDNA 3.5 vs. 28 RDNA 3 RAM: 32 GB LPDDR5X vs. 16 GB DDR5 + 8 GB GDDR6 HDD: 1 TB vs. 512 GB (both NVMe-SSD)
I expect the Steam Machine to run graphically demanding FPS games quite a bit better due to the extra RDNA cores and faster VRAM. However it might actually be the inferior gaming machine for CPU/main RAM intense strategy or simulation games (e.g. Stellaris).
On Stellaris: I remember having a pretty good experience (not stellar) playing on a 2012 AMD FX-8350 desktop cpu. The six year old midrange laptop cpu Ryzen 4650u smokes that desktop cpu.
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/1780vs3766/AMD-FX-8350-...
Just to draw out the fact that with the Steam machine you will have a better Stellaris experience than what I had 7-8 years ago. (Because I assume even better performance than this laptop class cpu)
My thoughts go more on the question if 15GB ram 8GB VRAM is enough for the next 7 years. And if Steam verified will all be split up, and become more confusing, between the 3 different devices they have.
I’m not sure I’d want this at $550, but maybe. At $1050 without controller it’s a solid no.
I’m sure some people will want it. I have no interest in maintaining a PC so if I wanted to play PC games this is probably how I would do it. But the price just absolutely kills it for me.
Yeah I probably wasn’t going to then.
No way players will ever accept microtransactions...
Ok, Asia is doomed but no way western players will ever accept microtransactions...
No way...
Just to pick on someone, iBuyPower's cheapest "RDY" prebuilt gaming PC has 6 performance cores, 16GB RAM, 8GB VRAM RTX 5050, 1TB NVME, and costs $1200. Basically same specs as the Steam Machine, for a very similar price, but in a typical midtower instead of a sleek, compact cube
The RTX 5050 8 GB is 10-20% faster and the Intel 225F is significantly more powerful (a bit harder to get percentage ranges there since there aren't many 225 benchmarks).
The Steam Machine has been known to be roughly a Ryzen 5 3600 + RX 7600 M performance wise for a while and the release benchmarks have confirmed it; given Valve's statements that it would likely cost more than consoles before prices went haywire, I don't think the Steam Machine would ever have been priced competitively.
> The RTX 5050 8 GB is 10-20% faster
yeah... like I said, basically the same? but if you're determined to split hairs, then that 10-20% faster is also 10-20% more expensive ($1050 vs $1200), so it's still a wash either way. But when "just" a 5060 Ti 8gb (supposedly a $380 GPU) is then 50% faster than the 5050... Clearly the steam machine and 5050 are playing in the same ball pit here. They're doing the same gaming experience
At these prices, it's not going to convince console gamers/more casual gamers to move to Steam.
Steam Deck was also vastly more appealing at launch when the base model was £349 (64GB/LCD). It now starts at close to twice the price, £649 (512GB/OLED) despite the hardware being kind of old at this point.
I see examples like this: https://www.bestbuy.com/product/cyberpowerpc-gaming-desktop-... ($1200)
The Steam Machine is $150 cheaper, less storage, and due to lower TDP going to perform more poorly. But... I want something I can hide behind my TV that is very quiet. Can you help me find towers like that?
Steam machine is a PC (not like a console): - not priced as a loss leader - runs any desktop OS - it’s a PC
You can do all of this out of box, it’s turnkey, it’s primarily a console experience but a PC if you need it. My point was that comparing this to a prebuilt or BYO PC is like comparing a console to a PC. Different value prop.
I wish that Apple would throw a few nickels that way; Apple Silicon is almost wasted without a decent games library. It would realistically be my only computer if that were the case.
Valve could have priced this at 5k and probably found a couple thousand buyers, and if they only made a few thousand boxes they could claim it sold out then too. This thing is DOA in terms of having any major success or impact on the gaming market when I can walk down to my neighborhood PC store and either build a better PC myself for less money (at off the shelf markups no less!!!) or get a pre-built with better specs that costs less. I could buy a P5Pro and a Switch 2 combined for less money than the 2TB version, and the PS5Pro has 2tb as well!
Its actually mind boggling that Valve is coming in with a less economic product that a fucking hand-built premade at my local PC store.
In fact you could literally just buy a separate PS5 and Macbook Neo and spend less than most Steam Machine configurations, so even the "it's also a computer" selling point is not that big of a deal.
Rather odd to talk about an as yet unreleased product failing in the past tense.
But you cant compare the price point with what it used to cost and imagine that its overpriced now and that people will seek alternatives. There aren't any cheaper alternatives.
This has played out time and time again during every other supply-side shock. Once prices go up, they don't come back down.
For the current DRAM situation, I can almost promise we'll never see $60-$90 RAM again. Maybe, 32GB won't cost you $500 eventually, but it'll cost you $250-$350 instead of $500. If the market can bear it, why would anyone get into a price war that's just a race to the bottom where no one wins?
That doesn't disprove my point though. Prices are still higher as a baseline than before the supply side shock. Prices raise to a "new normal" and consumers adapt, removing pressure to lower back down to pre-shock levels.
wholesale egg prices have actually plummeted, yet retail prices have only drifted slowly downward incrementally, and have not reached the previous baseline. Its asymmetric price transmission, and its a documented economic phenomenon. "Prices go up like rockets, and fall like feathers"
Suppose you have a warehouse full of widgets. You bought them them for $450 each, and sell them for $500. You're really happy with this profit, and you can just keep selling them at $500...forever, right?
But then, I get my own warehouse and fill it with widgets that I bought at $400 each because I entered under better market conditions. And I really want to sell these widgets -- they aren't making me any money when they just sit there taking up space and burning rent.
So I price these widgets at $475, to attract customers. It works; the widgets are flying off the shelves. And they're being purchased by people who used to be your customers, and I'm making even more money per-unit than you are.
What's your next move? Do you want to keep losing customers to me, or do you want to adjust your price to be more competitive?
A new entrant isn't guaranteed to now price at $475. They'll see the incumbent being successful at $500. Now they price at $499 rather than trigger a destructive price war. Companies collude on this quite frequently. When everyone keeps their prices high, all get to enjoy the big margins.
Outside of that, ok so you have a warehouse full of widgets you need to move fast. So you undercut, and sell out. If demand is still bigger than your supply, you're now out of capacity, customers are going back to buying for $500 from your competitor. That means you've mispriced your limited inventory, so now you raise your prices up to closer to $500 because it helps you control your capacity, and also you know the market can clearly bear it.
Anyway, those are obviously overly simplified scenarios prices rarely fall down dramatically because of tacit collusion. Its asymmetric price transmission ("Prices go up like rockets, but fall like feathers")
Retailers are mostly free to offer things at whatever prices they want. But the market has more power than you may think to correct it.
Prices will continue to go up.
Though that’s kind of cheating considering it’s basically a monopoly at this point
If that bubble pops like it seems to be threatening to do memory prices could drop back to their old levels give or take some sticky inflation.
Can you explain this chart?
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/historical-cost-of-comput...
For reference, the PS5 Pro has more than twice the number GPU CUs, an 8-core CPU, a 2TB SSD, a controller, and costs $899.
Also, you can build a decent PC for $1049, but getting it into a decent form/noise factor is going to ratchet that price up. Add in the proprietary CEC stuff that Valve has done for it and it's not as terrible as it seems.
Even if I didn't have a Steam Library, I wouldn't buy the PS5 anyway: no Steam Sales there. And Steam Sales are a godsend.
I stopped PC gaming about a decade ago and my current daily driver is a Macbook. I periodically play games on my a PS5 or XBOX, but there are a ton of great games on my Steam wishlist.
I feel like I'm the exact target market for this (although I'm not going to buy at this price point at this time). I don't want to bother with Windows and would love a 'console' allowing me to play most Steam games without a lot of hassle.
With this thing you could buy it and then install your favorite Linux distro on it and never give Valve another dime. If they ate the cost, businesses would buy them up as the best value for the compute and they're not buying Steam games.
PS5 hardware sales started generating profit in the first year. Only for the first few month the sales were "subsidised".
Yes, but we are in the unique situation that we saw actually increasing prices for RAM and storage over time due to AI craze. You (or me) have no idea what Sony's markup on consoles is right now.
Valve often boasts that they have a very high Rev / Employee number.
The lower the price, the more boxes sell, hopefully making the platform large enough for publishers to target.
The higher the price, the better specs the box can afford, increasing the platform's longevity.
The hidden value you don't see in the specs is that publishers will target this platform specifically for a certain amount of time.
Will it run my Steam library of games or do I need to also pay 5000$ again with inflated prices?
Can you imagine if the PlayStation Store sold games on the PS5 that you couldn't play there because they were actually Windows games?
It isn't a short list of AAA games that don't run on SteamOS.
To be fair, all the latest generation consoles are near 100% backwards compatible with their respective last gen. This has historically been more tricky due to architecture changes but it seems like all consoles have converged into more or less bog-standard prebuilt computers so it's less of an ask.
But still, I trust my Steam library to last longer than anything I've bought digitally on consoles.
"...and it's a PC
Yes, Steam Machine is optimized for gaming, but it's still your PC. Install your own apps, or even another operating system. Who are we to tell you how to use your computer?"
It's not just a gaming console.
Note: I ask as someone with a Steamdeck sitting on the desk in front of me and a custom-built computer under my TV running Linux.
With Windows becoming increasingly hostile, I do think there's room for a hardware/software integrated "just works" offering in the Linux PC space. Plus software pricing is probably a lot more competitive than console (dunno, never had anything to do with consoles, but my impression has always been that hardware is a loss-leader there).
https://www.newegg.com/Gaming-Desktop-PC/SubCategory/ID-3742
That said, I've never had a Steam Deck or tried to seriously game on Linux, so I may be out of touch with how much smoother the picture is in an all-Proton world.
(the laptop issue turned out to be something in the firmware asserting BC PROCHOT for some reason; for now we can periodically clear it with the ThrottleStop utility, but who knows what the actual underlying problem is)
valheim started with extremely poor steam deck performance, but at some point, the team did steam deck optimizations that got it humming nicely enough
And I've paid full retail price for maybe two of them, the vast majority is from 50-90% sales. You don't get those for the PS5 that much.
I also don't have any need for a "Gaming PC", what I've always wanted is a console but with my Steam games. This is it.
I think it's partly because, on console, the sellers / devs have an incentive to reduce the price of physical copies, because they need to compete with used copies. They killed used copies on PC, so they don't need to compete with that market.
but youre exactly the target market for this it sounds like
I think you could kind of get there with a gaming pc that boots up steam big picture immediately? but it would feel hacky vs this for sure
If the price was not upset by the RAM debacle it would have been a very attractive offer, no subscription and more upgradable. I still think in time when the market calms down and supply is less constrained it will reach that price point, even at its current price it's not a completely unreasonable offering for a family member especially with the ability to share your existing steam library.
I can't see anyone other than enthusiasts buying it over a normal console or Windows laptop.
(both "semicustom AMD" so probably effectively the same architecture)
I’m not the target but I can see the point.
indie devs have easy access to release on PS5, latest Xbox, Switch alongside Steam simultaneously
the subscription any of those users have (a prerequisite for online or multiplayer access) also comes with many many free games, games that are otherwise $4 - $25 without the subscription
people already in those ecosystems have been accumulating (unplayed) titles just like Steam users meme about, and as soon as they sign in on their new console all are available
I think this product is going to be hamstrung by its attempts to present as a midpoint between a PC and a console. The way this is being achieved seems to be by selling a device with the specifications of a console but the price tag of a PC.
Valve already did the "this is a lowend device and that's okay" thing with the Steam Deck, and got away scot-free because nobody expected a handheld and people didn't have a ton of preconceived notions. The Deck was also a better value since it was (prior to the price hike) priced reasonably for its specifications.
The desktop PC and/or living room console modalities are both significantly more stratified. People have solidly defined expectations about price-to-performance-to-usability ratios in both of these sectors, and I worry this doesn't go far enough in any particular direction to meet the demands of either market.
Leaves me wondering who exactly this is for.
The Mac mini costs $600.
[1] https://www.xda-developers.com/mac-mini-m4-gaming-hands-on/
However, at the price of $1130 for Steam Machine + controller, you might as well buy the Mac mini and a PS5 on top for $1250.
It just seems like a poor deal.
The best argument I have heard is that people already have large Steam libraries, but then again, those people typically already own a gaming PC.
A great example of the target audience are the people who've been playing games on the Steam Deck, but want something with a bit more oomf without the hassle of building a PC. I am not in that demographic! But I have a friend who is. He's quite happy to pay more for convenience. He already has a gaming laptop, but I can see him getting this to replace his ancient Steam Link.
A piece of hardware that runs a basket of popular higher-end games at close to 60fps is generally what people look for. If you know you wanna run DF you can use much cheaper hardware, but if you wanna run "games" you wanna check that your target pc performs good enough on a selection of games.
Good - at parity with a PS5 Pro or XBSX in the latest AAA titles.
Great - better than PS5 Pro or XBSX in the latest AAA titles.
I mean that for real: I’ve been impressed by the performance of the M4 Mini I own, but a gaming machine it is not
Maybe in the future. There should be a new generation of Mac Mini's soon, further extending the performance lead of Apple chips.
Maybe once Fable is back or the next OpenAI model releases, we could take a look at implementing a compatibility layer to translate DirectX games to Metal.
Even if that should yet be out of reach, such a project may become more feasible if AI progress keeps up.
At some point you need to face the reality of it not happening.
https://pcpartpicker.com/
[0] https://pcpartpicker.com/list/KY3VW9
PCPartPicker Part List: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/3WkCdq
Price: $1021
So if you want something small, it's a bit more expensive
Maybe they lowered to 16gb to reduce the price.
A relic from “Hard Disk Drive”, which was about two persistent storage technologies ago.
This is what you get for the price. Maybe a 100-50 max difference.
I've been looking at building a TV box for a while and this was the number it was hitting
Don't get me wrong, I'm not commenting on the value, but rather the markets ability to handle it.
This may be the best option of a couple of terrible ones.
I would also be expecting Wifi 7 support as well as unified memory considering they ordered custom AMD silicon. Understandable that it is a rather conservative design for their first generation though.
Wired Xbox 360 controllers (and most of their off brand alternatives) have a non-removable USB-A cable.
All my cables I would connect to my home PC/macbook are USB C. IE bluetooth adaptor, sd card adaptor, external ssd, mouse/keyboard, a soundbar etc.
I have several chinesium clones of dewalt batteries/tools, IE lights, compressors etc. They all have USB c output.
"most pc perihpials are USB-A" is not exactly correct for some time now. (not that I'm a fan.)
Lower transfer rate means less shielding is needed for the cable as well as the overmold, and enables longer and more flexible cables, as extra shielding stiffens the cables.
The wired controller is USB-A. The bluetooth controllers "are" USB-C... but came with A-to-C cables, not C-to-C.
Approximately every time I want to plug something in to my laptop that's not a charging cable for another device, it's USB-A.
More to the point, anything I'd want to plug in to a gaming machine, is usb a.
Most new gaming mice and keyboards sold in 2026 use USB A. Not to mention all the older ones that still work.
In 2026 the single most useful port to add to my Macs would be USB-A, with no close competition. On any device with 2+ USB-C ports, it'd easily be worth sacrificing a USB-C to get a USB-A.
Most devices have a cable that’s fully replaceable so you can choose to use C to C or C to A but basically everything has usb C on the device end.
Yes, but we're talking about the ports on the Steam Machine, so the host end is what matters. And gaming peripherals are likely even more skewed towards USB A, because Macs are not the main target for that.
The only PC peripheral I have with USB-A is a mouse dongle when I'm lazy and don't connect bluetooth - and that one I connect to the monitor.
All others are usb-c.
I've tried various iterations of a gaming HTPC over the years, and they've all been pretty miserable. That lack of any reasonable or stable CEC solution this whole time so far has honestly been an oversized anchor this whole time. And I think Valve is doing a bit of a disservice not advertising it more.
Valve is still great.
Edit, reply to Rohansi as I am rate limited, I’m talking about gaming PCs not consoles.
Wish it was cheaper but would look forward to a “just works” experience including sleep/instant game resume.
Add my thousands of already owned Steam games and it makes me excited for a great couch gaming experience. It’s the reason I don’t get a PS5/Switch cause I don’t wanna rebuy all the games and they are not on sale as much.
Sounds like it's in the same vicinity for graphics power. Not worth $1k for a tiny bit more RAM.
I do wonder if this will give me any useful presets, in the same way the Steam Deck does. I have no interest in tweaking graphics settings one at a time.
I have even connected 2 computers directly with an ethernet cable to rule out my networking gear and it was ok but very very far from perfect!
Not to mention the experience is clunky at best. Switching resolution, losing settings, dealing with encoding/decoding, etc.
> In an effort to improve the purchase experience and limit resellers, we're implementing a reservation system.
> Starting right now, you can sign up for the Steam Machine model/bundle you're interested in.
> If you're busy now, no problem: You can sign up anytime before Thursday June 25th at 10 a.m. Pacific.
> At that time, we will close signups and do a one-time randomization to determine the reservation and waitlist order.
The CPU hard-throttles to 4 GHz after exactly 8 minutes of sustained load.
4 year old chip design on an equivalently old process node, not that unlike nvidia selling 2-3 year old chips as the spark. Thanks to AI boom, consumer market really just getting the warmed-over leftovers here from AMD and NVDIA.
Having to enter a lottery to buy one makes it feel like Valve doesn’t have new stock in the pipeline for the foreseeable future.
Given it requires a Steam login of a certain age to register, I suspect this is just to limit the scalpers.
Is it dumb of them to do this? Not really, they got unlucky with the timing and they already designed the machines. Selling them below cost to subsidize steam-sales would probably create bad incentives for them.
What will this mean for Valve's future? Nothing, they're still a relatively lean company with a money machine.
Will this dissuade them from creating hardware in the future? Probably not, the Steamdeck was really succesfull and they've got more than enough resources to do a few failed experiments.
They could have sweetened the deal somehow, though. Maybe owners get a discount on games or something. It was bad timing, but it's not like they can't afford to take a bit of a hit for good will.
Also, I don't think their target market is people who don't own any Steam games yet. It's going to be people with already extensive back catalogues on Steam.
"native" macos games on the m series aren't even that much better because they usually just run through a rosetta layer that seems to lock FPS at only 40. Fans will spin full bore because the game is so unoptimized.
This is glorious
Which tracks, to my wit; my Switch 1 is a buyers remorse product. If I knew that a Linux x86 handheld was eventually getting made, I'd have never bought it.
They started with Proton after Microsoft suddenly made a move with the Windows store and also started bolting down Windows a bit. As with most things Microsoft that initiative quietly died over time. But at that time Valve probably couldn't afford to take any chances. It probably also made them realize they had build a castle on someone elses land.
If you are making money in the amounts Valve is, then even the simplest risk analyses is going to show that "Microsoft rug pulling you" is one of your few existential threats. Even though the probability is low or medium-ish at best, the impact is massive. Even anti-trust isn't going to save you. By the time Microsoft gets convicted, you are already dead. Just look at Netscape.
Valve understands that inextricably tying themselves to Windows is a long-term death sentence. SteamOS represents a lifeboat for when Microsoft goes full iOS and decides to lock down Windows in exchange for taking 30% of all software purchases. Valve has been taking this threat seriously since at least 2010, which is why they've been investing in Linux gaming. Both Steam Deck and the Steam Machine are further steps toward complete independence from Microsoft.
You can achieve a lot by specifically optimizing your game for a particular machine and Valve has such extreme market power that every game studio releasing on PC will make sure that their game looks and runs great on the Steam Machine.
This machine is more limited than I expected e.g. only 8 GB VRAM, however because of Valve's market power all game studios will see 8 GB VRAM as the new limit. Every game will now aim to look and run great with only 8GB VRAM.
As a poor gamer, I truly appreciate Valve setting such a low standard for gaming PC hardware. Game studios were certainly already looking at 16 GB VRAM + 32 GB RAM as the new standard for AAA games. That is now history.
https://youtu.be/cUJGvKHdDRo?si=q7VrGGpP3mDlLhKl&t=28
It could have been something, but the target market is precisely the market that will look at the price and say "Nah".
And as one point of clarification, game makers by and large still aren't targeting Linux. This machine works via the absolutely excellent, almost magical Proton (https://github.com/valvesoftware/proton) that lets you run most of your Windows library on Linux, largely seamlessly.
I disagree that the target market won't accept the price. I see the target market as less technical people, who don't care about hardware specs, but just want to play Steam games without issues.
The price is in the same region as an iPhone, and if you care enough about PC gaming to buy a gaming PC at all, you are certainly willing to spend at least as much money on it as you spent on your phone.
Ftfy
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/brbFsK This is $50 more but it has 1TB of storage and a newer generation of both CPU and GPU and will absolutely destroy it.
I'm sure you could get actually easily cheaper and better even, I haven't followed the market a lot lately.
Prebuilt are likely to be even better deals because they will use some cheap noname parts for the RAM and the PSU, which is mostly fine.
It's not huge, it's a mid-tower (admittedly, not a pretty one). But the real benefit is that it is upgradable. Basically you are trading off user serviceability for "it just works" and the form factor.
Another thing the Steam machine has is HDMI-CEC support, which is nice if you intend to use this with a TV, perhaps with KDE Plasma Bigscreen. But $1000 is rather steep for a console/HTPC.
That’s great.
That’s rough.
At this price and features it'll probably just be a footnote.
Steam Machine game testing - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48632989 - June 2026 (19 comments)
What do you mean? Most PC's have mixed memory configurations.
Valve gets it
this is for folks who want steam games in their living room and dont want to build their own system.
However at this point in my life, the best gaming experience i get is from XBox live/online subscription. I got to the browser, click on a game and start playing without caring for anything else. The most complicated thing i have to do is connect an Xbox gamepad for games that require it (I prefer keyboard +mouse whenever possible).
I wish Steam had something like that for the games I've bought. I've got several games in the library, I cant play some of them because currently I have a Mac m4.
And this likely goes on until AI really dies or stabilises...
https://www.amazon.com/MINISFORUM-Desktop-Computer-Output-Gr...
I want a Steam Machine for my living room, but these specs are just terrible for 2026. According to Digital Foundry, this $1200 machine is worse than a $500 6-year-old base PS5.
Indeed, thankful for that.
Provides some of the worst value for money on the market ($1,049 with no controller, additional $70 for controller): worse than the PS5 ($599), Xbox Series X ($599), Switch 2 ($449), and DIY PCs.
This doesn't have the best value
Steam Machine - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45903404 - Nov 2025 (1514 comments)
For balance:
I don’t need a Steam Machine - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45943992 - Nov 2025 (272 comments)
I'm not convinced this hardware is "an extension of PC gaming, not a console" when the hardware is generations out of date. To credit Microsoft, Sony, and other players, the reality is that unless you are "in the game" for decades, you HAVE to provide a convincing differentiator from the other console markets.
Steam had this with the Steam Deck and personally, I see the world moving to thin clients that play games via some remote desktop infrastructure. It makes no sense to buy this hardware even if it was 500-700 dollars.
In my opinion, it would've been worth the money to just buy a gaming PC, put it in a garage, hidden room, etc with the networking gear, then stream it over the network to a Steam Link or using Apollo/Artemis/Moonlight/Parsec; anything.
Tangential to this discussion: Steam is in the unique position to create a kernel anti-cheat. I know that's not popular. But they are the only ones with the install base AND ability to pull it off in a such a fashion that wouldn't be so god-awful. It's clear that multiplayer gaming isn't going to go away from kernel anti-cheat. It's also clear that developers are still going to target Windows-only with Steam Deck support as a best-kept basis.
I don't see the Steam Machine/Deck as a competitor until they solve the kernel anti-cheat portion. Until then, it can play games that are older, not popular, or single-player which is a valid market but not one that I am a part of, anyway.
EDIT:
S) It's not meant for you.
S) But it's on-par with the PS5. S) It can be a regular PC. S) I just want to game on hardware that's good enough. Dead-on-arrival doesn't mean that this doesn't serve a niche. The niches this serves just really cannot be this compelling. You cannot tell me you have $1,050 laying around just to spend on this machine that comes with 512GB of storage.I don't get it. I don't get the market segment that does want this when there's so many better options on the market.
Feels like they should have gone cheap. Undercut the switch and be the cheapest way to play games on your TV. We're pretty far past performance equalling more entertainment. A 150-200 box to play indie side scrollers is a niche that exists.
But even docked, it's a winner for her and all her friends. She's converting more parents over via her friends. The well off ones are just buying from Valve like me. The less so, are using whatever PC is around to mixed results. I'll see how it goes as the kids get older, but I think there's a bigger case than you think and I think it's mostly years long PC gamers who want a more communal experience be it with partners, kids, or friends.
Even buying an old tiny micro PC that's 10th gen Intel would've been a cheaper buy.
There's also potential for community fixes for older games with issues. And easier troubleshooting cause you can just look up "fix for X game Steam Machine", or "does X game work on Steam Machine"
There are advantages to this over something generic, or building your own machine.
lmao bring up the wife factor, please.
We are devs here. We can have and build gaming PCs I hope?
Yes I will gatekeep.
Yes it is the best as I can get and play anything I want.
They will buy a PS5, Switch or Xbox.
If you know PC gaming you will just get a gaming desktop. With newer hardware.
The online discourse around this is also incredibly toxic, filled with utopians who don’t understand how serious cheating is in these games, or that kernel anti-cheat, while not perfect, is the best solution available today.
FWIW, the easiest way to dispel the fallacies pumped out by these individuals is to ask how much time they've sunk into a reasonably contemporary competitive online game. I almost never meet people who have these delusions about anticheat being ineffective that also has actually invested significant (>500) hours into the games that they're appropriate for.
(people who work with spam and fraud/abuse prevention also usually don't have these delusions, because the underlying economics are similar. turns out that actually having experience with a thing is enough to disillusion most people of stupid ideas about that thing, who know?)
All of us refuse kernel level anti cheat.
Dota overwatch is the best we have available for anti cheat. It's better than kernel level anti cheat
Ring 0 anticheat is a mitigation, and just one step down the road of enforcing fairness. The goal of erasing cheaters quickly becomes a Procrustian bed that alienates fair players and funds cheat developers, there's nothing that gamedevs can do client-side to solve this problem without redefining how PC gaming works. Out of all the games I've put 500+hrs into, votekick is the only working anticheat that I've encountered.
Competitive games will likely add AI-based flagging into the mix, but it still doesn’t make sense to make cheating as trivial as adding a few uprobes/kprobes on a Linux box.
I would, admittedly, be interested in an anticheat that reboots the machine for deck into a secure mode.
The GPU is on par with the 3060 12GB and RX 7000 series GPUs which are older.
The PS5 is six years old! This is a brand new machine!
The Steam Survey is a better indicator of what you should target vs. something like the Steam Machine or Deck IMO.
I can get something like 80% of the graphics with 20% of the GPU because the places where games are really pushing graphics out now are really resource intensive. Ray tracing is amazing but we got REALLY REALLY good at making games look good without it too.
Wait, really? I looked at the specs and saw like 2/3 the CUs of a PS5.
"No wireless? Less space than a Nomad? Lame"
During covid, instead of getting second budget gaming PC, I setup janky multi-seat program (Aster), to split single windows machine where I could play locally and someone else could play on steamlink. There's so many games out there that you can run multiple instances simultaneously. Or simply stream desktops to media room paired with a good remote.
It was very janky, setup, streaming DRM (or not). But justifies world of spending on one highend system than multiple mid / tier. The Aster program was designed for low income nations where you split a single workstation into like 8+ substations (i.e. education). TBH if Valve sold a 2-3k steammachine super host that can stream multiple games to different thin client, and value proposition is this is the only entertainment unit for your entire house, I think it would pique interests. Maybe tile different streams into one client for splitscreen playing. Sell those controllers.
I really don't see the vision Valve is looking for here.
Well if you scroll down the page, it's presented as a selling point of the machine
You can barely code in such an environment to a satisfactory degree. You want to stream 4k games with low latency?
I'm someone who has built dozens of gaming PCs, and wired my house. I also have zero interest in doing the above... if I have to pay few hundred extra to get a Steam machine hooked up to a TV without all that hassle... I'll do that.
It's not the absolute best value for gaming. It's not horrible in current market conditions but it's also not targeting "best value for gaming" anywhere in the marketing materials. It's hardware that can play your Steam library on your TV. There are harder, less expensive ways to do that, as there have been for ages.
If you're a console gamer, there are less expensive, just as easy options to play console games, so it's definitely not suited for that market.
It's really only catering to people with disposable income that want a cute way to hook up a Steam-capable machine to a TV. It's not a huge market, nor is it a non-existent market.
It was probably a bigger market at $750 than $1050, but we can't have nice things.
Some people say this same thing about the Nintendo Switch and its successor, but here we are, with the former closing in on highest selling console of all time, and the latter tracking above that.
There isn’t teal system seller at the moment
Look at the PS2. Incredible games on bespoke custom harware.
We didnt know how good we had it.
This is just a x86 PC.
Note that you can order more storage but not more RAM. Although that may also be to force vendors to target this exact architecture.
Also: oooh internal power supply! Someone thought about elegance too.
https://www.phoronix.com/news/AMD-Marek-Joins-Valve
> a Nintendo Switch would provide much better bang for you buck.
A secondhand Steam Deck would also be better value, but this isn't a value-focused product. The Steam Machine is Valve's second stab at the premium couch-based PC gamer market, this time with Proton and a bigger focus on controller usability for ordinary PC games.
.....and if you think this is expensive just wait until the PS6 and new Xbox are released.
I couldnt produce 10y visa statements from another country i lived in.
Since then I just dont use steam, shame cause i like the hw
I would have hoped for ~600$ with the economic realities maybe 800$, but 1000$+ just feels like too much doesn't valve have like a multi-billion dollar muscle couldn't the folks make it a tad cheaper...
I guess we can only blame the current market conditions at the end of the day.
Linux more or less runs most Windows games. The ones that don't run are ones where the developer is going out of their way to make them not run - mostly with kernel-mode anti-cheats that just find themselves staring at the wrong kernel.
Steam makes that pretty seamless and Steam games "just work". For non-Steam games you need to do some tinkering, it's stuff that most people browsing this forum can do.
It follows a different philosophy. I've been using atomic systems for the past year or so as my main driver.
If you want to install something that needs superuser access, you do it inside a container. This protects your OS from breaking.
The number of times I've accidentally installed something which broke my window manager or compositor is now zero
I wonder if they mean that? Japan is 100V.
That said, there are signs that it's coming to the AMD drivers. [1] [2]
[0] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/02/hdmi-forum-to-amd-no...
[1] https://www.techpowerup.com/348723/amd-readies-full-open-sou...
[2] https://www.fosslinux.com/157755/hdmi-2-1-on-linux-complete-...
Either you want a gaming computer, and you'll get a much better one that can be upgraded in the future for the same price, or you want a console, and you'll never pay a grand for it.
4 years old hardware and poor connectivity.
I think if the Xbox ended up being more like the Steam Machine (i.e. more like a PC) then this middle ground that the Steam Machine sells to would probably go away as I don't think the group of folks who care that it's Linux based is high enough to support production.
All that said, I don't think this is a good value. I'm presuming if I did a little work SteamOS 3 would be workable for me, and I have significantly more RAM, and possibly a better GPU? Not exactly sure where the GPU falls out, but I definitely believe I could buy a better GPU for less than the new box.
If it gets preferred shipment for the controller, you could buy it and sell the box and keep the controller. :) I think my controller ship date is estimated in 2027 right now.
Pricey, but so is any other sort of electronic entertainment hardware these days.
take a sip at GamingOnLinux community... they don't seem to care about stuff running perfectly on Proton and not natively or that Gabe is buying another 600 million USD yatch. they love the Steam ecosystem more than developers crafting games and abiding to 30% of fees that are a clear sign of monopoly power
It would be incredible to convert my dusty XSX to a linux box
I expect to get the rest of this decade out of my Steam Deck so IDK, very different to my normal expectations for a computer. The Steam Deck also defines a floor that will allow compatible games to be very performant on the Steam Machine so I think that will help the Steam Machine have a decent lifespan.
I also think on some level we need to start resigning ourselves to getting 10+ years out of our computers!
Here's hoping my $135 BC-250 arriving tomorrow works without any issue.
Either way, congrats to Valve!
As I noted when announced, it's something that doesn't get headlines, but a real barrier for enjoyment for a console-like PC. Hate being stuck with 'guest 1' and 'guest 2' or whatever. Many games want each player to progress and without true multi sign on, it just doesn't work. Hence games dropping local multiplayer on PC.
https://www.tomshardware.com/video-games/console-gaming/valv...
I hope this and the steam deck-likes continue to be successful and incentivize developers to optimize their games for last-gen and portable hardware. I think the "steam deck compatible" certification has already been fairly good for that.
I'm buying the Steam Machine as well to game on the couch. Give me 4k 60fps and that's all I need. The Steam Controller is also fantastic shape on my hands, very comfortable.
How'd the 14 sneak in here
dhh has been parroting tony robbins stuff and other vaguely white supremacist stuff on his blog.
His blog is a mix of zealous out-of-touch and unloved techbro shit and the most rancid far-right essays possible. Trust me, he's earned it.
It makes me feel insane that people just skip over this stuff. The guy is openly citing "people" like Tommy Robinson yet he's still a popular and respected distro guy? I'm going to commit a crime.
Was already kind of annoyed at the "manual" not being very comprehensive - think I'll switch to another distro or fully yank control away from Omarchy and just roll my own Arch, I guess. Depends on how much work it'll take.
I'm glad I asked!
You can install it on your normal, average Arch installation anyways. Don't need to rip everything out from the root just for a pre-configured meme distro. It's not as if Omarchy had hard forks of all the software it steals, anyways. It really is just dotfiles.
Personally, I'm rarely "surprised" by a need to play a specific game that I don't already have downloaded/installed so I can just tell Steam to download the game in advance. But if I were to be in such a surprise scenario, we're talking the difference between popping on one youtube video while I wait or popping on two youtube videos while I wait. In both scenarios, I am waiting for a small but not insignificant amount of time... now if we could get 10gbps that'd be a game changer. I wouldn't even context switch for a 2.6 minute wait.
[0] https://gameboost.com/blog/call-of-duty-bo7-download-size
Now, I don't want to overstate it: it's simple disappointment. I'm still interested in the machine, as is.
Now I envy you living in a country where an internet uplink speed of > 1GbE exists for typical private households.
Fairly common for those with full-powered gaming desktops and Steam Decks, and soon, Steam Machines.
Personally... my internet is only 300 Mbps. My WiFi connection is roughly on par with 1GbE. I have a very small pool of 2.5GbE capable devices, but overall I'm just not fussed about making the switch.
I find it far more plausible that AI-assisted game dev will help indies catch up in scale to 10 year old AAA than the modern AAA studios deciding to throw in the towel on the graphics arms race.
At Xbox Showcase, many of the popular beats were bringing back elements from Halo or Gears of War that fans missed.
The formula for making hits seems to be pretty clear, but the studios are bucking it.
indie games community has joined the chat
I mean publishing titles with the polish & breadth of content of Arkham City , 2013 Tomb Raider , Titanfall 2 etc.
Luckily the market did find a sort of stable target to aim for with the Steam Deck; many modern titles do aim to work well with those modest specs, such as Cyberpunk 2077, Baldur's Gate 3 etc. And when Blizzard launched Diablo IV on Steam, they explicitly announced that they had partnered with Valve to ensure the game was heavily optimised for the Deck and very playable on Day 1 (and if was, from my experience).
Hopefully we see more such examples with the Steam Machine. And I do agree with you that they could've gone with specs worth $250, but sadly with the current pricing crisis, $250 won't get much and I bet many people would've laughed at the specs. Even the Switch 2 now costs $500. :(
The capitalism part actually made sense until it didn't
Steam Machine
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48632884
can i build a mini pc myself? probably but meh
Honestly tempted to buy a couple for relatives, who do some phone gaming and one who owns a 3DS they use, and see if they find anything interesting in PC gaming. Also make it a decent media center of course too.
And lack of DRM makes a PC in general a mediocre experience for official streaming services if you want more than 720p streaming. If you care about that.
Now that I see the final price of the Steam Machine, I'm gonna be recommending the BC-250 more strongly.
That's what, ~4-5 years of gaming on a superior GPU without the headaches of hardware failures or upfront cost of 1000$?
Yikes Valve. The only folks buying gaming PCs these days are people eeking out an advantage in competitive 3D shooters or folks unaware of how far cloud gaming has come.
I couldn't imagine playing a game by streaming inputs to a server 30ms away, which then streams those inputs another 30ms to the game server, and then having that round trip.
60ms screen delay and 120ms total delay.
One more data point - you're getting 1080p medium settings (for latest games) with a Steam Machine at ~1000$ upfront vs 4k max settings but 20-50ms added latency (for most people) for ~20$/mo without any longterm commitment.
That's where we're at. I'm in the 2000$ upfront to get max settings, minimal latency camp myself but I consider that to be a niche, luxury purchase category.
Yet it will still be out of stock for a long time.
A company that spins up a division, builds a product, sells 100k of them, and winds down is a success
Keep in mind this entire venture from Valve is also about ensuring they can't be made a vassal of Microsoft.
I dont have much hope in getting that, let alone this.
Now we're expected to pay almost 2x the cost of a current-gen console for what is probably near-identical console performance? Doesn't make sense. I appreciate Valve being in the hardware business and I understand that inflation/the AI bubble are hurting PC components but a grand for this is a terrible value. I mean let's see what the benchmarks look like, but "Semi-custom AMD Zen 4 6C / 12T" sounds like what's in the PS5 and Xbox One. Actually those have 8C/16T CPUs.
lol
I think most of people who wanted (me included) a steam machine are now between buying it or not buying anything at all.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45908208