Steam Machine Discussion

[mike.coulter]

It seems like a fantastic machine, it’s just a shame the industry has ruined entry price points for average consumers.

I’m sure it will do well, and if prices can come down I’m sure it would do even better.

 

[jeffpeng]

The price that shows up on no "DIY vs. Steam Machine" comparison is the integrator tax. You literally cannot build a PC this compact, this well integrated, this silent and with all the custom HDMI trickery yourself with parts available from NewEgg. You just *can't* unless you are willing to spend substantial amounts of time and actually have the skills required to pull it off.

But I also get the the Steam Machine sits in a really weird spot the Steam Deck didn't launch into:

The Steam Deck was and largely still is competing with the Nintendo Switch. And here it offered a really compelling value: vast back catalogue of games, a lot of which you probably already own, now on the go in basically a hand-held PC. Awesome.

The value proposition of the Steam Machine is: small neat silent box that also has HDMI-CEC. Those are two very specific features to care about, and I feel for most people that already have games on Steam they lose to "most fps per dollar". Now for people that are *new* to steam... it's a really tough sell compared to the PS5 or even the XBox.

The bottom line is this: people want a console with console features at console prices that also is a PC that does PC things with PC performance. That simply doesn't square. The current hardware economics just make this even worse.

 

[East India Company]

There really is one born every minute I guess.

Indeed, and fortunately there are also plenty born with the patience to educate them.

 

[Queen6]

Very cool and niche machine, but not the budget friendly cube Valve hoped to put out. Had this come out at $500-$700 it could have done very well.

That's shame of it, had the Steam Machine launched at Valve's original target price... For many it would have been a solid solution. The Steam Machine is clearly not designed for enthusiast's who likely have far more powerful HW. More for the average gamer on a budget who wanted a reasonably priced plug & play solution. I wouldn't be surprised if Valve was originally targeting a higher spec, but that's simple not possible in the current economy.

Valve simple doesn't have the clout and has to live with what it can get at massively inflated prices. Those that think it's underpowered & overpriced go look at the AI industry & chip makers as they the ones at the root cause... Unless the AI bubble burst HW prices are only going to keep increasing for the foreseeable... Even Apple is increasing pricing and reducing SKU's nor are they alone.

Q-6

 

[leifp]

I’m both happy and conflicted that they’ve released it now. They did all the work, might as well profit from it. Thanks to the market it’s an absurdity. But it will, like the Steam Deck (eventually), get updates and down the line is when I’ll be interested in it. I have a NUC with an RTX2060 in it and that’s the machine it needs to beat, soundly, before I’ll be tempted into purchasing a Steam Machine. Or I’ll just get a different NUC replacement. Regardless, steamOS is the reason I’m intrigued, and I may well install that on my NUC.

 

[diamond.g]

I originally wanted one if it would work well with the Vision Pro but after seeing the disappointing reviews and the price, I’ll probably wait for the next generation

That seems like a weird pairing.

Both your CPU and GPU are substantially more capable than what's in the Steam Machine.

Eh the CPU performance probably isn’t as far apart as one would think. Zen 4 is a pretty good upgrade over Zen 2. Even 4c with its lower clock headroom.

 

[salamanderjuice]

That seems like a weird pairing.

Eh the CPU performance probably isn’t as far apart as one would think. Zen 4 is a pretty good upgrade over Zen 2. Even 4c with its lower clock headroom.

Steam Machine CPU should be faster. The 3700X has a couple extra cores but they're slower.

 

[diamond.g]

Steam Machine CPU should be faster. The 3700X has a couple extra cores but they're slower.

Everything I could find indicates the multi core performance is about equal and the Z4 single core performance is higher. But in this case the SM is GPU bound so it probably doesn’t matter all that much.