> 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.
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.
I've never understood why anti-scalpers just don't work backwards from shipping address. Are these scalpers all really keeping hundreds of actual physical addresses they can receive packages at? Like if you see the limited product has 100 orders going to the same building, or apartment, or whatever then flag it before it goes out. Limit PO Boxes, etc.
Sure they can find mules to buy+receive one and then sell to the scalper, but the more steps you put in the better. Same for the people scamming Sam's club by buying memberships, ordering limited items, then refunding the membership. Just lock orders to members older then >1yr and make sure it only ships to the actual physical address attached to the membership. Flag multiple memberships at the same address.
I've run a modest shipping op and the second I saw even a couple orders of the same product going to the same address I would halt it and do additional verification.
I really wanted a PS5 when it was first released, and I refused to pay the scalper tax to get one, so I spent a few minutes a few times a day over a couple of weeks trying to snag one from one of the many retailers selling them. Extraordinarily frustrating, I was not so interested in this process that I was going to script it or any such nonsense, I just wanted to eventually get lucky and snag one.
I eventually did, and when it finally arrived at my doorman building I mentioned what was in the package to the doorman, and how happy I was to finally get my hands on it after the effort expended and he said "oh really? there's a guy on the 5th floor who's bought dozens of them - he sold me one at cost".
At the scale of the PS5 release (I don't know how many they first shipped in 2020, but they're at >80M sold now so undoubtedly X million in the first year) - would an address match intervention have been able to differentiate my order from the dozens of orders the scalper on the 5th floor had placed, presuming some cooperation from the doorman to allow for variance in the details of the shipping address the scalper used? I'm reasonably confident the answer is no and I would have been caught in the net that attempted to prevent the scalper from scalping.
At least I don't think scalper's will be a problem with the Steam Machine and I honestly believe someone with the knowledge of building PCs can build something way more powerful.
You slip the doorman $50 to hold tracking numbers of packages you're having sent to random units in the building. Or just promise him a unit at MSRP for his help.
These sorts of things are pretty cheaply routed around for those making scalping into a volume business.
Sure you can probably lock things down so you catch the vast majority of these mechanisms, but not without impacting legitimate users. So it's a tradeoff of how much more of a hassle do you want to make things for legitimate customers vs. how much you want to lock out resellers.
You don't even really need a doorman in many buildings either. There will be a shared mail room (if you're lucky) where packages get dropped. If you work from home you just watch the UPS/Fedex tracking and run down the moment it gets delivered to snag it before anyone else sees it.
The few folks I know who did this sort of thing were less professionals making a living off it, and more someone who wanted to subsidize their gaming habit by grabbing 3 or 4 units and keeping one while flipping the rest. They'd just ship to friends/family. The folks buying 50 units at a time are pretty rare from what I can tell.
I have since moved out of NYC but yes I had an apartment number. If the doorman was helping this scalper, the scalper could have varied the address he used enough to avoid exact match dedupes while still ensuring he could claim the packages as his from the doorman.
[edit: to be clear they are not the norm, they are more expensive than buildings without one, but there are still lots of them that are not Trump Tower or other places for the absurdly wealthy]
It’s less about 1 scalper buying 100. Order limits, credit card limits, etc already restrict that.
It’s more about 1000 scalpers buying two or three to immediately resell. There are entire discords and communities around this with thousands of members.
I think there's less motivation to scalp the steam machine than there was e.g. the steam deck or the PS5. With the PS5 there were all those PS5-exclusives where you can either get a PS5 or not play them. The Steam deck was the first of the current wave of practical PC handhelds and it was a while before there were realistic competitors.
The Steam Machine is ultimately a mid-range gaming PC in a nicer form factor and a slight discount compared to building it yourself. I don't think anyone would pay 1.5x for a Steam Machine when they could just buy a regular PC for less. There's no capabilities the Steam Machine has that a regular PC doesn't, which limits the ability of scalpers to charge larger margins and thereby limits the motivation.
As for potentially impacting the wider PC hardware market? Well, retail scalpers are small fry compared to Altman, Bezos, Musk et al.
The answer is that once you move past a modest shipping op the people with actual visibility on that would be the warehouse that's fulfilling, also typically people who don't have the power to cancel orders themselves.
Ecomm orders want to drop to the distribution center as soon as possible, which means you can't wait until you have a whole bunch of them just so you can analyze which addresses are on multiple orders. You would either need to 1) detect this in the warehouse systems (I spent my career working on these, so I can say with high certainty that is almost definitely Not going to happen, especially if they go through a 3PL) OR 2) you have to cancel orders after they have already dropped to the warehouse (which means wasted labor in the best-case scenario).
None of that is worth the effort to a company who is fundamentally still getting paid the same for the product regardless of if the purchaser is a scalper or not.
Why would any people need to see the addresses at all? The solution being proposed is something that you'd automate with a series of heuristics.
And your point about the company making the same money for shipping to scalpers vs non scalpers seems like it would only apply to the shipping company, but if you view from the perspective of the product company, obviously they have an incentive to avoid scalpers because it negatively impacts the brand and the price spikes are money not captured by the product company and may even reduce further spending (eg if a buyer spaffed half their budget on an overpriced console, that's less for buying games which benefit the product company, eg Steam in this case)
You are vastly over-estimating the tech power the vast majority of businesses have dedicated to logistics. There's a large number of different systems involved with a enterprise logistics stack. Ecomm store provider, ERPs, middleware, warehouse systems, shipping systems, banking, etc. Which part of the pipeline are you going to hold up while you wait for enough orders to pool to build a meaningful heuristic?
The solution Valve came up with is quite brilliant.
It sounds like you are massively overthinking it. When you pre-order anything, you need to enter a shipping address. Why would you need to consider anything beyond that or require 'dedicated' logistics?
that's not to say I don't like Valve's solution - I agree, it is very nice
I don't think they're necessarily overestimating what they've dedicated to logistics, they're overestimating what they've dedicated to anti-scalping. If they cared to detect it, they could invest even just a token effort and make great strides. But why would they care?
IIUC: scalping manuals and scalper ring Discord accesses are sold as get rich quick schemes underground. Gullible individuals join the big supply choking sessions. Many of them don't make much but masterminds don't care.
So it really has to be done like Cybertruck early deliveries to 100% prevent scalping and flipping(the fact that Musk nails it...)
Early deliveries of the cybertruck were highly anticipated and the cybertruck is still the best selling electric truck even after needing to compete with the F150 lightning, Hummer EV, silverado EV, and Rivian R1T
... they pay low income people $2-5, literally, to be the face of their scalping. It's like gig work for those people. The worker uses their own name, address, and credit card even to make the purchase. The scalper reimburses them + $5.
Low-income people have their own credit card? I'm having trouble picturing the situation where someone willing to accept gig work for a few $ can have a credit card that allows a 4-figure spend. That seems like a very bad deal for the bank to me.
I worked for a while at a service company that helped for a few of those issues specifically. It basically served as a back-search against an email address and known connections (social media), and online connections to give it an effective score if it should be manually verified or sidelines into a separate bucket than the general pool.
And even that isn't as icky as a short project I worked on for a major CC company. Still get the icks thinking about it, and I didn't continue beyond the 6mo contract.
It is the AddressesV3 service. We're planning on using it (for the website redesign) to make sure that the addresses are correct (enough). There's a significant number of people who register and quit/get fired, yet still have to make one final filing (for a state government agency) that we snail-mail them a final "I'm done with this" paper form to fill out. And every couple of years an envelope gets returned as "undeliverable".
For bulk shippers the USPS will penalize you if you have... well it was not bad addresses but non-standard addresses. The mail order company I worked for a few years ago put more effort than I expected to normalize and verify addresses met USPS standards. So I guess the penalty made it worth it.
I’ve seen websites say during checkout “your address wasn’t in our db but this one was” showing what was clearly a cleaned up form (changed “Circle” to Cir, uppercased, turned ZIP into ZIP+4) so there are ways.
You would have to tell the user “use the corrected/matched one only” though. Some sites offer the correction but don’t make you use it.
The downside is this service is not up-to-the-minute accurate. I rented a new-construction house and it was the better part of a year before it made it into the USPS address correction database, despite receiving mail just fine.
Might be acceptable collateral damage, but it’d exclude some people.
Yep this is the right answer, address jigging is the oldest trick in botting. Nowadays with fingerprint browser, generated credit card number and residential proxy, it is very hard to tell legit buyers from scalpers.
From what i remember during the great GPU Crisis of 2022, the scalpers were shipping them to randomized addresses and intercepting them before the actual owner scooped them up.
Capitalism really does create a perverse incentive here, and when there's significant margin at play, there's an opportunity.
I played the NewEgg shuffle game for months to get the couple GPUs I needed during that time... not fun at all. I had to limit myself to bundles where the other component wasn't complete garbage. I still have a 600W EVGA PSU from one of the bundles (RTX-3080) that I've only used once to test if my issue was the PSU, MB or something else... turned out to be the RAM.
Knowing how it works is simple. You can game it with different names, you can modify the text of the address. My address I was able to make 20+ versions without trying. You can add unit # to a house address. It becomes wack-a-mole at some point.
I feel like to put that much effort into anti-scalping efforts you actually have to have a product that's really valuable. For a lot of products this really isn't the case (like this Steam machine iteration).
> I've never understood why anti-scalpers just don't work backwards from shipping address.
If Alice and Bob live in the same apartment and try to buy Steam Machines, but Bob forgets to include his apartment number (everything gets dumped on a shared package room, after all), Alice will be confused when an automated email accuses her of fraud.
Totally doable - I remember talking with a guy that worked at a sports betting company and they flagged any accounts with any duplicated fields as requiring further investigation (to clamp down on gaming bonus bets and deposit matches).
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.
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.
Isn't it s/(s+g), where as you correctly say, g is legit account who want to buy? 1000 people want to buy a machine, 10 of them are scalpers, that's one percent on average? s = 10 and g = 990.
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.
Yeah, I hope there's a gradient between scalper buying a single 99 cent game and actual person who has time played on multiple games and multiple purchases. The probability of someone with say a 3000 hours played across multiple games with hundreds or thousands of dollars of purchases is far less likely to be a scalper than someone with a single purchase many years ago and maybe some completely f2p play in say dota/cs, since the latter is likely to be a bot account.
They said the extra time ment they would be able to do additional verification. I’ll bet checking what games you purchased and play time are a part of that.
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.
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.
But the difference in computing power is more impressive between the first IBM PC in 1981 and a new PC from 2001, than between a new PC from 2001 and now. At least subjectively (it might be that software in general got more slower than hardware got faster).
That one for me is particularly painful. We were playing the alpha release before the game officially came out after work. I still work at the same place, though I've moved jobs within it a few times.
I don't fear dying in a car accident. I dread the certainty that one day I'll be 80 and all I'll have left are memories, everything and everyone I ever loved will be gone (unless I have children which is very unlikely at this point), the world will be completely alien to me, and there's absolutely nothing I can do to prevent this - apart from dying even sooner which is even worse.
I think there are ways most people cope with this knowledge most of the time so they don't go crazy. I get why so many elites are obsessed with preventing aging.
They have the Master Chief collection or something (almost all the games in one with a selector screen), I remember a year or two ago booting into and playing online game, plus there appears to be a discord server that organizes players to better reach playable numbers.
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.
> 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)
Not true at all. In many of the big football/soccer countries there's always been very strong measures to ensure affordability. England caps premier league prices, the Bundesliga goes further still by having a 50 + 1 rule, that is all teams are majority member owned. Up until ~2000 they had no private investors at all.
The yardstick in European football has always been that an ordinary working person can go and see a game in the stadium. A fair amount of sports did until they got the privatization treatment.
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.
I think the actual solution is closer to, you buy a team specific ticket/option: if your team advances you get the ticket, if some other team advances their fans get the tickets.
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.
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.
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".
The trick to getting away with being corrupt is to as corrupt as you can without your marks/customers/voters/whatever revolting¹. Switching ticket sales to an auction format would likely add enough friction that many people² wouldn't bother, bringing the price back down, or would make a very public noise about how unfair it feels.
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[1] or authorities taking action, but that usually comes after the marks/customers/voters/whatever speaking up loud enough, unless by “taking action” you mean “taking a piece of the action” by way of being corruptible themselves.
[2] from those who do, or might in future, play along with the current race-to-buy-at-fixed-teered-rates system.
> 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.
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.
If I pay high prices for your tickets and for travel to see you play in one of your limited selection of touring cities, sure, I might go. But if you tour again a few years later, I would rather see an artist I haven’t seen live yet.
Meanwhile if the tickets are affordable, I’ll try and go again. You’ll have my renewed interest every time.
Tennis is terrible to watch these days. It was always a bit of a corporate jolly, but the stands are literally half empty for all but the finals of slams. Nobody really cares for the game...
Do you realize you also need to pay for hotels and flights and food and etc? In such situations of course you'd sell them. People talk as if the ticket is even the problem and that it's cheap to go otherwise.
Yes if the ticket selling happened in another world with another species other than humans it is possible that nobody would try to scalp. Here on earth people will find ways to bring non-market prices in-line with a market. It has nothing to do with who is selling the original tickets and all to do with how individual people behave with money.
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?
This, but for everything: industrial modernity, pizza, jazz, and in general nearly all music and culture of note (it's true that some high culture is actually good, though it oftentimes is a thin rebadge of something working people had already been doing for a long time): working people have done almost literally everything that matters throughout the entirety of history. Rich people should be grateful we don't turn them into (delicious) sausage and leave it at that.
History always repeats in cycles. The poor never do a damn thing, until it gets pretty bad and then they vote for fascists, and if they are starving then the guillotines come out for whoever is currently powerful (fascists or not). That's how it has always worked. As long as the powerful class continues providing bread and circuses, no guillotines. In cycles where fascism happens, it does accelerate the cycle because fascists are too stupid to realize they need to provide bread and circuses.
This and plenty of other problems that plague the society now and over the past centuries could be solved by eliminating the distinction and gap between "rich" and "poor".
nonsense, the lowest strata of working society has never had it so good, unfortunately things are still going to be out of reach, perhaps what the comment above said was a little harsh but there is truth to it, if what you love about the sport is merely its accessibility then find or start a new one (that the rich will appropriate in a couple of hundred years).
Mate poor people never went to any world cup. I find it funny to watch rich guys discuss why it is too expensive to buy a ticket TO THE WORLD CUP. Like that was never a thing people afforded unless you happen to have the luck of your life and live next to one of the stadiums. Most people go to zero ticketed cultural or sports events per year where I'm from, and that's at the country level before you even slice by poor people.
It's like watching millionaires discussing that nowadays poor people can't afford to go on a rocket to space.
I know this particular context was within the WC but the phrasing of the parent comment seemed to go beyond just that and to football tickets in general, which is what set me off.
Also, I know for a fact that plenty of working class people from England go to the World Cup. Fair enough, they’re wealthy by the standards of Brazilian favelas but that’s a broader issue. It still stings to see the price gouging that FIFA is enjoying this time round.
I really don't think you're interpreting that right. The idea of football tickets in general becoming too expensive for the working class doesn't even make sense, there's so many of those tickets.
Depending on the club, you can’t compare pricing for Blyth Spartans tickets to Arsenal (famously expensive) and say “well you can just go follow a different club.” That’s just not how football support works in England.
Also, I pointed to another comment that working class fans are the fans that make the game. Man U are famously followed by “the prawn sandwich brigade” and the top tier clubs are regularly mocked by others for being out-sung at their own stadiums.
> I know this particular context was within the WC but the phrasing of the parent comment seemed to go beyond just that and to football tickets in general, which is what set me off.
No idea why you would read a comment in a thread specifically about the WC and think, "but boy, think how angry I could be if I decided this comment was about something else entirely?!"
Sure, it would be better that everyone could have a beautiful life without any worries and being able to do all they want to. Choosing the world cup as the thing to be mad about is ridiculous though.
Right. I've been to Fusion Festival. I'm surprised someone called it Burning Man. It's nothing like Burning Man - but I think it has similar counter-cultural vibes. I've not been to Burning Man though. Apparently Fusion is actually the bigger event of the two.
I'd call it an electronic music festival (or a giant rave, because terms like "EDM festival" were invented by corporations to displace "rave" the same way "open source" was meant to sanitize "free software" and Fusion is not a corporate event). I wouldn't call it a psytrance festival - that's just what they play on one stage of many, and maybe the 3rd or 4th biggest. There's a stage run by people from Berghain that plays techno the whole time (my favorite), a drum-n-bass stage, a couple more electronic music stages that I'm not sure about the subgenre, some smaller stages where live rock and metal bands play, theater performances, some kind of car racing thing next to a circus-looking tent, neither of which I've visited. And what the heck is "the hotel"?
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.
"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."
And why should that matter? If Valve wants to sell below market this is a reasonably fair system for doing so. What you do with your purchase is none of their concern.
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.
Brands could do that - or an approximation of that by having an higher launch prize for the initial batch - yet they mostly don't.
Maybe the intent here is not keeping difference to themselves, and there's more brand value in not profiting from supply constraints, while being perceived as doing something about mass scalping.
Since most brands don't seem to agree with you, and if you just feel like you should be able to use your extra money to get lucky, you can still try to convince one of the lucky ones. I guess the few who might take it to eBay will charge even more for the privilege.
Not everything needs to be about efficient markets.
Yes, there likely is a large component where the median customer would be unhappy, just like they were with Uber surge pricing despite it being a win for the median participant in any role. That's why I'm here to preach the gospel of the unfathomable beauty and efficiency of the market and capitalism that has catapulted us into the greatest time in history.
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?
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.
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
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.
Giving a list price would make no sense in the case of an auction, in fact would be misleading, (maybe even illegal ??), and not just because of these issues.
Most people would bid the maximum that they can justify. That's like saying that only scalpers take part in auctions (easy counter example : eBay).
If people were perfectly rational robots, this could work. Also, sales jobs wouldn't exist and politicians would be held accountable for their promises.
In real world, sales tactics work. People can be influenced to pay more than they thought they're willing to pay. Scalpers know this and exploit this at scale. A Vickery auction gives basically zero opportunity to get talked up. People will bid at the "thought they're willing" price, and scalpers will outbid them. Then the same people who underbid on auction will go to eBay, see it listed at "influenced to pay more" price, and buy it for much more than they bid.
And yes; the vast majority of eBay auction bidders are indeed scalpers, whose day job is to look for cheap deals that they can resell for more. It's extremely rare in this day and age to actually take advantage of eBay bidding to buy in-demand stuff on the cheap. It's much easier when there's "buy now" option but you need to be fast and lucky because you're competing against scalpers here too. Of course things are different for stuff that few people want in the first place - scalpers are not interested in those because they're too hard to offload, so you get your fair chance.
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.
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.
Aaah so scalpers are only as bad as they are because they corner the market. Thanks, I think this is the only reasonable explanation that don't just ignore supply and demand mechanism.
They took the same approach for the Steam Deck, so given that this is a repeating MO, anyone wanting to abuse the system had time to prepare accounts.
The payment addresses sound trickier to work around, but abusers can just invent a fake billing address; many payment methods neither receive nor validate this.
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.
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.
I expect Steam is already being DDOS'd probably close to 24/7. DDOS services are cheap, and there's plenty of kids with a card that think they're going to show off their 1334 haxing skillz after getting banned for using an aimbot they also paid for.
They are not exactly great in handling large peaks of traffic. They don't last that long, but they are still there. Controller launch had order processing issues. Any large sale start always have issues. Though it might be less load and more of making tens of thousands of background changes on items on sale.
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.
Activity I can understand, but how should age be weighted? Do you intend to prefer younger or older players? Should annual income (or taxable income) also be weighted?
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.
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.
One issue here is that one, very important for the future of Valve, type of target customer here is first time Steam users : teens without a console nor a (gaming) PC. April 2026 is already going to be a problem for them.
(Though I guess someone in their family can enter the lottery for them.)
I would be careful granting that s is less than g. There are lots of incentives other than scalping for people to create extra illegitimate accounts on Steam, and one individual can often control hundreds of bots, whereas a legitimate user almost never has more than one or two accounts.
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.
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.
Scalpers targeted products sometimes don't last one full seconds. Which means they go from product page -> cart -> checkout -> payment in fractions of a second each, likely through JS injection. It's hardly Selenium speeds. Your alarm clock or Valorant skills are of absolutely no use. That had been the norm for years where scalping has been a problem.
Presumably Valve could record all the serial numbers at the factory and simply block steam logins from accounts don't own a steam machine for the first year or so. The hardware wouldn't be locked, it'd just be steam that refuses to allow logins from the wrong account, steam already sends over your hardware id during the login process so they definitely could use it.
And yes, it's not hard to spoof your hardware id, but who is going to buy a machine at scalper prices only to then need to run sketchy software to even be able to use it. It'd completely kill the scalping market and not affect anyone buying one to use.
Exactly. If you're selling stolen or pirate product at a cut rate, people will tolerate goofiness for the better deal, but if you're scalping and people are paying above-market, they're not going to take the risk on sketchy purchases that may get their Steam account banned or something. And the scalper isn't going to take the risk buying a ton of product they can't unload, so even Valve stating they will enforce this would have a measurable effect.
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.
I personally wouldn't call it a loss of freedom. You could put another OS on it, without limitations. You just wouldn't be able to log into steam unless it's the correct account, just like steam refuses logins from hardware banned devices and banned accounts.
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.
It wouldn't be hard, but who would pay scalper prices for something that they then have to run dodgy software on that may or may not jeopardize their entire steam account?
This is a different threat model than anti-cheat. Here you just want it to be annoying enough to stop scalping.
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?
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.
I guarantee you there are lots of sleeper accounts out there that have made "a purchase", which could be less than a dollar. It definitely helps to require any purchase at all, but if they were trying to be semi-thorough that requirement would look more like $100 in purchases.
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.
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 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.
>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.
Which, again, hurts both the seller and the vast majority of the buyers.
>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.
Scalpers, the vast majority of the time, deal with markets with non-artificial restrictions, and use them to their advantage. In this case, Valve has very intentionally designed a system to prevent scalpers because they want people to have a fair chance of getting a product that is very much not artificially restricted. Valve is free to sell to whoever they want, consumers are free to purchase from Valve, and scalpers are in the middle, exploiting the system for profit, and willingly or not pushing for DRM and for binding accounts to devices.
> 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!
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.
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.
Privilege endures. The lucky player gets a good roll against the odds, the privileged player casts loaded dice. You can be privileged because you were once lucky (e.g. you were born to parents who bequeathed their loaded dice to you), but you cannot be lucky because you are/were privileged
Luck of the draw is very different from having the capital to invest in bots and buying up units to resell at higher prices. You could say they're lucky to have that capital, but economic privilege isn't necessarily luck either. Scalpers do not add value to the market no matter how you slice and dice it, they aren't a consumer of the product they're merely capitalizing on demand to create greater scarcity than there otherwise would have been so that they can demand higher prices. A pretty clear value detraction.
I agree, but Im trying to decide what "artificial restrictions...on the market" are and can't come up with anything other than "the problems and solutions occasioned by selling a limited number of items" i.e. distribution problems.
So are scalpers distributors?
Is the onus on the company/market/"all of us" to find "better" (whatever you think "better" is) distribution methods?
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)
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
We'll have to agree to disagree here because in my little bubble people are livid and have been swearing off things due to perceived price gouging. For me it was cereal. I like it but manufactures trying to squeeze $12 a box for it put me off enough that I just don't go down that aisle anymore. Now I eat granola.
I will note that raising the price on something you already produce and have a healthy supply of is quite different from a high introductory price on a new product you can't make enough of.
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.
Valve is where they are at because Gabe knows he is rich enough and doesn't need to squeeze every penny out of their customers' pocket, nor is there any investors making him do so. Maximizing the price of the steam machine which is already going way above the anticipated price due to component prices skyrocketing will be perceived as a giant fuck you move and burn years of goodwill, erasing a major competitive advantage valve holds over other game storefronts.
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.
Your comment made me realize that it's also not hard to imagine we could be a few short years away from a benevolent AI tasked with setting the market and selectively selling to individuals who, as a group, embody some ideal distribution for the company.
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.
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.
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.
People labor so they can buy stuff in general, mostly at normal pricing. Nobody labors for the edge case of paying off a scalper to get something, and that situation's mostly going to cause bitterness that they had to work extra because the scalper inflated the price.
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.
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.
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.
In my limited experience of seeing Dutch auctions in practice it actually has the opposite of the intended effect, as the people that are willing to pay the highest are also the people that will have a way to profit, just on a lesser scale.
For example, Panini (sports card manufacturer) did Dutch auctions on boxes of new card sets during the peak of pandemic collectible mania. The majority of customers that were willing to pay the highest prices on Panini's website were card breakers, which are people/companies that sell "spots" in livestream box openings (i.e. customers buy the right to all cards containing players from a certain sports team before the box is opened).
While it sounds nice in principal, it basically just means cashed up people get it first. But there is also the fun side of it becoming a status symbol I guess. Drive up future demand.
> But there is also the fun side of it becoming a status symbol I guess. Drive up future demand.
For the Steam Controller that's very clearly at least partly what's going on. Valve's "we didn't expect the demand!" schtick is getting pretty hard to buy when they clearly expected around the same expectations for V2 as for V1. PC gaming usage has grown massively since the first controller came out.
As it is, scalpers/bots have been cashing in for a while, coining it from cashed-up people, so flipping that would make sense by a company and taking advantage of that to help reduce/fund a lower price down the line quicker.
Another way would be to auction of X amount of units, then those with cash can pay through the nose directly and again, the company gains and by that, so do normal consumers on a breadline, as it would help reduce the cost quicker down the line for the rest of the purchasers.
I think I'd be OK with the idea of a 'First Print' edition that sold for 4-5x the markup, shipped a month earlier, and maybe came with better limited time decorative plate options. They'd only sell 1 to 2% of them total.
Everyone else could get into the second round raffle for a chance to buy / place in line.
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.
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.
It's like the complete opposite of "bidding fee"/"penny" auctions, which are very scammy and provide plenty of profit to the auctioneer, but people feel like they could get a great price. But if you make the math (and notice the dark patterns and know that usually there are also fake bidders...) you can see how much of a scam they are.
Pissing off your customers by nakedly profit maximizing is great for one shot life games.
They would maximize profit for this launch and in the process damage a reputation that is literally worth billions. Gamers are famously sensitive, and famously have a long memory for PR fuckups.
Right, I think the problem with a lot of the economics-based analyses in this thread is that they rely on the assumption that Valve ought to, or wants to, sell the device at its market value.
High volume on low margin is an extremely good way to make money. It's very naive to think the easy way to get rich is to price gouge. It's actually often the worst.
They are around because they control most of live venues and major bands don't care enough to fight. There are many ways to play steam games that don't involve buying nearly standard PC hardware at a premium.
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.
What's sad and ironic is that GabeN actually lived here for a few years (during COVID) and has even gotten a PR... you'd think he'd show some love for us hobbitses.
I do have my US pixel setup with a local esim for calls/data and a US tello esim that "wifi calls" on my US number over the data from the local esim. It's been working pretty seamlessly and means that, like, my US login.gov two factor tokens still get to my number.
Also, my office here is absolutely covered in maps of just New Zealand, which always gives me a chuckle.
It's way, way better than it was 15 years ago. Amazon and Amazon AU, Costco, etc. TradeMe for the cheaper stuff you don't want to wait for shipping from China.
But yeah the selection and availability is nowhere near the USA or even say.. Indonesia.
It's lovely here, but it's been a real shift vs having nearly every retailer available in my county and being able to go to NYC for a weekend on a whim.
Indonesian here, electronics are everywhere yeah, especially Chinese-made. But the law leans a lot on protectionism, if you try importing one you'll be subject to 10% tax on customs and "other fees".
If you try to import a phone, you'll also have to pay additional fees to "activate" the IMEI, otherwise you won't be able to connect to local cellular providers.
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.
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.
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.
This is how tickets for sports and concerts should always be sold.
Entertainment tends to compare with airline tickets, except that with air travel, there are regular flights and competition. There is no such thing as a single flight from Paris to New York on one Saturday at 9pm on a window of a few years.
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.
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 bird is an odd combination, also there's plenty of builds although less power efficient on amazon and then there's the playstation 5.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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 :/
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.
The steam machine has upgradable storage and RAM, both being their respective commodity connections (m.2 & sodimm respectively). There's even 1 sodimm slot free from the factory if you want to immediately plunk in a 2nd 16gb stick.
Those two are realistically the only upgrades someone buying a prebuilt instead of DIY is going to entertain doing regardless.
But that's all besides the point, which it's simply that clearly the steam machine is priced fairly for the hardware it contains in the current economic market. Whether or not you personally would prefer a prebuilt or to DIY is entirely irrelevant
Note that some machines will have two 8GB sticks, others just one 16GB stick. This is mentioned in the Gamers Nexus interview with some Valve employees, who were talking about the difficulty of finding RAM at any price. They had intended them all to be two sticks, but some will come with one because that's all they could source.
What sort of difference does dual-channel RAM make? Some people probably want the single 16GB so they can add their own additional stick. Which option is better is not straightforward.
Valve claimed in their internal tests it did not meaningfully change performance, which I'd be inclined to believe. The Steam Machine is likely going to be most often GPU bottle-necked, so the CPU performance regressing by even double digit percentages doesn't necessarily result in any change in gaming performance.
You'll note in that techspot comparison, by contrast, they used the fastest CPU and fastest GPU and then still used medium/low settings to really maximize whatever difference the RAM speed would have. Which is a valid test, but it's not necessarily going to generalize to low-end hardware. Like the CPU being limited to 90fps instead of 120fps doesn't matter when the GPU is struggling to hit 60fps in the first place.
A GPU defect on the Steam Machine requires a full replacement of the proprietary motherboard. You can’t put a new GPU in or have someone do it for you. And when GTA VI comes out there is no upgrade path possible to make the Steam Machine perform enough.
> A GPU defect on the Steam Machine requires a full replacement of the proprietary motherboard. You can’t put a new GPU in or have someone do it for you.
Of course you can have someone put in a new one for you, it's called an "RMA"? A GPU defect is going to show up well within the warranty period. It's things like fans that will fail over time.
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.
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.
You misunderstood my last sentence, and my overall point, so I'll try again: Do you have parts list that supports your claim, with all new parts, without caring about the form factor?
Living in Japan, most popular concerts are handled this way. It really really sucks to not get a ticket, and it sucks even more that we need to do it this way because of scalpers. But hey, if it means I overall have a better chance of getting tickets (at list price at that), hey, I guess it is worth it.
I wish there were better ways of defeating scalpers.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
>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.
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)
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
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.
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."
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.
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.
It seems to me like a social score system is a direct upgrade to this in certain ways: participating in undesired behaviour will cause you headaches you cannot really solve with money.
Too bad it "naturally" slips into mass surveillance, but restricting privileges would be a great alternative to reducing the ability to take care of necessities for you and yours.
It doesn't have to only be money. In person waiting time is another mechanism to allocate a scarce resource. Back in the day when # of tickets exceeded demand at a fixed price, the tickets went to he/she who was willing to arrive early and wait in line longer (ie, die hard fans). Camping out for tickets was a thing and I somewhat miss it relative to scalpers and price being the only mechanism to drive demand/supply to equilibrium.
I don't see it really as profit maximising, just allocating it first to the people who want it the most. Like they are willing to pay scalpers.
You can get it at the lower price, you just have to wait. The same happens with loads of digital devices. On release day the price is higher.
If it helps you can separate it and have the first a 'ticket' in line to buy the product for the regular price. You just reserve your spot with the auction. The queue price just drops over time.
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.
Because public image matters. Steam has built a reputation for being customer friendly. Coming up with a Byzantine pricing system for your highly anticipated new hardware will not be well received by the steam users. The extra short term earning will be a drop in the bucket compared to what steam is already making from taking 30% off most game sells, but the reputation damage will linger forever.
> Steam Machine, like our other hardware products, is made up of many components that we source from manufacturers around the world. The price at which we sell our hardware is a direct result of the cost of these components. We felt like we had a good understanding of how those costs might change over time when we first started sourcing them for Steam Machine back in 2023. That understanding was born from the many years of data we all have about the evolution of PC hardware prices – primarily, that it tends to get cheaper over time as new technology arrives.
> Over the past year or so, that has changed quickly and significantly, most visibly for RAM and storage components. There are a variety of reasons, all of which are affecting hardware products everywhere. The overall effect is that our original goal for the price of Steam Machine is no longer viable. So the prices we're sharing today reflect the state of the world for manufacturing; or, more accurately, it reflects the price of the components as we've secured them over the past 6 months.
Take notes about the tone, the communication style, the honesty that you can feel by reading those words. There are no problem that can’t be alleviated (if not solved) with good communication to your customer, and you can bet that Steam knows damn well theirs!
What about the graphics processing capability? I see there are some modules with a GPU on them. Are they good enough to run 3D games that were released in the last 5 years?
I'm also happy with older games. I just don't know how powerful these GPUs are.
That's the thing, you care about celebrities, others about reality. If US didn't stop Korean companies from selling old manufacturing equipment to China, we'd still have RAM available, but Chinese one, so obviously every capitalist would rather blame individuals instead of the US government.
But thats my perspective, which obviously I feel like is closer to the truth on the ground, wouldn't claim it's some universal truth though.
China seems to be ramping up memory production anyway?
I can accept that as a contributing cause but the main cause is the small number of companies that are buying all the ram. Even if there was more supply they'd still be screwing up the prices.
"High demand" is not a concrete issue and blaming the purchasers seems so misdirected I'm almost convinced that argument originated from sockpuppets or something.
If the fries factory runs out of fries, would we blame consumers for buying too much, or the factory for not catching up with demand? Why sell stuff if it's not meant to be bought?
If an industrial plant figures out a new way to turn fries into fuel and starts buying all the fries in the country at any price up to $50 a pound, I do blame them for the resulting price spike. This is not consumer demand.
I don't much blame the factory that's already running 24/7 for failing to catch up in the short term. I'm not going to insist they do the impossible, or that they should have forseen a demand spike that caught us all by surprise.
The large ai companies bought advance purchases of memory while the actual buildouts are massively lagging and will probably never materialize at even 70% of planned capacity for years. They are financed and motivated to create their own tulip craze disconnected with actual need
We do still have Chinese manufactured RAM available, it's just that it's DDR4 which is not compatible with a lot of the hardware made in the past years.
...which is also why both Intel and AMD are reviving some of their previous DDR4-based models: the current DDR5 offerings are increasingly unsellable because of the memory shortage.
If there's anything good to be found about the Ramageddon, it's that people will hopefully keep using their perfectly good phones and other hardware a bit longer between upgrades.
Most of the general, watered down tone of Corporate America that we love to hate comes from the legal department, usually at the late-stage point when they make all the decisions in a company: product, business, launches, strategy, direction, etc. Everything needs to run through legal, and they have a final say on everything, including every public communication.
That's why I'd love an interview with Steam's legal head. Sounds like they'd have some wild stories to share.
The original price should have been in $700-800 range, pre-RAM and storage pricing escalation, which would have changed the equation drastically. I even considered getting it as a mostly streaming box for a living room, intending to play only the lighter games on device. But for the announced price and after delays, it just doesn't make sense financially. As is, you're grossly overpaying for the level of GPU performance Steam Machine offers.
>The original price should have been in $700-800 range, pre-RAM and storage pricing escalation
Also on a 2025 launch, but that 2023 mid-level hardware feels already pretty weak in 2026, especially for a console you're supposed to run 6-7 years into the future. Sure, it's as powerful as a base PS5 but that console is already 6 years old by now. So the valve box is a pain to justify jumping in unless you're a big valve fan and don't want to DIY a PC.
I’ve seen from a couple of places that a valver has commented that they can’t say exactly what the original price goal was, but that you can get an idea from the price increase of the steamdeck (~$200 usd)
That wouldve put the steam machine somewhere around the $800 mark for the base edition, which would’ve been so, so much sweeter of a value proposition.
there's probably ~$150 in the ram and ~$100 in the SSD alone, not to mention everything else.
we gotta have data-centers though because, uh.. well, we gotta have em.
To a large extent, all these datacenters are being built because people want tokens. Do you use something like Opus or GPT5.5 for coding? Well, you're part of the demand.
If you don't, then yes, as a PC enthusiast I'm sad as well. But like, it's a little bit ironic to be complaining about RAM prices if you've got 5 sub-agents hacking away.
If someone is using heavily underpriced tokens I don't blame them much either. They're not funding the hardware purchases, super-investors that want to control the AI world are.
Apple is also an absolutely enormous company. Even if Valve wanted to lock in prices, they're simply too small for RAM manufacturers to notice on their radar, unfortunately.
If the price is expected to fall over time, then the negotiated price is below market at the beginning and above market at the end. From the suppliers view, they take a loss in the early years that they recover later.
Apple probably pays a premium to shift this risk to the supplier. Besides that they don't take a loss just because prices tend to fall. They only lose if market prices fall more steeply than expected.
That would only works until it doesn't. The suppliers got supplier too and those in turn have their own supplier. I don't know about any specific contract but I bet there's a force majeure or price excluding input cost somewhere.
Places like Apple run their supply chains to ground. Literally in some cases, as they track sourcing of component materials back to the mines they are dug out of.
They know it's a tough sell. Fortunately for everyone in the market, you can still find used CPUs/GPUs/RAM pretty easily and save a decent amount if you're ok with building your own.
Valve doesn't need this to do well to survive. And you don't need a steam machine (or any >$1000 machine) to play PC games. Just wait it out or buy used hardware. Hell, even an rog ally x plays just about anything (and also supports steamOS), and you can still get that at reasonable prices.
Given the price of components right now, I don’t know. 1k for that small of a form factor seems acceptable. It’s a nice addition to the living room, could likely play a role in cancelling expensive video streaming subscriptions. Might also run some local LLMs. Seems decent.
I love my steam deck and I just don’t see this working, but time will tell. If they sell 2-3mill units I’d consider that a wild success and that i was dead wrong. really hope I am. Steam machine will really change the game if it success
The PS5 can only play games that you pay Sony a tax to play. The steam machine can play any game, including those bought outside Steam and thus without paying valve a tax.
This means the PS5 is subsidised, whereas Valve hardware does not tend to be. They have confirmed that internally all divisions must be roughly profitable/break-even.
While you are technically correct, 99% of all games that are going to be played on this device are going to come from steam where they take a 30% cut.
I don't know how much money they make from each unit but major profit is not the goal here. They want to sell more games to more casual people who don't even own a PC anymore.
Why can’t you imagine it? The console makers have been selling at a loss for 3 maybe 4/5 decades.
Edit: looks like it took 10 million PS5s to break even. The article is 5 years old I wonder if it’s true in 2026.[2]
> The existing industrial arrangement at the time was that of a bundled console-plus-cartridge business model, where the console manufacturer (say, Atari with its VCS/2600) sold the console at a loss and cross-subsidized it with the money made on cartridges sold with a huge profit margin.[1]
[2] It took Sony years to stop losing money on PS3 sales, but the company stopped selling the PS4 at a loss around six months after its debut in 2013. The PS5 has taken ever so slightly longer, but it’s clearly not repeating the costly exercise of the PS3 despite early reports suggesting Sony was struggling with PS5 pricing due to expensive parts.
PS5 has a lot parts in high volumes negotiated years in advance so they can leverage lower prices than valve. Valve ships like 10% max of the volumes that Sony sells.
They were originally sold at a loss, then became per-unit profitable at some point, and now they might be eating a loss on them again. But they lock in hardware prices years in advance.
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.
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.
Even though I balked at the Steam Deck prices on the recent inventory restock, as they were up ~30% presumably due to the same hardware shortages, I got one anyway. Prices won't drop anytime soon and if any for-profit organization has earned my loyalty, its Valve.
When I used it I was somewhat incredulous that I could simply exit Steam mode have an actual Linux desktop environment, where I could literally do what I wanted. It was my computer, a proper general purpose computing machine, and it was (willingly* in my control. No sneaky root needed.
genuinely what do you use AR for? I see alot of people saying this same thing. I don't have any VR/AR experience as the frame will be my first VR headset
Virtual boxing with friends (Thrill of the Fight 2). AR allows me to see my room instead of some virtual ring so there's less risk of hitting walls or furniture
Sure, and I'd really like a true black display. I accept that any mass market device coming from a niche will have compromises in the interest of reaching a broader market. The high end is already served by pimax and bigscreen.
The Apple Vision Pro. I really wish Valve would release a $3500 Steam Frame with all the bells and whistles. Of course, with the price of RAM it might be $7000 so maybe I'll just have to wait until hopefully the market cools down a bit and baseline hardware advances some more.
Notably with the Steam Frame you're stuck with the high end snapdragon and 16GB of RAM even if you'll use it with a computer, but they didn't want to splurge five or ten dollars on color cameras. Weird priorities.
The whole front part with the lenses and processors is removable, and there's an expansion connector on the face piece for future accessories, so it's certainly possible that colour cameras could be released later, and be an add-on for the Frame without needing to buy a new device.
wasn't it strongly implied that things like that would be enabled via the expansion port and aftermarket products? I would not be surprised to see color AR within a year of launch
The last generation of steam controller still had a mode you could start it in where it would register as xinput device. Seems that's gone on the new generation.
Would you rather have it degrade to the functionality of an Xbox 360 controller without Steam? That's the best they could do without all games including support for the controller (latest SDL3 has it).
Not really. Can't really map a touchpad as an analog stick. Can't map a gyro as a joystick. Can't take XBox rumble and map it to the Steam Controllers haptic feedback.
Can you hack it together in theory, get something working but making sacrifices left and right? Sure. But why would Valve want to do that? Use experience would be incredibly bad.
But give it time. There will be a standalone driver for Windows eventually, either from Valve or from the community.
It's possible already. Using an open source app called PadForge. I've setup a profile that works without steam and emulates xbox360 pad. I've used it without problems in Forza Horizon 6 which is an UWP / PC Game Pass game, also in various emulators.
Loot boxes are, by any and all definitions, evil. It’s gambling. Worse even, it’s gambling with real money over digital ephemera.
Loot boxes are not a fun mechanic. Loot boxes are not designed to entertain you or give you good value for your money. Loot boxes only exist to make you gamble with your money over something that could easily be sold as a single purchase item, or better yet, be rewarded in-game. Simple as that. It’s a gambling scheme. Always has been. Always will be.
The problem with visual only loot boxes is that people will pay for rare skins and so everyone still gambles on that stuff. I don’t know if they solved that, used to be you’d buy the keys to unlock them and hope to profit from selling a skin. Adults should also be protected against dark patterns like this.
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.
Sony have admitted to selling the PS5 at a loss during the first 8 months of sales. Even when they announced the $499 disc drive SKU was no longer selling at a loss, they admitted the $399 SKU still cost more to make than it sold for. Things are no doubt different today, but Sony absolutely subsidized the PS5 at launch.
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).
Instead they made the right choice and subsidise the software. Valve has been sending patches for Linux for over the last 10 years as well as giving SteamOS out for free for other hardware now.
If you don't want to play games, why would you buy a steam machine? Even with a subsidized price, you could get a mini PC with no GPU for half that or less.
Steam take 30% of the purchases made via the Steam Store.
If you sell a game on Steam, you can redeem as many Steam Keys for your game as you wish.
Those keys are sold at 100% profit to you, Steam dont take any.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The Steam Machine is nothing special either and it’s being sold at a ridiculously price. I wouldn’t hold my breath on the Frame being affordable by any stretch of the imagination.
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.
I got a Steam Deck for my son. Docking it to an external monitor with mouse and keyboard in desktop mode is just running a nice desktop Linux with KDE Plasma by default. I showed him the basics and it's perfectly usable for his school needs. And he can still put it in his bag and play Skyrim on a train ride.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
a trainer takes more work and substantially worse security. i can code review 40 lines of shell+python at a glance cannot say the same for most general purpose trainers
It’s just hard for me to be impressed by one of the weakest entries from both a performance and image quality point of view. It’s all subjective though so if others do find it impressive, all the power to them.
I actually think the SW2 port is the most “impressive” handheld experience I’ve seen so far. Given its a superior experience “out of the box” as it were.
You write this on the forum where often in apple-based topics folks here defend locked down system ie on phones for themselves as something actually superior. Its often paid PR or folks to deep in the topic to have objective opinions (or simply employees/shareholders) but still, I've had that talk few times and downvotes were flying left and right.
I’m fine with both. My phone and my “console experience that’s more open than an xbox” are wildly different scenarios, for which I have different needs and expectations.
There are alternatives for both, if/when I ever want them.
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
So long as the developer pays the Apple Tax to have their code signed. Otherwise it will be marked as sus and the user has to go into Security, and manually allow the software to run. (alternatively, you can have them use the terminal to bypass setting the security bit). This is a step back from older versions that had an "Trust This Program" button right there during execution. And indicates a clear roadmap to ensure no unsigned code can run on OSX.
Apple could handle dev keys for free, if this was actually about security. But they don't because its another step on their road to locking down OSX like they do iOS and ensuring they make every platform developer pay their taxes.
Developers also can't access the biometric security features at all without an Apple dev account either. Even for my local software that I build for myself, I cannot use fingerprint unlock without an Apple dev license.
I don't really want to pay $100/yr to release free software for OSX, so I don't.
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.
Kind of funny because most games on the PS5 Pro have performance tuning settings. It's not as comprehensive as you'd find on a PC game, but it's clear the console audience is also wanting to tweak how their game runs. And, for what it's worth, pretty much every new PC game has an auto-configuration that customizes the settings for the hardware on install. So you don't have to ever go into settings, so long as you're happy with the play experience the developer decided you should have.
> 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.
If people are going through the trouble to defeat DRM, I would say that's more than a hint that people want the ability to run whatever OS on them freely.
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
Sure and maybe Google also subsidizes the Pixel phones because they'll make up for it with Google Play transaction fees. But what if I don't want something that's arguably illegal price dumping, and would rather pay a bit extra to actually own my hardware and be able to run what I want, even after it's discontinued? We don't get such an option.
Quickly more and more companies are adopting the model of finding ways to trap the user into continuously paying them more money after the sale, then locking down hardware and software to ensure the customer is properly trapped, and maybe price cutting their competitors a bit. The death of mobile computing is actively happening right before our eyes as Google completes the trap by restricting users ability to install apks. Ultimately customers end up paying more and having a shittier experience as a result of this.
I think it needs to be applauded when a company refuses to engage with this model and simply lets you own what you bought and paid for, and brings this idea to a market that has long been infected with lockdownitis. (Unfortunately in this case the price is not "a little bit higher", but what can you do when component prices have become crazy...)
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.
It supports HDMI CEC, it has a built in dedicated radio for the steam controller, it ships with Steam OS, and will receive support from Valve.
If you are comfortable building a custom PC and fixated on the spec sheet sure, it's not that exciting. But there are some rough edges with PC couch gaming that are sanded off with this machine.
The Xbox and PS5 are x86 but they aren't PCs. They are gaming appliances purpose built to run their respective purpose built operating systems. Without hacks, they don't do anything but only run code that's allowed to run. A Steam Machine is a PC. Yes, it's intended to run games (like any other gaming PC) but you can run whatever code you want on it.
Everyone loves to say the Xbox and PS4/5 are just like an x86 PC except for the fact they are missing a huge aspect of what makes a PC a personal computer. If the vendor locks you out of doing personal computing, it's not really a PC, is it? Refering to x86 as a PC is such an outdated way of thinking. I can go buy an ARM-based laptop and do more with it than an x86 console. Even an iPhone offers a more PC like experience than an x86 console. The Hubble Space Telescope runs a 486, does that make it a PC as well?
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
> bring gaming back to the couch in a way that the Steam Link didn't succeed at.
Also in the way that the Ouya didn’t succeed at - their kickstarter tagline was “Cracking open the last closed platform: the TV”. I actually had completely forgotten about the Ouya, but the wording of your comment made me go look it up.
Oh god I bought one of these. It was so terrible. Valve is definitely the right company (private) to pull this off. Gabe just needs to own a foundry and they’ll be set.
My guess is connectivity. I was only happy with the Steam Link when it was using a wired connection. This isn't an issue in my home, but most homes don't have wired Ethernet all over.
I did not love the v1 Steam Controller, but it's easy to use with other controllers.
Even with a wired connection, I hate Steam Link. It's fine for streaming to the Steam Deck while playing on the Steam Deck, but Steam Deck -> TV has a lot of issues. I could probably resolve them if I faffed around enough, but I've spent enough hours trying instead of gaming.
The SD doesn't seem to support AV1 decoding, the resolution streaming resolution won't go to 4k despite forcing it in the settings, and the most annoying issue, if the framerate is not set to 90fps, there is 30ms of additional streaming latency. Which means, if I connect it to my 60fps living room tv, it will add 30ms of latency.
Then there are a bunch of minor issues, no virtual monitor, having to manually swap settings to windowed mode and hope the game offers the correct resolution for my TV (since my gaming rig is on an ultrawide), having to leave the gaming pc on and unlocked.
Apparently Apollo or Moonlight will solve some of the annoying issues, but I'm kind of soured on the streaming experience at this point. Streaming on the SD should Just Work.
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.)
It's a more nuanced situation than people generally want to accept.
>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.
This is the most simple and probably accurate explanation. Companies like to make money, untapped markets look like money.
The problem is that then, the current audience, who is primarily male, can raise concerns about the marketing not catering to them anymore.
There's a political arm who doesn't like that at all, and they will not only attempt to enforce collective delusion to dismiss the whole thing (what do you mean? everybody plays videogames, playerbase is split 50/50 pretty much!), but invalidate the very idea that a primarily male audience can have grievances about being catered to.
This makes them look insane and alienates the original audience politically speaking, and ironically, makes the original audience look bigoted, which puts consumers off.
This dance has been going on for like a decade and a half at this point and it's only recently that signs of it dying down have started to show. I can only hope.
People are not vectors of real-valued numbers, and "mean person" is not a coherent concept. Does the average person have half a penis and half a vagina? Is their skin a tan-ish mocha brown? Do they have slightly but not really curly hair that is long in some parts and short in others? Incomplete epicanthic folds?
Any representation of people will be a randomly chosen sample, and not an attempt to visualize the blending of all people from the sample.
IMHO there isn't a realistic "typical gamer stereotype" anymore
sure you can pick any of the past stereotypes and will find people like that, even many, but it's not "most" or even "a slim majority"
Games, and with that Steam, have spread through all of society and Steam is the most wide spread platform for it.
So whatever anecdotal data you have based on your local environments selection bias is probably not "overall representative", just a slice of one of the many many different kinds of people playing games bought from steam.
I'd say about half of Steam players aren't male. The "video games are for boys" thing is kind of a self fulfilling prophecy because anyone who believes that will obviously not play with a woman.
I think that it's true that games are definitely being played by both males and females today, but I think that statistics is that mobile games skew female, and PC games skew male.
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
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.
Maybe, due to the budget specs, they figure the “cozy gamer” demographic will be their sweet spot. Hence the Stardew Valley video and Cuphead with its retro/nostalgic graphics. The people they showed do seem like they’d fall into that demographic, which would be less concerned with their FPS counts and playing games that don’t stress the system as much, generally speaking.
That is confusing. The Nintendo switch is half the price, and plays all of those games. Why would someone want to buy the more expensive Steam machine just to play 2d pixel art games?
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.
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".
> look at the most played games right now, look at the demographics for those games.
Doesn't Steam have a very long tail? Most played might not be very representative.
Maybe young men are just boring and all play mostly just a few games, while majority of players that are more diverse have their interests spread more evenly across others?
Which part? Are you actually claiming that in your experience steam gamers are mostly black, mostly gay, mostly women, or what? Because that would be a shocking statistic we'd probably know about given the general population demographics of race/orientation, and general interaction with the female sex in real life.
and you might also end up with 100 people with punk hair stiles, or firefighters or whatever
Games are so wide spread through all parts of society and Steam is the largest platform for them, sampling 100 people is fully non representive.
Whatever stereotype of two people on a couch you pick, there are not just thousands but more like many 100,000ths to millions of people not matching the stereotype at all. I mean think about it steam has daily active user numbers in the multiple tens of millions.
My best guess is, the people on the photos are related to whoever created the photos in some arbitrary way. It's a pretty common practice for startups when you need photos like that and have no need for "professional actors/models". Like employees of you or who ever you might have hired to do the photos, or some of their friends etc. You still need to singn a simple contract but it's much less time intensive, complicated and annoying to do compared to trying to hire models (of any kind including such made to look like "gamer stereotypes") .
Are you, for some reason, assuming that every time n people play games together, those n people are drawn independently from the population?
This is a completely nonsensical assumption. If you find three firefighters and one unknown person at a table playing cards, what do you think the probability that the fourth person turns out to be a firefighter is?
Only if you assume that people who play games together select the person to play games with entirely randomly. In practice, firefighters would tend to know other firefighters, so a bunch of firefighters in a room playing a game isn't _that_ improbable.
I'm just saying it doesn't deserve such praise for being "real", because if you placed a spycam in a random steam user house it wouldn't look like that. Not that there's anything wrong with it being carefully crafted like any marketing material.
Picking 100 people and picking 2 people are entirely different things.
But either way I don't understand your argument.
If you're picking 100 people, they won't share any trait. But how is that relevant to this video clip?
If you're picking a random living room where people are playing steam games, there's a reasonable chance it looks like the video clip. Why not? The odds are low you get someone looking exactly like that, but you can say that same sentence no matter who gets picked. Don't fall victim to the lottery paradox.
except it very well might look quite like that. I happen to know such a case and I don't know that many people IRL.
Video Gaming became widely available roughly in the 90th in many of the places the steam machine is expected to mainly sell to (US/EU/CA/AU/UK/some other places, a lot of special cases).
And most people who grew up with video games don't stop gaming. This means that Steam customers and gaming in general is not _at all_ anymore a hobby where most people fall under a small handful of stereotypes.
In turn statements along the line of yours are really quite meaningless and misleading. Steam has stopped being "just for nerds" or anything like that a long time ago.
And sure, things are probably different if you limit yourself to people active on steam forums, that place has a very different bias and using it as basis can lead to huge misconceptions about how people who "use" steam generally live.
Lastly let's also take a moment to consider who this steam machine is advertised to:
- no children, doing so is a regulatory pain
- not young adults, in current times 1k is just too much for someone currently trying to see if they can move out of their parent's place
- so more adults with a stable job/income, which grew up with gaming or at least do game a lot (so mainly age group ~20-35)
- also excluding the kind of people which would anyway go for a 3+k gaming system even if prices where more normal (like a lot of tech enthusiasts with money, "pc masterace" gamers, etc.)
and if you consider that potential customer base the chance for a randomly sampled home (of the target customer audience) to look somewhat like that(1) just went up quite a bit.
And exactly this is also the group for which the clip is, because a major part of the clips "message" is something on the line of a vague combination of "It's a product for everyone"/"Not just for nerds"/"Not just for tech enthusiasts"/"No special tech knowledge needed to play". I.e. "hey person who might live in an apartment without any nerdy stuff, it's also for you, you don't need special tech skills or anything like that". And this is kinda the only group where such a clip might make a difference in weather or not they buy, most other customer groups either won't buy anyway or will make a decision based on spec and reviews...
So IMHO this is a very well chosen clip setting.
Funnily the room does contain a lot of the kind of "not perfectly fitting furniture" you find a lot IRL due to a combination of people not finding fits and replacing/adding furniture over time with slightly changes in taste. I wonder if that was intentional or if the studio provider just didn't care or hat issues finding the right sets of things them self.
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(1): As in: It has no "nerdy" things, or tech enthusiasts things. And is "just" a "normal/boring" adult apartment taken a clip of shortly after it was cleaned.
I am guessing the BMI would track. Unless they make unlikely changes including spending more time away from that couch, these two are looking at health consequences that will probably make them a burden on society by the time they hit middle age.
Ignoring the sitting in front of the TV thing, I think if you sampled 2 steam players at random, they would look nothing like any other 100 random steam players.
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...
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.
Just scroll a bit further, you can see more clips just like any other commercial shots from a studio set. I don’t think that’s a point you can praise Valve.
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.
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.
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.
Days of our Lives is staged and so is The Godfather.
Yet one is not like the other.
Valve staged a scene of two people playing a game like how most people play a game. Just like that, there are many small human touches to this Steam Machine page. The messy cable picture where they show off the led strip, the honest and plain FAQ. Etc.
We don't have to glaze Valve for doing this, but we can still appreciate it.
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.
For the inevitable minisforum machines comparisons - it's not as bad for Valve as it seems.
You can't just add a dedicated GPU to a cheap miniPC with an integrated graphics- power delivery and airflow will have to be different, and you may be surprised to find out that even the cheapest mini PCs with dedicated graphics aren't significantly cheaper than a Steam machine (if at all).
And then my personal experience with these cheap no-brand mini-computers is that their Linux compatibility is spotty, BIOS updates are non-existend, quality control is severely lacking, and you have basically no support. They are also often pretty loud, overheat and die within a year or two.
If something doesn't work properly, you are on your own- the manufacturer will have forgotten about this model in a couple of months, and user base is so low that it's unlikely someone will find a workaround.
So comparatively, a Steam Machine would be much preferable to me, considering that it will likely work out of the box with no compatibility issues, will have a typical valve support (which, judging by Steam Deck, is quite fair), is well-built and near silent.
The problem is once the price crosses a thousand, I'd rather add, say, 500 eur, and get a much more powerful machine.
I see a point for the cheapest bottom of the barrel gaming pc/handheld (which would be 700-750) with many performance tradeoffs, but this doesn't look like a good enough upgrade from that.
A 12+ GB RTX4070-class videocard, 24-32GB of RAM and maybe even an 8-core CPU for $1500+ would likely be more usable in the current market
I love my Steam Deck but let's not forget that it took a solid 2-3 years for it to really become a somewhat turnkey, stable experience. They shipped it in a near-beta state. Flipping between gaming/desktop mode induced a fail state probably 30% of the time until a year ago, docking to TV's can still be very frustrating (aspect ratio and latency are almost always wonky until you tinker with it a fair bit) and isn't nearly as smooth a transition as with the switch, there used to be a VERY frustrating lockout where if your deck wanted to update and you weren't on your home network it wouldn't log in, just all sorts of really frustrating points of friction.
Again I love my deck, it's an incredible and capable device. But it was very clunky those first 2-3 years. It really only matured in the last 12-18mo or so. Hopefully the SM is a stronger experience day/week/month 1.
> I love my deck, it's an incredible and capable device. But it was very clunky those first 2-3 years
I got the Steam Deck on release. It was a near solid device for me from the get go. Only had the occasional crash/reboot, but I wouldn't describe it as having been clunky.
I personally would call the UI pretty clunky. Trying to figure out which settings are on the right settings button menu vs the left is annoying. Plus, there's stuff like not being able to get the onscreen keyboard to come on screen, and streaming can be a headache.
I love it and use it a lot, but it's not a Nintendo Switch experience, at all.
Then it’s likely you either weren’t trying to use all the available features or are misremembering, because I promise you it was not smooth at launch. I got mine over a year in and these problems still existed. The gaming/desktop transition was a notorious issue, as was docking to a TV. Computer monitors it was (generally) fine.
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”.
Sure, and this also solves those things while having better hardware. I have a shield pro, it hasn't seen a hardware update in a long time. I can game one it, but I need to use the steam link app, not run the games natively. These devices serve similar, but different markets.
I also work in music production (for video games) and fully switched to Linux + FOSS about a year ago.
I'd say it is a lot more doable if you make electronic styles of music. Harder if you make classical styles, as many of the big sample libraries don't support Linux yet.
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.
I don't think that will be the case sadly, just because the majority of gamers don't actually know or care about software having root or kernel level access. In a world where Linux becomes mainstream, AAA games will aim for those users, not hobbyists and enthusiasts like us.
What is the downside of this if I trust the software provider (eg Riot Games or presumably Valve if this ever comes to Linux)? I have recently come around in support of Riot's anticheat because multiplayer competitive games are so damaged without it, even though I use Linux 95% of the time.
It's hard to trust. I have a spare Windows PC where I install whatever on it, and the EA Javelin anticheat has screwed things up before. Wouldn't be doing that on a computer I care about.
Could the kernel have something built in to help with this? Like it can tell a program that nothing else is looking at its memory. And then secure boot attests that the kernel isn't tampered with.
> And then secure boot attests that the kernel isn't tampered with.
That's pretty much a dystopian scenario where you're unable to interact with any network services without using devices with software that's controlled and/or trusted by the service provider. Basically a grave threat to Free Software as a whole, the end of free reimplementations of things you rely on to connect with the society. We already have a glimpse of that on mobile phones controlled by Google and Apple, we don't need more.
There are kinds of games that actually rely on anticheats to be viable, but they're in the tiny minority and I don't think they're worth reorganizing the society over. Most just consider it a solution for problems caused by their incompetently designed netcode.
Linux and Windows both already support secure boot. Anyone is free to make a locked down version of Linux, and they have (game consoles, Android). Desktop Linux has way less market share than Windows. So what would you like SteamOS or the Linux kernel to do? I'm not fond of this stuff, but at least if people are using a partially locked down video game focused Linux, it's better than them going to Windows.
Attestation-gated anti-cheat is invasive, and the direction it points is grim.
But "covers for incompetently designed netcode" doesn't hold at all.
Netcode and cheat-resistance are mostly orthogonal. Netcode is latency-hiding — prediction, reconciliation, interpolation. Cheating is the client being an endpoint you don't control. You can have flawless netcode and still get wallhacked, because a wallhack touches the renderer, not the wire. You have to ship that data for the client to draw the level.
Server-side validation kills the cheats that surface as state: speedhacks, teleports, impossible positions; but it's blind to the ones that don't touch state at all. A wallhack reads memory the client holds. A vision aimbot runs on a second machine reading the screen- nothing crosses the network for the server to reject.[0]
That's why the kernel and attestation stuff exists. Not lazy devs papering over a bug: a class of cheat that server authority structurally can't reach, because the cheat never lies to the server.
I understand the dystopia argument, and it's a decent one. "Just write better netcode" isn't.
I'd humbly request that you spend time trying to actually grapple with the problem, there are some exceptionally well paid and talented programmers who are working on this non-stop in the large publishing houses (EA, Ubisoft, Tencent, Activision) who would do anything to avoid paying royalties to shitty software that breaks the performance and reliability of their games: yet for some reason year over year they can't seem to manage it.
Worth understanding why that is, instead of assuming incompetence or malice; perhaps its a harder problem than you think.
I know it's frustrating, I really don't care. They can play or do something else. GTA Online from those comments actually does look like a case of bad netcode btw, and it does have kernel anticheat already.
An open source kernel doesn't prevent attestation mechanisms. Anticheats on Windows increasingly require Secure Boot, and all others drivers to be signed/whitelisted; they could try to put similar restrictions on supported distros.
Yeah, I imagine Linux support would be more like a supported Linux distro rather than generic Linux support. Something like SteamOS but with kernel anti-cheat and secure boot from the start.
Big question is whether they can make craching the anti-cheat it hard/unpredictable enough that the publishers will trust it. If the publishers release such a platform and someone releases a live distro that can crack it with 3 mouse clicks, that's a lot of wasted effort.
I have no idea how effective the Windows anti-cheat is, but I imagine that Linux tooling in general is going to make it harder to lock a user out of controlling their own machine.
Sure, but maybe this is a different battle? First party Linux support is orthogonal to games not using kernel level anti-cheat solutions.
Tangentially, I wouldn't use kernel level anti-cheats, but if Valve's solution is indicative of the SotA in userspace anti-cheat solutions, there's a lot of room for improvement.
I strongly disagree. There have only ever been a handful of data exploits attributable to kernel-level anti-cheats. On the other hand, developers report that they significantly reduce cheating. As someone who plays online games, this is a tradeoff I gladly make.
I often feel these comments are made by people whose preferred games are not ruined by cheaters. This is happening right now in Arc Raiders, and it's really sad to watch. The developer, Embark, is now investigating using KLAC to reduce the number of cheaters.
Thankfully that has been improving [1] and non-kernel is 100% possible today [2] with valve has so much on documentation and support for game and anti cheat developers to accomplish this.
Unfortunately many of these developers believe that kernel-level is mandatory (by virtue of believing that it actually works to prevent _all_ cheating, which we know it doesn't).
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.
My thinking was that I’ll use the Steam Machine for whatever I can. If there’s some title that friends really want to play and that requires kernel anticheat, and it exists in geforce now, I’ll do that from the steam machine.
If it’s something even less doable than that… well I’ll do without.
But you're playing with friends, right? So you don't actually need anticheat at all. Or are you playing with friends and random assholes from the internet?
I'm curious because if a game requires anticheat that means there's an intention that I'd be playing with people who would cheat if they could. And I don't want to have anything to do with people like that. I don't really understand why anyone wants to spend their time playing games with assholes from the internet.
> But you're playing with friends, right? So you don't actually need anticheat at all.
There are a lot of games out there where a group of friends parties up and then goes against other parties of friends out there. Sometimes I want to play with my friends against others instead of only against my friends. Its been a pretty common kind of game style for decades.
> I don't really understand why anyone wants to spend their time playing games with assholes from the internet.
Yeah, it'd be nice to somehow exclude those assholes who would cheat. Maybe if there was some kind of technology which could limit the ability for people to use cheats, some kind of "anti-cheat". It would probably have to be pretty low level in the system to properly enforce this "anti-cheating" integrity, maybe in the kernel and hardware level?
I'm curious which ones you had trouble with? I switched last week, and have been testing all the games in my library. I'm quite impressed with how all of them just work with zero or little tinkering. The only games I haven't been able to play are the ones with anti cheat that explicitly deny Linux.
In Proton: Age of Empires 2 DE multiplayer went out of sync which ends the game. BeamNG Drive (now Linux native but wasn't a year ago) took 20min to preprocess shaders, then was laggy compared to Windows on the same machine, then reproducibly crashed from a memleak. Both were known issues on ProtonDB, but the rating still said "gold," so I stopped trusting the ratings.
Dolphin is Linux native. Works fine except for the huge input lag using GameCube controllers (via wii u adapter which is the only solid way), which means I can't really use it. Known issue with some driver, I tried a kmod to overclock it but no dice.
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.
I use Macs for work and PC for games, and this little box seems a good opportunity to play The Legend of Linux on a desktop or a couch, and make it true.
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.
No, Ardour is disgustingly ugly, so is Gimp and other FOSS apps stuck in the 90s. Some people dig that though I guess.
Also isn’t the case with Ardour that they essentially want you to pay for the binary because compiling it is a PiTA and there are no instructions on how to do so?
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
GamerNexus found out that an equivalent DIY machine would cost $979 in parts only to give a perspective on the pricing. It would probably be bigger too due to the discrete GPU.
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.
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
Why would it be the same percentage increase? RAM is only one component of the whole machine. "We were going to sell our airplane for $10 million, but one screw doubled in price so now we're selling it for $20 million."
Because of the proportion of the two critical component increases as a part of the whole. It's not like a screw, more like the propeller or something. I just bought ram at retail price, and in my currency it went from $100 to $600CAD for 32Gb. I can't even justify a nvme drive at this point, the prices are comical.
I built my current computer in 2020, went from part-time junior engineer to full-time senior engineer, and I couldn't afford to replace that computer at the same specs today. It's unbelievable.
I couldn't afford to replace my current NVMe drives (which is why I'm very happy I set everything up with the Samsung 970 Pro, as they're 2-bit drives that will outlast even my grandchildren).
I actually had to RMA some RAM yesterday, and even that has gotten so expensive that it now costs more than my entire computer cost in 2020.
Well none of them actually went out and pretended to buy the entire world's supply of silicon. So no, Altman gets most of the blame personally in this case and the silicon fabs for taking the fake order like absolute tictacs. Demand would be high otherwise too, but that's what got everyone panic buying and resulted in this mess.
Even taking into account all their fuckups majority of their content is accurate and well sourced. I dont know why people do this thing where they point to a few instances and then extrapolate that out.
They literally paused uploading videos because they had an insane amount of wrong data in their videos. It got better for a few months when they decided to slow down video releases but now they are back at it. I dont know why people do this thing where they ignore factual data because they like a creator.
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).
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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
Note that the performance of the RTX 5050 is completely irrelevant if it doesn't work. While some say that their NVIDIA rig is working, that's a risk that's probably not worth taking for something that is expected to "just work." The last thing a console user would tolerate is dealing with whatever mess NVIDIA has dreamed up next.
> Note that the performance of the RTX 5050 is completely irrelevant if it doesn't work.
I don’t really understand the point of this comment. Shouldn’t we operate under the assumption that it will work? Is there something particular problematic about the 5050?
Also, AMD GPU’s are still very affordable and totally viable. I have a 9070 and I love it.
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.
I'm considering it, but as a replacement for the desktop gaming machine.
I'm already running Linux on the desktop. I don't use it for anything else, I have a MacBook for non-gaming. The desktop is due for an upgrade soon, and upgrading to a Steam Machine makes total sense to me. I don't have to deal with driver issues, and I get a supported config that will just work with my steam library. I might have to put my current SSD into a cage and add it as an external drive somehow, because I don't want to download a couple of TB of Steam library.
I don't give a shit about graphics quality - I play games for the gameplay not for the graphics, and mostly play strategy games anyway.
I already have a Deck and love that for travelling. A Machine as a non-travelling version of that would be great.
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?
If you’re fine paying a premium because you value a smaller form factor than a typical tower then sure go ahead and get a steam machine. But that seems like a steep price just to have a smaller machine.
I’m not going to start posting a bunch of different computers and then have us get bogged down nitpicking the specs. Go look at a couple of vendors and compare prices. The steam machine is just not competitively priced IMO and you don’t need their hardware to get the same experience when bazzite exists and runs great. Plus they will probably do a major release steamOS for desktop again soon anyway so you can likely boot that up soon.
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.
It's not comparing a console to a PC because a console, historically, has had way more firepower than the cost. It's only with recent hikes that that changed. There is no way you could've matched a PS5 at launch for $400 even with the most patient of PC builds.
It's telling that depending on who I talk to, they go "it's a PC, not a console" or "it's a console, not a PC." It's neither and it's both. It brings the PC's flexibility to a console experience, but for $1100 is that enough? It won't be as turnkey as a console (steam deck showed they can't quite get there) and it's hundreds more than one.
Minor nit: a steam machine is running Proton. Which is wine, yes, but wine that Valve supports, wine with patches and changes (afaik, most of which get upstreamed to wine). On a Mac you're probably going to use CrossOver to package up wine.
Wine is wine, yes, but CodeWeavers is not Valve. Mac gaming is niche. The budgets involved are incomparable. Expect it to take weeks to months for hotfixes applied in days to Proton to filter through to CrossOver.
(This is my lived experience: HD2 patch 28th April broke wine compatibility, Proton had a hotfix in a day or two, CrossOver had a preview that partially fixed it May 11th and a release that fully fixed it June 9th; it was unplayable from April 28th to June 9th, longer if you count the stuttering issue that it suffered since March.)
The future of gaming on a Mac is also made less certain by the upcoming obsolescence of Rosetta. AFAICT Apple won't just pull it out completely, but they're clearly uninterested in supporting it long term, so over time the experience of trying to get x86 games to run on ARM Macs will worsen.
(I think I'll aim for a DIY PC build in 2027 in the hopes memory prices decline by then, but it's a faint hope!)
You are right of course. But I expect that valve will come up with proton-on-arm with x86 translation very soon (in fact possibly next week-ish when they release the frame).
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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"
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
I think the point is that "only a few companies create these things" has always been true.
You need to provide a compelling argument why it is different this time.
The counter-argument is pretty basic:
RAM companies are currently selling as much as they can at high prices. This leads to investment in building new factories.
At some point the supply of new RAM will match the demand for it. When that occurs companies can increase profit by cutting prices to gain market share.
What's more, all the RAM companies have slightly different estimates of what the demand is. This leads to different levels of investment in new factories. Some will over-invest in new factories and the only way they can make their investment back is by increasing market share.
The final factor is new entries in the market. Chinese RAM manufactures can already produce DDR4 RAM (but only small amounts of DDR5). They can both increase supply of DDR4 RAM and are aggressively chasing DDR5 capabilities.
TL;DR: The profit motive is too strong for companies to artificially keep prices high once demand drops.
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?
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")
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.
People keep claiming this but it isn't true. The subsidy from advertising is very low:
> They make about $20 per user annually and, assuming an active TV service life of five years, yield about $100 over the lifecycle of a main viewing room TV.
I don’t have data for how much tvs are currently subsidized. But you can just look at the inflation adjusted price of TVs from say 1980 to 2010 and see the drop without worrying about adjusting for advertising and spyware subsidies.
You can also look at computer monitors (which don’t have advertising and spyware) and see an enormous price drop.
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
I’m sure you can figure it out if you try. I maybe was overexpressive with “exclusive”, that was my mistake. Wrapping thoughts in words is lossy and generally making an effort to be understood implies the listener making an effort to understand, yes?
If you were to anticipate a failure for a soon to launch product, it is entirely appropriate to say “dead on arrival”. A similar metaphor might be calling the product “stillborn”.
> If you were to anticipate a failure for a soon to launch product, it is entirely appropriate to say “dead on arrival”. A similar metaphor might be calling the product “stillborn”.
Okay, but the commenter I replied to said neither of those things. They didn't say "it'll be DOA", or even "it's DOA", but rather "killed this product on arrival". Despite my previous knowledge of the "dead on arrival" idiom, I found this particular wording strange due to its use of past tense, so I wrote a comment expressing that.
If you disagree, that's fine, but you've chosen an extraordinarily unproductive way to express that disagreement.
I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to come off as adversarial. I don’t feel like you have to get words exactly right to communicate. There’s lots of folks on hacker news and sometimes, for some reason or another, folks just don’t know an idiom, so I thought I’d point it out. Appreciate ya and I hope you have a good week!
I'm simply impressed they're releasing at all. This has to be literally the worst 6 month time window in the last 20+ years to launch a new computing device at scale and have to build the vendor contracts and inventory from zero.
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.
I don't disagree that this device is very likely too expensive to sell well.
But! The price is not insulting. You can built a slightly faster PC for a little less, but that PC would be ~10 times larger, it would be louder, it would lack features like HDMI-CEC and good wifi/bluetooth. It really wouldn't compare for living room usage.
In order to get anywhere near the size of the Steam Machine, you'd have to exceed its costs.
Isn't CEC available for all in-tree GPU drivers using DP-to-HDMI passthrough? (although I do imagine Nvidia would still be preferred for a custom build, perhaps with a USB CEC injector)
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.
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.
Neither of those options is good value. PS5 charges more for games and you have to pay extra to connect to the Internet. The value proposition of PC gaming is openness. You can play on whatever you want, on anything that can run it; you're not locked into one hardware vendor or game store. This means competitive pricing across all market segments, except where consoles sell at a loss to buy lock-in.
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.
> Buying a gaming pc is always a bad deal compared to a PS5!
If you only compare the hardware, that's true. Even if you don't consider all the other functionality that a PC has vs. a console, add all the different ways to get free and heavily discounted games on Steam/PC, and the results of that calculation might start to look very different.
Your response is essentially OPs reasoning, read it again :)
Anyways, just wanted to add that the steam machine and PCs killer differentiator: a truly open platform that no mac, ps5 and other consoles can offer. Do whatever you want, install whatever software you want, whatever OS you want. Break the rules, face the consequences. Live life like a living being, not as a slave to some corpo.
I take it you meant GP (as in, the post I was responding to - which to this post is actually GGP but I digress).
I don't think it is. Their reasoning is:
> 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.
Mine is that it is indeed price, only not the price of the hardware alone but rather the price of the ecosystem as a whole. Another aspect that I didn't cover is that a game that you buy today for PC will likely still work on whatever PC you have 20, 30 years from now. The same cannot be said for consoles.
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.
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.
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?
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.
If you look at how extremely overpriced console hardware typically gets away with being, this is not a bad deal if the system is durable, relatively quiet and there are good games well optimised for it. The deal is sweetened by the fact that you will be eventually be able to upgrade the RAM and storage easily and for cheap if/when prices eventually come down from the current AI insanity levels.
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?
That CPU comes with a cooler so you don't need that.
At 2TB SSD, you should compare to the $1350 steam machine instead.
The GPU isn't exactly equivalent. Gamers Nexus puts it closer to RX6600 performance. But that ignores the RDNA3 improvements so I don't really have a good comparison for that.
They did announce SteamOS for general computers, so I don't expect game support to be too different.
I don’t have a horse in the race and I’m speaking from ignorance, but I noticed that Valve’s offering only requires 300W of power. That sounds very appealing for the sort of games I play.
Would it be difficult to make a PC with a similar power/performance profile?
Note that the power estimate for the build above is only 325W. The power supply is beefier than that for headroom and economics.
It wouldn't be surprising if Valve's efforts at integrating the unit (putting the relevant chips on a single board, eliminating anything unnecessary, and improving cooling) could shave a significant amount of power.
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:
The RTX 5060 will be significantly faster than the Steam Machine on games with hardware ray tracing effects, which tend to be the more demanding games.
To me it's not even the comparison with builds that's damning; it's the comparison with handhelds and other mini PCs. Most people excited by this probably have a Steam Deck or another handheld, so they have to be into playing a very specific slice of games that can run slightly better than the handheld.
For example, Forza 6 on high 1080p is 60 for SM vs 40 for high end handhelds and 30 for SD. Even at the original price, is it really worth $750? Not to mention that many handhelds and mini PCs also have USB4 ports that one could attach a retired GPU to get 60fps+ @ very high 2k, but the Steam Machine has no such port and only one NVMe slot.
So this is for people who are allergic to the existing solutions (plugging in your handheld, using Moonlight) or just like the brand, but I know it's going to still sell out. I just don't want to hear about extensibility, eco-friendliness, or cost effectiveness from a certain segment of gamers after this.
Well if you want to be pedantic, your NVMe drive is actually a SSD, nvme being merely a transport protocol. But point taken; I should have said SSD prices.
For people who are already throwing money at Valve on a monthly subscription and might otherwise have bought something from Sony or Microsoft, or more likely, will also buy something from Sony or Microsoft.
Very few games are free. Otherwise they range from $0.99 to $90-ish. Sometimes I get a bunch from Humble Bundle deals. Sometimes I buy something that looks interesting but never play it.
There's no Steam subscription of any kind to access your library. Whether you're spending $0 on average year, or $300 -- you get to access your Steam library the same.
Who knows, maybe once the AI bubble has burst they will surprise us with a replacement mainboard for this second gen. If they want to keep it in sale as long as the Steamdeck it would make sense to offer gamers a simple way to upgrade their existing machine when Steam's ecosystem is already open to all sides. Maybe they'll even outsource that mainboard upgrade to ASUS, MSI or others. Once we see a teardown we can make a better prediction.
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.
Unified memory is a lot more flexible and efficient though. You don't have to have assets loaded in RAM and also VRAM for the CPU/GPU to use them. Don't forget about how much more RAM a general purpose OS like Steam OS can consume versus a gaming specific OS too. The PS5 Pro also has an extra 2GB of DDR5 system RAM too.
My old Ryzen 3700X gaming PC has 16GB of RAM and 8GB of VRAM (RTX 2070 Super) and there isn't any game that runs better on it than my Xbox Series X. And the GPU in the Steam Machine is slightly worse than an RTX 2070 Super.
> You don't have to have assets loaded in RAM and also VRAM for the CPU/GPU to use them.
You typically don't want to do this anyway in games. You're probably doing something wrong if you're reading textures/meshes on both the CPU and GPU.
> Don't forget about how much more RAM a general purpose OS like Steam OS can consume versus a gaming specific OS too.
SteamOS is meant to be a gaming specific OS first. It has a desktop environment but none of that loads unless you switch to desktop mode. That's just taking up some disk space while you play games.
>SteamOS is meant to be a gaming specific OS first. It has a desktop environment but none of that loads unless you switch to desktop mode.
I think it's fair for some of us to consider the resource usage of a core feature and not really accept "just don't use desktop mode" as a viable suggestion. Especially if half the pitch is "it's a mobile PC." You can't use many of the features it's capable of in gaming mode.
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.
Console stores also have sales. Often with pretty huge discounts. I just bought a bunch of games on Xbox in the 1-5 dollar range. I see similar sales on PS5 all the time.
Honestly, these days, Steam, PS and Xbox game sales prices are pretty much in the same level now. Ten years ago it was very different. Recently I was thinking whether to buy Resident Evil 4 on Steam or on PS (had the same price 9,99€). Got it on Steam in the end. Though, Steam still wins on regional pricing as they support more local currencies.
Only the Nintendo store have games priced usually a bit higher.
> To buy a PS5 Pro is going to require re-buying all of your games for it
Why would I re-buy all the games I own?! The vast majority of people one-and-done games and movies. There are a handful they go back to, and that's it.
CHILDREN replay games cycling through them ad-infimum because their entire concept of time is like 3x less than we've been waiting for the next GTA.
And they don't have money! Adults are the majority of the market now.
Any other behavior from adults, who are seriously time constrained, is niche. And that's fine if someone wants to spend their adult time on earth replaying games, but let's be honest. It's niche.
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).
I'm still gaming on a 980. I have never been chasing pixel perfection or the latest and greatest.
I would say I am the exception, but hardware survey says otherwise. There are a lot of people for whom the Steam Machine would be at worst a sidegrade.
* Not all PS4 games can run on PS5. Granted, it's only a few edge cases. But you still need to pay the PS4>PS5 upgrade if you want to avoid bottlenecks.
* PS3 games and the like require a 150+$ yearly subscription, and it's streaming for many of them. No thanks.
* No PS2/PSP/Vita compatibility, heck no emulation at all.
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.
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.
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.
and the fears that Saddam Hussein was going to buy a bunch of PS2s because the cpu was SO POWERFUL they would be used for missile guidance systems or something
I haven't heard of any others, and your comment said 'supercomputers'.
Not to mention that the NSCA was just throwing spaghetti at the wall to see if it would prove useful when it came to the PS2,[0] and their setup never worked reliably.[1] The PS3 had several supercomputers made independently.[1][2][3]
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.
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?
Isn’t it just a mid-range PC for ~$1,100? Why would someone buy that just to use it like a regular PC and not use Steam? That just seems strange. I’m sure there are also many PS5 owners that bought the console but only got one or two games before the console collected dust.
Piracy and alternative storefronts don't exist on PS5. I could buy a steam machine and then exclusively buy my games from EA. They're also not charging you for the multiplayer access
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.
That article is from 8 months after it released. Notably it doesn't count the Digital Edition, but I doubt it also got sold at a loss for that much longer.
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.
Sony is selling off old stocks at old future prices. They've already started hiking the price up - it's unlikely they'll eat the loss on hardware here either.
> 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.
PS5 Pro had a launch price of $700, which already felt steep. How is $900 not even worse value? Even if it's "better" than the Steam Machine, let's not pretend that it's actually a good value for the hardware.
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.
And yet my steam deck still plays everything I throw at it. Could I find a Crysis-type game that was basically designed as a GPU torture device that it would struggle with? Obviously. Is there a resolution difference? Yes. But there are a lot of games coming out only asking for moderate specs.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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?"
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!
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
So a tiny tiny tiny amount of games, with the added fun that older games might just not be available, OR cost a whole bunch because they're collector items.
People love talking about console exclusives, but every game from before 2013 is basically a PC exclusive.
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?
There's no game worth installing a rootkit for. The market is far more diverse and interesting than the handful of popular AAA titles , most of which are just shooters
There is a certain group of gamers who care about all of those games, but there is a not insignificant group who doesn't at all. So while it's not a non issue, it's not a show stopper that you can't play online shooter games. And that really is the only genre of game that won't work. Everything else has been flawless on linux.
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.
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).
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)
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.
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.
Yep, this is what I've noticed. As long as you can stick with the same motherboard and PSU, you can kinda-sorta upgrade them. But after that you hit a wall.
But not at a thousand dollars.
SFF builds are more expensive and fussier to setup and cool down .
So a well made, prebuilt Steam Machine is good value when compared with an equivalent SFF
I have a huge number also. And I've played a small fraction. For example, Stellaris - I've got almost 900 hours played. Against The Storm is running a close second. Some other games, less than an hour. If it is 99 cents, I'm probably going to get it if it looks somewhat similar to anything I enjoy.
If you check out Humble Bundle, you can find bundles of games where you get 20-30 games for around $20. Many of them are charity bundles, like one I got to help people in the Turkey/Syria area affected by the 2023 earthquake. Those bundles mostly consist of keys redeemed on the Steam platform. I don't play first-person-shooters, so those are going to sit in my library unplayed & uninstalled.
Let's say you on average manage to find 8 hours a week in a normal week playing videogames. A decent bit, no doubt, but not too crazy for someone who would consider themselves a "gamer".
You do that like 50 weeks a year. That's ~400 hours a year. 2,500 / 400 = 6.25 years.
My Steam account is 20 years old. Even if we doubled it to 5,000 hours, that's 250 hours a year. Roughly 5 hours a week on average.
That said, a lot of people just end up owning a lot of games on Steam through sales even though they may never play them or only put a few hours in them. I've got >200 games and yet over half have <2 hours of play time. A ton I've never installed, they just came bundled in sales with other games I did actually want. When you can buy a whole publisher's collection of games for like $20 on some crazy sale why not?
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.
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
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.
They still are. Any PS5 will play PS4 games. The PS5 Pro is a mid cycle spec bump that allows some newer games to have slightly better graphics. The games are still hard required to function within the expectations already set for the first PS5 model. I played Ghost of Yotei just fine on a non-Pro, and it targets the newer model.
We're also nearing PS6 time in the next year or two. It's already six years old.
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.
I picked up a PS5 Pro before Christmas on sale for $599. It seems I made out like a bandit. I assumed prices would go out due to all this AI mess and knew I’d want one for GTA.
Watching the LTT review of the Steam machine, it also reminded me why a console holds a lot of value. A lot of their video was about fiddling with settings per game to get a good balance of performance vs visuals. Something I never have to think about with the PS5, especially the Pro.
While I like the idea of PC gaming, and even more so what Valve is doing, trying to move the industry to Linux, the reality of PC gaming has always felt like a huge pain. As much sys admin as actual gaming.
If the Vavle platform are popular enough, they could get presets with a lot of games, but that remains to be seen.
The Steam Machine is likely slower than the base PS5 in terms of GPU performance. As a proxy, the memory bandwidth is 448 GB/s on the PS5 and in the range of 256 GB/s for the Steam Machine's VRAM
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
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
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.
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.
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?
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
> indie devs have easy access to release on PS5, latest Xbox, Switch alongside Steam simultaneously
And yet steam's indie library far outpaces what all other consoles indie games combined provide. Also you get access to a vast amount of games distributed independently and other stores that the PC ecosystem has available.
> 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 - $25 without the subscription
I don't think most PC gamers like being told every month what games they have to play in order to maximize their subscription value. They view it as wasting 100$ yearly just to have the ability to play online along other features that are free on PC.
> 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
That's a legit improvement from the console platforms but since it was only a change made in the previous gen you can only go back a single generation for now. On steam your library might encompass stuff sold three generations ago and if you are willing to take advantage of PC gaming outside steam you can go as far back as the invention of video games itself with emulators.
and all of those obvious counterpoints is still not enough to justify the price difference between a current gen console and this Steam Machine when an old sub $99 mobile device can power three generation old games as well, and connect to a monitor for those inclined to go out of their way for that user experience
> when an old sub $99 mobile device can power three generation old games as well, and connect to a monitor
Running an outdated, out of support version of android with limited app availability and a crappy selection of poorly maintained emulation forks... with a buggy GPU driver that causes so many visual and performance issues on a digital platform that does everything they can keep you from installing your choice of OS, let alone the lack of usual niceties that desktop operating systems get you. It will do in a pinch but I don't think anyone who likes emulating stuff enjoys using a system like this. Even a new flagship phone will share some of these issues and if you have an iphone you will pay to have an still inferior solution that can vanish at moments notice if apple decides the emulator your purchased isn't compliant to their draconian guidelines or isn't compatible with newer apis. I guess at least the UI/UX will be nice.
Alright, so at what price does your opinion stop being true, because there will certainly be consumer hardware price hikes again in 6 months, due to further RAM demand
I just think that phones and specially old ones are quite bad at being repurposed, its hard to work with them when they were purposely engineered that way. You will have much better results with an old pc desktops or pc notebook. Some may even be as performant as the steam machine, just don't expect low power usage and something small and good looking for the living room, a sore point in pc desktops that the steam machine tries to address.
At what point does the value proposition go back, for the target audience you are fond of and can imagine to be disinterested in both consoles and enthusiasts uses of old phones
That was the premise of this thread, the price point of consoles and a generally antiquated understanding of current gen console indie gaming libraries
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!
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.
So awesome. If I needed/wanted a gaming PC or "family TV" gaming machine, I'd snag this for sure. I've had the Steam Deck since launch and it's really quite well-executed and I've logged hundreds of hours on it. SteamOS is totally decent and the level of polish has been continually improved. The price for the Machine is totally acceptable considering the market currently, particularly considering these [0][1][2] would be my options if I had $1500 CAD to spend on a gaming PC right now -- all machines with 8gb VRAM GPUs and 16GB of RAM.
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.
I mean, can the market really handle any of these prices? If we're truly stuck with these increasing prices for another year or so, whole sectors might get "restructured", including gaming, simply because people cannot afford the devices they depend on.
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.
My hope is this is just a soft launch that people who really want can get now, but that they revise it in the future to either be massively more powerful or much cheaper.
Same, I could have maybe justified $600 to my wife, $800 would be really pushing it. But 1k+ with a controller? There's no way when we have other things to save for. I am sure young single people will still buy it and it will sell out, but my Series X was $550 a few years ago and ill enjoy that in my living room for a while longer.
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.
Yep, and I feel many commenters in this thread are comparing value propositions only in terms of specs. I’ve built a number of Mini-ITX cases, from 5L to 20L, and they are a pain to work with and maintain. In some cases it’s impossible to make a reasonable filtered airflow, so dust builds up very fast, and a teardown to do clean up is pretty annoying. Steam Machine looks very straightforward to maintain. And it’s also tiny and quiet.
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!
I'm skeptical that they have working CEC. The steam deck, for example, does not. It also doesn't work reliably with many TVs. I'll believe it when I see it.
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.
Every iphone, ipad, playstation, xbox, android phone (though there are ways of unlocking), smart TV, smart Fridge. These are all devices that run a full web browser, these aren't appliances they're full personal computers. You can write and run software on them, even if arbitrarily limited in hardware access.
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.
That's because you've been making a concerned effort to buy usb-c stuff. The average consumer has way more usb-a stuff than usb-c, even more so when talking about pc desktop users.
I even bet many mac users wished their device had a usb-a port or two in order to not be so dependent on adapters, hubs and docks.
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.
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.
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.
> Why do you think the standard iPhones only does USB 2.0 transfer speed?
Because they saved die space in silicon? Same reason the MacBook Neo only has a single USB 3 and a USB 2. It seems that their A-series Pro silicon only has hardware for a single USB 3, and their non-Pro silicon doesn't even have it at all. I highly doubt they are sparing pins from the connector, the complexity of making a special port variant for that far surely outweighs any potential savings.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
If it has USB-C on one end then you can use a C to C cable or a C to A so it doesn't really matter. It's not a show stopper either way but I've long wanted to slim down my birds nest of cables. Since my laptop and phone are USB-C I can get by with C to C cables only so I probably wouldn't get a computer that required me to double the number of cables I have to keep.
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.
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.
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.
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
That said I would not trust this as a PSU for a computer which uses almost all the available power output and does not have it's own internal battery. Most USB-C chargers are not designed to run at 100% capacity for extended periods and could not handle sudden spikes over the rated capacity. Even for desktop PSUs you always want to get something that has a good headroom over the actual power draw for stability.
From reading posts on X/Twitter, I got the feeling that PC Gaming enthusiasts truly believed this was going to compete with console gaming and those players would flock to the utopia that is Steam OS and managing hardware. At this price I believe its way too expensive to temp console gamers and Steam supporters will probably balk about the specs to price ratio.
The main market to me is going to be ibuypower people, so a console gamer who wants to jump to PC but doesn't want to self build.
I've been screwing around on pcpartpicker on and off for today, and I don't see a clean way to get steam machine specs for less than $800 if you build it yourself, and closer to $900 if i'm being honest (and in no way will it be SFF).
I think the big thing will be if steam can commit to this like the deck and get better performance over time. Consoles out perform their hardware thanks to lots of optimization, enforced by knowing you're stuck with/always going to have the same specs.
The steam machines success to me pivots completely on if they can capture a market of customers who want to jump from console and don't want to become hardware savvy (which has not gotten as easy as it should).
Compatibility and performance in the next 6 months is going to determine a lot.
No case. No custom made motherboard that supports HDMI CEC. Lack of developers specifically developing around valve hardware like they did with the SteamDeck.
> Lack of developers specifically developing around valve hardware
Like what? The only "specific" thing that comes to mind are the boot animations and the Decky plugins (which should work with all SteamOS-like distros).
All of the optimizations, "Steam Deck" graphics settings, controller mapping support, Linux-friendly anticheat and more works on any Linux PC. Almost nothing is bespoke to the Deck, by design.
And all those consoles (save the Switch maybe) are heavily subsidized by those companies to compete at that artificial price point.
According to LTT Valve made the conscious decision NOT to subsidize the Steam Machine to let the market compete. I very much respect that and will be willing to pay the premium because of that and:
- using my purchase to vote for/encourage the growth of the Linux ecosystem.
- as a PC gamer I'm already highly invested in the Steam platform with all of my other gaming purchases.
The PS5 (which is realistically the main competitor) has the caveat that to get even something as basic as multiplayer you need to pay a $10-20 monthly subscription, so you can multiply that by however many months you plan to own it and add it to the price.
I'd like to factor in the cost of games, but then my Steam library might be a little bigger than the average... Am I willing to pay €60 for a game? Rarely. Am I willing for the spring/summer/winter sale on Steam? Yes!
Idk why anyone thought this would be a "PC console killer" type of product. Consoles are subsidized because they act as the entry point to closed hardware/software ecosystems. You can't do that with a general purpose PC because it's an open ecosystem by definition.
But there are economic benefits to an open ecosystem. The Steam Machine has a gigantic back catalog of games that can be had for cheap. You also probably already have all the peripherals you'll need for it. And of course they don't charge for online play.
That last part alone makes up for the cost after just 2-3 years.
This is a general purpose PC but it's also designed for Steam. Valve will get back a fair amount of revenue on games sold for usage on said machines. They could sell it with little to no margin (maybe they are doing it) while increasing gaming time and potential revenue. Sure, games can be had for cheap and so far it seems to be profitable.
Sony have admitted to selling the PS5 at a loss during the first 8 months of sales. Even when they announced the $499 disc drive SKU was no longer selling at a loss, they admitted the $399 SKU still cost more to make than it sold for. Things are no doubt different today.
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.
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.
It does sound like some people do have pretty good results with it, but my experience is really not unique (I know personally many others who have similar).
With that in mind, I maintain that this stuff is very very far from perfect.
I have had a very clunky experience historically. But I tried the built in steam game streaming over the local network to my steam deck and this time the experience was flawless.
I feel like the problem is a very large number of rough edges and software bugs, hardware issues, etc. But it's so possible to stream over the local network with zero noticeable latency. Only if all the stars align and there are no bugs.
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.
I can vouch for it being really great for me as well (as others pointed out). But I use Apollo instead of Sunshine. It has some superior things baked in, including easy resolution/monitor handling.
Maybe give it a shot.
I use a dedicated capture card ($250ish Elgato 4K X) over Thunderbolt to access my desktop. I can't imagine putting up with any higher latency than that.
The chroma encoding is a little disappointing, but I don't think there's any way to bypass it, even at 1080p.
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.
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.
Have you tried Steam Remote Play? It allows your desktop to render games and stream it to your Steam Deck that's connected to your TV. Or to any other device really.
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.
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.
>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.
Your mileage may vary, but I've never gotten reasonable performance out of Crossover. I have a decked out Mac for development and most of the games I've tried in Crossover still need you to turn the settings to damn near lowest possible.
If Mac Minis were viable for gaming, everyone would get one. Unfortunately, Crossover has very spotty support and GPTK starts fraying at the seams on CPU-heavy titles.
The upcoming Steam Frame will be the real make-or-break moment for ARM PC gaming. Up until now, nobody has seriously attempted to make ARM work for the "Steam Deck" segment of users.
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.
I hope this is successful, like it or not this might be one of the best ways that Linux can reduce the Microsoft Windows monopoly. I would actually go as far as to say that it has to succeed.
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.
> We think of Steam Machine as an extension of PC gaming, not as a console.
But is that really so bad? I don't want to say 'sell it at a loss' but loss leaders don't need to bankrupt their companies in order to do their job.
If you sold them at or below cost then people would figure out how to buy 100's and make server farms out of them. Particularly for this hardware. The awkwardness of the hardware being made up for by the subsidy from the manufacturer. But pricing them at break-even would still be good business.
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.
If that's the cost of a _working_, well supported and _viable_ open platform, than so be it. People, especially the ones here at hacker news, ought to give way more value to this, else we lose it all.
70% of the Steam users have a PC that's weaker than the Steam Machine[0]. These things will sell out, that's not the issue. The issue is that Valve probably won't have enough power to secure hardware deals to fulfill all the orders, thus limiting the growth of their hardware side.
Add "in their living room" and the answer is low. But is it a good experience to game in the living room, on the couch? To me that's an open question that is (sadly) very expensive to answer.
I was interested in the Steam machine, but I might not get one because I cannot log in to my Steam account, for no reason that I know. Steam's web-based process for resetting my password always gets stuck after successful completion of the captcha, regardless of which device or OS I use to do it, the accessible-to-Google procedures for getting past that blockage have not worked, and the email address that one could once use in this situation now just sends an autoreply that says no one is monitoring it anymore.
So I have exhausted all of the obvious routes for logging into my Steam account. Perhaps there are additional routes to discover, but I'm not particularly motivated to look for them at this point. If just getting logged in is this painful, I'm not particularly optimistic about the experience of buying or owning the thing.
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.
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?
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.
Similar here. I have the PS4 here and rarely even use PlayStation these days. Mostly it is just PC (now runing Linux even for gaming) and Steam Deck. I was thinking about upgrading to PS5 a year or two ago bu then did some calculations and it is more expensive then it looks at first (PlayStation+ is in practive not optional and it is 72 €/year at minimum, games are quite more expensive themselves than on the PC, and well there is a lot less choice in games). So I have basically just started moving my game library to Steam and PC (GoG and similar other sources store), just makes more sense with PC and now Steam Machine makes inot the a console form factor while still having all the power and freedom of PC. So yeah an easy decision to go with Steam Machine. Sure price of the hardware itself is not exactly very attractive but yeah not so much different to what is normal these days in PC hardware (fsck all these terrible "AI" slop scam bubble corporations). Would love to see a cheaper bare-bones edition without RAM and SSD inside but even without this I think Steam machine will be quite a nice replacement for PS4.
I could see myself buying the undeniably beautiful GabenCube at spec if the price were at or only slightly above SW2/PS5 level; as an additional device to play the outlier game that is exclusive to "PC" and Steam Deck / Macbook Pro not delivering enough oomph for it to run satisfactorily.
I think this put this all in perspective for me. If Microsoft came out with this exact hardware (with Windows but still open and you could load SteamOS on it), at this price point, people mock Microsoft to death about how this product is a joke.
It’s called the Xbox and the reason it wasn’t at this price point is that Microsoft has the capital power to subsidize the cost at risk of the Xbox division not being profitable. Valve doesn’t have such freedoms on hardware it seems.
The XSX costs 43% less than the cheapest Steam Machine, even though it has twice the SSD and includes a controller. Microsoft isn't subsidizing it that far.
That’s a Nth generation device that has a built out hardware pipeline. I assure you that Microsoft still subsidizes the devices and has lowered the cost on later models through hardware supply chain build out agreements.
What are you trying to prove? That Microsoft has hardware pricing magic?
Very late to the discussion, but many people see the price of the Steam Machine and balk at the high cost, even if they understand the reasoning. However, this isn't about the Steam Machine. Computing has just gotten more expensive. This is the new reality going forward, Steam Machine is just on the front edge of the wave. (Until, and if, RAM manufacturers catch up).
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.
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.
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.
Now game devs can optimised their game for it and Steam Machine will get royal treatment. It's not unusual for a PS5 game to run slow on a PC with much better hardware due to not being optimised. The Nintendo switch is a great example, pretty old hardware but the games run well (for their intended experience).
Many people are complaining about the price but you can bring you entire steam game collection and even use as a PC if you want, I sold my PS5 once it became a useless brick cause Sony prevents you from running Linux.
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.
I think the steam machine is more important as a benchmark for 3rd parties developing their own Steam OS based systems. Although I am sure Valve would be happier if it was popular on its own merits too.
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.
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.
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.
Valve makes it very very easy to be a PC gamer, and, importantly, slightly harder to be a PC gamer who buys games in places other than Steam.
Yes you can buy games on GoG or Epic and play them on a steam deck or a steam machine. But it's juuuuust enough faff to be annoying enough, that you'd rather just get them on steam. I know people (and am a person) who have rebought games they already own so they are on steam, to make playing between steam deck and desktop more reliable.
It's the same with the steam controller. You _can_ use it with games outside of steam, but it's enough of a faff that you find yourself avoiding it.
It's incredibly effective, and why they are an effective monopoly in PC gaming.
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.
Of course it was, they are talking about the 2012~2015 (not sure about the exact date) steam machine that was released and failed. It took a long time for enough pieces to fall into place that would lead to the success of the steam deck and now the, too soon to call a success, launch of the new steam machine (2026).
The original Steam Machines were a line of pre-made PCs with SteamOS from various vendors. Valve made a reference machine, but it was never widely available. The device released today is their first product that's actually called "Steam Machine".
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
It's still missing wi-fi, bluetooth, sc dongle, sd card reader, (frugal) led bar, the hdmi cec functionality and whatever you value yourself for assembly, installation, troubleshooting and tweaking time (between half an afternoon to a whole day). Dealing with pc bioses is tedious and tweaking fan behavior and thermals could take a whole other day, which you are gonna need because the cheapo case you've picked up only comes with a single loud fan and poor ventilation for pc case standards, so you either gonna have a loud motherfucker or a cooked to perfection unreliable rig.
Let alone having to put the PC on the floor because it won't fit anywhere else in the living room.
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.
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.
I would have probably picked an Intel B580 for the additional VRAM (at $250), and a case with better airflow like the Bequiet Pure Base 501, but your point stands.
My first thought was "I wonder how this would work as a small-factor game dev machine" and lo and behold, there is a clip of someone working in Godot running a debug version of their game. Very cool to see Valve market this as Linux PC rather than strictly gaming.
The point is there are better-value options if all you want is a SFF PC for development work. 16 GB is also pretty tight for development, come to think of it.
I saw a bunch of reviews (written and YouTube). It seems that the Valve development team behind this product was disappointed by the final cost. If this machine was built 2-3 years ago, can anyone estimate how much cheaper the cost would be? I assume this biggest price hikes have come from memory (RAM) and storage (NVMe).
Well, when they announced it (7 months ago) I got laughed out of the room when I said this will be at least 1k$ 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$...
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.
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.
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)
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.
Yeah I keep reading comments about "semiconductor boom/bust cycles", but they ignore that Moore/Dennard Laws were in a totally different regime back then, and they ignore the external factor of AI. So I just don't understand what those comments are alluding to.
I honestly have no idea what you are actually talking about. Government printing capital? What does that even mean? And patterns are meaningless, what is the mechanism and the underlying relationship? Whatever you heard stock analysts say they don't sound they know engineering or science.
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.
Man it's so unfortunate that this launch coincided with the component crisis, forcing the prices to be just outside the range of people that were debating between getting this and getting a console, it would've made so much more of an impact if the prices were $200 lower.
I wish there was a clear Mac Mini alt. With lots of drawbacks of the mac mini fixed e.g. a very simple way to connect to tablets (iPads, Androids tabs) as screen and ability to connect to any keypad and mouse, natively (I am sure a linux mini pc box will have that already - at least I may not need a "connector hardware").
I really like the idea of travelling around with my iPad but have a very small but sufficiently powerful computer tucked away in my bag (along with needed cables) if I need it (because, well, Apple is not going to let their iPads unleash their capabilities).
There are some around (even in my geography) but all of them seem to be half-heartedly done.
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
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.
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.
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.
Both of them are laptops. The average person buying a laptop basically just needs a web browser and some office tools that will run on either. But they will run better on the macbook neo for less money. It's a no brainer choice right now unfortunately.
Well, let's defer to the market share statistics, as usual. We hear this line every few years, but the market knows what it wants. iPads are almost a larger market than Macbooks, at this point.
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?
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.
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.
The Steam Deck is an ok PC gaming machine, but most PC games aren't optimized for console experience. There's even quite a few Windows games that don't work or have bugs on the Deck. Meanwhile all Switch games are made for that platform and there are a ton of exclusives you can't get on PC. Glad each one has a niche, but Switch is an order of magnitude (or two) more successful than the Steam Deck.
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.
What if, in addition, a nominal fee was charged just to have a chance to purchase a Steam Machine? Let's say $3 (or whatever). Then, all that money is donated to an organization like Extra Life or Game for Love?
In that way, someone with 5000 scalper accounts knows they're going to be out $15k just to get in line. And everyone else who is trying to buy just one isn't sweating the nominal fee.
> 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?
I will definitely be getting this regardless of price or specs. I'm no hard core gamer and I play Balatro, Vampire Survivors and occasional online Halo 2 with friends. This is perfect.
Too bad YouTube doesn't have a proper API for building 3rd party clients. I would love to build one and use it on my SteamDeck and on the big TV with the SteamMachine.
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.
Seems like a case of under promising and planning to over deliver later. The hardware seems to be 2.1 but they haven't sorted out every feature in the drivers yet.
I'll be getting one eventually either way, hopefully after the RAMpocalypce has ended, just because I enjoy collecting consoles and games, and I want to support Linux through SteamOS. I'm sure I can find a place for it in my life, but it's not something I need.
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.
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.
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.
And since for AMD it is an open source driver Valve can also hack on it and squeze more performance out of it for their own specific hardware configuration.
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.
Most peripherals these days have a fully detachable cable so it can be whatever you want. Usually they include some garbage 10 cent C to A cable in the box that you throw in the bin and replace with a good quality C to C cable.
I could understand having both C and A on the machine, but having the one C port on the back seems like a mistake since that's the port I'd think you'd most want quick access to to plug in flash drives and such if you wanted to copy files from a phone or laptop. While the back ports are where you'd stick the fixed receivers.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The reason I'm going to buy a Steam Machine instead of building a computer is the verified program.
I've absolutely loved being able to check a store listing page and immediately know if a game will run well on the Steam Deck. Having the same program for a higher end target would be really nice for me.
Also, getting the CEC right is really valuable for me. If I'm building a computer there's no chance I am going to be able to get it to play nice with the TV using just the controller.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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)
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.
> 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?)
Dota isn't a very cheatable game to begin with. Even with the best micro you can't reach a high elo without the appropriate high level planning skills.
If we look at a game like Rust it's impossible for it to exist without a kernel anti-cheat today
"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.
The only competitive game I’ve put serious hours into that had votekick was CS, and teams would almost never kick their own cheaters, even when they were obvious, because they wanted that sweet Elo.
...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.
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.
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.
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.
The benchmarks I've seen - only a few, and only because my partner was watching them - show it basically neck and neck with a PS5. Not a PS5 Pro, to be clear, and a PS5 slim is only $650, but the Steam Machine isn't underpowered in console gaming terms.
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.
>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.
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.
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.
> 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
> 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.
> Steam is in the unique position to create a kernel anti-cheat
Valve has a long-term policy of being utter trash at game security.
> 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.
Epic Games does fine (though they did it by purchasing an anticheat startup).
EDIT: Oh, you're talking about making an anti-cheat focused Linux kernel build? Meh, still would not trust Valve on that front given their long-standing policy of not giving a shit.
>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.
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.
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.
My prediction was that they would bundle it with Steam store money or other games to bring the "end price" below a 1000 Euro, surprised to see I was wrong!
I feel like Framework really missed this boat with their desktop PC they released last year. They could have used that + a gamepad to have captured so much of this.
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.
I'd say that heavily depends on what you see as alternatives. For some the Steam Machine is filling an unmet need in the market, for others it's a more expensive gaming pc or gaming console.
As we are on HackerNews, there's a good chance that you can build / setup your own pc with better specs which you might want to look into and then decide.
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.
Releasing an actual Linux binary doesn't really matter that much. Proton is just a better experience. Even when games did include a linux build you were usually better off telling Steam to run the Windows one in Proton because it just ran faster with less bugs. A Windows binary is just more portable, more stable long term, and a better experience.
What we actually need is developers testing their games on Proton to make sure they run well day, releasing graphics presets that run well on the hardware, and simply not blocking Linux through anti cheat.
> A Windows binary is just more portable, more stable long term, and a better experience.
I must preface this by saying that I'm not a game dev, but the Steam Runtime SDK has been offering stable versioned targets for linux for close to a decade now. Porting to one of them shouldn't be more difficult than porting to any other console specific SDK.
Windows API and ABI has always been more portable than anything else. This is why Microsoft is a tech giant. You can take a windows binary from 1995 (actually even older) and run it reliably today.
If it doesn't run and you are a commercial client, Microsoft will implement a compatibility hack for you in the latest windows code so your thing from 1995 will work.
There is no parallel to this in the tech world so far. Linux gets around this by requiring you to recompile things, but recompiling old code along with old compilers and old libraries and all their dependencies is a nightmare.
Sure, I know all that, but it’s ironic to me that Unix, which was boasted as the epitome of portability once with C, POSIX, X11, X/Open and whatnot, actually struggles with backwards compatibility while Microsoft, the notorious developer of a closed-source, locked-in platform, has managed to become the key to portability :)
That's source-level portability, while this is binary portability. Even early on, MS put in lots of effort to ensure that old applications kept working.
Budget reasons would be my guess. The USB-C port here is 10 gbit while the USB-A ports on the machine are USB 2.0(front) and 5gbit(rear) speeds.
While they could have and imo should have just put usb 2.0 C ports on it, users have an expectation that USB-C ports are fully functional high speed ports. On most machines you can plug something in to any USB-C port on a device and they all work the same.
> 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?
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.
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.
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.
That's how a lot of modern Linux distros are because immensely better. Updates on an immutable OS are massively more reliable, it doesn't prompt you to merge diffs in config files, it never breaks, you never have to reinstall.
I've run Bazzite on my desktop for the last year and every update has just been hitting the "Apply" button in the settings page with my xbox controller. While on mutable distros it's always involved going in to the terminal and running a series of commands or opening the repo list and manually replacing the release name for Debian. I know there is a GUI software store to do it but it literally never works because some error will show up that isn't handled and you just get a generic error message.
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.
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
Honestly, it seems pretty enticing for a PC-just-for-gaming-but-not-a-“gaming-PC”, if you get my meaning.
I have no need for it right now, but when the next big Windows-only game comes out, it’ll be pretty tempting. (The last Windows gaming I did was when The Elder Scrolls Online came out…)
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.
yeah, so this was exactly my scenario. i have an xbox and ps5, but bought a steamdeck about 6 months ago to play indie and windows games... its been utterly amazing. i dont care about specs, or graphics, or framerates (within reason). playing on steam still feels like it did when i was young.
maybe im misunderstanding, but you exactly like the person that a steam machine is for.
Honestly, it seems overpriced (as expected). But it's much smaller than PS5 and according the first reviews it runs much cooler. Still not my cup of tea.
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"?
> 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!
I fully believe that the current PC hardware should be able to play essentially any game for a very long time. And the only reason we are being pushed to upgrade is because games are pushing poorly optimized graphics with mandatory features like ray tracing. No game play experience is impossible to achieve on the steam deck level hardware.
I'm hopeful that with the insane hardware prices right now, studios will be forced to actually make their games work on older hardware.
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).
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.
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.
> 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.
Until they want to play Fortnite/Roblox/whatever else.
There are a lot more games in the world than Fortnite/Roblox.. and besides, those are pretty bad examples since you can also play them on Android, so it's not like you need a PC to play them in the first place.
it's not like I'd ever expect only real hacker news here (whatever that even means) but let's be honest for a moment this is just an ordinary consumer item lacking anything novel or innovative ... it's basically just a very large smartphone with a game library for an app store.
I don't disagree, but what this does have is commercial backing and branding, and an excuse for game devs to target it - which benefits the Linux gaming ecosystem as a whole (and non-gaming ecosystem too, like look at all the improvements coming to AMD and KDE users, thanks to Valve's involvement).
I have doubts in their reservation process, though. I signed up for the controller reservation as soon as it started (after they just gave the first batch to scalpers) and it was mentioned that they prefer genuine accounts. My account is over 22 years old at this point and has regular transactions going on. Countless games with countless hours, almost daily activity. I even got the Index back in the day and still use it.
Anyway, upon registration I was informed that my account was "not eligible". You are welcome, I guess.
It is immutable and has versioned image releases (unlike Arch, which is mutable and rolling release).This adds stability, makes the system less prone to breakage, and easy to rollback (factory reset).
Ans of course, the biggest visible difference is that this boots directly into Steam big-picture mode, where you operate the UI using a controller (although it does support KB+mouse), which makes it ideal to use connected to a TV, like a regular gaming console.
SteamOS is highly customized and managed by Valve. It doesn't have the Arch repos or pacman. Updates to the OS come from Valve in large releases rather than per package. All apps installed either come through Steam or Flatpak.
So it's Arch in the same way Android could be called Linux.
The way SteamOS works is a bit weird. By default the OS partition is read only, you can do whatever in your user directory. But they let you unlock it to make whatever changes you want.
I’m pretty sure that this OS partition gets completely wiped every update though so your customisations will have to be reapplied.
Yup it is Arch Linux, that basically boots into Steam client with Big Picture mode. And if you switch to desktop mode you get a standard Linux with KDE Plasma desktop environment.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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 it was indeed, 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. :(
i agree about steam deck and i think a couple solid hardware players need to take a risk, like xbox did with series S. try to draw a line and encourage game studios to join in
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
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.
My 2021 machine is still more powerful (apart from the GPU maybe, but that one is from 2022 and has 12GB memory) and I can't justify buying this for that amount.
Would've loved to have a dedicated machine for gaming, but alas.
One disappointment: you have to have already made a purchase, which doesn't help if owning a Steam OS machine is the first time you will be buying and playing anything from Steam.
I really don’t get the bellyaching about the price. They are going to sell as many of these as they can make, so there is no sense in subsidizing the price. Maybe in the future they will, especially if Windows continues on it’s current trajectory.
DOA lol, I built a computer 6 years ago for less with 64GB of DDR5. I can't imagine anyone buying this. Maybe they can hold out for 5 years and add some more ram and sell it for 25% in true Steam fashion.
Sorry Valve. I know its not really your fault but I refuse to give you my money this time. Instead I'm executing plan B: converting my Steam Deck into a workstation. It's the best hardware I have and while it can't play everything smoothly what it can run well is practically endless.
The Japan situation is so fucking weird. Why can I only buy Steam hardware from a website that someone seems to have set up on a weekend, and where half the inventory is out of stock…?
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.
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.
Yeah I can feel you. I built mine just a few months before that terrible "AI" slop bubble scam hypte started. The only mistake I regret now is that I only went with 32 GiB of memory and said to myself I can upgrade later to 64 GiB if I need more. Well luckily most of the time I don't but yeah sometimes it could come in handy. Not for games but for other work. Ah well, still happy I was lucky to do it before the AIpocalypse
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.
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.
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
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!).
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.
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.
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!
I'm sorry but a Steam Machine is a horrendous choice for a workstation, and so is SteamOS.
I really can't think of a single use-case where the Steam Machine is the right choice actually, unless your one and only wish is to make a donation to Gabe.
You can have the same performances in the same form factor with the same OS (but more upgradability) for less, or you can improve on any of those points for the same price.
> same performances in the same form factor with the same OS (but more upgradability) for less
This also remains true for Apple! I don't care about performance. At all. I write text in a terminal! I only care about the hardware working as expected, out of the box, without having to tinker with bullshit. And Steam provides a platform that fulfills this, every time!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
If you go to pcpartpicker.com, you can select components and it only shows parts that are compatible with the parts you've already selected. It made selecting parts super easy. And I was shocked at how easy it was to build a PC. It only took maybe 90 minutes including 20 minutes skimming a YouTube video on how to assemble a PC. And installing Ubuntu was maybe 30 more minutes (15 minutes to make a bootable thumb drive and 15 minutes to install the OS on my new machine).
It was so much less of a hassle than I had expected.
That being said, I wouldn't make a PC until RAM and storage prices come back down to earth.
I built my last computer with my kids, it was done in 2 hours and it was a family activity.
You'll also need the exact same configuration on this than on any other computer on which you install SteamOS.
There's also absolutely no guarantee that this will "work well". I fully trust Valve to be fair, but you're talking about a completely untested piece of hardware.
This is on the level of "just use rsync bro". I prefer the console experience of clicking a button to order, plugging it in and playing. Valve is doing the vertical integration, they're putting together the hardware, the software and the OS, of course you'll be getting a better experience than pulling together random stuff. Also game devs will be optimizing games specifically for this hardware combo, just like consoles.
>I prefer the console experience of clicking a button to order, plugging it in and playing.
You're mixing up the experience of putting together the machine and using it. Why do you think playing games on Steam is not just clicking play and playing?
>Valve is doing the vertical integration, they're putting together the hardware, the software and the OS, of course you'll be getting a better experience than pulling together random stuff.
I mean, the GN review already talks about how some things don't quite work right because games are seeing Steam OS and assuming the hardware is a Deck. I'm not so sure it's such a given that the experience will be smoother, at least in the early days.
You can order a prebuilt with any OS installed to have the exact same experience.
Game devs will NOT be optimizing specifically for this hardware lol, that's ridiculous. PC optimization (and this is a PC) has nothing in common with console optimization.
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."
How much faster? I have 10G, and in my experience you will very quickly get disk IO limited that it doesn't matter. You can optimize for that, but be honest - how much time you're actually going to save in lifetime.
Only place I saw 2.5G actually be beneficial is Wi-Fi 6E/7 for the APs.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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)
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.
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.
We use that feature, and it's faster than our 300 Mbps internet even though both gaming laptops are on WiFi. shrug but yeah I don't know that it's a "killer feature" when we're talking about a device that omitted features and is still $1050. If this made it $1100 and lost 10% of sales to increase sales by 1%, it's a loss for the company ;)
i'm in, i think prices are gonna suck anyway, i own a playstation and that shit sucks, i want to do more couch co-op with my partner and the steam library opens up so much indie games
For comparison - cloud gaming such as Nvidia's Geforce NOW is at ~20$/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.
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 $4 a day, that's 30 years of using a car."
No matter how superior the GPU, the latency from streaming will never be able to compete if you're outside of a major hub.
I couldn't imagine playing a game by streaming inputs to a server 30ms away, which then streams those inputs another 30ms to the game server, and then having that round trip.
Fair. There's a free 1080p Nvidia Geforce NOW tier anyone can try to see if latency is an issue for them and the games they play.
One more data point - you're getting 1080p medium settings (for latest games) with a Steam Machine at ~1000$ 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.
According to GFN, my ping is somewhere between ~20-25.
I can see how it would be playable for the casual audience, but as someone who grew up on native gaming, it's not really playable to me for anything that's not turn based.
It's like how someone can play League of Legends at 80 ping for years, but once you're down to like 10 once you can't really go back.
of course you shy away from the fact that the string pullers in the world are hell bent on removing as much local compute and privacy from us as possible, so we can do nothing but use cloud services for everything from gaming to video editing. im sure the thought police would never use that to stifle dissenting opinions. your attitude displays a high level of unwarranted trust in these corrupt institutions and greedy corporations who all decided that making you pay a monthly fee for everything is much better for them than you buying something once, especially when all of these online services are monitored in real time for thought crimes by their ai systems.
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.
Valve isn't doesn't have to appease any public shareholders every quarter. There are likely no real expectations apart from making some profit which I am sure they will easily do. Then they just do like they have done with the Steamdeck and leave it on their store as an item they keep in stock and make some decent side income on. Throw it on sale for all their big sales and get some nice sales bonuses off it here and there.
I think ultimately there goal is to push more people towards Linux so that more games get developed there. All of their hardware pretty much targets the Linux side of gaming, so they really are trying to get rid of the Microsoft monopoly on PC gaming which I think is great.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The 2013 Steam Machine is as different from this device as it could possibly be. Proton didn't exist back then and Steam Input was still in (relative) infancy.
Or already is in form of many freely available gaming Linux distributiuons like CacjyOS, Nobara, Bazzite... not 100% exactly the same but still 99% there already so no need to wait for SteamOS.
> 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.
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.
I've never understood why anti-scalpers just don't work backwards from shipping address. Are these scalpers all really keeping hundreds of actual physical addresses they can receive packages at? Like if you see the limited product has 100 orders going to the same building, or apartment, or whatever then flag it before it goes out. Limit PO Boxes, etc.
Sure they can find mules to buy+receive one and then sell to the scalper, but the more steps you put in the better. Same for the people scamming Sam's club by buying memberships, ordering limited items, then refunding the membership. Just lock orders to members older then >1yr and make sure it only ships to the actual physical address attached to the membership. Flag multiple memberships at the same address.
I've run a modest shipping op and the second I saw even a couple orders of the same product going to the same address I would halt it and do additional verification.
I really wanted a PS5 when it was first released, and I refused to pay the scalper tax to get one, so I spent a few minutes a few times a day over a couple of weeks trying to snag one from one of the many retailers selling them. Extraordinarily frustrating, I was not so interested in this process that I was going to script it or any such nonsense, I just wanted to eventually get lucky and snag one.
I eventually did, and when it finally arrived at my doorman building I mentioned what was in the package to the doorman, and how happy I was to finally get my hands on it after the effort expended and he said "oh really? there's a guy on the 5th floor who's bought dozens of them - he sold me one at cost".
At the scale of the PS5 release (I don't know how many they first shipped in 2020, but they're at >80M sold now so undoubtedly X million in the first year) - would an address match intervention have been able to differentiate my order from the dozens of orders the scalper on the 5th floor had placed, presuming some cooperation from the doorman to allow for variance in the details of the shipping address the scalper used? I'm reasonably confident the answer is no and I would have been caught in the net that attempted to prevent the scalper from scalping.
At least I don't think scalper's will be a problem with the Steam Machine and I honestly believe someone with the knowledge of building PCs can build something way more powerful.
Surely you have an apartment number? Or is it like in many places in Europe, where the address is the building number and name of the recipient?
You slip the doorman $50 to hold tracking numbers of packages you're having sent to random units in the building. Or just promise him a unit at MSRP for his help.
These sorts of things are pretty cheaply routed around for those making scalping into a volume business.
Sure you can probably lock things down so you catch the vast majority of these mechanisms, but not without impacting legitimate users. So it's a tradeoff of how much more of a hassle do you want to make things for legitimate customers vs. how much you want to lock out resellers.
You don't even really need a doorman in many buildings either. There will be a shared mail room (if you're lucky) where packages get dropped. If you work from home you just watch the UPS/Fedex tracking and run down the moment it gets delivered to snag it before anyone else sees it.
The few folks I know who did this sort of thing were less professionals making a living off it, and more someone who wanted to subsidize their gaming habit by grabbing 3 or 4 units and keeping one while flipping the rest. They'd just ship to friends/family. The folks buying 50 units at a time are pretty rare from what I can tell.
I have since moved out of NYC but yes I had an apartment number. If the doorman was helping this scalper, the scalper could have varied the address he used enough to avoid exact match dedupes while still ensuring he could claim the packages as his from the doorman.
Doorman? Do you live in Trump Tower?
Doorman buildings are quite common in NYC.
[edit: to be clear they are not the norm, they are more expensive than buildings without one, but there are still lots of them that are not Trump Tower or other places for the absurdly wealthy]
It’s less about 1 scalper buying 100. Order limits, credit card limits, etc already restrict that.
It’s more about 1000 scalpers buying two or three to immediately resell. There are entire discords and communities around this with thousands of members.
I think there's less motivation to scalp the steam machine than there was e.g. the steam deck or the PS5. With the PS5 there were all those PS5-exclusives where you can either get a PS5 or not play them. The Steam deck was the first of the current wave of practical PC handhelds and it was a while before there were realistic competitors.
The Steam Machine is ultimately a mid-range gaming PC in a nicer form factor and a slight discount compared to building it yourself. I don't think anyone would pay 1.5x for a Steam Machine when they could just buy a regular PC for less. There's no capabilities the Steam Machine has that a regular PC doesn't, which limits the ability of scalpers to charge larger margins and thereby limits the motivation.
As for potentially impacting the wider PC hardware market? Well, retail scalpers are small fry compared to Altman, Bezos, Musk et al.
They do:
> Limit one signup per household. We will use payment method, shipping address, and other information to eliminate multiple entries.
The answer is that once you move past a modest shipping op the people with actual visibility on that would be the warehouse that's fulfilling, also typically people who don't have the power to cancel orders themselves.
Ecomm orders want to drop to the distribution center as soon as possible, which means you can't wait until you have a whole bunch of them just so you can analyze which addresses are on multiple orders. You would either need to 1) detect this in the warehouse systems (I spent my career working on these, so I can say with high certainty that is almost definitely Not going to happen, especially if they go through a 3PL) OR 2) you have to cancel orders after they have already dropped to the warehouse (which means wasted labor in the best-case scenario).
None of that is worth the effort to a company who is fundamentally still getting paid the same for the product regardless of if the purchaser is a scalper or not.
Why would any people need to see the addresses at all? The solution being proposed is something that you'd automate with a series of heuristics. And your point about the company making the same money for shipping to scalpers vs non scalpers seems like it would only apply to the shipping company, but if you view from the perspective of the product company, obviously they have an incentive to avoid scalpers because it negatively impacts the brand and the price spikes are money not captured by the product company and may even reduce further spending (eg if a buyer spaffed half their budget on an overpriced console, that's less for buying games which benefit the product company, eg Steam in this case)
You are vastly over-estimating the tech power the vast majority of businesses have dedicated to logistics. There's a large number of different systems involved with a enterprise logistics stack. Ecomm store provider, ERPs, middleware, warehouse systems, shipping systems, banking, etc. Which part of the pipeline are you going to hold up while you wait for enough orders to pool to build a meaningful heuristic?
The solution Valve came up with is quite brilliant.
It sounds like you are massively overthinking it. When you pre-order anything, you need to enter a shipping address. Why would you need to consider anything beyond that or require 'dedicated' logistics?
that's not to say I don't like Valve's solution - I agree, it is very nice
I don't think they're necessarily overestimating what they've dedicated to logistics, they're overestimating what they've dedicated to anti-scalping. If they cared to detect it, they could invest even just a token effort and make great strides. But why would they care?
IIUC: scalping manuals and scalper ring Discord accesses are sold as get rich quick schemes underground. Gullible individuals join the big supply choking sessions. Many of them don't make much but masterminds don't care.
So it really has to be done like Cybertruck early deliveries to 100% prevent scalping and flipping(the fact that Musk nails it...)
nobody wants the Cybertruck, why would anyone scalp it?
Early deliveries of the cybertruck were highly anticipated and the cybertruck is still the best selling electric truck even after needing to compete with the F150 lightning, Hummer EV, silverado EV, and Rivian R1T
What?
... they pay low income people $2-5, literally, to be the face of their scalping. It's like gig work for those people. The worker uses their own name, address, and credit card even to make the purchase. The scalper reimburses them + $5.
Low-income people have their own credit card? I'm having trouble picturing the situation where someone willing to accept gig work for a few $ can have a credit card that allows a 4-figure spend. That seems like a very bad deal for the bank to me.
many ways to write the same address. abbreviations, fake unit/apt numbers, apt numbers, etc. try to verify that at the scale of nike or adidas.
ultimately they are selling out inventory so it probably takes a lot of convincing to spend money on a cat and mouse game
I worked for a while at a service company that helped for a few of those issues specifically. It basically served as a back-search against an email address and known connections (social media), and online connections to give it an effective score if it should be manually verified or sidelines into a separate bucket than the general pool.
And even that isn't as icky as a short project I worked on for a major CC company. Still get the icks thinking about it, and I didn't continue beyond the 6mo contract.
In the US USPS provides this as a service. Every time I put my address in I get asked to use the standardized version.
It is the AddressesV3 service. We're planning on using it (for the website redesign) to make sure that the addresses are correct (enough). There's a significant number of people who register and quit/get fired, yet still have to make one final filing (for a state government agency) that we snail-mail them a final "I'm done with this" paper form to fill out. And every couple of years an envelope gets returned as "undeliverable".
https://developers.usps.com/addressesv3
For bulk shippers the USPS will penalize you if you have... well it was not bad addresses but non-standard addresses. The mail order company I worked for a few years ago put more effort than I expected to normalize and verify addresses met USPS standards. So I guess the penalty made it worth it.
Yeah so does Australia Post. I've dug too deeply but Google Maps on face value seems to provide it as well.
I’ve seen websites say during checkout “your address wasn’t in our db but this one was” showing what was clearly a cleaned up form (changed “Circle” to Cir, uppercased, turned ZIP into ZIP+4) so there are ways.
You would have to tell the user “use the corrected/matched one only” though. Some sites offer the correction but don’t make you use it.
The downside is this service is not up-to-the-minute accurate. I rented a new-construction house and it was the better part of a year before it made it into the USPS address correction database, despite receiving mail just fine.
Might be acceptable collateral damage, but it’d exclude some people.
I think offering suggested edit is ok but requiring the edit be accepted is unwise.
Unfortunately I've had websites strip out the house number in the "cleaned up" address.
Yep this is the right answer, address jigging is the oldest trick in botting. Nowadays with fingerprint browser, generated credit card number and residential proxy, it is very hard to tell legit buyers from scalpers.
From what i remember during the great GPU Crisis of 2022, the scalpers were shipping them to randomized addresses and intercepting them before the actual owner scooped them up.
Capitalism really does create a perverse incentive here, and when there's significant margin at play, there's an opportunity.
I played the NewEgg shuffle game for months to get the couple GPUs I needed during that time... not fun at all. I had to limit myself to bundles where the other component wasn't complete garbage. I still have a 600W EVGA PSU from one of the bundles (RTX-3080) that I've only used once to test if my issue was the PSU, MB or something else... turned out to be the RAM.
Knowing how it works is simple. You can game it with different names, you can modify the text of the address. My address I was able to make 20+ versions without trying. You can add unit # to a house address. It becomes wack-a-mole at some point.
I feel like to put that much effort into anti-scalping efforts you actually have to have a product that's really valuable. For a lot of products this really isn't the case (like this Steam machine iteration).
> I've never understood why anti-scalpers just don't work backwards from shipping address.
If Alice and Bob live in the same apartment and try to buy Steam Machines, but Bob forgets to include his apartment number (everything gets dumped on a shared package room, after all), Alice will be confused when an automated email accuses her of fraud.
I believe that's exactly what the Steam Machine reservation does: limits to one per household, so I take that to mean the address without the name.
Although I think the language in the response dialog will be nicer than accusing of fraud.
Totally doable - I remember talking with a guy that worked at a sports betting company and they flagged any accounts with any duplicated fields as requiring further investigation (to clamp down on gaming bonus bets and deposit matches).
You see only the address when it is already paid and to be shipped. Cancelling credit card transaction is very costly to the merchant.
I'm pretty sure I have to provide my address to many e-commerce shops during checkout, so that happens before payment.
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)
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.
Isn't it s/(s+g), where as you correctly say, g is legit account who want to buy? 1000 people want to buy a machine, 10 of them are scalpers, that's one percent on average? s = 10 and g = 990.
I feel like I'm having a slow day XD
Yes, you are technically correct (the best kind), but when s is much smaller than g, then s/(s + g) and s/g are approximately equal.
Scalpers can be damned because Valce might just deprioritize accounts in lottery unless they already spent money on Steam and play games.
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.
Yeah, I hope there's a gradient between scalper buying a single 99 cent game and actual person who has time played on multiple games and multiple purchases. The probability of someone with say a 3000 hours played across multiple games with hundreds or thousands of dollars of purchases is far less likely to be a scalper than someone with a single purchase many years ago and maybe some completely f2p play in say dota/cs, since the latter is likely to be a bot account.
They said the extra time ment they would be able to do additional verification. I’ll bet checking what games you purchased and play time are a part of that.
I wonder whether most scalpers are hustle types, bored teenager or organized groups.
Which is pretty much what they did :
> You must have made a purchase on Steam prior to April 27th 2026.
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.
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.
I never thought much of the need for trigger warnings until I read “the Xbox 360 came out decades ago”
The XBox 360 release is closer to the (US) release of the NES than it is to the current day.
Reading this was physically painful.
Dang. That wasn't supposed to be a challenge... That will have eventually become true no matter what tbh.
Similarly, Windows XP's release is closer to the release of the IBM 5150 (the first-ever IBM PC) than it is to today.
But the difference in computing power is more impressive between the first IBM PC in 1981 and a new PC from 2001, than between a new PC from 2001 and now. At least subjectively (it might be that software in general got more slower than hardware got faster).
we're dead, practically.
red rings of death, specifically :)
Time to wrap us in a towel and put us in the oven!
The original Crysis will be TWENTY YEARS OLD in 2027.
And I still can't afford a GPU to play it
Don’t worry, you also can’t afford RAM to play it either. Not that it needs much.
30th anniversary of Quake's release today.
That one for me is particularly painful. We were playing the alpha release before the game officially came out after work. I still work at the same place, though I've moved jobs within it a few times.
Casual reminder we're all mortal! :D
DX
I don't fear dying in a car accident. I dread the certainty that one day I'll be 80 and all I'll have left are memories, everything and everyone I ever loved will be gone (unless I have children which is very unlikely at this point), the world will be completely alien to me, and there's absolutely nothing I can do to prevent this - apart from dying even sooner which is even worse.
I think there are ways most people cope with this knowledge most of the time so they don't go crazy. I get why so many elites are obsessed with preventing aging.
Just a few days ago I was thinking about firing up my 360 to play some Halo Reach. Any idea if the online matchmaking still works?
I think the Xbox 360 online stuff was only shut down... two or three years ago? It hung around for a long time.
They have the Master Chief collection or something (almost all the games in one with a selector screen), I remember a year or two ago booting into and playing online game, plus there appears to be a discord server that organizes players to better reach playable numbers.
It doesn't.
Had that at a national electronics chain in romania for the PS5 launch.
It’s effectively closed off to new accounts too, which significantly reduces the effectiveness of bot campaigns
Fusion Festival (happening this week), aka European Burning Man (but not exactly) does this.
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.
> 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)
Not true at all. In many of the big football/soccer countries there's always been very strong measures to ensure affordability. England caps premier league prices, the Bundesliga goes further still by having a 50 + 1 rule, that is all teams are majority member owned. Up until ~2000 they had no private investors at all.
The yardstick in European football has always been that an ordinary working person can go and see a game in the stadium. A fair amount of sports did until they got the privatization treatment.
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.
I think the actual solution is closer to, you buy a team specific ticket/option: if your team advances you get the ticket, if some other team advances their fans get the tickets.
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.
A stadium full of rich fans makes for a boring event typically.
FIFA is corrupt, so this shouldn't be a surprise.
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.
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".
The trick to getting away with being corrupt is to as corrupt as you can without your marks/customers/voters/whatever revolting¹. Switching ticket sales to an auction format would likely add enough friction that many people² wouldn't bother, bringing the price back down, or would make a very public noise about how unfair it feels.
--------
[1] or authorities taking action, but that usually comes after the marks/customers/voters/whatever speaking up loud enough, unless by “taking action” you mean “taking a piece of the action” by way of being corruptible themselves.
[2] from those who do, or might in future, play along with the current race-to-buy-at-fixed-teered-rates system.
To be fair, most of the scalpers are FIFA.
They can keep it and society will be better off.
> 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.
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.
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.
Same thing applies to live music.
If I pay high prices for your tickets and for travel to see you play in one of your limited selection of touring cities, sure, I might go. But if you tour again a few years later, I would rather see an artist I haven’t seen live yet.
Meanwhile if the tickets are affordable, I’ll try and go again. You’ll have my renewed interest every time.
If you pay ten times the price for a ticket and go one fifth as much, they win.
Tennis is terrible to watch these days. It was always a bit of a corporate jolly, but the stands are literally half empty for all but the finals of slams. Nobody really cares for the game...
> If you'd bought them for $10, you'd instantly turn around and sell them for a few thousand to someone else.
I expect there are plenty of people who would in fact, not do that.
At many income levels and budgets, gaining $1k from selling a ticket helps a lot less than losing $1k from buying a ticket hurts.
Plus many people aren't rational economic actors and would keep the $10 ticket and enjoy the show even if it doesn't make economic sense.
Do you realize you also need to pay for hotels and flights and food and etc? In such situations of course you'd sell them. People talk as if the ticket is even the problem and that it's cheap to go otherwise.
Many ticket platforms have a resale feature and you get back what you paid if someone gets your ticket.
> Do you realize you also need to pay for hotels and flights and food and etc? In such situations of course you'd sell them.
Sure, but there's also the situation of all the people who are locals who don't need hotels and flights and food and etc.
You assume a big assumption: that everything has to be run by efficient markets.
The existence of scalpers is the proof
That it is run like an efficient market, not that it has to be.
Yes if the ticket selling happened in another world with another species other than humans it is possible that nobody would try to scalp. Here on earth people will find ways to bring non-market prices in-line with a market. It has nothing to do with who is selling the original tickets and all to do with how individual people behave with money.
I think the point is that there are many ways to perfectly stop scalpers and keep non-market prices. You don’t HAVE to give in to market pressures.
For example, you could make tickets non-transferable, but refundable.
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.
This, but for everything: industrial modernity, pizza, jazz, and in general nearly all music and culture of note (it's true that some high culture is actually good, though it oftentimes is a thin rebadge of something working people had already been doing for a long time): working people have done almost literally everything that matters throughout the entirety of history. Rich people should be grateful we don't turn them into (delicious) sausage and leave it at that.
> Rich people should be grateful we don't turn them into (delicious) sausage and leave it at that.
You and I both know, the poor will not do a damn thing.
History always repeats in cycles. The poor never do a damn thing, until it gets pretty bad and then they vote for fascists, and if they are starving then the guillotines come out for whoever is currently powerful (fascists or not). That's how it has always worked. As long as the powerful class continues providing bread and circuses, no guillotines. In cycles where fascism happens, it does accelerate the cycle because fascists are too stupid to realize they need to provide bread and circuses.
This and plenty of other problems that plague the society now and over the past centuries could be solved by eliminating the distinction and gap between "rich" and "poor".
Why should poor people be allowed to enjoy things?
You want to see a significant fraction of society sad and angry?
I can’t tell if you’re being serious or sarcastic…
Yes.
nonsense, the lowest strata of working society has never had it so good, unfortunately things are still going to be out of reach, perhaps what the comment above said was a little harsh but there is truth to it, if what you love about the sport is merely its accessibility then find or start a new one (that the rich will appropriate in a couple of hundred years).
How do you measure good?
Mate poor people never went to any world cup. I find it funny to watch rich guys discuss why it is too expensive to buy a ticket TO THE WORLD CUP. Like that was never a thing people afforded unless you happen to have the luck of your life and live next to one of the stadiums. Most people go to zero ticketed cultural or sports events per year where I'm from, and that's at the country level before you even slice by poor people.
It's like watching millionaires discussing that nowadays poor people can't afford to go on a rocket to space.
I know this particular context was within the WC but the phrasing of the parent comment seemed to go beyond just that and to football tickets in general, which is what set me off.
Also, I know for a fact that plenty of working class people from England go to the World Cup. Fair enough, they’re wealthy by the standards of Brazilian favelas but that’s a broader issue. It still stings to see the price gouging that FIFA is enjoying this time round.
I really don't think you're interpreting that right. The idea of football tickets in general becoming too expensive for the working class doesn't even make sense, there's so many of those tickets.
Depending on the club, you can’t compare pricing for Blyth Spartans tickets to Arsenal (famously expensive) and say “well you can just go follow a different club.” That’s just not how football support works in England.
Also, I pointed to another comment that working class fans are the fans that make the game. Man U are famously followed by “the prawn sandwich brigade” and the top tier clubs are regularly mocked by others for being out-sung at their own stadiums.
> I know this particular context was within the WC but the phrasing of the parent comment seemed to go beyond just that and to football tickets in general, which is what set me off.
No idea why you would read a comment in a thread specifically about the WC and think, "but boy, think how angry I could be if I decided this comment was about something else entirely?!"
Wouldn't it be better if they could go at least once or twice though? If they wanted to?
Sure, it would be better that everyone could have a beautiful life without any worries and being able to do all they want to. Choosing the world cup as the thing to be mad about is ridiculous though.
Is it possible to be mad about two or more things?
> aka European Burning Man
Fusion festival is a Psytrance festival. It's nothing like Burning Man (a DIY community driven festival).
For the American's it would be closer to Electric Forest or Lost Lands (but with good music).
Right. I've been to Fusion Festival. I'm surprised someone called it Burning Man. It's nothing like Burning Man - but I think it has similar counter-cultural vibes. I've not been to Burning Man though. Apparently Fusion is actually the bigger event of the two.
I'd call it an electronic music festival (or a giant rave, because terms like "EDM festival" were invented by corporations to displace "rave" the same way "open source" was meant to sanitize "free software" and Fusion is not a corporate event). I wouldn't call it a psytrance festival - that's just what they play on one stage of many, and maybe the 3rd or 4th biggest. There's a stage run by people from Berghain that plays techno the whole time (my favorite), a drum-n-bass stage, a couple more electronic music stages that I'm not sure about the subgenre, some smaller stages where live rock and metal bands play, theater performances, some kind of car racing thing next to a circus-looking tent, neither of which I've visited. And what the heck is "the hotel"?
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.
"Customers must meet the following criteria to be able to sign up:
That prevents flooding of tickets by a single person but doesn't prevent me from signing up even though I just want to resell
And why should that matter? If Valve wants to sell below market this is a reasonably fair system for doing so. What you do with your purchase is none of their concern.
You can fight scalpers by hardware limiting the device to the account that was used to purchase for some set time (2 years or so)
Sure but no one can do anything about your free will. This is about being fair, any ideas to make the system fairer?
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.
You've proposed that N times already.
Brands could do that - or an approximation of that by having an higher launch prize for the initial batch - yet they mostly don't.
Maybe the intent here is not keeping difference to themselves, and there's more brand value in not profiting from supply constraints, while being perceived as doing something about mass scalping.
Since most brands don't seem to agree with you, and if you just feel like you should be able to use your extra money to get lucky, you can still try to convince one of the lucky ones. I guess the few who might take it to eBay will charge even more for the privilege.
Not everything needs to be about efficient markets.
Yes, there likely is a large component where the median customer would be unhappy, just like they were with Uber surge pricing despite it being a win for the median participant in any role. That's why I'm here to preach the gospel of the unfathomable beauty and efficiency of the market and capitalism that has catapulted us into the greatest time in history.
Wait, you bought a time machine? The wonders that must await us!
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?
You pre-authorize the charge.
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.
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
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.
> If you know MSRP
Giving a list price would make no sense in the case of an auction, in fact would be misleading, (maybe even illegal ??), and not just because of these issues.
Most people would bid the maximum that they can justify. That's like saying that only scalpers take part in auctions (easy counter example : eBay).
If people were perfectly rational robots, this could work. Also, sales jobs wouldn't exist and politicians would be held accountable for their promises.
In real world, sales tactics work. People can be influenced to pay more than they thought they're willing to pay. Scalpers know this and exploit this at scale. A Vickery auction gives basically zero opportunity to get talked up. People will bid at the "thought they're willing" price, and scalpers will outbid them. Then the same people who underbid on auction will go to eBay, see it listed at "influenced to pay more" price, and buy it for much more than they bid.
And yes; the vast majority of eBay auction bidders are indeed scalpers, whose day job is to look for cheap deals that they can resell for more. It's extremely rare in this day and age to actually take advantage of eBay bidding to buy in-demand stuff on the cheap. It's much easier when there's "buy now" option but you need to be fast and lucky because you're competing against scalpers here too. Of course things are different for stuff that few people want in the first place - scalpers are not interested in those because they're too hard to offload, so you get your fair chance.
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.
That risk is exactly what scalpers have been carrying at everyone of these cases.
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.
Aaah so scalpers are only as bad as they are because they corner the market. Thanks, I think this is the only reasonable explanation that don't just ignore supply and demand mechanism.
Well if you’re prepared to sell a kidney for a flux capacitor and a DeLorean, go for it.
They took the same approach for the Steam Deck, so given that this is a repeating MO, anyone wanting to abuse the system had time to prepare accounts.
The payment addresses sound trickier to work around, but abusers can just invent a fake billing address; many payment methods neither receive nor validate this.
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.
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.
I expect Steam is already being DDOS'd probably close to 24/7. DDOS services are cheap, and there's plenty of kids with a card that think they're going to show off their 1334 haxing skillz after getting banned for using an aimbot they also paid for.
They are not exactly great in handling large peaks of traffic. They don't last that long, but they are still there. Controller launch had order processing issues. Any large sale start always have issues. Though it might be less load and more of making tens of thousands of background changes on items on sale.
It doesn't solve scalping, it solves putting everyone in a Red Queen race[0] against the scalpers.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Queen%27s_race
I think account age and activity should be weighted into that equation.
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.
Activity I can understand, but how should age be weighted? Do you intend to prefer younger or older players? Should annual income (or taxable income) also be weighted?
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.
That crosses the line to elitism
Nah, just rewarding loyalty
Maybe weighted is the wrong term, it’s a threshold and that seems prudent.
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.
One issue here is that one, very important for the future of Valve, type of target customer here is first time Steam users : teens without a console nor a (gaming) PC. April 2026 is already going to be a problem for them.
(Though I guess someone in their family can enter the lottery for them.)
> 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.
I would be careful granting that s is less than g. There are lots of incentives other than scalping for people to create extra illegitimate accounts on Steam, and one individual can often control hundreds of bots, whereas a legitimate user almost never has more than one or two accounts.
Even with a hundred or a thousand bots per person you'd need a hell of a lot of scalpers to dwarf Steam's ~130 million active human users.
Japan has done this for concert tickets for years. It works great.
Scalping? What kind of scalping market will there be at these prices?
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.
It's been a problem in the West for decades too, for some reason we've only just decided to do something about it
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.
Scalpers targeted products sometimes don't last one full seconds. Which means they go from product page -> cart -> checkout -> payment in fractions of a second each, likely through JS injection. It's hardly Selenium speeds. Your alarm clock or Valorant skills are of absolutely no use. That had been the norm for years where scalping has been a problem.
Concert/game tickets are in a extremely different situation. SM doesn't become completely worthless past a certain (near, known) date.
Scalping is much easier to solve, people just wouldn't like it: Lock the device to the purchasing Steam account for a year.
It's just a PC, you shouldn't be able to "lock" it. Either you own the hardware or you don't.
Presumably Valve could record all the serial numbers at the factory and simply block steam logins from accounts don't own a steam machine for the first year or so. The hardware wouldn't be locked, it'd just be steam that refuses to allow logins from the wrong account, steam already sends over your hardware id during the login process so they definitely could use it.
And yes, it's not hard to spoof your hardware id, but who is going to buy a machine at scalper prices only to then need to run sketchy software to even be able to use it. It'd completely kill the scalping market and not affect anyone buying one to use.
Exactly. If you're selling stolen or pirate product at a cut rate, people will tolerate goofiness for the better deal, but if you're scalping and people are paying above-market, they're not going to take the risk on sketchy purchases that may get their Steam account banned or something. And the scalper isn't going to take the risk buying a ton of product they can't unload, so even Valve stating they will enforce this would have a measurable effect.
Imagine buying the SM for a teenager in your family that doesn't have a Steam Account yet.
First: Imagine a situation that won’t happen. A teenager without a steam account?
Second: They could easily allow any account to log in as long as the account that bought it is an actively logged in profile.
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.
I personally wouldn't call it a loss of freedom. You could put another OS on it, without limitations. You just wouldn't be able to log into steam unless it's the correct account, just like steam refuses logins from hardware banned devices and banned accounts.
>> But as I said, you don't like it
"Truth in advertising" in your OP :)
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.
It wouldn't be hard, but who would pay scalper prices for something that they then have to run dodgy software on that may or may not jeopardize their entire steam account?
This is a different threat model than anti-cheat. Here you just want it to be annoying enough to stop scalping.
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?
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…
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.
> 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.
>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.
I guarantee you there are lots of sleeper accounts out there that have made "a purchase", which could be less than a dollar. It definitely helps to require any purchase at all, but if they were trying to be semi-thorough that requirement would look more like $100 in purchases.
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.
It's certainly possible that Valve is not being truthful about the lottery. (Would that be illegal for them to do ?)
I thought sleepers Steam account was already a thing to work-around something - matchmaking limitations in Dota 2 maybe?
Oh yeah I remember reading that in a book about botnets. Valve can only do harm reduction here, but calculating actors will seep through.
Then s/g still applies
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.
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.
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.
>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.
Which, again, hurts both the seller and the vast majority of the buyers.
>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.
Scalpers, the vast majority of the time, deal with markets with non-artificial restrictions, and use them to their advantage. In this case, Valve has very intentionally designed a system to prevent scalpers because they want people to have a fair chance of getting a product that is very much not artificially restricted. Valve is free to sell to whoever they want, consumers are free to purchase from Valve, and scalpers are in the middle, exploiting the system for profit, and willingly or not pushing for DRM and for binding accounts to devices.
> 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!
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.
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.
what's the difference?
Privilege endures. The lucky player gets a good roll against the odds, the privileged player casts loaded dice. You can be privileged because you were once lucky (e.g. you were born to parents who bequeathed their loaded dice to you), but you cannot be lucky because you are/were privileged
Luck of the draw is very different from having the capital to invest in bots and buying up units to resell at higher prices. You could say they're lucky to have that capital, but economic privilege isn't necessarily luck either. Scalpers do not add value to the market no matter how you slice and dice it, they aren't a consumer of the product they're merely capitalizing on demand to create greater scarcity than there otherwise would have been so that they can demand higher prices. A pretty clear value detraction.
I agree, but Im trying to decide what "artificial restrictions...on the market" are and can't come up with anything other than "the problems and solutions occasioned by selling a limited number of items" i.e. distribution problems.
So are scalpers distributors?
Is the onus on the company/market/"all of us" to find "better" (whatever you think "better" is) distribution methods?
> Scalping is a natural "black" market which always pops up to satisfy market demand whenever artificial restrictions are placed on the market.
In which way do you see the market for Steam Machines to be artificially restricted?
Their price is being set artificially below the market demand/supply equilibrium.
The same thing happens when governments set price limits.
The price is being set according with Valve's costs and expected margins. It's not an artificial restriction.
It is "artificial" in the sense that the price is set well below the natural clearing price based on available supply and demand.
What makes that "natural"? I thought currency and finance were human-created concepts.
> satisfy market demand
There's not enough sugar in the world to coat that bullshit.
Scalpers aren't providing anything. The product already exists.
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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
> 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.
> In general customers don't actually care.
We'll have to agree to disagree here because in my little bubble people are livid and have been swearing off things due to perceived price gouging. For me it was cereal. I like it but manufactures trying to squeeze $12 a box for it put me off enough that I just don't go down that aisle anymore. Now I eat granola.
I will note that raising the price on something you already produce and have a healthy supply of is quite different from a high introductory price on a new product you can't make enough of.
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.
Valve is where they are at because Gabe knows he is rich enough and doesn't need to squeeze every penny out of their customers' pocket, nor is there any investors making him do so. Maximizing the price of the steam machine which is already going way above the anticipated price due to component prices skyrocketing will be perceived as a giant fuck you move and burn years of goodwill, erasing a major competitive advantage valve holds over other game storefronts.
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.
Nobody "needs" a scalper.
We do not, in fact, "need scalpers". They don't provide value to anyone except themselves.
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.
Your comment made me realize that it's also not hard to imagine we could be a few short years away from a benevolent AI tasked with setting the market and selectively selling to individuals who, as a group, embody some ideal distribution for the company.
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.
This would only make sense if everyone has equal ability to pay.
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.
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.
People labor so they can buy stuff in general, mostly at normal pricing. Nobody labors for the edge case of paying off a scalper to get something, and that situation's mostly going to cause bitterness that they had to work extra because the scalper inflated the price.
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.
Save some shade for people who are buying from the scalpers too.
Absolutely no one needs a steam machine.
Scalper:by increasing prices we add the value of enabling people to express their desire more faithfully.
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.
If you can't see the human effects scalping has on the market, then, well, you might be a microeconomist
That's just bad ragebait
A sound economic theory after we grant the assumption that all consumers have equal amounts of money.
On a scale of zero to Elon Musk, consumers all have approximately equal amounts of money /s
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition
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.
In my limited experience of seeing Dutch auctions in practice it actually has the opposite of the intended effect, as the people that are willing to pay the highest are also the people that will have a way to profit, just on a lesser scale.
For example, Panini (sports card manufacturer) did Dutch auctions on boxes of new card sets during the peak of pandemic collectible mania. The majority of customers that were willing to pay the highest prices on Panini's website were card breakers, which are people/companies that sell "spots" in livestream box openings (i.e. customers buy the right to all cards containing players from a certain sports team before the box is opened).
While it sounds nice in principal, it basically just means cashed up people get it first. But there is also the fun side of it becoming a status symbol I guess. Drive up future demand.
> But there is also the fun side of it becoming a status symbol I guess. Drive up future demand.
For the Steam Controller that's very clearly at least partly what's going on. Valve's "we didn't expect the demand!" schtick is getting pretty hard to buy when they clearly expected around the same expectations for V2 as for V1. PC gaming usage has grown massively since the first controller came out.
As it is, scalpers/bots have been cashing in for a while, coining it from cashed-up people, so flipping that would make sense by a company and taking advantage of that to help reduce/fund a lower price down the line quicker.
Another way would be to auction of X amount of units, then those with cash can pay through the nose directly and again, the company gains and by that, so do normal consumers on a breadline, as it would help reduce the cost quicker down the line for the rest of the purchasers.
I think I'd be OK with the idea of a 'First Print' edition that sold for 4-5x the markup, shipped a month earlier, and maybe came with better limited time decorative plate options. They'd only sell 1 to 2% of them total.
Everyone else could get into the second round raffle for a chance to buy / place in line.
It also reduces the DDoS effect of telling all your customers to repeatedly hit your web servers at a specific day & time.
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.
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.
How so? You don't like the price, you don't make a bid. You can only royally screw yourself.
What you said is correct, but only for a rational person. Note the wording of your parent comment: "it looks like".
Many if not most people will buy the thing for $X, then complain that someone else scored the same item for $X - $100.
It's like the complete opposite of "bidding fee"/"penny" auctions, which are very scammy and provide plenty of profit to the auctioneer, but people feel like they could get a great price. But if you make the math (and notice the dark patterns and know that usually there are also fake bidders...) you can see how much of a scam they are.
If it starts at $10000, then the number of people that buy right away and get upset when it drops by $100 is roughly zero people.
Once the price has already dropped more than ten times, and the site says when the next price drop is, people will figure it out well enough.
"Dumb people are going to be unhappy" is a strange argument to make.
Pissing off your customers by nakedly profit maximizing is great for one shot life games.
They would maximize profit for this launch and in the process damage a reputation that is literally worth billions. Gamers are famously sensitive, and famously have a long memory for PR fuckups.
But plays a massive role in shaping society
This basically makes the vendor the scalper, and the public would react accordingly.
Right, I think the problem with a lot of the economics-based analyses in this thread is that they rely on the assumption that Valve ought to, or wants to, sell the device at its market value.
High volume on low margin is an extremely good way to make money. It's very naive to think the easy way to get rich is to price gouge. It's actually often the worst.
Ticketmaster does this, and they are still around.
They are around because they control most of live venues and major bands don't care enough to fight. There are many ways to play steam games that don't involve buying nearly standard PC hardware at a premium.
> This is nice
But this is not nice:
> This item is not available for purchase in your region
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.
What's sad and ironic is that GabeN actually lived here for a few years (during COVID) and has even gotten a PR... you'd think he'd show some love for us hobbitses.
At least someone on the Google Pixel team finally discovered a map with New Zealand on it, and Pixel phones can now place calls over LTE here!
I do have my US pixel setup with a local esim for calls/data and a US tello esim that "wifi calls" on my US number over the data from the local esim. It's been working pretty seamlessly and means that, like, my US login.gov two factor tokens still get to my number.
Also, my office here is absolutely covered in maps of just New Zealand, which always gives me a chuckle.
I'm across the ditch in Oz, and every time I am in NZ it is always peculiar just how forgotten they are in some spaces.
I live in Melbourne, and our population is larger than that of all NZ so I get why they kind of get forgotten, but it still sucks.
It's way, way better than it was 15 years ago. Amazon and Amazon AU, Costco, etc. TradeMe for the cheaper stuff you don't want to wait for shipping from China.
But yeah the selection and availability is nowhere near the USA or even say.. Indonesia.
I'm in the rural South Island, which doesn't help either. No Costco for me.
You do have the eighth wonder of the world however. The 'Wall of Whittakers' at Pak'n'Save.
Also sorry that we send you our trash from Cadburies in tassie.
I live an hour from the nearest Pak'n'Save...
It's lovely here, but it's been a real shift vs having nearly every retailer available in my county and being able to go to NYC for a weekend on a whim.
Indonesian here, electronics are everywhere yeah, especially Chinese-made. But the law leans a lot on protectionism, if you try importing one you'll be subject to 10% tax on customs and "other fees".
If you try to import a phone, you'll also have to pay additional fees to "activate" the IMEI, otherwise you won't be able to connect to local cellular providers.
Crazy, I thought they would have just treated kiwistan as another australian state.
> Why a randomized reservation order?
Lies, they just want to protect themselves from the German Tank Problem [0] type of analysis.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_tank_problem
> they just want to protect themselves from the German Tank Problem type of analysis
How could you estimate that when they don't let you know your position in the queue (with or without randomisation)?
> we'll send you an email with the option to purchase. You'll then have 72 hours to complete the purchase.
I thought about this, and can not tell if you are being serious or not. I can see arguments for either.
All the best jokes are only part jokes.
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.
Seems weird to base a FOSS reservation system on... Google Sheets?
Fair point but I mean it eliminates state and would be familiar to just about anyone that might need something like this.
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.
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.
you had the right spirit and a hackers mindset. so dont fret too much on others opinions of you
This is how tickets for sports and concerts should always be sold.
Entertainment tends to compare with airline tickets, except that with air travel, there are regular flights and competition. There is no such thing as a single flight from Paris to New York on one Saturday at 9pm on a window of a few years.
This would also be a very good idea for university course selection systems
Exactly, get the devices in the hands of real users instead of ebay traders trying to get rich.
That's pretty cool!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I don't believe this is a lot of people, but I want to be proven wrong.
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
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.
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.
It is neither cheaper or easier to get this build?
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.
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 :/
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.
The steam machine has upgradable storage and RAM, both being their respective commodity connections (m.2 & sodimm respectively). There's even 1 sodimm slot free from the factory if you want to immediately plunk in a 2nd 16gb stick.
Those two are realistically the only upgrades someone buying a prebuilt instead of DIY is going to entertain doing regardless.
But that's all besides the point, which it's simply that clearly the steam machine is priced fairly for the hardware it contains in the current economic market. Whether or not you personally would prefer a prebuilt or to DIY is entirely irrelevant
Note that some machines will have two 8GB sticks, others just one 16GB stick. This is mentioned in the Gamers Nexus interview with some Valve employees, who were talking about the difficulty of finding RAM at any price. They had intended them all to be two sticks, but some will come with one because that's all they could source.
Would have been nice from Valve to be transparent about that. Maybe a little warning that your particular batch performs a little less than others.
What sort of difference does dual-channel RAM make? Some people probably want the single 16GB so they can add their own additional stick. Which option is better is not straightforward.
...
https://www.techspot.com/article/3066-single-stick-vs-dual-c... - seems like 5-50% change in FPS! Way more of a factor (on some games) than I thought.
Valve claimed in their internal tests it did not meaningfully change performance, which I'd be inclined to believe. The Steam Machine is likely going to be most often GPU bottle-necked, so the CPU performance regressing by even double digit percentages doesn't necessarily result in any change in gaming performance.
You'll note in that techspot comparison, by contrast, they used the fastest CPU and fastest GPU and then still used medium/low settings to really maximize whatever difference the RAM speed would have. Which is a valid test, but it's not necessarily going to generalize to low-end hardware. Like the CPU being limited to 90fps instead of 120fps doesn't matter when the GPU is struggling to hit 60fps in the first place.
A GPU defect on the Steam Machine requires a full replacement of the proprietary motherboard. You can’t put a new GPU in or have someone do it for you. And when GTA VI comes out there is no upgrade path possible to make the Steam Machine perform enough.
> A GPU defect on the Steam Machine requires a full replacement of the proprietary motherboard. You can’t put a new GPU in or have someone do it for you.
Of course you can have someone put in a new one for you, it's called an "RMA"? A GPU defect is going to show up well within the warranty period. It's things like fans that will fail over time.
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.
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.
You misunderstood my last sentence, and my overall point, so I'll try again: Do you have parts list that supports your claim, with all new parts, without caring about the form factor?
show me a mini PC which has the radiator volume of this steam machine.
actually, show me any PC like that...
Living in Japan, most popular concerts are handled this way. It really really sucks to not get a ticket, and it sucks even more that we need to do it this way because of scalpers. But hey, if it means I overall have a better chance of getting tickets (at list price at that), hey, I guess it is worth it.
I wish there were better ways of defeating scalpers.
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.
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.
The price of a Steam account is going to be less than the profit of ordering an additional Steam Machine by a lot.
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.
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.
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.
Lolzteam et al still exist. Buying a Steam account is one click or so.
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
How can I sell my old accounts?
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.
How do they get around restriction on only one entry per address? Open 1000 PO boxes?
When I used to do resale (~2018 - lost my CS job and was interviewing, but had to live between jobs), the easiest one was fake apartment numbers.
Instead of
You turn it into or if you live in an apartment variants of this such as This was years ago and I assume the matching work has gotten a lot better though.I appreciate the legitimate input sans ridicule. One can only hope it's better now
Ok but organizing a separate address for each delivery is going to be a pain
>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.
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)
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
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.
Holy fuck, not everything in this life needs to be profit maximized.
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."
The Dutch auction vs lottery are two ways to solve scalping. They differ in what one considers fair.
market doing what the market does.
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.
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.
It seems to me like a social score system is a direct upgrade to this in certain ways: participating in undesired behaviour will cause you headaches you cannot really solve with money. Too bad it "naturally" slips into mass surveillance, but restricting privileges would be a great alternative to reducing the ability to take care of necessities for you and yours.
It doesn't have to only be money. In person waiting time is another mechanism to allocate a scarce resource. Back in the day when # of tickets exceeded demand at a fixed price, the tickets went to he/she who was willing to arrive early and wait in line longer (ie, die hard fans). Camping out for tickets was a thing and I somewhat miss it relative to scalpers and price being the only mechanism to drive demand/supply to equilibrium.
I don't see it really as profit maximising, just allocating it first to the people who want it the most. Like they are willing to pay scalpers.
You can get it at the lower price, you just have to wait. The same happens with loads of digital devices. On release day the price is higher.
If it helps you can separate it and have the first a 'ticket' in line to buy the product for the regular price. You just reserve your spot with the auction. The queue price just drops over time.
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.
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.
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.
Because it damages the brand and many people will remember the product as being heavily overpriced and never come back.
It works only once per civilization, but Steam could run a dutch auction, then surprise! sell to the winners at list price.
Because public image matters. Steam has built a reputation for being customer friendly. Coming up with a Byzantine pricing system for your highly anticipated new hardware will not be well received by the steam users. The extra short term earning will be a drop in the bucket compared to what steam is already making from taking 30% off most game sells, but the reputation damage will linger forever.
The funny thing is, someone paying $3,400 for a Steam Machine would be an idiot.
Internally, it's equivalent to a mid-grade PC from 2018. You're not playing AAA games in 4K on this thing.
Because they want to maximize longterm profitability and believe (which makes sense to me) this approach would harm that
because the less wealthy get mad about it
Because long-term this destroys goodwill.
Most companies need customers that don't hate their guts, that's why they don't do this
> Steam Machine, like our other hardware products, is made up of many components that we source from manufacturers around the world. The price at which we sell our hardware is a direct result of the cost of these components. We felt like we had a good understanding of how those costs might change over time when we first started sourcing them for Steam Machine back in 2023. That understanding was born from the many years of data we all have about the evolution of PC hardware prices – primarily, that it tends to get cheaper over time as new technology arrives.
> Over the past year or so, that has changed quickly and significantly, most visibly for RAM and storage components. There are a variety of reasons, all of which are affecting hardware products everywhere. The overall effect is that our original goal for the price of Steam Machine is no longer viable. So the prices we're sharing today reflect the state of the world for manufacturing; or, more accurately, it reflects the price of the components as we've secured them over the past 6 months.
Take notes about the tone, the communication style, the honesty that you can feel by reading those words. There are no problem that can’t be alleviated (if not solved) with good communication to your customer, and you can bet that Steam knows damn well theirs!
Valve's communication around this release has redirected all rage towards Sam Altman rather than the Steam Machine.
That's the beauty of the "There are a variety of reasons" part, whatever you believe to be the reason, Valve seems to agree with you, biases or not.
Valve open silicon when?
I believe in you Gabe.
The MNT Station, currently in development, could very well be a fully-OSHW "Steam Machine": https://www.crowdsupply.com/mnt-research/mnt-station
What about the graphics processing capability? I see there are some modules with a GPU on them. Are they good enough to run 3D games that were released in the last 5 years?
I'm also happy with older games. I just don't know how powerful these GPUs are.
Yeah hat would be awesome. Some RISC-V processor or something like that. A man can dream :)
The variety of reasons being Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, etc.
We all know why hardware has become unaffordable even if Valve hasn't spelled it out.
That's the thing, you care about celebrities, others about reality. If US didn't stop Korean companies from selling old manufacturing equipment to China, we'd still have RAM available, but Chinese one, so obviously every capitalist would rather blame individuals instead of the US government.
But thats my perspective, which obviously I feel like is closer to the truth on the ground, wouldn't claim it's some universal truth though.
China seems to be ramping up memory production anyway?
I can accept that as a contributing cause but the main cause is the small number of companies that are buying all the ram. Even if there was more supply they'd still be screwing up the prices.
"High demand" is not a concrete issue and blaming the purchasers seems so misdirected I'm almost convinced that argument originated from sockpuppets or something.
If the fries factory runs out of fries, would we blame consumers for buying too much, or the factory for not catching up with demand? Why sell stuff if it's not meant to be bought?
If an industrial plant figures out a new way to turn fries into fuel and starts buying all the fries in the country at any price up to $50 a pound, I do blame them for the resulting price spike. This is not consumer demand.
I don't much blame the factory that's already running 24/7 for failing to catch up in the short term. I'm not going to insist they do the impossible, or that they should have forseen a demand spike that caught us all by surprise.
See the problem is they bought fries, that haven't been produced yet, with money that doesn't exist. For end users that do not want fries.
The large ai companies bought advance purchases of memory while the actual buildouts are massively lagging and will probably never materialize at even 70% of planned capacity for years. They are financed and motivated to create their own tulip craze disconnected with actual need
What the heck?
High demand and a long lead time product - you can’t spin up fabs overnight to adapt to demand.
This creates a period where the people with the largest amount of capital can out compete other buyers in the market.
This is the situation at play right now. Your model is too simple.
We do still have Chinese manufactured RAM available, it's just that it's DDR4 which is not compatible with a lot of the hardware made in the past years.
...which is also why both Intel and AMD are reviving some of their previous DDR4-based models: the current DDR5 offerings are increasingly unsellable because of the memory shortage.
The "rage" is largely surrounding the price, not the Machine hardware itself. The Deck sold like hotcakes at $400.
We'll see actual outrage when the masses defer new smartphone upgrades due to price bumps.
If there's anything good to be found about the Ramageddon, it's that people will hopefully keep using their perfectly good phones and other hardware a bit longer between upgrades.
I'm pretty sure they would have loved to put a better GPU chip in but that would have cost too much extra in these mad days.
Don't forget Trump and Hormuz!
Most of the general, watered down tone of Corporate America that we love to hate comes from the legal department, usually at the late-stage point when they make all the decisions in a company: product, business, launches, strategy, direction, etc. Everything needs to run through legal, and they have a final say on everything, including every public communication.
That's why I'd love an interview with Steam's legal head. Sounds like they'd have some wild stories to share.
I have a feeling it would have cost drastically less if we didn't have a RAM / storage crisis, which is really sad.
The original price should have been in $700-800 range, pre-RAM and storage pricing escalation, which would have changed the equation drastically. I even considered getting it as a mostly streaming box for a living room, intending to play only the lighter games on device. But for the announced price and after delays, it just doesn't make sense financially. As is, you're grossly overpaying for the level of GPU performance Steam Machine offers.
>The original price should have been in $700-800 range, pre-RAM and storage pricing escalation
Also on a 2025 launch, but that 2023 mid-level hardware feels already pretty weak in 2026, especially for a console you're supposed to run 6-7 years into the future. Sure, it's as powerful as a base PS5 but that console is already 6 years old by now. So the valve box is a pain to justify jumping in unless you're a big valve fan and don't want to DIY a PC.
What's most surprising is the benchmarks dont look too hot vs the PS5... which doesn't cost nearly as much.
Sony are masters of optimizations. Some of their PC ports run really well on the Steam Deck.
I’ve seen from a couple of places that a valver has commented that they can’t say exactly what the original price goal was, but that you can get an idea from the price increase of the steamdeck (~$200 usd)
That wouldve put the steam machine somewhere around the $800 mark for the base edition, which would’ve been so, so much sweeter of a value proposition.
I feel bad for them running into this shortage right before launch. Steam Machine was announced before all this.
there's probably ~$150 in the ram and ~$100 in the SSD alone, not to mention everything else. we gotta have data-centers though because, uh.. well, we gotta have em.
To a large extent, all these datacenters are being built because people want tokens. Do you use something like Opus or GPT5.5 for coding? Well, you're part of the demand.
If you don't, then yes, as a PC enthusiast I'm sad as well. But like, it's a little bit ironic to be complaining about RAM prices if you've got 5 sub-agents hacking away.
If someone is using heavily underpriced tokens I don't blame them much either. They're not funding the hardware purchases, super-investors that want to control the AI world are.
This is why Apple locks in supplier prices years in advance.
Apple is also an absolutely enormous company. Even if Valve wanted to lock in prices, they're simply too small for RAM manufacturers to notice on their radar, unfortunately.
Computer hardware prices tend to go down over time so in general this is a pretty bad strategy. Of course in rare times like these it can pay off.
Presumably this is calculated into the contract.
If the price is expected to fall over time, then the negotiated price is below market at the beginning and above market at the end. From the suppliers view, they take a loss in the early years that they recover later.
Apple probably pays a premium to shift this risk to the supplier. Besides that they don't take a loss just because prices tend to fall. They only lose if market prices fall more steeply than expected.
That would only works until it doesn't. The suppliers got supplier too and those in turn have their own supplier. I don't know about any specific contract but I bet there's a force majeure or price excluding input cost somewhere.
Places like Apple run their supply chains to ground. Literally in some cases, as they track sourcing of component materials back to the mines they are dug out of.
I love it
I won’t buy it
But wow what a nice communication
That’s gonna look great on post mortem report
> There are a variety of reasons, all of which are affecting hardware products everywhere.
I'm pretty sure the price increase is exclusively caused by LLMs.
Is that the coupon code that brings it down to a competitive price?
I totally get where they’re coming from but sadly it doesn’t change the fact that $1100+ is a tough sell for the benchmarks they’re hitting.
They know it's a tough sell. Fortunately for everyone in the market, you can still find used CPUs/GPUs/RAM pretty easily and save a decent amount if you're ok with building your own.
Valve doesn't need this to do well to survive. And you don't need a steam machine (or any >$1000 machine) to play PC games. Just wait it out or buy used hardware. Hell, even an rog ally x plays just about anything (and also supports steamOS), and you can still get that at reasonable prices.
Given the price of components right now, I don’t know. 1k for that small of a form factor seems acceptable. It’s a nice addition to the living room, could likely play a role in cancelling expensive video streaming subscriptions. Might also run some local LLMs. Seems decent.
I love my steam deck and I just don’t see this working, but time will tell. If they sell 2-3mill units I’d consider that a wild success and that i was dead wrong. really hope I am. Steam machine will really change the game if it success
Still, how does a PS5 cost half, and arguably, has better/fast hardware? I can't imagine Sony selling them at a loss.
The PS5 can only play games that you pay Sony a tax to play. The steam machine can play any game, including those bought outside Steam and thus without paying valve a tax.
This means the PS5 is subsidised, whereas Valve hardware does not tend to be. They have confirmed that internally all divisions must be roughly profitable/break-even.
While you are technically correct, 99% of all games that are going to be played on this device are going to come from steam where they take a 30% cut.
I don't know how much money they make from each unit but major profit is not the goal here. They want to sell more games to more casual people who don't even own a PC anymore.
Why can’t you imagine it? The console makers have been selling at a loss for 3 maybe 4/5 decades.
Edit: looks like it took 10 million PS5s to break even. The article is 5 years old I wonder if it’s true in 2026.[2]
> The existing industrial arrangement at the time was that of a bundled console-plus-cartridge business model, where the console manufacturer (say, Atari with its VCS/2600) sold the console at a loss and cross-subsidized it with the money made on cartridges sold with a huge profit margin.[1]
[1] https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/how-nintendo-bled-atari-g...
[2] It took Sony years to stop losing money on PS3 sales, but the company stopped selling the PS4 at a loss around six months after its debut in 2013. The PS5 has taken ever so slightly longer, but it’s clearly not repeating the costly exercise of the PS3 despite early reports suggesting Sony was struggling with PS5 pricing due to expensive parts.
[2] https://www.theverge.com/2021/8/4/22609150/sony-playstation-...
The base PS5 does not have better hardware. Though the PS5 Pro outperforms the Steam Machine and is still cheaper than it..
PS5 has a lot parts in high volumes negotiated years in advance so they can leverage lower prices than valve. Valve ships like 10% max of the volumes that Sony sells.
They were originally sold at a loss, then became per-unit profitable at some point, and now they might be eating a loss on them again. But they lock in hardware prices years in advance.
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.
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.
Even though I balked at the Steam Deck prices on the recent inventory restock, as they were up ~30% presumably due to the same hardware shortages, I got one anyway. Prices won't drop anytime soon and if any for-profit organization has earned my loyalty, its Valve.
When I used it I was somewhat incredulous that I could simply exit Steam mode have an actual Linux desktop environment, where I could literally do what I wanted. It was my computer, a proper general purpose computing machine, and it was (willingly* in my control. No sneaky root needed.
Color AR is a thing Frame doesn't support so sadly it's behind the times and I can't go back
genuinely what do you use AR for? I see alot of people saying this same thing. I don't have any VR/AR experience as the frame will be my first VR headset
Virtual boxing with friends (Thrill of the Fight 2). AR allows me to see my room instead of some virtual ring so there's less risk of hitting walls or furniture
It has cameras so you should still be able to see everything, just not in color because the cameras are monochrome.
Not op, but I use it for seeing the joystick + throttle and the "real" instruments in flight simulator.
Sure, and I'd really like a true black display. I accept that any mass market device coming from a niche will have compromises in the interest of reaching a broader market. The high end is already served by pimax and bigscreen.
If I may ask, what devices would you consider to be "with the times"? If there's some dope AR headset that I don't know about, I'd love to learn more.
The Apple Vision Pro. I really wish Valve would release a $3500 Steam Frame with all the bells and whistles. Of course, with the price of RAM it might be $7000 so maybe I'll just have to wait until hopefully the market cools down a bit and baseline hardware advances some more.
Notably with the Steam Frame you're stuck with the high end snapdragon and 16GB of RAM even if you'll use it with a computer, but they didn't want to splurge five or ten dollars on color cameras. Weird priorities.
The whole front part with the lenses and processors is removable, and there's an expansion connector on the face piece for future accessories, so it's certainly possible that colour cameras could be released later, and be an add-on for the Frame without needing to buy a new device.
wasn't it strongly implied that things like that would be enabled via the expansion port and aftermarket products? I would not be surprised to see color AR within a year of launch
And yet Steam Controller somehow only works with Steam...
There is a linux driver that allows playing without steam. Are you on Windows?
If you are stuck to Windows there are some 3rd party efforts like https://github.com/ddeverill/SteamlessController
The last generation of steam controller still had a mode you could start it in where it would register as xinput device. Seems that's gone on the new generation.
Would you rather have it degrade to the functionality of an Xbox 360 controller without Steam? That's the best they could do without all games including support for the controller (latest SDL3 has it).
> Would you rather have it degrade to the functionality of an Xbox 360 controller without Steam?
Yes? What's wrong with that? Then it's at least usable.
Usable sure, but then why did you get a Steam Controller if not to make use of the additional inputs?
Not really. Can't really map a touchpad as an analog stick. Can't map a gyro as a joystick. Can't take XBox rumble and map it to the Steam Controllers haptic feedback.
Can you hack it together in theory, get something working but making sacrifices left and right? Sure. But why would Valve want to do that? Use experience would be incredibly bad.
But give it time. There will be a standalone driver for Windows eventually, either from Valve or from the community.
It's possible already. Using an open source app called PadForge. I've setup a profile that works without steam and emulates xbox360 pad. I've used it without problems in Forza Horizon 6 which is an UWP / PC Game Pass game, also in various emulators.
https://padforge.org
One can still be a billionaire and not use shady tactics.
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.
The systems in Counter Strike are some of the least abusive in all of gaming.
Open up Roblox and see the sheer amount of loot boxes via Robux with Pay 2 Win items, battle passes, daily rewards, etc.
Counter Strike meanwhile has item skins which don't impact the game. They aren't more OP, in fact, most of the time they give you a disadvantage.
Counter Strike is an 18+ game. Kids shouldn't be on this anyways.
Being the lesser of two evils doesn't make it right. It's also possible to not have loot boxes at all.
The "lesser" of 2 evils here isnt practicing evil?
Loot boxes are, by any and all definitions, evil. It’s gambling. Worse even, it’s gambling with real money over digital ephemera.
Loot boxes are not a fun mechanic. Loot boxes are not designed to entertain you or give you good value for your money. Loot boxes only exist to make you gamble with your money over something that could easily be sold as a single purchase item, or better yet, be rewarded in-game. Simple as that. It’s a gambling scheme. Always has been. Always will be.
To clarify, the loot boxes in Roblox are game specific. The platform itself just has the catalog where you buy stuff directly
But still, Roblox should do a better job regulating the games on its platform
The problem with visual only loot boxes is that people will pay for rare skins and so everyone still gambles on that stuff. I don’t know if they solved that, used to be you’d buy the keys to unlock them and hope to profit from selling a skin. Adults should also be protected against dark patterns like this.
For at least a short while. I'm not sure it's a stable configuration.
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.
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.
Sony have admitted to selling the PS5 at a loss during the first 8 months of sales. Even when they announced the $499 disc drive SKU was no longer selling at a loss, they admitted the $399 SKU still cost more to make than it sold for. Things are no doubt different today, but Sony absolutely subsidized the PS5 at launch.
> https://www.pcmag.com/news/sony-says-499-ps5-no-longer-sells...
Discounted doesn't necessarily mean at a loss. It could just mean a smaller profit margin than normal.
Steam has a very high markup compared to its competitors like Epic Games Store.
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).
Instead they made the right choice and subsidise the software. Valve has been sending patches for Linux for over the last 10 years as well as giving SteamOS out for free for other hardware now.
If you don't want to play games, why would you buy a steam machine? Even with a subsidized price, you could get a mini PC with no GPU for half that or less.
Steam take 30% of the purchases made via the Steam Store. If you sell a game on Steam, you can redeem as many Steam Keys for your game as you wish. Those keys are sold at 100% profit to you, Steam dont take any.
Interesting. So you can freely sell keys outside of Steam and they don’t mind?
You have to sell it for the same price, but yes. Most games on the Humble Store give you Steam keys, where Humble takes 25% and Steam gets nothing.
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.
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.
Some people then had to re-enable ads manually to use AdBreak, the Kindle jailbreak that abused ad delivery :)
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)
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.
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.
It's also convenient since they're now facing multiple anti-trust lawsuits.[1]
[1]: https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/dutch-non-profit-set...
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.
At a price point of 10k if we extrapolate to its release.
Snapdragon gaming handhelds are much cheaper than a Steam Deck, so I’m hopeful that as an Arm device it won’t be completely crazy.
The Steam Machine is nothing special either and it’s being sold at a ridiculously price. I wouldn’t hold my breath on the Frame being affordable by any stretch of the imagination.
Except without color AR it will not as many of the interesting things HNers want to do require it.
i can deal with folding my laundry in black and white
Like what? Provide examples please.
You can install whatever apk you want on your Oculus Quest.
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.
But can I uninstall Meta Horizon OS and install Gentoo?
Gotta get that -O3 flag.
I got a Steam Deck for my son. Docking it to an external monitor with mouse and keyboard in desktop mode is just running a nice desktop Linux with KDE Plasma by default. I showed him the basics and it's perfectly usable for his school needs. And he can still put it in his bag and play Skyrim on a train ride.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
Out of curiosity, why didn't you just ask chatgpt to modify the save file directly?
Repeatability would be my guess.
chmod +x makes it executable. Also, at this point just use a trainer
a trainer takes more work and substantially worse security. i can code review 40 lines of shell+python at a glance cannot say the same for most general purpose trainers
The steam deck is way too under-powered to be "the best console". Best handheld, maybe, if you really value portability.
It is surprisingly powerful for a handheld. Somehow Cyberpunk 2077 ran really well on it.
> It is surprisingly powerful for a handheld
It's in fact one of the least powerful handhelds (of the x86 class.)
> Somehow Cyberpunk 2077 ran really well on it.
With significant dropping of settings across the board, with 30-40fps at best and frequent drops into sub <20fps during the action.
That may count as "really well" depending on your definition I suppose. I wouldnt tolerate it, but i'm sure many would/do.
Definitely impressive for a handheld. The "really well" is calibrated for the hardware.
> Definitely impressive for a handheld
It’s just hard for me to be impressed by one of the weakest entries from both a performance and image quality point of view. It’s all subjective though so if others do find it impressive, all the power to them.
I actually think the SW2 port is the most “impressive” handheld experience I’ve seen so far. Given its a superior experience “out of the box” as it were.
crysis runs great
That’s a depressing tale
Reminds me of the PS3 and its OtherOS feature.
You write this on the forum where often in apple-based topics folks here defend locked down system ie on phones for themselves as something actually superior. Its often paid PR or folks to deep in the topic to have objective opinions (or simply employees/shareholders) but still, I've had that talk few times and downvotes were flying left and right.
I’m fine with both. My phone and my “console experience that’s more open than an xbox” are wildly different scenarios, for which I have different needs and expectations.
There are alternatives for both, if/when I ever want them.
You’re comparing apples to oranges and complaining none of them are tomatoes. Not a valid argument by any stretch of the imagination.
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
For HDMI CEC they've already published their user-space daemon: https://gitlab.steamos.cloud/holo/linux-cec
drivers for what else, exactly? valve is already regularly upstreaming work in major open source linux drivers (and has been for a long time)
for example: https://www.phoronix.com/news/Valve-Old-AMD-Linux-Love-Song
They did take almost a year for Windows drivers for the Steam Deck OLED: https://steamdeckhq.com/news/windows-is-now-supported-on-ole...
I mean it's a PC, you can install whatever your want on a PC.
Yes, a Personal computer as opposed to Apple's computer.
Even Apple's PC lets you install whatever you want
So long as the developer pays the Apple Tax to have their code signed. Otherwise it will be marked as sus and the user has to go into Security, and manually allow the software to run. (alternatively, you can have them use the terminal to bypass setting the security bit). This is a step back from older versions that had an "Trust This Program" button right there during execution. And indicates a clear roadmap to ensure no unsigned code can run on OSX.
Apple could handle dev keys for free, if this was actually about security. But they don't because its another step on their road to locking down OSX like they do iOS and ensuring they make every platform developer pay their taxes.
Developers also can't access the biometric security features at all without an Apple dev account either. Even for my local software that I build for myself, I cannot use fingerprint unlock without an Apple dev license.
I don't really want to pay $100/yr to release free software for OSX, so I don't.
Realistically only macOS runs on Macs, Linux worked on the early M series but not later models, as far as I know.
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.
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.
Kind of funny because most games on the PS5 Pro have performance tuning settings. It's not as comprehensive as you'd find on a PC game, but it's clear the console audience is also wanting to tweak how their game runs. And, for what it's worth, pretty much every new PC game has an auto-configuration that customizes the settings for the hardware on install. So you don't have to ever go into settings, so long as you're happy with the play experience the developer decided you should have.
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.
Not going to jump through those hoops to run software
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.
Legislators *use* cell phones though; very few of them use video game consoles.
You're the one being dishonest and ignorant comparing defeating DRM to something that is open from the start
How is that dishonest? They were replying to:
> 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.
If people are going through the trouble to defeat DRM, I would say that's more than a hint that people want the ability to run whatever OS on them freely.
Nope.
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.
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
to be fair, they subsidize the hardware costs. microsoft loses $100+ on each box they sell.
Sure and maybe Google also subsidizes the Pixel phones because they'll make up for it with Google Play transaction fees. But what if I don't want something that's arguably illegal price dumping, and would rather pay a bit extra to actually own my hardware and be able to run what I want, even after it's discontinued? We don't get such an option.
Quickly more and more companies are adopting the model of finding ways to trap the user into continuously paying them more money after the sale, then locking down hardware and software to ensure the customer is properly trapped, and maybe price cutting their competitors a bit. The death of mobile computing is actively happening right before our eyes as Google completes the trap by restricting users ability to install apks. Ultimately customers end up paying more and having a shittier experience as a result of this.
I think it needs to be applauded when a company refuses to engage with this model and simply lets you own what you bought and paid for, and brings this idea to a market that has long been infected with lockdownitis. (Unfortunately in this case the price is not "a little bit higher", but what can you do when component prices have become crazy...)
So put the price up by $100 and include $100 of non-transferable digital credits on the XBox account to spend on games.
That’s not how sticker shock works.
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.
It supports HDMI CEC, it has a built in dedicated radio for the steam controller, it ships with Steam OS, and will receive support from Valve.
If you are comfortable building a custom PC and fixated on the spec sheet sure, it's not that exciting. But there are some rough edges with PC couch gaming that are sanded off with this machine.
> 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?
The Xbox and PS5 are x86 but they aren't PCs. They are gaming appliances purpose built to run their respective purpose built operating systems. Without hacks, they don't do anything but only run code that's allowed to run. A Steam Machine is a PC. Yes, it's intended to run games (like any other gaming PC) but you can run whatever code you want on it.
Everyone loves to say the Xbox and PS4/5 are just like an x86 PC except for the fact they are missing a huge aspect of what makes a PC a personal computer. If the vendor locks you out of doing personal computing, it's not really a PC, is it? Refering to x86 as a PC is such an outdated way of thinking. I can go buy an ARM-based laptop and do more with it than an x86 console. Even an iPhone offers a more PC like experience than an x86 console. The Hubble Space Telescope runs a 486, does that make it a PC as well?
Buddy, read the context. I think you missed the whole point.
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.
[1]: Incidentally, it looks like they're working on broader support. Sweet! https://www.theverge.com/games/953411/valve-steamos-desktop-...
> 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.
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.
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.
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."
If you sampled 100 steam players at random, it would look nothing like that.
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.
> bring gaming back to the couch in a way that the Steam Link didn't succeed at.
Also in the way that the Ouya didn’t succeed at - their kickstarter tagline was “Cracking open the last closed platform: the TV”. I actually had completely forgotten about the Ouya, but the wording of your comment made me go look it up.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ouya/ouya-a-new-kind-of...
I've still got my ouya, wonder if it still works.
It was a fun idea, even though I mostly just used it as an emulator box.
The controllers were neat but a bit janky, I always had issues w/ the batteries.
Oh god I bought one of these. It was so terrible. Valve is definitely the right company (private) to pull this off. Gabe just needs to own a foundry and they’ll be set.
Having used a Steam Link, I couldn't tell you why it failed. It works great. Maybe the controller was the problem.
My guess is connectivity. I was only happy with the Steam Link when it was using a wired connection. This isn't an issue in my home, but most homes don't have wired Ethernet all over.
I did not love the v1 Steam Controller, but it's easy to use with other controllers.
Even with a wired connection, I hate Steam Link. It's fine for streaming to the Steam Deck while playing on the Steam Deck, but Steam Deck -> TV has a lot of issues. I could probably resolve them if I faffed around enough, but I've spent enough hours trying instead of gaming.
The SD doesn't seem to support AV1 decoding, the resolution streaming resolution won't go to 4k despite forcing it in the settings, and the most annoying issue, if the framerate is not set to 90fps, there is 30ms of additional streaming latency. Which means, if I connect it to my 60fps living room tv, it will add 30ms of latency.
Then there are a bunch of minor issues, no virtual monitor, having to manually swap settings to windowed mode and hope the game offers the correct resolution for my TV (since my gaming rig is on an ultrawide), having to leave the gaming pc on and unlocked.
Apparently Apollo or Moonlight will solve some of the annoying issues, but I'm kind of soured on the streaming experience at this point. Streaming on the SD should Just Work.
Yeah those people are definetly not a realistic sample of the average Steam user. I wonder why they chose them in particular.
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.)
It's a more nuanced situation than people generally want to accept.
>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.
This is the most simple and probably accurate explanation. Companies like to make money, untapped markets look like money.
The problem is that then, the current audience, who is primarily male, can raise concerns about the marketing not catering to them anymore.
There's a political arm who doesn't like that at all, and they will not only attempt to enforce collective delusion to dismiss the whole thing (what do you mean? everybody plays videogames, playerbase is split 50/50 pretty much!), but invalidate the very idea that a primarily male audience can have grievances about being catered to.
This makes them look insane and alienates the original audience politically speaking, and ironically, makes the original audience look bigoted, which puts consumers off.
This dance has been going on for like a decade and a half at this point and it's only recently that signs of it dying down have started to show. I can only hope.
There is no average Steam user.
People are not vectors of real-valued numbers, and "mean person" is not a coherent concept. Does the average person have half a penis and half a vagina? Is their skin a tan-ish mocha brown? Do they have slightly but not really curly hair that is long in some parts and short in others? Incomplete epicanthic folds?
Any representation of people will be a randomly chosen sample, and not an attempt to visualize the blending of all people from the sample.
Maybe you're out of touch, they pretty much look like the typical young nerd from Seattle.
Isn't it ironic that you used anecdotal data as a rebuttal to anecdotal data?
to some degree that is the whole point
IMHO there isn't a realistic "typical gamer stereotype" anymore
sure you can pick any of the past stereotypes and will find people like that, even many, but it's not "most" or even "a slim majority"
Games, and with that Steam, have spread through all of society and Steam is the most wide spread platform for it.
So whatever anecdotal data you have based on your local environments selection bias is probably not "overall representative", just a slice of one of the many many different kinds of people playing games bought from steam.
Nope! That's just how a normal conversation works.
No, it's the children who are wrong!
>typical young nerd from Seattle
Unfortunately I usually meet gopnik and niño rata in Dota and CSGO and not typical young nerds from Seattle
Who says they're average? Why should they be average?
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?
Average? Well, male for one.
It's not my point, but I don't think you're giving a strong rebuttal either.
I'd say about half of Steam players aren't male. The "video games are for boys" thing is kind of a self fulfilling prophecy because anyone who believes that will obviously not play with a woman.
From SQ Magazine (not sure how reliable they are):
92% identify as male, 7% female.
https://sqmagazine.co.uk/steam-statistics/
I think that it's true that games are definitely being played by both males and females today, but I think that statistics is that mobile games skew female, and PC games skew male.
The ESA, which covers only the US ages 18+: 53% male, 68% white, 87% straight, median age 37. https://www.theesa.com/resources/essential-facts-about-the-u...
A female share of around 40-48% has held steady in this report since around 2007.
Quantic Foundry's research largely backs that women prefer more casual-genre games like match 3, with a mobile bent that wouldn't show up in Steam data: https://quanticfoundry.com/2017/01/19/female-gamers-by-genre...
But they also show a heavy preference for third-person MMOs that are also less likely to show up in Steam data: https://quanticfoundry.com/2023/01/27/perspective/
“Movie stars tend to be more attractive and better at acting than the median human. Really makes ya think doesn’t it?”
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.
Going out on a limb here, maybe they think the average gamer isnt trans?
Is the implication here that the people shown in that video are trans? How do we determine that?
Oh I think we can determine
How? Please explain.
They look undeniably trans. Any other questions?
Yes. What does undeniably trans mean? Can you explain what makes you so confident? How is this provable?
What does that have to do with anything?
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
The average steam user is intersex, leaning male. The _median_ steam user is male. Neither is terribly representative of the market as a whole.
How representative of the market do you think a transgender person is? Probably less so?
whoosh
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?
Do you have any actual data to back this up? Because it doesn't really line up with my experience.
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.
Maybe, due to the budget specs, they figure the “cozy gamer” demographic will be their sweet spot. Hence the Stardew Valley video and Cuphead with its retro/nostalgic graphics. The people they showed do seem like they’d fall into that demographic, which would be less concerned with their FPS counts and playing games that don’t stress the system as much, generally speaking.
That is confusing. The Nintendo switch is half the price, and plays all of those games. Why would someone want to buy the more expensive Steam machine just to play 2d pixel art games?
Clearing up confusion about a demographic by assuming things about other demographics seems like a bad idea.
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.
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".
> look at the most played games right now, look at the demographics for those games.
Doesn't Steam have a very long tail? Most played might not be very representative.
Maybe young men are just boring and all play mostly just a few games, while majority of players that are more diverse have their interests spread more evenly across others?
Which part? Are you actually claiming that in your experience steam gamers are mostly black, mostly gay, mostly women, or what? Because that would be a shocking statistic we'd probably know about given the general population demographics of race/orientation, and general interaction with the female sex in real life.
I would not claim Steam users are "mostly" any of those groups, frankly.
and you might also end up with 100 people with punk hair stiles, or firefighters or whatever
Games are so wide spread through all parts of society and Steam is the largest platform for them, sampling 100 people is fully non representive.
Whatever stereotype of two people on a couch you pick, there are not just thousands but more like many 100,000ths to millions of people not matching the stereotype at all. I mean think about it steam has daily active user numbers in the multiple tens of millions.
My best guess is, the people on the photos are related to whoever created the photos in some arbitrary way. It's a pretty common practice for startups when you need photos like that and have no need for "professional actors/models". Like employees of you or who ever you might have hired to do the photos, or some of their friends etc. You still need to singn a simple contract but it's much less time intensive, complicated and annoying to do compared to trying to hire models (of any kind including such made to look like "gamer stereotypes") .
About 0.3% of people are firefighters in the US. The odds that you end up with 100 of them is:
0.000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001%
That's 248 zeroes after the decimal point.
Are you, for some reason, assuming that every time n people play games together, those n people are drawn independently from the population?
This is a completely nonsensical assumption. If you find three firefighters and one unknown person at a table playing cards, what do you think the probability that the fourth person turns out to be a firefighter is?
Only if you assume that people who play games together select the person to play games with entirely randomly. In practice, firefighters would tend to know other firefighters, so a bunch of firefighters in a room playing a game isn't _that_ improbable.
I don't see where you're hoping to take this. Looks like a pretty normal scene to me. What substance are you adding to the thread?
I'm just saying it doesn't deserve such praise for being "real", because if you placed a spycam in a random steam user house it wouldn't look like that. Not that there's anything wrong with it being carefully crafted like any marketing material.
Picking 100 people and picking 2 people are entirely different things.
But either way I don't understand your argument.
If you're picking 100 people, they won't share any trait. But how is that relevant to this video clip?
If you're picking a random living room where people are playing steam games, there's a reasonable chance it looks like the video clip. Why not? The odds are low you get someone looking exactly like that, but you can say that same sentence no matter who gets picked. Don't fall victim to the lottery paradox.
"Wouldn't" is a pretty strong word.
> user house it wouldn't look like that.
except it very well might look quite like that. I happen to know such a case and I don't know that many people IRL.
Video Gaming became widely available roughly in the 90th in many of the places the steam machine is expected to mainly sell to (US/EU/CA/AU/UK/some other places, a lot of special cases). And most people who grew up with video games don't stop gaming. This means that Steam customers and gaming in general is not _at all_ anymore a hobby where most people fall under a small handful of stereotypes.
In turn statements along the line of yours are really quite meaningless and misleading. Steam has stopped being "just for nerds" or anything like that a long time ago.
And sure, things are probably different if you limit yourself to people active on steam forums, that place has a very different bias and using it as basis can lead to huge misconceptions about how people who "use" steam generally live.
Lastly let's also take a moment to consider who this steam machine is advertised to:
- no children, doing so is a regulatory pain
- not young adults, in current times 1k is just too much for someone currently trying to see if they can move out of their parent's place
- so more adults with a stable job/income, which grew up with gaming or at least do game a lot (so mainly age group ~20-35)
- also excluding the kind of people which would anyway go for a 3+k gaming system even if prices where more normal (like a lot of tech enthusiasts with money, "pc masterace" gamers, etc.)
and if you consider that potential customer base the chance for a randomly sampled home (of the target customer audience) to look somewhat like that(1) just went up quite a bit.
And exactly this is also the group for which the clip is, because a major part of the clips "message" is something on the line of a vague combination of "It's a product for everyone"/"Not just for nerds"/"Not just for tech enthusiasts"/"No special tech knowledge needed to play". I.e. "hey person who might live in an apartment without any nerdy stuff, it's also for you, you don't need special tech skills or anything like that". And this is kinda the only group where such a clip might make a difference in weather or not they buy, most other customer groups either won't buy anyway or will make a decision based on spec and reviews...
So IMHO this is a very well chosen clip setting.
Funnily the room does contain a lot of the kind of "not perfectly fitting furniture" you find a lot IRL due to a combination of people not finding fits and replacing/adding furniture over time with slightly changes in taste. I wonder if that was intentional or if the studio provider just didn't care or hat issues finding the right sets of things them self.
---
(1): As in: It has no "nerdy" things, or tech enthusiasts things. And is "just" a "normal/boring" adult apartment taken a clip of shortly after it was cleaned.
I am guessing the BMI would track. Unless they make unlikely changes including spending more time away from that couch, these two are looking at health consequences that will probably make them a burden on society by the time they hit middle age.
Ignoring the sitting in front of the TV thing, I think if you sampled 2 steam players at random, they would look nothing like any other 100 random steam players.
First time seeing an ad? If you sampled 100 F-150 buyers they would look nothing like the people in the commercials.
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...
Yes, all ads are made by sampling 100 users of the product at random.
I mean, you could say this of I think pretty much literally any ad. Were you previously unaware of advertising?
those random players have gaming pcs
if you sampled 100 blackberry customers at random, they'd absolutely hate a software keyboard
and so on
No average pilot.
I don't get it. It's a quite typical commercial clip. Just perhaps less dramatic. What's special about that clip?
A lot of video game and console ads are much more sensationalized.
I also don't get it, looks like any other ad
That's basically how I looked playing Cuphead with my wife except I think there was a bit more swearing coming from her
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.
The books are beside the TV, not on the coffee table. You can't see them in the second shot.
Ah, I think you’re right. That aside, there’s still no evidence of continuity between the two shots and I’m a cynic.
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...
Just scroll a bit further, you can see more clips just like any other commercial shots from a studio set. I don’t think that’s a point you can praise Valve.
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.
Nah, I have to agree with andy^andrew.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Noted, thanks! You can tell English is not my first language ;)
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.
Days of our Lives is staged and so is The Godfather.
Yet one is not like the other.
Valve staged a scene of two people playing a game like how most people play a game. Just like that, there are many small human touches to this Steam Machine page. The messy cable picture where they show off the led strip, the honest and plain FAQ. Etc.
We don't have to glaze Valve for doing this, but we can still appreciate it.
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.
For the inevitable minisforum machines comparisons - it's not as bad for Valve as it seems. You can't just add a dedicated GPU to a cheap miniPC with an integrated graphics- power delivery and airflow will have to be different, and you may be surprised to find out that even the cheapest mini PCs with dedicated graphics aren't significantly cheaper than a Steam machine (if at all).
And then my personal experience with these cheap no-brand mini-computers is that their Linux compatibility is spotty, BIOS updates are non-existend, quality control is severely lacking, and you have basically no support. They are also often pretty loud, overheat and die within a year or two. If something doesn't work properly, you are on your own- the manufacturer will have forgotten about this model in a couple of months, and user base is so low that it's unlikely someone will find a workaround.
So comparatively, a Steam Machine would be much preferable to me, considering that it will likely work out of the box with no compatibility issues, will have a typical valve support (which, judging by Steam Deck, is quite fair), is well-built and near silent.
The problem is once the price crosses a thousand, I'd rather add, say, 500 eur, and get a much more powerful machine. I see a point for the cheapest bottom of the barrel gaming pc/handheld (which would be 700-750) with many performance tradeoffs, but this doesn't look like a good enough upgrade from that. A 12+ GB RTX4070-class videocard, 24-32GB of RAM and maybe even an 8-core CPU for $1500+ would likely be more usable in the current market
> For the inevitable minisforum machines comparisons
It appears the Steam Machine is much more powerful than what a typical mini desktop pc would offer, while staying cool and quiet.
Gamers Nexus review: https://youtu.be/66QzlDewigE
>which, judging by Steam Deck, is quite fair
I love my Steam Deck but let's not forget that it took a solid 2-3 years for it to really become a somewhat turnkey, stable experience. They shipped it in a near-beta state. Flipping between gaming/desktop mode induced a fail state probably 30% of the time until a year ago, docking to TV's can still be very frustrating (aspect ratio and latency are almost always wonky until you tinker with it a fair bit) and isn't nearly as smooth a transition as with the switch, there used to be a VERY frustrating lockout where if your deck wanted to update and you weren't on your home network it wouldn't log in, just all sorts of really frustrating points of friction.
Again I love my deck, it's an incredible and capable device. But it was very clunky those first 2-3 years. It really only matured in the last 12-18mo or so. Hopefully the SM is a stronger experience day/week/month 1.
> I love my deck, it's an incredible and capable device. But it was very clunky those first 2-3 years
I got the Steam Deck on release. It was a near solid device for me from the get go. Only had the occasional crash/reboot, but I wouldn't describe it as having been clunky.
I personally would call the UI pretty clunky. Trying to figure out which settings are on the right settings button menu vs the left is annoying. Plus, there's stuff like not being able to get the onscreen keyboard to come on screen, and streaming can be a headache.
I love it and use it a lot, but it's not a Nintendo Switch experience, at all.
Then it’s likely you either weren’t trying to use all the available features or are misremembering, because I promise you it was not smooth at launch. I got mine over a year in and these problems still existed. The gaming/desktop transition was a notorious issue, as was docking to a TV. Computer monitors it was (generally) fine.
My bad- support is too wide of a term, and I meant it in a sense that Valve is quick to respond when their hardware stops working.
I got my deck fixed after the warranty period, for example, with very little fuss. They even payed for the shipping of the broken device to them
That’s pretty cool of them. Hopefully they continue to operate that way. I remember when Apple used to be like that about iPods.
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.
The Steam Machines raises the bar on PC Console gaming.
Because:
- GPUs don't support HDMI CEC by default, nor does the operating system offer it
- Suspend mode on motherboards often suck
- Many game controllers with 2.4Ghz don't properly import USB Wake events. Or the motherboard didn't implement it properly
I see the Steam Machine as an expensive open source concept car that moves the needle for us PC gamers.
Hasn't all this been mostly solved on the Nvidia Shield Pro for ~7 years now?
Sure, and this also solves those things while having better hardware. I have a shield pro, it hasn't seen a hardware update in a long time. I can game one it, but I need to use the steam link app, not run the games natively. These devices serve similar, but different markets.
Not really - it's not a PC.
I also work in music production (for video games) and fully switched to Linux + FOSS about a year ago.
I'd say it is a lot more doable if you make electronic styles of music. Harder if you make classical styles, as many of the big sample libraries don't support Linux yet.
Just in case you're interested, here's a list of everything I use: https://johnoestmannmusic.com/tooling/
You are lucky. A lot of the games I play with friends use kernel level anticheat crap that doesn't work on Linux
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.
Even if AAA supports Linux, it’s got to be without kernel anticheat. That’s a non starter for myself and many others
I don't think that will be the case sadly, just because the majority of gamers don't actually know or care about software having root or kernel level access. In a world where Linux becomes mainstream, AAA games will aim for those users, not hobbyists and enthusiasts like us.
What is the downside of this if I trust the software provider (eg Riot Games or presumably Valve if this ever comes to Linux)? I have recently come around in support of Riot's anticheat because multiplayer competitive games are so damaged without it, even though I use Linux 95% of the time.
It's hard to trust. I have a spare Windows PC where I install whatever on it, and the EA Javelin anticheat has screwed things up before. Wouldn't be doing that on a computer I care about.
Could the kernel have something built in to help with this? Like it can tell a program that nothing else is looking at its memory. And then secure boot attests that the kernel isn't tampered with.
> And then secure boot attests that the kernel isn't tampered with.
That's pretty much a dystopian scenario where you're unable to interact with any network services without using devices with software that's controlled and/or trusted by the service provider. Basically a grave threat to Free Software as a whole, the end of free reimplementations of things you rely on to connect with the society. We already have a glimpse of that on mobile phones controlled by Google and Apple, we don't need more.
There are kinds of games that actually rely on anticheats to be viable, but they're in the tiny minority and I don't think they're worth reorganizing the society over. Most just consider it a solution for problems caused by their incompetently designed netcode.
Linux and Windows both already support secure boot. Anyone is free to make a locked down version of Linux, and they have (game consoles, Android). Desktop Linux has way less market share than Windows. So what would you like SteamOS or the Linux kernel to do? I'm not fond of this stuff, but at least if people are using a partially locked down video game focused Linux, it's better than them going to Windows.
Attestation-gated anti-cheat is invasive, and the direction it points is grim.
But "covers for incompetently designed netcode" doesn't hold at all.
Netcode and cheat-resistance are mostly orthogonal. Netcode is latency-hiding — prediction, reconciliation, interpolation. Cheating is the client being an endpoint you don't control. You can have flawless netcode and still get wallhacked, because a wallhack touches the renderer, not the wire. You have to ship that data for the client to draw the level.
Server-side validation kills the cheats that surface as state: speedhacks, teleports, impossible positions; but it's blind to the ones that don't touch state at all. A wallhack reads memory the client holds. A vision aimbot runs on a second machine reading the screen- nothing crosses the network for the server to reject.[0]
That's why the kernel and attestation stuff exists. Not lazy devs papering over a bug: a class of cheat that server authority structurally can't reach, because the cheat never lies to the server.
I understand the dystopia argument, and it's a decent one. "Just write better netcode" isn't.
I'd humbly request that you spend time trying to actually grapple with the problem, there are some exceptionally well paid and talented programmers who are working on this non-stop in the large publishing houses (EA, Ubisoft, Tencent, Activision) who would do anything to avoid paying royalties to shitty software that breaks the performance and reliability of their games: yet for some reason year over year they can't seem to manage it.
Worth understanding why that is, instead of assuming incompetence or malice; perhaps its a harder problem than you think.
[0]: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2512.21377
I know about the cheating problem and would rather they just not solve it. There are more important things than video games.
Cool,
You're welcome to, but those games precipitously lose players, because it's frustrating.
https://www.reddit.com/r/GTA/comments/1af8t12/online_isnt_fu...
I know it's frustrating, I really don't care. They can play or do something else. GTA Online from those comments actually does look like a case of bad netcode btw, and it does have kernel anticheat already.
Kernel level anticheat doesn't make sense on Linux because the kernel is open. There's simply no incentive to do that
An open source kernel doesn't prevent attestation mechanisms. Anticheats on Windows increasingly require Secure Boot, and all others drivers to be signed/whitelisted; they could try to put similar restrictions on supported distros.
In fact Android has secure boot plus its own stricter thing. Probably the most commonly running software based on the Linux kernel.
Yeah, I imagine Linux support would be more like a supported Linux distro rather than generic Linux support. Something like SteamOS but with kernel anti-cheat and secure boot from the start.
Big question is whether they can make craching the anti-cheat it hard/unpredictable enough that the publishers will trust it. If the publishers release such a platform and someone releases a live distro that can crack it with 3 mouse clicks, that's a lot of wasted effort.
I have no idea how effective the Windows anti-cheat is, but I imagine that Linux tooling in general is going to make it harder to lock a user out of controlling their own machine.
Yeah, the nightmare scenario. I'm actually a little bit worried that we will look back on the last few years as the Golden Years of Gaming on Linux
Sure, but maybe this is a different battle? First party Linux support is orthogonal to games not using kernel level anti-cheat solutions.
Tangentially, I wouldn't use kernel level anti-cheats, but if Valve's solution is indicative of the SotA in userspace anti-cheat solutions, there's a lot of room for improvement.
it's a non starter to even have kernel level anticheat, it's the worst idea pushed on the consumers since browser level drms.
I strongly disagree. There have only ever been a handful of data exploits attributable to kernel-level anti-cheats. On the other hand, developers report that they significantly reduce cheating. As someone who plays online games, this is a tradeoff I gladly make.
I often feel these comments are made by people whose preferred games are not ruined by cheaters. This is happening right now in Arc Raiders, and it's really sad to watch. The developer, Embark, is now investigating using KLAC to reduce the number of cheaters.
Thankfully that has been improving [1] and non-kernel is 100% possible today [2] with valve has so much on documentation and support for game and anti cheat developers to accomplish this.
[1]: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/anticheat/ [2]: https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/steamdeck/proton
Unfortunately many of these developers believe that kernel-level is mandatory (by virtue of believing that it actually works to prevent _all_ cheating, which we know it doesn't).
Exactly, no game is worth installing a rootkit for
How much do you rely on Steam hardware survey? I am doing my part reporting my Linux usage.
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.
My thinking was that I’ll use the Steam Machine for whatever I can. If there’s some title that friends really want to play and that requires kernel anticheat, and it exists in geforce now, I’ll do that from the steam machine.
If it’s something even less doable than that… well I’ll do without.
But you're playing with friends, right? So you don't actually need anticheat at all. Or are you playing with friends and random assholes from the internet?
I'm curious because if a game requires anticheat that means there's an intention that I'd be playing with people who would cheat if they could. And I don't want to have anything to do with people like that. I don't really understand why anyone wants to spend their time playing games with assholes from the internet.
> But you're playing with friends, right? So you don't actually need anticheat at all.
There are a lot of games out there where a group of friends parties up and then goes against other parties of friends out there. Sometimes I want to play with my friends against others instead of only against my friends. Its been a pretty common kind of game style for decades.
> I don't really understand why anyone wants to spend their time playing games with assholes from the internet.
Yeah, it'd be nice to somehow exclude those assholes who would cheat. Maybe if there was some kind of technology which could limit the ability for people to use cheats, some kind of "anti-cheat". It would probably have to be pretty low level in the system to properly enforce this "anti-cheating" integrity, maybe in the kernel and hardware level?
> And I don't want to have anything to do with people like that.
And nobody is forcing you too.
> I don't really understand why anyone wants to spend their time playing games with assholes from the internet.
Maybe your experience and preference is not shared equally by all? HN users in particular to seem to struggle with this concept for some reason.
I've only ever played a couple of games with kernel-level anticheat. The rest have some other reason they don't work in Linux.
I'm curious which ones you had trouble with? I switched last week, and have been testing all the games in my library. I'm quite impressed with how all of them just work with zero or little tinkering. The only games I haven't been able to play are the ones with anti cheat that explicitly deny Linux.
In Proton: Age of Empires 2 DE multiplayer went out of sync which ends the game. BeamNG Drive (now Linux native but wasn't a year ago) took 20min to preprocess shaders, then was laggy compared to Windows on the same machine, then reproducibly crashed from a memleak. Both were known issues on ProtonDB, but the rating still said "gold," so I stopped trusting the ratings.
Dolphin is Linux native. Works fine except for the huge input lag using GameCube controllers (via wii u adapter which is the only solid way), which means I can't really use it. Known issue with some driver, I tried a kmod to overclock it but no dice.
*sad poro noises
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.
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
A much better way to raise that signal, is to use that money to buy native Linux games instead.
Ditto.
I use Macs for work and PC for games, and this little box seems a good opportunity to play The Legend of Linux on a desktop or a couch, and make it true.
Let me guess, DAWs? Have you tried Reaper (FOSS) or Bitwig Studio (commercial)?
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.
No, Ardour is disgustingly ugly, so is Gimp and other FOSS apps stuck in the 90s. Some people dig that though I guess.
Also isn’t the case with Ardour that they essentially want you to pay for the binary because compiling it is a PiTA and there are no instructions on how to do so?
You're not alone, I'm also constantly pixel peeping and disappointed with the UIs of many open source (and closed source!) tools.
Reaper is neither Free nor Open Source.
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
How do you use a controller with your TV? Do you route USB over there as well?
Please buy pinephone instead.
GamerNexus found out that an equivalent DIY machine would cost $979 in parts only to give a perspective on the pricing. It would probably be bigger too due to the discrete GPU.
So you'd save $150-$200 building it yourself, around 15-20%. Seems reasonable to me.
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.
According to LTT the original price was in the $800 range, but thanks to Sam Altman it increased to what we saw today.
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.
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
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.
Why would it be the same percentage increase? RAM is only one component of the whole machine. "We were going to sell our airplane for $10 million, but one screw doubled in price so now we're selling it for $20 million."
Because it's not just one screw, at the moment RAM, flash and GPUs are experiencing massive price increases.
And in both machines a similar percentage of their price is caused by these components.
>GPUs
AMD GPU's are all still basically MSRP. You can get a 9070 for $600 off amazon right now.
Because of the proportion of the two critical component increases as a part of the whole. It's not like a screw, more like the propeller or something. I just bought ram at retail price, and in my currency it went from $100 to $600CAD for 32Gb. I can't even justify a nvme drive at this point, the prices are comical.
I built my current computer in 2020, went from part-time junior engineer to full-time senior engineer, and I couldn't afford to replace that computer at the same specs today. It's unbelievable.
I couldn't afford to replace my current NVMe drives (which is why I'm very happy I set everything up with the Samsung 970 Pro, as they're 2-bit drives that will outlast even my grandchildren).
I actually had to RMA some RAM yesterday, and even that has gotten so expensive that it now costs more than my entire computer cost in 2020.
Yup, and another source:
https://bsky.app/profile/papapishu.bsky.social/post/3movfklq...
Ohh, I thought it was in their earlier videos. I did not see they released one today lol, my bad!
I think that was already in the RAM crisis, so that was priced in. I think it would be a lot cheaper w/o the whole price boom.
Not it was definitely before.
And Amodei, and Satya, and Pichai.., don't forget about them.
Well none of them actually went out and pretended to buy the entire world's supply of silicon. So no, Altman gets most of the blame personally in this case and the silicon fabs for taking the fake order like absolute tictacs. Demand would be high otherwise too, but that's what got everyone panic buying and resulted in this mess.
Elon bought and Amodei and Sunder are using it now. So Altman was right, his bet paid off.
Don't use LTT as a source for anything. They are mainly an entertainment channel with a giant track record of fuck ups anything data related.
Even taking into account all their fuckups majority of their content is accurate and well sourced. I dont know why people do this thing where they point to a few instances and then extrapolate that out.
They literally paused uploading videos because they had an insane amount of wrong data in their videos. It got better for a few months when they decided to slow down video releases but now they are back at it. I dont know why people do this thing where they ignore factual data because they like a creator.
You mean when they just opened their new lab and a massive controversy happened?
The lab is 3 years old and it collapsed one time...
It’s not just LTT
https://bsky.app/profile/papapishu.bsky.social/post/3movfklq...
How in the world is a guy named Linus using Windows
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).
> 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.
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.
That’s a beast for €676. Good buy.
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.
The original price target was $800, so you probably were never going to buy this thing.
Oh was it? I remember some rumors but not that one.
Yeah I probably wasn’t going to then.
I don't know what you mean by 'killed.' It'd be sold out faster than hot cakes.
It also killed their ability to make lots of units. They say so themselves. Selling out isn't a good thing.
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.
This is a good general theory, but generic and sort of reasons backwards from "actually it's not popular"
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.
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...
“There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance.” –Some Microsoft guy
"640k of memory ought to be enough for anybody" -Fake Bill Gates quote
How is that remotely like this at all?
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
> 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.
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
Note that the performance of the RTX 5050 is completely irrelevant if it doesn't work. While some say that their NVIDIA rig is working, that's a risk that's probably not worth taking for something that is expected to "just work." The last thing a console user would tolerate is dealing with whatever mess NVIDIA has dreamed up next.
You need to build within the same constraints.
Also, it's $71 more thanjdiy according to GN.
> Note that the performance of the RTX 5050 is completely irrelevant if it doesn't work.
I don’t really understand the point of this comment. Shouldn’t we operate under the assumption that it will work? Is there something particular problematic about the 5050?
Also, AMD GPU’s are still very affordable and totally viable. I have a 9070 and I love it.
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.
I'm considering it, but as a replacement for the desktop gaming machine.
I'm already running Linux on the desktop. I don't use it for anything else, I have a MacBook for non-gaming. The desktop is due for an upgrade soon, and upgrading to a Steam Machine makes total sense to me. I don't have to deal with driver issues, and I get a supported config that will just work with my steam library. I might have to put my current SSD into a cage and add it as an external drive somehow, because I don't want to download a couple of TB of Steam library.
I don't give a shit about graphics quality - I play games for the gameplay not for the graphics, and mostly play strategy games anyway.
I already have a Deck and love that for travelling. A Machine as a non-travelling version of that would be great.
Exactly what I’m thinking.
Could you please help me by listing one or two prebuilt towers with sufficient gaming performance for $1100?
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?
If you’re fine paying a premium because you value a smaller form factor than a typical tower then sure go ahead and get a steam machine. But that seems like a steep price just to have a smaller machine.
I’m not going to start posting a bunch of different computers and then have us get bogged down nitpicking the specs. Go look at a couple of vendors and compare prices. The steam machine is just not competitively priced IMO and you don’t need their hardware to get the same experience when bazzite exists and runs great. Plus they will probably do a major release steamOS for desktop again soon anyway so you can likely boot that up soon.
This is 6x6x6" and can sit on my desk, quietly.
Or next to the TV in the living room and not look conspicuous.
Yes, you could also buy a gaming console instead of a PC. These are not the same things. This will sell out.
A steam machine is a PC in a small form factor. I’m not talking about consoles, I said PC.
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.
It's not comparing a console to a PC because a console, historically, has had way more firepower than the cost. It's only with recent hikes that that changed. There is no way you could've matched a PS5 at launch for $400 even with the most patient of PC builds.
It's telling that depending on who I talk to, they go "it's a PC, not a console" or "it's a console, not a PC." It's neither and it's both. It brings the PC's flexibility to a console experience, but for $1100 is that enough? It won't be as turnkey as a console (steam deck showed they can't quite get there) and it's hundreds more than one.
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.
You could have done that 12 months ago.
Mac Mini will handle 1080p very well.
I have an M2 MBP. If only it'd just play my Steam library without emulation or compatibility layers.
A steam machine is running wine as a comparability layer, fwiw
Minor nit: a steam machine is running Proton. Which is wine, yes, but wine that Valve supports, wine with patches and changes (afaik, most of which get upstreamed to wine). On a Mac you're probably going to use CrossOver to package up wine.
Wine is wine, yes, but CodeWeavers is not Valve. Mac gaming is niche. The budgets involved are incomparable. Expect it to take weeks to months for hotfixes applied in days to Proton to filter through to CrossOver.
(This is my lived experience: HD2 patch 28th April broke wine compatibility, Proton had a hotfix in a day or two, CrossOver had a preview that partially fixed it May 11th and a release that fully fixed it June 9th; it was unplayable from April 28th to June 9th, longer if you count the stuttering issue that it suffered since March.)
The future of gaming on a Mac is also made less certain by the upcoming obsolescence of Rosetta. AFAICT Apple won't just pull it out completely, but they're clearly uninterested in supporting it long term, so over time the experience of trying to get x86 games to run on ARM Macs will worsen.
(I think I'll aim for a DIY PC build in 2027 in the hopes memory prices decline by then, but it's a faint hope!)
You are right of course. But I expect that valve will come up with proton-on-arm with x86 translation very soon (in fact possibly next week-ish when they release the frame).
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.
I don’t disagree with you but it’s still an emulation layer.
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.
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.
> 4K gaming at 60 FPS with FSR
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.
Dear god, when Valve sells a computer that's twice the price of a comparable Mac, the world's turned upside down.
Comparable Mac, except for you know, all the game support.
Depending on the games and how much you're willing to pay for them, the price point shift very fast.
No steam sales on consoles after all
"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.
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".
There is no guarantee that these prices are here to stay...
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.
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.
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?
> They never went back to pre-supply shock prices.
What do you mean?
2011: 2 TB HDD for $79.99 ($0.0000400 / MB).
2012: 2 TB HDD for $157.27 ($0.0000786 / MB).
2014: 4 TB HDD for $109 ($0.0000367 / MB)
2024: 8 TB HDD for $111.98 ($0.0000140 / MB)
https://web.archive.org/web/20250318110739/http://jcmit.net/...
https://www.thecpuguide.com/pc/disk-price-history-hdd-ssd-pr...
China
Televisions literally feel in price every year for 40 years.
That's like the one outlier in a sea of slow price increases over time.
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.
This was a thing before those axes you're grinding even existed.
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.
How much are a dozen eggs at your local store? Curious to stress test your theory. I assume they're at least $10/dozen?
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"
Some data suggests that eggs averaged $2.19 per dozen, at retail, in May of 2026: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/APU0000708111
Looking at the chart, it seems to be the case that every sharp increase in price has been followed by a sharp decrease in price.
Just for fun, here's the same chart adjusted for inflation: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1WXWZ
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.
Just another step into the direction of global Brazilification.
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.
If it goes on long enough new manufacturers will eventually spin up and sell RAM cheaper.
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?
GPUs?
Though that’s kind of cheating considering it’s basically a monopoly at this point
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.
>Monopolies or better put the mergers of companies over the last 40 years hasn’t lead to cheaper prices,
Can you explain this chart?
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/historical-cost-of-comput...
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.
I think the point is that "only a few companies create these things" has always been true.
You need to provide a compelling argument why it is different this time.
The counter-argument is pretty basic:
RAM companies are currently selling as much as they can at high prices. This leads to investment in building new factories.
At some point the supply of new RAM will match the demand for it. When that occurs companies can increase profit by cutting prices to gain market share.
What's more, all the RAM companies have slightly different estimates of what the demand is. This leads to different levels of investment in new factories. Some will over-invest in new factories and the only way they can make their investment back is by increasing market share.
The final factor is new entries in the market. Chinese RAM manufactures can already produce DDR4 RAM (but only small amounts of DDR5). They can both increase supply of DDR4 RAM and are aggressively chasing DDR5 capabilities.
TL;DR: The profit motive is too strong for companies to artificially keep prices high once demand drops.
But why would they invest in more factories if they also think it's a temporary hickup?
Then it's just the same capacity, but without huge buyers. Still the prices won't come down...
If they built new factories now, they would just lose money to an investment that would not pay off.
(Of course under the premise that AI collapses or is saturated at some point. If that doesn't hold true then ex falso quodlibet!)
> But why would they invest in more factories if they also think it's a temporary hickup?
Because they have orderbooks 2 years (at least) into the future so know what demand is there - and they are demanding deposits for future orders.
It's easy to see if this is true. Look for news on new factories opening:
Micron: https://finance.yahoo.com/technology/ai/articles/micron-mu-p...
Samsung: https://www.kedglobal.com/korean-chipmakers/newsView/ked2026... (note this is doubling Samsung's memory production)
SK Hynix: https://finance.yahoo.com/sectors/technology/articles/sk-hyn...
Yes, 2 years.
How long does building a factory take?
If the demand grows with their production they can sell more units at the same price.
If demand goes down by a certain percentage, they sell more for less + they lost the investment into new factories.
It all is based on IFs and about personality, about "optimism" vs "pessimism"
I for one think that the AI bubble will "burst" at some point and I think that then there will be a lot of hardware to go by.
Time will be the judge of my abilities to replace the Oracle of Delphi.
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?
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?
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")
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.
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.
It happens all the time. For a recent example, see Windows midrange laptop pricing since the MacBook Neo was introduced, despite the RAM crisis.
Yes. Absolutely. They will move more units and make more profit overall, and if they don't do it a competitor will.
Look at TV prices over the last 20 years.
TV is heavily subsidized from data collection and ads, not sure it's a perfect comparison
People keep claiming this but it isn't true. The subsidy from advertising is very low:
> They make about $20 per user annually and, assuming an active TV service life of five years, yield about $100 over the lifecycle of a main viewing room TV.
https://omdia.tech.informa.com/om030986/in-the-smart-tv-indu...
Look at monitor price drops (comparing the same tech). Same price drop curve.
Prices have fallen far more than profit from data sale provides, so it's easy to view as a good enough comparison.
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
I don’t have data for how much tvs are currently subsidized. But you can just look at the inflation adjusted price of TVs from say 1980 to 2010 and see the drop without worrying about adjusting for advertising and spyware subsidies.
You can also look at computer monitors (which don’t have advertising and spyware) and see an enormous price drop.
Edit: I found this which estimates you can make about $100 in ads and data collection over the lifetime of a TV https://omdia.tech.informa.com/om030986/in-the-smart-tv-indu...
but monitors are not showing the same trend...
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
> killed this product on arrival sadly.
Rather odd to talk about an as yet unreleased product failing in the past tense.
You may be unfamiliar with the colloquialism. This one is exclusively for unreleased products.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_on_arrival#:~:text=In%20a...
> This one is exclusively for unreleased products.
What? This is so obviously incorrect that I'm not even sure how to respond to it.
I’m sure you can figure it out if you try. I maybe was overexpressive with “exclusive”, that was my mistake. Wrapping thoughts in words is lossy and generally making an effort to be understood implies the listener making an effort to understand, yes?
If you were to anticipate a failure for a soon to launch product, it is entirely appropriate to say “dead on arrival”. A similar metaphor might be calling the product “stillborn”.
> If you were to anticipate a failure for a soon to launch product, it is entirely appropriate to say “dead on arrival”. A similar metaphor might be calling the product “stillborn”.
Okay, but the commenter I replied to said neither of those things. They didn't say "it'll be DOA", or even "it's DOA", but rather "killed this product on arrival". Despite my previous knowledge of the "dead on arrival" idiom, I found this particular wording strange due to its use of past tense, so I wrote a comment expressing that.
If you disagree, that's fine, but you've chosen an extraordinarily unproductive way to express that disagreement.
I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to come off as adversarial. I don’t feel like you have to get words exactly right to communicate. There’s lots of folks on hacker news and sometimes, for some reason or another, folks just don’t know an idiom, so I thought I’d point it out. Appreciate ya and I hope you have a good week!
Fair enough. I'm afraid my adversariality heuristic sometimes yields false positives...
Over $1000 for a machine with only half a terabyte of storage, especially for gamers, is just brutal.
Why dead on arrival though? If you want to buy the same kind of pc, price is the same.
You can buy a PS5, of course, but that's a different walled garden.
If you are in the market for a 3k pc, sure do it, but if you are in the market for a 1k pc, why not a steam machine?
I'm simply impressed they're releasing at all. This has to be literally the worst 6 month time window in the last 20+ years to launch a new computing device at scale and have to build the vendor contracts and inventory from zero.
I'd like to buy one, but its a bit pricey for those specs. $1600 AUD?
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.
I don't disagree that this device is very likely too expensive to sell well.
But! The price is not insulting. You can built a slightly faster PC for a little less, but that PC would be ~10 times larger, it would be louder, it would lack features like HDMI-CEC and good wifi/bluetooth. It really wouldn't compare for living room usage.
In order to get anywhere near the size of the Steam Machine, you'd have to exceed its costs.
Isn't CEC available for all in-tree GPU drivers using DP-to-HDMI passthrough? (although I do imagine Nvidia would still be preferred for a custom build, perhaps with a USB CEC injector)
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.
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.
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.
[1] https://www.xda-developers.com/mac-mini-m4-gaming-hands-on/
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.
Neither of those options is good value. PS5 charges more for games and you have to pay extra to connect to the Internet. The value proposition of PC gaming is openness. You can play on whatever you want, on anything that can run it; you're not locked into one hardware vendor or game store. This means competitive pricing across all market segments, except where consoles sell at a loss to buy lock-in.
>PS5 charges more for games and you have to pay extra to connect to the Internet
To be clear, you have to pay to play certain games online. A lot of popular ones are free and general internet access does not cost anything.
A lot of folks also aren't all that interested in playing games online anyway.
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.
> Buying a gaming pc is always a bad deal compared to a PS5!
If you only compare the hardware, that's true. Even if you don't consider all the other functionality that a PC has vs. a console, add all the different ways to get free and heavily discounted games on Steam/PC, and the results of that calculation might start to look very different.
Your response is essentially OPs reasoning, read it again :)
Anyways, just wanted to add that the steam machine and PCs killer differentiator: a truly open platform that no mac, ps5 and other consoles can offer. Do whatever you want, install whatever software you want, whatever OS you want. Break the rules, face the consequences. Live life like a living being, not as a slave to some corpo.
> Your response is essentially OPs reasoning
I take it you meant GP (as in, the post I was responding to - which to this post is actually GGP but I digress).
I don't think it is. Their reasoning is:
> 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.
Mine is that it is indeed price, only not the price of the hardware alone but rather the price of the ecosystem as a whole. Another aspect that I didn't cover is that a game that you buy today for PC will likely still work on whatever PC you have 20, 30 years from now. The same cannot be said for consoles.
I do agree with your second paragraph though! :)
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.
> 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.
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.
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?
You are correct. I see now that the offer I saw for $600 is largely out of stock, and only available in Florida.
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
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.
I doubt it will ever be because Apple doesn’t understand the non casual gaming market.
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.
If you look at how extremely overpriced console hardware typically gets away with being, this is not a bad deal if the system is durable, relatively quiet and there are good games well optimised for it. The deal is sweetened by the fact that you will be eventually be able to upgrade the RAM and storage easily and for cheap if/when prices eventually come down from the current AI insanity levels.
Here, try your hand at assembling one much cheaper at the same performance:
https://pcpartpicker.com/
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?
[0] https://pcpartpicker.com/list/KY3VW9
That CPU comes with a cooler so you don't need that.
At 2TB SSD, you should compare to the $1350 steam machine instead.
The GPU isn't exactly equivalent. Gamers Nexus puts it closer to RX6600 performance. But that ignores the RDNA3 improvements so I don't really have a good comparison for that.
They did announce SteamOS for general computers, so I don't expect game support to be too different.
I don’t have a horse in the race and I’m speaking from ignorance, but I noticed that Valve’s offering only requires 300W of power. That sounds very appealing for the sort of games I play.
Would it be difficult to make a PC with a similar power/performance profile?
Note that the power estimate for the build above is only 325W. The power supply is beefier than that for headroom and economics.
It wouldn't be surprising if Valve's efforts at integrating the unit (putting the relevant chips on a single board, eliminating anything unnecessary, and improving cooling) could shave a significant amount of power.
Impossible because of the unified CPU/GPU chip that the Steamdeck used.
Its a MicroATX build. This is considerably larger than the Steam Machine.
The Steam Machine is about a 6" cube. That's ~3.5L in volume. This case is ~33.6L. 33.6 / 3.5 != 4.
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:
PCPartPicker Part List: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/3WkCdq
Price: $1021
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
At 51L in volume this thing is absolutely massive compared to the Steam Machine.
The RTX 5060 will be significantly faster than the Steam Machine on games with hardware ray tracing effects, which tend to be the more demanding games.
To me it's not even the comparison with builds that's damning; it's the comparison with handhelds and other mini PCs. Most people excited by this probably have a Steam Deck or another handheld, so they have to be into playing a very specific slice of games that can run slightly better than the handheld.
For example, Forza 6 on high 1080p is 60 for SM vs 40 for high end handhelds and 30 for SD. Even at the original price, is it really worth $750? Not to mention that many handhelds and mini PCs also have USB4 ports that one could attach a retired GPU to get 60fps+ @ very high 2k, but the Steam Machine has no such port and only one NVMe slot.
So this is for people who are allergic to the existing solutions (plugging in your handheld, using Moonlight) or just like the brand, but I know it's going to still sell out. I just don't want to hear about extensibility, eco-friendliness, or cost effectiveness from a certain segment of gamers after this.
People who are willing to spend $71 on not having to build it themselves. That's the premium according to GNs best-effort like-for-like build.
It's been a while since I built a PC but that price seems very fair
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.
Was 16gb planned since the beginning?
Maybe they lowered to 16gb to reduce the price.
Mac Mini in 2011 had 8GB max?
The disk and memory prices are very high right now. Perhaps they could do a disk-less, memory-less variant.
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.
Well if you want to be pedantic, your NVMe drive is actually a SSD, nvme being merely a transport protocol. But point taken; I should have said SSD prices.
It seems more correct to call an SSD a disk than to call it a drive.
> Those are specs that belong on a laptop or a lowend console offering like the Series S.
Unfortunately, valve (and we consumers) have to recalibrate our understanding of which prices qualify as "insulting".
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
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.
Incorrect go spec something on new egg and you’ll get a very similar number.
For people who are already throwing money at Valve on a monthly subscription and might otherwise have bought something from Sony or Microsoft, or more likely, will also buy something from Sony or Microsoft.
The consumerist mindset accepts this device.
There's no monthly sub for Steam.
All games are free then?
Very few games are free. Otherwise they range from $0.99 to $90-ish. Sometimes I get a bunch from Humble Bundle deals. Sometimes I buy something that looks interesting but never play it.
How's that relevant?
There's no Steam subscription of any kind to access your library. Whether you're spending $0 on average year, or $300 -- you get to access your Steam library the same.
Who knows, maybe once the AI bubble has burst they will surprise us with a replacement mainboard for this second gen. If they want to keep it in sale as long as the Steamdeck it would make sense to offer gamers a simple way to upgrade their existing machine when Steam's ecosystem is already open to all sides. Maybe they'll even outsource that mainboard upgrade to ASUS, MSI or others. Once we see a teardown we can make a better prediction.
I blame Sam Altman and all the other AI bros for this and everything else in consumer tech increasing in price
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.
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.
Unified memory is a lot more flexible and efficient though. You don't have to have assets loaded in RAM and also VRAM for the CPU/GPU to use them. Don't forget about how much more RAM a general purpose OS like Steam OS can consume versus a gaming specific OS too. The PS5 Pro also has an extra 2GB of DDR5 system RAM too.
My old Ryzen 3700X gaming PC has 16GB of RAM and 8GB of VRAM (RTX 2070 Super) and there isn't any game that runs better on it than my Xbox Series X. And the GPU in the Steam Machine is slightly worse than an RTX 2070 Super.
> You don't have to have assets loaded in RAM and also VRAM for the CPU/GPU to use them.
You typically don't want to do this anyway in games. You're probably doing something wrong if you're reading textures/meshes on both the CPU and GPU.
> Don't forget about how much more RAM a general purpose OS like Steam OS can consume versus a gaming specific OS too.
SteamOS is meant to be a gaming specific OS first. It has a desktop environment but none of that loads unless you switch to desktop mode. That's just taking up some disk space while you play games.
>SteamOS is meant to be a gaming specific OS first. It has a desktop environment but none of that loads unless you switch to desktop mode.
I think it's fair for some of us to consider the resource usage of a core feature and not really accept "just don't use desktop mode" as a viable suggestion. Especially if half the pitch is "it's a mobile PC." You can't use many of the features it's capable of in gaming mode.
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.
>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.
The sales are a nice thing but for me the biggest benefit of Steam is knowing that I can use my games library on other/future devices.
My games have been working on my desktop from 10 years ago, the SteamDeck, my laptop and likely any future computer I buy that runs Linux.
Console stores also have sales. Often with pretty huge discounts. I just bought a bunch of games on Xbox in the 1-5 dollar range. I see similar sales on PS5 all the time.
Honestly, these days, Steam, PS and Xbox game sales prices are pretty much in the same level now. Ten years ago it was very different. Recently I was thinking whether to buy Resident Evil 4 on Steam or on PS (had the same price 9,99€). Got it on Steam in the end. Though, Steam still wins on regional pricing as they support more local currencies.
Only the Nintendo store have games priced usually a bit higher.
> To buy a PS5 Pro is going to require re-buying all of your games for it
Why would I re-buy all the games I own?! The vast majority of people one-and-done games and movies. There are a handful they go back to, and that's it.
CHILDREN replay games cycling through them ad-infimum because their entire concept of time is like 3x less than we've been waiting for the next GTA.
And they don't have money! Adults are the majority of the market now.
Any other behavior from adults, who are seriously time constrained, is niche. And that's fine if someone wants to spend their adult time on earth replaying games, but let's be honest. It's niche.
> The vast majority of people one-and-done games and movies. There are a handful they go back to, and that's it.
Citation needed.
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).
I'm still gaming on a 980. I have never been chasing pixel perfection or the latest and greatest.
I would say I am the exception, but hardware survey says otherwise. There are a lot of people for whom the Steam Machine would be at worst a sidegrade.
> To buy a PS5 Pro is going to require re-buying all of your games for it.
No? You can plan all your PS4 (and regular PS5) games. Plus some PS3 and PS One (IIRC) other games.
* Not all PS4 games can run on PS5. Granted, it's only a few edge cases. But you still need to pay the PS4>PS5 upgrade if you want to avoid bottlenecks.
* PS3 games and the like require a 150+$ yearly subscription, and it's streaming for many of them. No thanks.
* No PS2/PSP/Vita compatibility, heck no emulation at all.
I think they mean rebuying all your steam games on PSN
But what if I have had PS3/4/5? anyway silly argument given how much of steam libraries go unplayed anyway.
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.
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.
> 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".
> 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.
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.
> Valve very much is in the position to subsidize the costs;
They're not, because they don't lock down the hardware to only Steam.
If they subsidized the cost, people could just buy them as general purpose computers and not buy steam games on them.
Valve would only be in a position to subsidize the hardware if they locked the hardware down to just the Steam store.
Yeah but then people would buy them for non-gaming use. Remember the PS2 supercomputers?
and the fears that Saddam Hussein was going to buy a bunch of PS2s because the cpu was SO POWERFUL they would be used for missile guidance systems or something
*PS3.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_3_cluster
From that very page...
> The National Center for Supercomputing Applications had already built a cluster based on the PlayStation 2.
I haven't heard of any others, and your comment said 'supercomputers'.
Not to mention that the NSCA was just throwing spaghetti at the wall to see if it would prove useful when it came to the PS2,[0] and their setup never worked reliably.[1] The PS3 had several supercomputers made independently.[1][2][3]
[0] https://www.ncsa.illinois.edu/2003/05/27/playing-the-superco...
[1] https://www.warhistoryonline.com/war-articles/ps3-supercompu...
[2] https://web.uri.edu/gravity/ps3/
[3] https://www.beyond3d.com/content/news/701
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.
Playstation plus essential is $80 per year
PS5 sells at a loss & makes up the difference collecting rent on a closed system. With Steam you're buying an open system.
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?
Valve cannot do that because they can't guarantee that people buying the Steam Machine will even use it for gaming.
Isn’t it just a mid-range PC for ~$1,100? Why would someone buy that just to use it like a regular PC and not use Steam? That just seems strange. I’m sure there are also many PS5 owners that bought the console but only got one or two games before the console collected dust.
Piracy and alternative storefronts don't exist on PS5. I could buy a steam machine and then exclusively buy my games from EA. They're also not charging you for the multiplayer access
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.
The steam machine is just a regular Linux PC, you can install anything you want on it.
I have the Deck and I mostly use it to emulate Switch & PS2 games.
> 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.
[pirate flag emoji].
Games from sources other than Steam are a bit more fiddly to get going, but it's far from impossible. Like Valve says, it's your computer.
Steam machine is not locked into the steam client. You can install whatever you want.
https://www.pcmag.com/news/sony-says-499-ps5-no-longer-sells...
That article is from 8 months after it released. Notably it doesn't count the Digital Edition, but I doubt it also got sold at a loss for that much longer.
PS5 NEVER in it's lifecycle sold at a loss. That hasn't happened for generations now.
All caps doesn't make it true.
Sure, the reality makes it true. The BOM for PS5 is very low.
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.
It's happened before. Storage more than doubled after the thailand floods back in 2011. There have been RAM disruptions as well.
Sony is selling off old stocks at old future prices. They've already started hiking the price up - it's unlikely they'll eat the loss on hardware here either.
> 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.
PS5 Pro had a launch price of $700, which already felt steep. How is $900 not even worse value? Even if it's "better" than the Steam Machine, let's not pretend that it's actually a good value for the hardware.
Not that it matters as much for a gaming console but the PS5 Pro CPU is definitely the slower one.
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.
For reference compare it to a PC.
If Valve wants users to compare the Steam Machine to a PC, then it's going to be outdated in 6 months.
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.
No one would build a gaming pc right now at all.
And yet my steam deck still plays everything I throw at it. Could I find a Crysis-type game that was basically designed as a GPU torture device that it would struggle with? Obviously. Is there a resolution difference? Yes. But there are a lot of games coming out only asking for moderate specs.
I wish PCs were still advancing that fast...
Dude still thinks it's 2003.
SM: AMD Zen 4 6C / 12T
PC: AMD Ryzen 5 7600X 4.7 GHz 6-Core ($170)
-
SM: AMD RDNA3 28CUs 8 GB
PC: AMD Radeon RX 7600 8 GB ($280)
-
SM: 16GB DDR5
PC: 2 x 8 GB DDR5-5600 CL40 ($225)
-
SM: 512GB NVMe SSD
PC: Samsung 870 Evo 500 GB 2.5" SSD ($283)
-
Other parts the PC will need:
- CPU Cooler ($18)
- Motherboard ($100)
- Case ($60)
- PSU ($60)
-
SM: $1,049
PC: $1,196
That's pretty good. Even if the SM cost 20% more the cuteness factor of its small quiet aesthetic has its own appeal. Hope PC prices come down...
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.
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.
> 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.
I've recently played through all the Dragon Age games on the same PC. A PS5 can only do Inquisition and the best one, Veilguard.
Before that, I played Psychonauts 1.
We forget how many insanely good, solid games existed even in just the PS3 era.
On Linux I can play games going back multiple generations as well as emulating other consoles
Ehh, but on Linux nowadays it's whichever gen, plus modding, multiple frontends and storefronts.
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.
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.
True! The Steam Deck LCD is a great retro gaming / emulator device and has outclassed many more focused competing devices for a while now.
And all you use your IPhone for is to make phone-calls, right?
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.
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.
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!
It's less about "checking your email" and more about ' it's an open system and you can do with it what you want", in whichever domain.
The PS5 has an internet browser, you can do all that.
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
Not sure if anything has changed but back when I had one the only thing I found that was supported was Plex
> 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?
It will run your PS4 and PS5 libraries.
So a tiny tiny tiny amount of games, with the added fun that older games might just not be available, OR cost a whole bunch because they're collector items.
People love talking about console exclusives, but every game from before 2013 is basically a PC exclusive.
So no.
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?
Steam clearly shows a badge showing if it runs on Linux. You can filter out stuff that won’t run.
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.
There's no game worth installing a rootkit for. The market is far more diverse and interesting than the handful of popular AAA titles , most of which are just shooters
There is a certain group of gamers who care about all of those games, but there is a not insignificant group who doesn't at all. So while it's not a non issue, it's not a show stopper that you can't play online shooter games. And that really is the only genre of game that won't work. Everything else has been flawless on linux.
Since it's not locked down I assume you could install windows on it
you don't even have to, you can do a single GPU passthrough to VM and integrate it seamlessly.
Steam Deck works just fine, so I guess the Machine will too.
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.
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).
Mass market success doesn't mean overnight success.
The only thing about price mentioned during announcement, before rampocalypse, was that it would cost much more than a console.
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.
https://www.newegg.com/Gaming-Desktop-PC/SubCategory/ID-3742
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)
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
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.
Way too many prebuilts use fully custom components making it (intentionally) hard to upgrade them piecemeal.
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.
Yep, this is what I've noticed. As long as you can stick with the same motherboard and PSU, you can kinda-sorta upgrade them. But after that you hit a wall.
Custom gaming PCs are huge and ugly, which is a concern for me (and my partner). Size and comfort are the main advantages.
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.
But not at a thousand dollars. SFF builds are more expensive and fussier to setup and cool down . So a well made, prebuilt Steam Machine is good value when compared with an equivalent SFF
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.
How do you find time to play 500 games?
Even if a game takes 5 hours that’s 2500 hours
That’s mind blowing to me
I have a huge number also. And I've played a small fraction. For example, Stellaris - I've got almost 900 hours played. Against The Storm is running a close second. Some other games, less than an hour. If it is 99 cents, I'm probably going to get it if it looks somewhat similar to anything I enjoy.
If you check out Humble Bundle, you can find bundles of games where you get 20-30 games for around $20. Many of them are charity bundles, like one I got to help people in the Turkey/Syria area affected by the 2023 earthquake. Those bundles mostly consist of keys redeemed on the Steam platform. I don't play first-person-shooters, so those are going to sit in my library unplayed & uninstalled.
Let's say you on average manage to find 8 hours a week in a normal week playing videogames. A decent bit, no doubt, but not too crazy for someone who would consider themselves a "gamer".
You do that like 50 weeks a year. That's ~400 hours a year. 2,500 / 400 = 6.25 years.
My Steam account is 20 years old. Even if we doubled it to 5,000 hours, that's 250 hours a year. Roughly 5 hours a week on average.
That said, a lot of people just end up owning a lot of games on Steam through sales even though they may never play them or only put a few hours in them. I've got >200 games and yet over half have <2 hours of play time. A ton I've never installed, they just came bundled in sales with other games I did actually want. When you can buy a whole publisher's collection of games for like $20 on some crazy sale why not?
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.
Physical games are on the way out for consoles and the proces quotes for PlayStations are the models without the drive.
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
Right now, noone that can avoid it should be buying ANYTHING with RAM or SSD in it.
We're truly screwed if things don't calm down at least a little....
Reviews are saying it’s actually similar to base PS5 in performance.
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.
They still are. Any PS5 will play PS4 games. The PS5 Pro is a mid cycle spec bump that allows some newer games to have slightly better graphics. The games are still hard required to function within the expectations already set for the first PS5 model. I played Ghost of Yotei just fine on a non-Pro, and it targets the newer model.
We're also nearing PS6 time in the next year or two. It's already six years old.
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.
I picked up a PS5 Pro before Christmas on sale for $599. It seems I made out like a bandit. I assumed prices would go out due to all this AI mess and knew I’d want one for GTA.
Watching the LTT review of the Steam machine, it also reminded me why a console holds a lot of value. A lot of their video was about fiddling with settings per game to get a good balance of performance vs visuals. Something I never have to think about with the PS5, especially the Pro.
While I like the idea of PC gaming, and even more so what Valve is doing, trying to move the industry to Linux, the reality of PC gaming has always felt like a huge pain. As much sys admin as actual gaming.
If the Vavle platform are popular enough, they could get presets with a lot of games, but that remains to be seen.
Playstation price is also increasing FYI
The Steam Machine is likely slower than the base PS5 in terms of GPU performance. As a proxy, the memory bandwidth is 448 GB/s on the PS5 and in the range of 256 GB/s for the Steam Machine's VRAM
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
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
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.
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.
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.
A PlayStation 5 also requires you now to be online every so often (30 days?) for even your single player games.
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?
Given that it's an open platform your device isn't hostage to valve's whims nor are you powerless to overrule any DRM you judge unfair.
Steam's DRM can be trivially bypassed if you care and know where to look.
Denuvo and other DRM also exists though.
This is completely untrue and was based on some weird TikTok rumors.
More properly, this is competing with prebuilt gaming PCs, surely?
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.
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
> indie devs have easy access to release on PS5, latest Xbox, Switch alongside Steam simultaneously
And yet steam's indie library far outpaces what all other consoles indie games combined provide. Also you get access to a vast amount of games distributed independently and other stores that the PC ecosystem has available.
> 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 - $25 without the subscription
I don't think most PC gamers like being told every month what games they have to play in order to maximize their subscription value. They view it as wasting 100$ yearly just to have the ability to play online along other features that are free on PC.
> 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
That's a legit improvement from the console platforms but since it was only a change made in the previous gen you can only go back a single generation for now. On steam your library might encompass stuff sold three generations ago and if you are willing to take advantage of PC gaming outside steam you can go as far back as the invention of video games itself with emulators.
and all of those obvious counterpoints is still not enough to justify the price difference between a current gen console and this Steam Machine when an old sub $99 mobile device can power three generation old games as well, and connect to a monitor for those inclined to go out of their way for that user experience
> when an old sub $99 mobile device can power three generation old games as well, and connect to a monitor
Running an outdated, out of support version of android with limited app availability and a crappy selection of poorly maintained emulation forks... with a buggy GPU driver that causes so many visual and performance issues on a digital platform that does everything they can keep you from installing your choice of OS, let alone the lack of usual niceties that desktop operating systems get you. It will do in a pinch but I don't think anyone who likes emulating stuff enjoys using a system like this. Even a new flagship phone will share some of these issues and if you have an iphone you will pay to have an still inferior solution that can vanish at moments notice if apple decides the emulator your purchased isn't compliant to their draconian guidelines or isn't compatible with newer apis. I guess at least the UI/UX will be nice.
Alright, so at what price does your opinion stop being true, because there will certainly be consumer hardware price hikes again in 6 months, due to further RAM demand
I just think that phones and specially old ones are quite bad at being repurposed, its hard to work with them when they were purposely engineered that way. You will have much better results with an old pc desktops or pc notebook. Some may even be as performant as the steam machine, just don't expect low power usage and something small and good looking for the living room, a sore point in pc desktops that the steam machine tries to address.
We got that part, they’re good points
At what point does the value proposition go back, for the target audience you are fond of and can imagine to be disinterested in both consoles and enthusiasts uses of old phones
That was the premise of this thread, the price point of consoles and a generally antiquated understanding of current gen console indie gaming libraries
As someone who plays a lot of both I would say it still is
I constantly encounter indie games that are only on PC, for example Satisfactory, Chained Together, Last Call BBS
Steam is still way better for indie stuff
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)
Zen 2 vs Zen 4 though. pS5 probably slower for CPU tasks
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!
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.
So awesome. If I needed/wanted a gaming PC or "family TV" gaming machine, I'd snag this for sure. I've had the Steam Deck since launch and it's really quite well-executed and I've logged hundreds of hours on it. SteamOS is totally decent and the level of polish has been continually improved. The price for the Machine is totally acceptable considering the market currently, particularly considering these [0][1][2] would be my options if I had $1500 CAD to spend on a gaming PC right now -- all machines with 8gb VRAM GPUs and 16GB of RAM.
[0] https://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/MX00135058
[1] https://www.canadacomputers.com/en/armoury-gaming-desktops/2...
[2] https://www.canadacomputers.com/en/gaming-desktop-pcs/275404...
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.
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.
I mean, can the market really handle any of these prices? If we're truly stuck with these increasing prices for another year or so, whole sectors might get "restructured", including gaming, simply because people cannot afford the devices they depend on.
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.
My hope is this is just a soft launch that people who really want can get now, but that they revise it in the future to either be massively more powerful or much cheaper.
Same, I could have maybe justified $600 to my wife, $800 would be really pushing it. But 1k+ with a controller? There's no way when we have other things to save for. I am sure young single people will still buy it and it will sell out, but my Series X was $550 a few years ago and ill enjoy that in my living room for a while longer.
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.
Yep, and I feel many commenters in this thread are comparing value propositions only in terms of specs. I’ve built a number of Mini-ITX cases, from 5L to 20L, and they are a pain to work with and maintain. In some cases it’s impossible to make a reasonable filtered airflow, so dust builds up very fast, and a teardown to do clean up is pretty annoying. Steam Machine looks very straightforward to maintain. And it’s also tiny and quiet.
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!
I'm skeptical that they have working CEC. The steam deck, for example, does not. It also doesn't work reliably with many TVs. I'll believe it when I see it.
> who are we trying to tell you how to use your computer?
Valve is still great.
Yeah. Hope they never change.
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.
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.
Every iphone, ipad, playstation, xbox, android phone (though there are ways of unlocking), smart TV, smart Fridge. These are all devices that run a full web browser, these aren't appliances they're full personal computers. You can write and run software on them, even if arbitrarily limited in hardware access.
I can't believe all the replies who see no problem with a company completely controlling their device like it makes no difference.
This is more competing in the game console market than the PC market though.
Yup, even though this is just a gaming PC, most people are going to be using it as a game console.
PS5, Xbox? They're almost PCs and are in the same space as Steam Machine.
I know many people keep pointing at PS5 as the competition, but I'll throw this in:
I can buy a game on PC and play it on the go, I don't have to buy anything else.
The Steam Deck+a PC places Steam in a different league than the PS5 (for now).
Nintendo Switch 2 is way closer, however the games are different (I don't love Nintendo games).
Finally for those of us with a big Steam library and kids, buying a Steam machine or a Steam Deck means I will spend ZERO on games (I can confirm)
Until the next Steam sale. Steam Summer Sale is coming up!
Lol! I know right?
Jokes aside, I figured out techniques to avoid buying all together, which is great. I already spent plenty.
> The Steam Deck+a PC places Steam in a different league than the PS5 (for now).
It places it in same league as PS Portal and PS5
No the PlayStation portal streams, there is an enormous difference there.
I can already stream any steam game on any android and iphone out there
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.
Why is it surprising? This is essentially a pre-built PC in a small form factor and most PC peripherals are USB-A.
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.)
That's because you've been making a concerned effort to buy usb-c stuff. The average consumer has way more usb-a stuff than usb-c, even more so when talking about pc desktop users.
I even bet many mac users wished their device had a usb-a port or two in order to not be so dependent on adapters, hubs and docks.
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.
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.
You forgot all the extra signaling that type C ports have? Nobody wants a type C port that only does USB 2.0.
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.
> Why do you think the standard iPhones only does USB 2.0 transfer speed?
Because they saved die space in silicon? Same reason the MacBook Neo only has a single USB 3 and a USB 2. It seems that their A-series Pro silicon only has hardware for a single USB 3, and their non-Pro silicon doesn't even have it at all. I highly doubt they are sparing pins from the connector, the complexity of making a special port variant for that far surely outweighs any potential savings.
Serial and PS2 is even cheaper to implement than USB yet I’m happy that we removed those ports in favor of something modern.
Conversely, my Logitech wireless keyboard and trackpad needs this stupid receiver that they only make a USB-A version of.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logitech_Unifying_receiver
One of the many reasons not to buy Logitech.
New stuff does, but most of my peripherals aren't new. A couple are a decade old and probably pre-date USB-C being standardized.
I am semi-frequently annoyed that my laptop has 0 USB-A ports. At least give me one.
I haven’t seen a new product with USB-A in years. It’s long past time to move on.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
>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.
If it has USB-C on one end then you can use a C to C cable or a C to A so it doesn't really matter. It's not a show stopper either way but I've long wanted to slim down my birds nest of cables. Since my laptop and phone are USB-C I can get by with C to C cables only so I probably wouldn't get a computer that required me to double the number of cables I have to keep.
Tell that to logitech.
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.
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.
A USB-C PD power supply which supports 130W is probably gonna be more expensive than whatever power supply they're using now...
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.
And steam machine uses almost double that.
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.
There's plenty of cheap adapters for these use cases.
Series X controllers are easily worth that extra $20-$30 for the jump in quality.
These are USB3-A, so USB3-A to USB-C cables will properly work at full potential for any of your USB-C peripherals.
It's a bummer if have none of these cables around, but it's still more elegant than adapting USB3-A stuff to USB-C.
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
It took me a bit of digging but Framework sells a single port 240w USB-C charger https://frame.work/au/en/products/power-adapter-240w?v=FRAKM...
That said I would not trust this as a PSU for a computer which uses almost all the available power output and does not have it's own internal battery. Most USB-C chargers are not designed to run at 100% capacity for extended periods and could not handle sudden spikes over the rated capacity. Even for desktop PSUs you always want to get something that has a good headroom over the actual power draw for stability.
For reference to the current prices of consoles:
Nintendo Switch 2 $449.99
Xbox Series S (512GB/1TB) $379.99 – $449.99
Xbox Series X (1TB) $649.99
PlayStation 5 Slim (Digital) $599.99
PlayStation 5 Slim (Disc) $649.99
PlayStation 5 Pro $899.99
From reading posts on X/Twitter, I got the feeling that PC Gaming enthusiasts truly believed this was going to compete with console gaming and those players would flock to the utopia that is Steam OS and managing hardware. At this price I believe its way too expensive to temp console gamers and Steam supporters will probably balk about the specs to price ratio.
The main market to me is going to be ibuypower people, so a console gamer who wants to jump to PC but doesn't want to self build.
I've been screwing around on pcpartpicker on and off for today, and I don't see a clean way to get steam machine specs for less than $800 if you build it yourself, and closer to $900 if i'm being honest (and in no way will it be SFF).
I think the big thing will be if steam can commit to this like the deck and get better performance over time. Consoles out perform their hardware thanks to lots of optimization, enforced by knowing you're stuck with/always going to have the same specs.
The steam machines success to me pivots completely on if they can capture a market of customers who want to jump from console and don't want to become hardware savvy (which has not gotten as easy as it should).
Compatibility and performance in the next 6 months is going to determine a lot.
And if someone better than me wants to check my PC Part picker work: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/HCtXkD
I've got $766 for CPU/MB/HDD/GPU/RAM.
No case. No custom made motherboard that supports HDMI CEC. Lack of developers specifically developing around valve hardware like they did with the SteamDeck.
> Lack of developers specifically developing around valve hardware
Like what? The only "specific" thing that comes to mind are the boot animations and the Decky plugins (which should work with all SteamOS-like distros).
All of the optimizations, "Steam Deck" graphics settings, controller mapping support, Linux-friendly anticheat and more works on any Linux PC. Almost nothing is bespoke to the Deck, by design.
And all those consoles (save the Switch maybe) are heavily subsidized by those companies to compete at that artificial price point.
According to LTT Valve made the conscious decision NOT to subsidize the Steam Machine to let the market compete. I very much respect that and will be willing to pay the premium because of that and:
- using my purchase to vote for/encourage the growth of the Linux ecosystem.
- as a PC gamer I'm already highly invested in the Steam platform with all of my other gaming purchases.
Just round up the penny for the more honest price.
Nintendo Switch 2 $450
Xbox Series S (512GB/1TB) $380 – $450
Xbox Series X (1TB) $650
PlayStation 5 Slim (Digital) $600
PlayStation 5 Slim (Disc) $650
PlayStation 5 Pro $900
Steam Machine 512GB: $1050
Steam Machine 2TB: $1350
Switch 2 is going up by $50
The PS5 (which is realistically the main competitor) has the caveat that to get even something as basic as multiplayer you need to pay a $10-20 monthly subscription, so you can multiply that by however many months you plan to own it and add it to the price.
Switch 2 performs very well for the price. It is getting the same games as PS5 etc.
I'd like to factor in the cost of games, but then my Steam library might be a little bigger than the average... Am I willing to pay €60 for a game? Rarely. Am I willing for the spring/summer/winter sale on Steam? Yes!
Idk why anyone thought this would be a "PC console killer" type of product. Consoles are subsidized because they act as the entry point to closed hardware/software ecosystems. You can't do that with a general purpose PC because it's an open ecosystem by definition.
But there are economic benefits to an open ecosystem. The Steam Machine has a gigantic back catalog of games that can be had for cheap. You also probably already have all the peripherals you'll need for it. And of course they don't charge for online play.
That last part alone makes up for the cost after just 2-3 years.
This is a general purpose PC but it's also designed for Steam. Valve will get back a fair amount of revenue on games sold for usage on said machines. They could sell it with little to no margin (maybe they are doing it) while increasing gaming time and potential revenue. Sure, games can be had for cheap and so far it seems to be profitable.
If they were sell it without margin people would buy it as a general purpose mini-PC.
Spec may not always match your needs. The hardware is tailored for PC Gaming which is dominated by Steam.
TMK Sony and Nintendo don't lose money on console sales.
Sony have admitted to selling the PS5 at a loss during the first 8 months of sales. Even when they announced the $499 disc drive SKU was no longer selling at a loss, they admitted the $399 SKU still cost more to make than it sold for. Things are no doubt different today.
> https://www.pcmag.com/news/sony-says-499-ps5-no-longer-sells...
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.
If you already have a powerful desktop PC in your house, streaming via Sunshine/Moonlight is pretty much perfect these days.
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.
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.
It does sound like some people do have pretty good results with it, but my experience is really not unique (I know personally many others who have similar).
With that in mind, I maintain that this stuff is very very far from perfect.
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.
I have had a very clunky experience historically. But I tried the built in steam game streaming over the local network to my steam deck and this time the experience was flawless.
I feel like the problem is a very large number of rough edges and software bugs, hardware issues, etc. But it's so possible to stream over the local network with zero noticeable latency. Only if all the stars align and there are no bugs.
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.
I can vouch for it being really great for me as well (as others pointed out). But I use Apollo instead of Sunshine. It has some superior things baked in, including easy resolution/monitor handling. Maybe give it a shot.
Thanks, I might give it a try if I ever look into this stuff again.
I use a dedicated capture card ($250ish Elgato 4K X) over Thunderbolt to access my desktop. I can't imagine putting up with any higher latency than that.
The chroma encoding is a little disappointing, but I don't think there's any way to bypass it, even at 1080p.
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.
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.
Have you tried Steam Remote Play? It allows your desktop to render games and stream it to your Steam Deck that's connected to your TV. Or to any other device really.
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.
Since it’ll have a mobile SoC with baked in memory I’m hoping that the price won’t be too inflated!
It was my understanding that SoC memory comes from the same manufacturing processes as other RAM, it just gets integrated differently.
It suffers from the same shortages as other RAM too.
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.
I was expecting $1200 for the base model, so $1,049 without a controller is nice to see.
Having to enter a lottery to buy one makes it feel like Valve doesn’t have new stock in the pipeline for the foreseeable future.
Eh, it was the exact same system for the Switch 2 and no one I know waited more than a week for theirs.
Given it requires a Steam login of a certain age to register, I suspect this is just to limit the scalpers.
I hope that's the case. Seeing Steam Controller reservations pushed into 2027 tempers my optimism.
It's funny how this (imo) almost feels like an inherently inert topic to discuss:
Is it dumb of them to do this? Not really, they got unlucky with the timing and they already designed the machines. Selling them below cost to subsidize steam-sales would probably create bad incentives for them.
What will this mean for Valve's future? Nothing, they're still a relatively lean company with a money machine.
Will this dissuade them from creating hardware in the future? Probably not, the Steamdeck was really succesfull and they've got more than enough resources to do a few failed experiments.
>Selling them below cost to subsidize steam-sales would probably create bad incentives for them.
They could have sweetened the deal somehow, though. Maybe owners get a discount on games or something. It was bad timing, but it's not like they can't afford to take a bit of a hit for good will.
It is interesting to know how it compares in terms of performance to 500$ Mac Mini with Crossover?
Of course Crossover support is worse than Proton, so it will not be viable alternative in real gaming scenarios. But Proton is made by Crossover team.
And Apple hardware is 2x cheaper.
Due to the memory and storage crisis, you actually cannot buy the $500 mac mini anymore. It starts at $799
Just checked what your claim, and... its even worse – 1000$ in my part of EU (m4 + 16gb, aka base configuration)
Your mileage may vary, but I've never gotten reasonable performance out of Crossover. I have a decked out Mac for development and most of the games I've tried in Crossover still need you to turn the settings to damn near lowest possible.
If Mac Minis were viable for gaming, everyone would get one. Unfortunately, Crossover has very spotty support and GPTK starts fraying at the seams on CPU-heavy titles.
The upcoming Steam Frame will be the real make-or-break moment for ARM PC gaming. Up until now, nobody has seriously attempted to make ARM work for the "Steam Deck" segment of users.
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.
At least it's repairable so unless you break the motherboard you can probably fix it.
I hope this is successful, like it or not this might be one of the best ways that Linux can reduce the Microsoft Windows monopoly. I would actually go as far as to say that it has to succeed.
That's my hope as well. I don't need/want a Steam Machine, but I want it to succeed, especially if it forces better support for anti-cheat.
Maybe it'll become a cheaper entry-level machine in a couple of years if they can keep producing them.
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.
> We think of Steam Machine as an extension of PC gaming, not as a console.
But is that really so bad? I don't want to say 'sell it at a loss' but loss leaders don't need to bankrupt their companies in order to do their job.
If you sold them at or below cost then people would figure out how to buy 100's and make server farms out of them. Particularly for this hardware. The awkwardness of the hardware being made up for by the subsidy from the manufacturer. But pricing them at break-even would still be good business.
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.
If that's the cost of a _working_, well supported and _viable_ open platform, than so be it. People, especially the ones here at hacker news, ought to give way more value to this, else we lose it all.
If you have hundreds of Steam games you bought through sales events, then that changes the calculus a bit.
Does it? Do people actually play those games? I thought people just liked buying them and never playing the vast majority of them.
Well, you can play them. Not playing the games you purchased sounds like an issue with you, rather than the system.
How many people who are that invested in their Steam library don't already have a mid to upper range PC?
70% of the Steam users have a PC that's weaker than the Steam Machine[0]. These things will sell out, that's not the issue. The issue is that Valve probably won't have enough power to secure hardware deals to fulfill all the orders, thus limiting the growth of their hardware side.
[0] https://www.techpowerup.com/342970/valve-claims-steam-machin...
Add "in their living room" and the answer is low. But is it a good experience to game in the living room, on the couch? To me that's an open question that is (sadly) very expensive to answer.
I was interested in the Steam machine, but I might not get one because I cannot log in to my Steam account, for no reason that I know. Steam's web-based process for resetting my password always gets stuck after successful completion of the captcha, regardless of which device or OS I use to do it, the accessible-to-Google procedures for getting past that blockage have not worked, and the email address that one could once use in this situation now just sends an autoreply that says no one is monitoring it anymore.
So I have exhausted all of the obvious routes for logging into my Steam account. Perhaps there are additional routes to discover, but I'm not particularly motivated to look for them at this point. If just getting logged in is this painful, I'm not particularly optimistic about the experience of buying or owning the thing.
Steam Support can probably get it sorted.
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...
It’s not just the ram now, it’s also the storage. A double whammy.
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.
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
Expensive, but corrected for inflation, around the price of a ps3 at launch, and the ps3 was sold as a loss leader when it came out
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.
Similar here. I have the PS4 here and rarely even use PlayStation these days. Mostly it is just PC (now runing Linux even for gaming) and Steam Deck. I was thinking about upgrading to PS5 a year or two ago bu then did some calculations and it is more expensive then it looks at first (PlayStation+ is in practive not optional and it is 72 €/year at minimum, games are quite more expensive themselves than on the PC, and well there is a lot less choice in games). So I have basically just started moving my game library to Steam and PC (GoG and similar other sources store), just makes more sense with PC and now Steam Machine makes inot the a console form factor while still having all the power and freedom of PC. So yeah an easy decision to go with Steam Machine. Sure price of the hardware itself is not exactly very attractive but yeah not so much different to what is normal these days in PC hardware (fsck all these terrible "AI" slop scam bubble corporations). Would love to see a cheaper bare-bones edition without RAM and SSD inside but even without this I think Steam machine will be quite a nice replacement for PS4.
With those unfortunate specs a used PS5 + Steam Deck OLED is the better deal to me.
HDR on that screen is just something to behold and UHD-BD drive is the cherry on top.
https://github.com/streetpea/chiaki-ng
I could see myself buying the undeniably beautiful GabenCube at spec if the price were at or only slightly above SW2/PS5 level; as an additional device to play the outlier game that is exclusive to "PC" and Steam Deck / Macbook Pro not delivering enough oomph for it to run satisfactorily.
I think this put this all in perspective for me. If Microsoft came out with this exact hardware (with Windows but still open and you could load SteamOS on it), at this price point, people mock Microsoft to death about how this product is a joke.
> with Windows but still open and you could load SteamOS on it
You're describing Every Computer Ever.
As opposed to an Xbox, which doesn't do that. But the XSX also costs 43% less.
The Xbox is subsidized by the Xbox Live subscription service, Windows and Steam are not.
Mainstream console pricing is a bloodbath enabled only by perverse financial incentives.
Every x86 PC ever. That's not true for ARM machines or Mac. Or the myriad of other closed platforms that are computers.
It’s called the Xbox and the reason it wasn’t at this price point is that Microsoft has the capital power to subsidize the cost at risk of the Xbox division not being profitable. Valve doesn’t have such freedoms on hardware it seems.
The XSX costs 43% less than the cheapest Steam Machine, even though it has twice the SSD and includes a controller. Microsoft isn't subsidizing it that far.
That’s a Nth generation device that has a built out hardware pipeline. I assure you that Microsoft still subsidizes the devices and has lowered the cost on later models through hardware supply chain build out agreements.
What are you trying to prove? That Microsoft has hardware pricing magic?
Very late to the discussion, but many people see the price of the Steam Machine and balk at the high cost, even if they understand the reasoning. However, this isn't about the Steam Machine. Computing has just gotten more expensive. This is the new reality going forward, Steam Machine is just on the front edge of the wave. (Until, and if, RAM manufacturers catch up).
“starting with the SteamOS 3.8 release, you can put together your own Steam Machine using whatever PC parts you want”
That’s great.
But, will it properly support NVIDIA GPUs? That’s was the biggest pain point for years.
$1049 for the base package? Much better than I thought it was going to be. I figured minimum $1200.
I mean, it is $1200 if you want a controller included
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.
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.
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.
I disagree. I see this becoming an Xbox/PlayStation killer/contender.
They currently don’t accept orders from people without an existing Steam purchase from before May. (Otherwise I might have been interested.)
I imagine that this is primarily for preorders and will be dropped as soon as there is sufficient stock.
Now game devs can optimised their game for it and Steam Machine will get royal treatment. It's not unusual for a PS5 game to run slow on a PC with much better hardware due to not being optimised. The Nintendo switch is a great example, pretty old hardware but the games run well (for their intended experience).
Many people are complaining about the price but you can bring you entire steam game collection and even use as a PC if you want, I sold my PS5 once it became a useless brick cause Sony prevents you from running Linux.
True. But if it doesn't work, a refund is quick and easy
https://poshmark.com/listing/Valve-Steam-DeckHDMI-64-GB-Blac...
What a great machine it would've been without these stupid prices we have now...
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.
I think the steam machine is more important as a benchmark for 3rd parties developing their own Steam OS based systems. Although I am sure Valve would be happier if it was popular on its own merits too.
With the scalping issue, the issue isn't whether can we detect scalpers to which anti scalping mechanism has the lowest false positive cost to it?
The random reservation order takes the scalping issue out of the fulfillment part and into allocation making it a lot harder on the scalper.
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.
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.
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.
Windows 7 was the last good one.
Valve makes it very very easy to be a PC gamer, and, importantly, slightly harder to be a PC gamer who buys games in places other than Steam.
Yes you can buy games on GoG or Epic and play them on a steam deck or a steam machine. But it's juuuuust enough faff to be annoying enough, that you'd rather just get them on steam. I know people (and am a person) who have rebought games they already own so they are on steam, to make playing between steam deck and desktop more reliable.
It's the same with the steam controller. You _can_ use it with games outside of steam, but it's enough of a faff that you find yourself avoiding it.
It's incredibly effective, and why they are an effective monopoly in PC gaming.
Why is the gasoline high octane in your metaphor? It's not like it's going to burn better.
If you're going to be burning barrels of $100 banknotes, why settle for plebian unleaded when you can use artisanal premium high-octane, if not avgas?
/s
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.
this Steam Machine hadn’t been announced back then? Not even the steam deck, which has been a massive success.
Of course it was, they are talking about the 2012~2015 (not sure about the exact date) steam machine that was released and failed. It took a long time for enough pieces to fall into place that would lead to the success of the steam deck and now the, too soon to call a success, launch of the new steam machine (2026).
The original Steam Machines were a line of pre-made PCs with SteamOS from various vendors. Valve made a reference machine, but it was never widely available. The device released today is their first product that's actually called "Steam Machine".
Also this was back before Proton. You could only play games that natively supported linux, which was hardly any back then.
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.
Yeah there was the steam link, but that was also way before 2019, so not sure what they could be referring to.
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.
You pay a premium for “it just works”.
This. Game companies will probably test their games on a steam machine.
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.
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.
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
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,
https://youtu.be/cUJGvKHdDRo?si=q7VrGGpP3mDlLhKl&t=28
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.
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.
Well, be prepared to be extraordinarily surprised.
Most games are tested on a steam deck nowadays.
Except due to Linux, the biggest games not only won't just work, they will not work at all.
> Except due to windows allowing kernel level anti cheat
Ftfy
AKA kernel-level rootkit spyware, a big security malware that should never exist anywhere.
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?
If you stay in the Steam ecosystem. Similar to the Steam Controller. Works great with Steam, not so great outside the ecosystem.
Only about 65 dollars cheaper for a comparable build and it wouldn't be small.
Can you still, in 2026?
I think with reasonable and somewhat common sales and picking right machine probably could find even better prebuild. Size not withstanding.
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.
It's still missing wi-fi, bluetooth, sc dongle, sd card reader, (frugal) led bar, the hdmi cec functionality and whatever you value yourself for assembly, installation, troubleshooting and tweaking time (between half an afternoon to a whole day). Dealing with pc bioses is tedious and tweaking fan behavior and thermals could take a whole other day, which you are gonna need because the cheapo case you've picked up only comes with a single loud fan and poor ventilation for pc case standards, so you either gonna have a loud motherfucker or a cooked to perfection unreliable rig.
Let alone having to put the PC on the floor because it won't fit anywhere else in the living room.
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.
> 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.
Yeah, I know that for a lot of people that does not make sense, and I understand, but it does for me.
I would have probably picked an Intel B580 for the additional VRAM (at $250), and a case with better airflow like the Bequiet Pure Base 501, but your point stands.
Even with similar specs you can still get more performance from a PC because Valve is throttling the Machine to keep thermals down.
My first thought was "I wonder how this would work as a small-factor game dev machine" and lo and behold, there is a clip of someone working in Godot running a debug version of their game. Very cool to see Valve market this as Linux PC rather than strictly gaming.
It's even worse value for productivity, though, because the CPU is purposely throttled to prevent overloading the thermal solution and the PSU.
I can't find evidence for this anywhere. Can you provide a source?
It's in the Gamers Nexus review, around the 23-minute mark: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66QzlDewigE
The CPU hard-throttles to 4 GHz after exactly 8 minutes of sustained load.
Is sustained 4 GHz really so bad?
The point is there are better-value options if all you want is a SFF PC for development work. 16 GB is also pretty tight for development, come to think of it.
I saw a bunch of reviews (written and YouTube). It seems that the Valve development team behind this product was disappointed by the final cost. If this machine was built 2-3 years ago, can anyone estimate how much cheaper the cost would be? I assume this biggest price hikes have come from memory (RAM) and storage (NVMe).
around 800 usd according to LTT’s video (near the end)
Well, when they announced it (7 months ago) I got laughed out of the room when I said this will be at least 1k$ 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$...
I really appreciate Gabe's approach of treat the user as THE USER not the thing we are trying to use.
Very tired of every interaction with every tech company and subscription service making me feel used rather than served.
Crazy. A Mac Mini costing nearly half as much as based on the released benchmarks, the same performance playing games with Crossover.
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.
Will Crossover survive the dropping of Rosetta 2 that is coming?
The Verge: Nearly twice the price of PS5 for PS5 performance.
That’s rough.
Rough but true. This has PMF but not at this price.
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...
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.
Sad about the price. Maybe it comes down some day.
Given the current state of the global market it will likely take a few years for prices to come down
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)
There is nothing typical about the current boom, I don’t think we can predict much based on past cycles
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.
I was definitely alive, what a weird remark to make…
Yeah I keep reading comments about "semiconductor boom/bust cycles", but they ignore that Moore/Dennard Laws were in a totally different regime back then, and they ignore the external factor of AI. So I just don't understand what those comments are alluding to.
AI is the biggest bubble/cycle to date because of how much capital the government has printed into it. But it still follows the same pattern.
I honestly have no idea what you are actually talking about. Government printing capital? What does that even mean? And patterns are meaningless, what is the mechanism and the underlying relationship? Whatever you heard stock analysts say they don't sound they know engineering or science.
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.
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.
Well, that's how prices solve shortages. Less people buy, and the ones who want it more get one
Ah yes. The good old cobweb theorem. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobweb_model
Prices coming down? In this economy?
Interesting with the memory. It is 16GB plus an additional 8GB for graphics, or is it just 16GB with 8GB reserved for graphics?
16GB DDR5 + 8GB GDDR6
It is 16GB plus an additional 8GB for graphics.
It's GPU's VRAM or some sort of shared memory? I have never seen mixed ram before.
>I have never seen mixed ram before.
What do you mean? Most PC's have mixed memory configurations.
Man it's so unfortunate that this launch coincided with the component crisis, forcing the prices to be just outside the range of people that were debating between getting this and getting a console, it would've made so much more of an impact if the prices were $200 lower.
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.
I say, be happy this means your 7 year old pc will be future proof for longer!
Related ongoing thread:
Steam Machine game testing - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48632989 - June 2026 (19 comments)
I wish there was a clear Mac Mini alt. With lots of drawbacks of the mac mini fixed e.g. a very simple way to connect to tablets (iPads, Androids tabs) as screen and ability to connect to any keypad and mouse, natively (I am sure a linux mini pc box will have that already - at least I may not need a "connector hardware").
I really like the idea of travelling around with my iPad but have a very small but sufficiently powerful computer tucked away in my bag (along with needed cables) if I need it (because, well, Apple is not going to let their iPads unleash their capabilities).
There are some around (even in my geography) but all of them seem to be half-heartedly done.
Wondering how it’d benchmark against https://www.tuxedocomputers.com/en/TUXEDO-Nano-Pro-Gen14-AMD... in an even smaller form factor and similar price range for specs.
"This item is not available for purchase in your region"
This is such a bummer. I live in the European Economic Area (EEA)
We have too good consumer protection laws for Valve. Makes my view of them negative, so I'll go elsewhere when I can.
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
Can you check how much that mini pc costs today?
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
https://www.amazon.com/MINISFORUM-Desktop-Computer-Output-Gr...
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.
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.
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.
Framework provides adequate price to value, what are you saying?
This doesn't have the best value
The MacBook neo is cheaper, faster, and higher quality in every way.
The iPad Mini is cheaper than the Macbook Neo, is more efficient, and has more apps.
Comparing the Machine to the Framework to the Mac is an Apples-to-Grapes-to-Oranges comparison.
Both of them are laptops. The average person buying a laptop basically just needs a web browser and some office tools that will run on either. But they will run better on the macbook neo for less money. It's a no brainer choice right now unfortunately.
Well, let's defer to the market share statistics, as usual. We hear this line every few years, but the market knows what it wants. iPads are almost a larger market than Macbooks, at this point.
Good luck playing PC games on PS5 or Xbox Series X.
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?
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.
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.
The Steam Deck is an ok PC gaming machine, but most PC games aren't optimized for console experience. There's even quite a few Windows games that don't work or have bugs on the Deck. Meanwhile all Switch games are made for that platform and there are a ton of exclusives you can't get on PC. Glad each one has a niche, but Switch is an order of magnitude (or two) more successful than the Steam Deck.
Switch 2 is faster, lighter and cheaper than Steam Deck.
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.
I like this randomized reservation approach.
What if, in addition, a nominal fee was charged just to have a chance to purchase a Steam Machine? Let's say $3 (or whatever). Then, all that money is donated to an organization like Extra Life or Game for Love?
In that way, someone with 5000 scalper accounts knows they're going to be out $15k just to get in line. And everyone else who is trying to buy just one isn't sweating the nominal fee.
I'm genuinely asking.
They already require you to have made at least one purchase on Steam before April.
Ahhh, there it is. That's a good approach.
> 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
I will definitely be getting this regardless of price or specs. I'm no hard core gamer and I play Balatro, Vampire Survivors and occasional online Halo 2 with friends. This is perfect.
Too bad YouTube doesn't have a proper API for building 3rd party clients. I would love to build one and use it on my SteamDeck and on the big TV with the SteamMachine.
I wish it was available in my country.
there are re-shipping services that will re-ship the item to you for an extra fee. The fee can be quite high though.
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.
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]
[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-...
Seems like a case of under promising and planning to over deliver later. The hardware seems to be 2.1 but they haven't sorted out every feature in the drivers yet.
The DisplayPort 1.4 instead of 2.1 is also interesting. The RX7000 series came with DisplayPort 2.1.
DisplayPort 1.4 should be enough to do 4K@120hz. Not enough bandwidth for HDR at the same time though
Oof. Great machine. Wrong price.
I'll be getting one eventually either way, hopefully after the RAMpocalypce has ended, just because I enjoy collecting consoles and games, and I want to support Linux through SteamOS. I'm sure I can find a place for it in my life, but it's not something I need.
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.
They released it. Companion cube.
I hope they will add the expected performances for a given game on the store pages, just like the required specs are specified.
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.
Unfortunate for them on the pricing of components. This won't do so well (right now), but I think the Frame will exceed expectations.
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.
From last year:
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)
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.
It was kind of expected since Steam Deck (obviously) had an AMD APU, and AMD works much better with mainstream Linux projects in general.
And since for AMD it is an open source driver Valve can also hack on it and squeze more performance out of it for their own specific hardware configuration.
valve themselves also personally employ multiple major contributors to the amd linux drivers
https://www.phoronix.com/news/AMD-Marek-Joins-Valve
Why so many USB-A ports and only one USB-C?
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.
Most peripherals these days have a fully detachable cable so it can be whatever you want. Usually they include some garbage 10 cent C to A cable in the box that you throw in the bin and replace with a good quality C to C cable.
I could understand having both C and A on the machine, but having the one C port on the back seems like a mistake since that's the port I'd think you'd most want quick access to to plug in flash drives and such if you wanted to copy files from a phone or laptop. While the back ports are where you'd stick the fixed receivers.
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.
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.
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.
It's just dead-on-arrival.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The reason I'm going to buy a Steam Machine instead of building a computer is the verified program.
I've absolutely loved being able to check a store listing page and immediately know if a game will run well on the Steam Deck. Having the same program for a higher end target would be really nice for me.
Also, getting the CEC right is really valuable for me. If I'm building a computer there's no chance I am going to be able to get it to play nice with the TV using just the controller.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> Yes I will gatekeep.
Well, you're not doing a good job of it! I'm going to buy one and use it to play games and have a good time.
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.
Hacker News is not a representative sample of the addressable market
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)
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.
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.
"For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially..."
"No wireless? Less space than a Nomad? Lame"
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.
> 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?)
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
Dota isn't a very cheatable game to begin with. Even with the best micro you can't reach a high elo without the appropriate high level planning skills.
If we look at a game like Rust it's impossible for it to exist without a kernel anti-cheat today
"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.
The only competitive game I’ve put serious hours into that had votekick was CS, and teams would almost never kick their own cheaters, even when they were obvious, because they wanted that sweet Elo.
...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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
> it performs on par with a PS5
Wait, really? I looked at the specs and saw like 2/3 the CUs of a PS5.
The benchmarks I've seen - only a few, and only because my partner was watching them - show it basically neck and neck with a PS5. Not a PS5 Pro, to be clear, and a PS5 slim is only $650, but the Steam Machine isn't underpowered in console gaming terms.
But better CUs I assume, Steam Machine is RDNA3, PS5 is RDNA2.
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.
>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.
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.
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.
Just because you don't see it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
> 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
> 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?
Google Stadia worked like a charm. I put hundreds of hours into it without a single problem. The tech felt like magic.
This is going to be very geographically dependent, surely?
What are you coding over the network such that the network is a bottleneck?
> 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.
> Steam is in the unique position to create a kernel anti-cheat
Valve has a long-term policy of being utter trash at game security.
> 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.
Epic Games does fine (though they did it by purchasing an anticheat startup).
EDIT: Oh, you're talking about making an anti-cheat focused Linux kernel build? Meh, still would not trust Valve on that front given their long-standing policy of not giving a shit.
>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.
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.
So why do people buy a Switch 2?
I guess because my kids keep breaking the shoddy slide-on joycons, and the new magnetic ones are a much better design.
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.
For all the new Nintendo first-party games.
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
Who thought that? The switch was an explosion when it launched.
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.
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.
I don't remember anyone saying this about the Switch and at the time, the reviews for North America at least were very positive.
Because a console is a console.
Look at the PS2. Incredible games on bespoke custom harware.
We didnt know how good we had it.
Nobody cares about the Switch hardware, they but it to play Nintendo games.
This is just a x86 PC.
My prediction was that they would bundle it with Steam store money or other games to bring the "end price" below a 1000 Euro, surprised to see I was wrong!
I feel like Framework really missed this boat with their desktop PC they released last year. They could have used that + a gamepad to have captured so much of this.
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.
You can upgrade the ram yourself.
You can, but why would you when all steam deck/machine certified games will run fine on this hardware?
Unless you buy it because it's an x86 based mac mini. That may be true for quite a few early adopters, who knows.
You probably can. Not sure target market can.
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.
Might be the first hardware Valve has priced correctly. All previous hardware was underpriced leaving it unavailable for months/years on end.
well, is there a better alternative for the money? I'm asking because i'm in the market for this
I'd say that heavily depends on what you see as alternatives. For some the Steam Machine is filling an unmet need in the market, for others it's a more expensive gaming pc or gaming console.
As we are on HackerNews, there's a good chance that you can build / setup your own pc with better specs which you might want to look into and then decide.
The biggest win for me from this product is pushing developers to release on Linux.
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.
Releasing an actual Linux binary doesn't really matter that much. Proton is just a better experience. Even when games did include a linux build you were usually better off telling Steam to run the Windows one in Proton because it just ran faster with less bugs. A Windows binary is just more portable, more stable long term, and a better experience.
What we actually need is developers testing their games on Proton to make sure they run well day, releasing graphics presets that run well on the hardware, and simply not blocking Linux through anti cheat.
> A Windows binary is just more portable, more stable long term, and a better experience.
I must preface this by saying that I'm not a game dev, but the Steam Runtime SDK has been offering stable versioned targets for linux for close to a decade now. Porting to one of them shouldn't be more difficult than porting to any other console specific SDK.
> A Windows binary is just more portable
How the turntables…
Windows API and ABI has always been more portable than anything else. This is why Microsoft is a tech giant. You can take a windows binary from 1995 (actually even older) and run it reliably today.
If it doesn't run and you are a commercial client, Microsoft will implement a compatibility hack for you in the latest windows code so your thing from 1995 will work.
There is no parallel to this in the tech world so far. Linux gets around this by requiring you to recompile things, but recompiling old code along with old compilers and old libraries and all their dependencies is a nightmare.
Sure, I know all that, but it’s ironic to me that Unix, which was boasted as the epitome of portability once with C, POSIX, X11, X/Open and whatnot, actually struggles with backwards compatibility while Microsoft, the notorious developer of a closed-source, locked-in platform, has managed to become the key to portability :)
That's source-level portability, while this is binary portability. Even early on, MS put in lots of effort to ensure that old applications kept working.
Why all USB-A ports instead of USB-C? (I counted 4 USB-A and just one USB-C.)
Budget reasons would be my guess. The USB-C port here is 10 gbit while the USB-A ports on the machine are USB 2.0(front) and 5gbit(rear) speeds.
While they could have and imo should have just put usb 2.0 C ports on it, users have an expectation that USB-C ports are fully functional high speed ports. On most machines you can plug something in to any USB-C port on a device and they all work the same.
Because most peripherals that are likely to be used with it are still USB-A. Things like mice and keyboards and gamepads and headphone and whatnot.
> 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.
"Internal power supply, AC power 110-240V"
I wonder if they mean that? Japan is 100V.
If AI is so good, then why don't we have perfect compatibility layers between OS's for games yet?
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
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.
Not sure who the target audience is for this.. indie gamers? But yeah I saw the news piece about the 750$ before memory craziness set in, still a lot.
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?
Yes you can connect keyboard and mouse; Overwatch (https://www.protondb.com/app/2357570) and WoW (https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iI...) should both work well, as do the vast majority of single-player games. Some multiplayer games with particularly invasive anti-cheat may not, so if you have anything else in mind best to check before buying.
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.
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.
That's how a lot of modern Linux distros are because immensely better. Updates on an immutable OS are massively more reliable, it doesn't prompt you to merge diffs in config files, it never breaks, you never have to reinstall.
I've run Bazzite on my desktop for the last year and every update has just been hitting the "Apply" button in the settings page with my xbox controller. While on mutable distros it's always involved going in to the terminal and running a series of commands or opening the repo list and manually replacing the release name for Debian. I know there is a GUI software store to do it but it literally never works because some error will show up that isn't handled and you just get a generic error message.
"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
Dual-booting SteamOS for gaming and some regular Distro for daily work would be neat.
It's pretty good for daily work. You can use Distrobox to do any software dev without dual booting.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48633563
We have pricey PCs, consoles and other electronics, but at least we have AI
It was never about us.
More information here: https://youtu.be/66QzlDewigE?is=WC9vt6LBtdWFPqfp
Worth watching for the Steam OS problems part
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.
the title is misleading, somebody could think that a startup launched a new steam based machine after the Hormuz closure
What's the competition in the gaming-capable pre-built mini-PC category? How does it compare to these on price/performance?
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.
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
> is there a specific reason that the XSX is harder to homebrew than the PS5?
Xbox 360 was notoriously hard to reverse engineer at the time. Maybe for similar reasons.
They should include the (entire) Valve game library for free with purchase for the first 6 months to drive adoption.
Honestly, it seems pretty enticing for a PC-just-for-gaming-but-not-a-“gaming-PC”, if you get my meaning.
I have no need for it right now, but when the next big Windows-only game comes out, it’ll be pretty tempting. (The last Windows gaming I did was when The Elder Scrolls Online came out…)
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.
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.
yeah, so this was exactly my scenario. i have an xbox and ps5, but bought a steamdeck about 6 months ago to play indie and windows games... its been utterly amazing. i dont care about specs, or graphics, or framerates (within reason). playing on steam still feels like it did when i was young.
maybe im misunderstanding, but you exactly like the person that a steam machine is for.
Starts at $1049
I would love to see Valve release a cheaper bare-bones edition without RAM and SSD.
I was hoping that Steam Machine + Steam Frame would be around 1000€ or there about.
I think Apple Mac Mini's prices make since now, only if you can install Linux on them
Steam Deck is probably better value
Honestly, it seems overpriced (as expected). But it's much smaller than PS5 and according the first reviews it runs much cooler. Still not my cup of tea.
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"?
> 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!
I fully believe that the current PC hardware should be able to play essentially any game for a very long time. And the only reason we are being pushed to upgrade is because games are pushing poorly optimized graphics with mandatory features like ray tracing. No game play experience is impossible to achieve on the steam deck level hardware.
I'm hopeful that with the insane hardware prices right now, studios will be forced to actually make their games work on older hardware.
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).
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.
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.
> 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.
Until they want to play Fortnite/Roblox/whatever else.
There are a lot more games in the world than Fortnite/Roblox.. and besides, those are pretty bad examples since you can also play them on Android, so it's not like you need a PC to play them in the first place.
This only really matters for children, who probably aren't the bulk of the hacker crowd.
fyi: this very web site is called ... hacker news.
The "hackers" here who are interested in this article, fall in one or more of these categories:
a) they already use Linux, but want to buy this anyway just to encourage the ecosystem
b) they want to recommend it for the normies they know, who find Linux, or gaming on Linux, daunting
So my point still stands.
it's not like I'd ever expect only real hacker news here (whatever that even means) but let's be honest for a moment this is just an ordinary consumer item lacking anything novel or innovative ... it's basically just a very large smartphone with a game library for an app store.
I don't disagree, but what this does have is commercial backing and branding, and an excuse for game devs to target it - which benefits the Linux gaming ecosystem as a whole (and non-gaming ecosystem too, like look at all the improvements coming to AMD and KDE users, thanks to Valve's involvement).
Do you usually want to upgrade components in a console?
I'm pretty sure you got my point.
$1049 .. Damn.
Here's hoping my $135 BC-250 arriving tomorrow works without any issue.
Either way, congrats to Valve!
I have doubts in their reservation process, though. I signed up for the controller reservation as soon as it started (after they just gave the first batch to scalpers) and it was mentioned that they prefer genuine accounts. My account is over 22 years old at this point and has regular transactions going on. Countless games with countless hours, almost daily activity. I even got the Index back in the day and still use it.
Anyway, upon registration I was informed that my account was "not eligible". You are welcome, I guess.
Do you have an active VAC ban? If not, it may be worth contacting them to ask why, they're quite responsive
> Do you have an active VAC ban?
No, and never had one. My account is as clean as pristine as it gets. I already mailed them but never got an answer.
congrats to Valve on the launch!
So SteamOS is just arch linux?
I guess there are important differences?
It is immutable and has versioned image releases (unlike Arch, which is mutable and rolling release).This adds stability, makes the system less prone to breakage, and easy to rollback (factory reset).
Ans of course, the biggest visible difference is that this boots directly into Steam big-picture mode, where you operate the UI using a controller (although it does support KB+mouse), which makes it ideal to use connected to a TV, like a regular gaming console.
SteamOS is highly customized and managed by Valve. It doesn't have the Arch repos or pacman. Updates to the OS come from Valve in large releases rather than per package. All apps installed either come through Steam or Flatpak.
So it's Arch in the same way Android could be called Linux.
so the available software is a bit limited then
I can still customize and configure things, or not really?
does that mean I can't customize the OS, like shortcuts?
The way SteamOS works is a bit weird. By default the OS partition is read only, you can do whatever in your user directory. But they let you unlock it to make whatever changes you want.
I’m pretty sure that this OS partition gets completely wiped every update though so your customisations will have to be reapplied.
I read many people saying "it's just a PC", but I am a bit skeptical for now.
I will probably wait for reviews to see how it goes
I still feel very interested, though, but I would need to adapt some workflows that I have with paint.net for now
Yup it is Arch Linux, that basically boots into Steam client with Big Picture mode. And if you switch to desktop mode you get a standard Linux with KDE Plasma desktop environment.
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.
The bus is not PCIe between the system and the GPU?
I don’t understand why it doesn’t have a headphones jack…
Is it supporting ReactOS as rumored?
weaker hardware than BC-250 compute card. volvo what is going on?
I was interested until I saw the price. Gonna pass on that.
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.
Unfortunately, the only game that matters this year is GTA 6, and it only plays on consoles such as the PS5 and the Xbox.
So unless it releases on the Steam Machine or PC, then the sales of the Steam Machine are going to be really poor.
That is even with the price of the Steam Machine being more expensive as well. You might as well buy a PS5 Pro or Xbox at the point.
The original NES cost $179 at launch, or about $550 today.
And for premium games we spent $45, or about $150 today.
I'm gonna be real here. I think they should have cancelled this release.
Does anyone have a rundown of Steam OS?
My phone has 1tb storage since 2022...
Yeah, I don't see this succeeding at these prices. Succeeding in a sense to come close to Switch 2 / PS5 (Pro) levels.
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.
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.
It was never going to do those numbers, regardless of price.
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.
The big problem isn't that this pc is weak, it's that games aren't well optimized
it would be nice if steam os could be downloaded officially
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?
4k with upscaling is the promise.. don't know if it will hold
Steam Engine, surely?
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?
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.
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.
A question for the ages.
indie games community has joined the chat
You are describing indie games.
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.
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 it was indeed, 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. :(
i agree about steam deck and i think a couple solid hardware players need to take a risk, like xbox did with series S. try to draw a line and encourage game studios to join in
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
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.
Oof, that price point is rough. I hope this does well for them, but I'm not sure who this is for.
Sadly not a good fit for my needs.
My 2021 machine is still more powerful (apart from the GPU maybe, but that one is from 2022 and has 12GB memory) and I can't justify buying this for that amount.
Would've loved to have a dedicated machine for gaming, but alas.
I don’t know for who this is if you can easily build a better mini pc yourself for cheaper
It’s dead on arrival
This is gonna be such a litmus paper test for the most fervent valve suckers
One disappointment: you have to have already made a purchase, which doesn't help if owning a Steam OS machine is the first time you will be buying and playing anything from Steam.
I really don’t get the bellyaching about the price. They are going to sell as many of these as they can make, so there is no sense in subsidizing the price. Maybe in the future they will, especially if Windows continues on it’s current trajectory.
Is this US only?
According to Tom's Hardware, it's North America, the United Kingdom, the European Union, and Australia.
https://www.tomshardware.com/video-games/console-gaming/valv...
absolutely amazing value
DOA lol, I built a computer 6 years ago for less with 64GB of DDR5. I can't imagine anyone buying this. Maybe they can hold out for 5 years and add some more ram and sell it for 25% in true Steam fashion.
A Framework Desktop is the better deal and more capable machine IMO. Also upgradeable.
$1000 !!!
Sorry Valve. I know its not really your fault but I refuse to give you my money this time. Instead I'm executing plan B: converting my Steam Deck into a workstation. It's the best hardware I have and while it can't play everything smoothly what it can run well is practically endless.
The Japan situation is so fucking weird. Why can I only buy Steam hardware from a website that someone seems to have set up on a weekend, and where half the inventory is out of stock…?
I'd love to know how the demographics of steam's actual users compare against those represented on the marketing page (https://store.steampowered.com/hardware/steammachine).
thanks to sam altman and jensen huangs bubble this will cost 2500$ next year at this time
Eagerly awaiting the steam engine release.
Damn, that's expensive for PS5 performance
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.
I’d just like to buy steamOS and install it on my ryzen 9 desktop and my Ryzen laptop.
No need to wait and buy anything. Try any gaming focused Linux distributions and you can already have this. Check out CachyOS, Nobara, Bazzite ...
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.
Yeah I can feel you. I built mine just a few months before that terrible "AI" slop bubble scam hypte started. The only mistake I regret now is that I only went with 32 GiB of memory and said to myself I can upgrade later to 64 GiB if I need more. Well luckily most of the time I don't but yeah sometimes it could come in handy. Not for games but for other work. Ah well, still happy I was lucky to do it before the AIpocalypse
Related:
Steam Machine
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48632884
Associated announcement post: https://store.steampowered.com/news/group/45479024/view/6852...
Why isn't this URL included in this post?
Updated
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.
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.
Care to explain what Omarchy has to do with Valve?
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
Same. Gaming exclusively on Linux (openSUSE Tumbleweed) for the last 2 years or so and also loving the Steam Controller.
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!).
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.
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.
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!
I'm sorry but a Steam Machine is a horrendous choice for a workstation, and so is SteamOS.
I really can't think of a single use-case where the Steam Machine is the right choice actually, unless your one and only wish is to make a donation to Gabe.
You can have the same performances in the same form factor with the same OS (but more upgradability) for less, or you can improve on any of those points for the same price.
> same performances in the same form factor with the same OS (but more upgradability) for less
This also remains true for Apple! I don't care about performance. At all. I write text in a terminal! I only care about the hardware working as expected, out of the box, without having to tinker with bullshit. And Steam provides a platform that fulfills this, every time!
Then get a Raspberry Pi and save $900?
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.
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.
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.
The fall of the X-Box has made it crystal clear that players buy consoles for the games much more than for the platform, even if they claim otherwise.
The Steam Machine doesn't have a single exclusive, therefore it will not sell, no matter its price point.
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.
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
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.
Ok but why not buy a cheaper or more performant machine and install SteamOS on it?
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.
If you go to pcpartpicker.com, you can select components and it only shows parts that are compatible with the parts you've already selected. It made selecting parts super easy. And I was shocked at how easy it was to build a PC. It only took maybe 90 minutes including 20 minutes skimming a YouTube video on how to assemble a PC. And installing Ubuntu was maybe 30 more minutes (15 minutes to make a bootable thumb drive and 15 minutes to install the OS on my new machine).
It was so much less of a hassle than I had expected.
That being said, I wouldn't make a PC until RAM and storage prices come back down to earth.
I'm sure you don't need to build your machine just to install SteamOS on
I built my last computer with my kids, it was done in 2 hours and it was a family activity.
You'll also need the exact same configuration on this than on any other computer on which you install SteamOS.
There's also absolutely no guarantee that this will "work well". I fully trust Valve to be fair, but you're talking about a completely untested piece of hardware.
Grasping at straws.
This is on the level of "just use rsync bro". I prefer the console experience of clicking a button to order, plugging it in and playing. Valve is doing the vertical integration, they're putting together the hardware, the software and the OS, of course you'll be getting a better experience than pulling together random stuff. Also game devs will be optimizing games specifically for this hardware combo, just like consoles.
>I prefer the console experience of clicking a button to order, plugging it in and playing.
You're mixing up the experience of putting together the machine and using it. Why do you think playing games on Steam is not just clicking play and playing?
>Valve is doing the vertical integration, they're putting together the hardware, the software and the OS, of course you'll be getting a better experience than pulling together random stuff.
I mean, the GN review already talks about how some things don't quite work right because games are seeing Steam OS and assuming the hardware is a Deck. I'm not so sure it's such a given that the experience will be smoother, at least in the early days.
You can order a prebuilt with any OS installed to have the exact same experience.
Game devs will NOT be optimizing specifically for this hardware lol, that's ridiculous. PC optimization (and this is a PC) has nothing in common with console optimization.
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."
RIP
cool
Mildly disappointed to see 1GbE when spending [at least] a thousand dollars. Stupid datacenters squeezing all the chips.
Interested in hear the justification why you would need more than 1GbE in a machine built specificly for gaming.
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.
How much faster? I have 10G, and in my experience you will very quickly get disk IO limited that it doesn't matter. You can optimize for that, but be honest - how much time you're actually going to save in lifetime.
Only place I saw 2.5G actually be beneficial is Wi-Fi 6E/7 for the APs.
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.
[0] https://gameboost.com/blog/call-of-duty-bo7-download-size
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.
Oh absolutely, I'm with you there. LED strips are so unnecessary. I'd much rather the money go towards something functional.
> 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.
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?
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.
$5 here and there adds up... and this thing is already $250 over the target price due to component prices increases.
I would trade the LED strip! Kidding, I understand SKUs have a cost too.
It's a living room pc - using it to stream from a media NAS is one application that comes to mind
You could stream 5 bluray videos and hold a zoom call at the same time with 1 gbps.
Downloading those giant game installs and updates
Where do you live and how much do you pay for that Internet uplink that is > 1GbE?
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.
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.
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)
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.
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.
We use that feature, and it's faster than our 300 Mbps internet even though both gaming laptops are on WiFi. shrug but yeah I don't know that it's a "killer feature" when we're talking about a device that omitted features and is still $1050. If this made it $1100 and lost 10% of sales to increase sales by 1%, it's a loss for the company ;)
would be amazing.
no thank you.
i'm in, i think prices are gonna suck anyway, i own a playstation and that shit sucks, i want to do more couch co-op with my partner and the steam library opens up so much indie games
can i build a mini pc myself? probably but meh
"This item is not available in your region" :(
PS5 performance at PS5 Pro price to target Nintendo Switch demographic?
For comparison - cloud gaming such as Nvidia's Geforce NOW is at ~20$/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.
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 $4 a day, that's 30 years of using a car."
No matter how superior the GPU, the latency from streaming will never be able to compete if you're outside of a major hub.
I couldn't imagine playing a game by streaming inputs to a server 30ms away, which then streams those inputs another 30ms to the game server, and then having that round trip.
60ms screen delay and 120ms total delay.
Fair. There's a free 1080p Nvidia Geforce NOW tier anyone can try to see if latency is an issue for them and the games they play.
One more data point - you're getting 1080p medium settings (for latest games) with a Steam Machine at ~1000$ 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.
According to GFN, my ping is somewhere between ~20-25. I can see how it would be playable for the casual audience, but as someone who grew up on native gaming, it's not really playable to me for anything that's not turn based.
It's like how someone can play League of Legends at 80 ping for years, but once you're down to like 10 once you can't really go back.
of course you shy away from the fact that the string pullers in the world are hell bent on removing as much local compute and privacy from us as possible, so we can do nothing but use cloud services for everything from gaming to video editing. im sure the thought police would never use that to stifle dissenting opinions. your attitude displays a high level of unwarranted trust in these corrupt institutions and greedy corporations who all decided that making you pay a monthly fee for everything is much better for them than you buying something once, especially when all of these online services are monitored in real time for thought crimes by their ai systems.
OK. What if I want to mod my singleplayer game? Or, God forbid, make mods for it?
yikes, you will own nothing and be happy.
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.
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.
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.
Valve isn't doesn't have to appease any public shareholders every quarter. There are likely no real expectations apart from making some profit which I am sure they will easily do. Then they just do like they have done with the Steamdeck and leave it on their store as an item they keep in stock and make some decent side income on. Throw it on sale for all their big sales and get some nice sales bonuses off it here and there.
I think ultimately there goal is to push more people towards Linux so that more games get developed there. All of their hardware pretty much targets the Linux side of gaming, so they really are trying to get rid of the Microsoft monopoly on PC gaming which I think is great.
Honestly seems kind of pointless in an era of cloud gaming :)
What? Cloud gaming flopped years ago.
It's been flopping for like 16 years now lol.
I'm tempted to go order yet another BC-250, even though I haven't gotten the first one going. Sure the Machine is considerably more modern, has great new features, probably vastly better power efficiency (even though it's only 6nm vs 7nm surprisingly). But 288GB/s memory bandwidth? Versus the BC-250's 448GB/s? https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/steam-machine-gpu.c437... https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/playstation-5-gpu.c348...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The 2013 Steam Machine is as different from this device as it could possibly be. Proton didn't exist back then and Steam Input was still in (relative) infancy.
Can we use it for AI?
You have my permission. Just do not share any learnings. There is enough LLM trash around as is.
Summary - Get a PS5 Pro.
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.
The good news today is that Steam OS will be available for any PC soon.
Or already is in form of many freely available gaming Linux distributiuons like CacjyOS, Nobara, Bazzite... not 100% exactly the same but still 99% there already so no need to wait for SteamOS.
Fair.
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.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45908208