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Steam Machine Price Announced - Starting at $1049 / £879

Holy Sh, $1428 for a 2TB and a controller
Microsoft Project Helix will be $2000 pc/console.
 
Boo Who? said:
Price to performance is gigantic on the Steam Machine.
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You don't get access to any additional games with the huge one. Plus it doesn't come with Steam OS installed, which complicates things for the people Valve expects to buy it. It's for people who want access to the PC library without the need for search engines and screw drivers.

I'm curious about the USB and WiFi chips. Do we know anything about those? The B650 AMD stuff is littered with MediaTek.
 
nathan-fillion-meme.gif
 
I'm thinking that RAM amounts will be cut for next-gen consoles. At this point it feels far-fetched to believe they'll launch with 32 gigs. It'll probably be 24. Helix will have a 24 and 16 version. PS6 could be 24 for the console and 16 for the handheld. Am I undershooting it or in the ballpark?
 
This thing is like half the size of the Series X/PS5 Slim, and there's a price to pay for that when comparing to other prebuilt PCs outside of the paper spec. A quick peak at a few sites and it looks like you can get a RX 7600 or RTX 5060 prebuilt with 1TB SSD for around $1k, with the caveat that they are like 10 times the size of the Steam Machine. For smaller size you can get a 5060 laptop for around $1100, with the tradeoff of worse acoustics, but the plus of portability(screen+battery).

If you're going for pure bang-for-buck performance, you could probably get something twice as fast all things considered with a small-ish mATX case and decent future-proofing for around $1300-1400 if you DIY.

Obviously they got screwed by the memory crisis. It's probably fair to assume this would have come in at around $700 before everything went to shit.
 
Danjin44 said:
What? that's gotten to be a joke right? They charging that much but you have buy controller separately? That's fucking stupid.
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Wait for a deep Steam sale lol

Have to hand it to them. They make Nintendo controllers look like a great deal.

I'd only buy it if they put every Vanillaware game on it including Princess Crown
 
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Bojji said:
Switch 2 also won't get it. Who advertised this pre build PC as a console?
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At very least Switch 2 has its own exclusives makes worth buying system for. I buy Nintendo systems to play Nintendo games…..what's this Steam system's selling point?
 
Cre8 said:
Holy Sh, $1428 for a 2TB and a controller
Microsoft Project Helix will be $2000 pc/console.
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There is a chance mommy asha changes it completely or offers cloud serivice stadia style as an alternative option too, by this time next year we will know the details 4sure :)
 
Danjin44 said:
At very least Switch 2 has its own exclusives makes worth buying system for. I buy Nintendo systems to play Nintendo games…..what's this Steam system's selling point?
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There are tons of games not available on consoles. You can also play all console games from previous eras (PS1/PS2/PS3 etc.) that are not available on modern console systems.

It has all those PC advantages. But at this horrible price and with weak specs it's a really bad investment.
 
Danjin44 said:
At very least Switch 2 has its own exclusives makes worth buying system for. I buy Nintendo systems to play Nintendo games…..what's this Steam system's selling point?
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Day 1 Steam Deck owners got it so easy, The utility alone trumps having a Switch 2 and no I'm not joking.
 
Danjin44 said:
At very least Switch 2 has its own exclusives makes worth buying system for. I buy Nintendo systems to play Nintendo games…..what's this Steam system's selling point?
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Play Steam games on your TV. I think that's literally it. The specs are pretty bad though.
 
Steve Holt said:
You were begging people to boycott PS5 Pro because it was missing a disk drive and 699£, but this underspec'd offering without even a controller would have been fine at 649-699?

Come On Biden GIF by GIPHY News


It's quite something..
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This is what I was talking about this weekend with you DenchDeckard DenchDeckard . You gotta learn to be more consistent man. Your PC bias is screaming at us nowadays.
 
PeteBull said:
There is a chance mommy asha changes it completely or offers cloud serivice stadia style as an alternative option too, by this time next year we will know the details 4sure :)
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She is definitely changing it. In recent interviews she and the other guy made it a point to mention how important it was to launch an "affordable" and "flexible" console. We're gonna see a significant overhaul. I'm not sure how they're gonna do it since specs should already be locked in but there will be big changes. Could lead to a delay to Fall 2028 or something.
 
There are people who will see this and still have hope for a $500 PS6 next year. I wonder what kind of margin they think Valve is making here. Think about it, anyone selling something wants to hit those nice, round pricing levels. $999 probably got a ton of push over the past month or two, which tells me this thing is basically selling at cost when packaging, warehousing and all the little extras are thrown in. Companies go to great lengths to hit those pricing marks, and if $49 was enough to pass on it, I think things must be tighter than we can imagine
 
Bojji said:
There are tons of games not available on consoles. You can also play all console games from previous eras (PS1/PS2/PS3 etc.) that are not available on modern console systems.

It has all those PC advantages. But at this horrible price and with weak specs it's a really bad investment.
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Even by slightest chance I would want get in to PC gaming, I would rather pay extra money to get full PC gaming experience over this half-ass machine.
 
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near said:
Probably the same reason Valve didn't push the Steam Deck to compete with the Switch. It's just a platform to market the Steam OS and push linux based gaming forward, while also giving enthusiasts more ways to spend money on the Steam store. They don't care about selling large quantities of hardware. Just a rich company having fun while growing its ecosystem.
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That's boring though. If they aren't going to make games like HL3, why not care more about the hardware space?
 
simpatico said:
There are people who will see this and still have hope for a $500 PS6 next year. I wonder what kind of margin they think Valve is making here. Think about it, anyone selling something wants to hit those nice, round pricing levels. $999 probably got a ton of push over the past month or two, which tells me this thing is basically selling at cost when packaging, warehousing and all the little extras are thrown in. Companies go to great lengths to hit those pricing marks, and if $49 was enough to pass on it, I think things must be tighter than we can imagine
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Sony has more access in the supply chain and overall logistics than Valve.

Sony co-designs their own chips and a lot of the components.

And even if it's $899 for the PS6, it will shit all over this box ten-fold.
 
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Let that be a lesson for those who said that PS5 Pro was too expensive on launch and that we could build a better PC for that money.

Steam Machine is too expensive for what it is, but this is the world we live in now.
 
I've spent the last couple hours watching a bunch of reviews and talking with my buddy about it and my opinions has changed slightly.

I've gamed on PC since the late 90s as a little kid but as I get older I really appreciate simplicity and ease of use of my consoles more and more. I tried building a comparable machine via Microcenter and it came out to $1114 w/o tax which made me rethink the machine for a bit and I'm more positive on it then I was.

It's still underpowered and overpriced but looking at it from a mini pc way it's not that bad. Personally the plug and play nature combined with stuff like CEC, and wake from sleep via controller are also features that I value and am willing to pay for.

I'm also a person that really likes testing things for myself albeit sometimes purely out of curiosity so I signed up for the updates on sale.
 
DeepEnigma said:
Sony has more access in the supply chain and overall logistics than Valve.

Sony co-designs their own chips and a lot of the components.

And even if it's $899 for the PS6, it will shit all over this box ten-fold.
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$899 with how much memory and storage? Even then that number grows $180 each year and the device has a distinct EOL. This product was never conceived to be a thousand dollar machine. The launch pricing is just triage because the unexpected happened and tanked the high-end consumer electronic market. Plan is probably to try and break even on the entire venture and maybe keep enough of the lights on to see if there's a viable $600 console market two years from now. One thing Valve has going for them is they can respec and make a Steam Machine 2 with infinitesimally less R&D than a new console. Call up AMD, see what's on the bargain shelf and it either makes sense or it doesn't. No need to go through all the pageantry and ecosystem construction as a new numbered console. It's basically a tweet.

My big takeaway is historically Valve hasn't been as profit motivated as the other gaming hardware makers. I'm fairly confident they are not trying to get rich with this pricing. For it to still be so high should scare the shit out of all gamers looking forward to new hardware at prices they recognize in the next 24 months.
 
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thicc_girls_are_teh_best said:
The price would probably be justified if you had expandability options, or Thunderbolt ports for an eGPU expansion. But even that isn't present from the looks of it, and I don't think you can expand system RAM either.

Yeah I can use it as a PC but the moment RAM prices come crashing down this thing will be extremely outdated relative the price of just buying more RAM & storage for your current setup, or buying new OEM setups around that time that'd cost similar (or cheaper) but with much better specs & expandability. So it's probably just best to wait things out; I'll have to look into dual-booting for my current setup once October hits (or just be extremely careful about any websites....I actually don't venture that much beyond the usual websites anyway like this, Youtube, etc.).

Hopefully Valve are looking into fixing things up with a refresh once RAM/NAND prices come back down. Maybe in time for Steam Deck 2. Sucks...



My main issue is lack of upgradability for the price. If they had eGPU support or a means of adding more system RAM, I think $1049 could be justified. But without those things, (potentially) without means of overclocking the APU, it really is just a (slightly weaker) PS5 with same level of upgradability (i.e none; closed box) and a Linux-based desktop experience on top.

How long will that desktop experience feel fluid tho given the RAM limitations and GPU constraints? These websites keep getting more and more resource-intensive every passing month, usually due to bad coding, but it is what it is. I just don't know if I can put a grand into a closed box with PC desktop functionality and admittedly great console-like OS & UI for gaming. If I'm looking for a whole package solution that isn't constrained in upgradability, then this doesn't do much for me unfortunately.

I'm still gonna keep an open mind tho, and see how things develop.
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I mean that's a legitimate issue / concern with no hiding from it and I absolutely agree. One of PCs best features is upgradability and trying to keep up with the latest demands. The idea of needing to spend even more in the future (potentially) on another full system is kinda unpleasant.
 
simpatico said:
$899 with how much memory and storage? Even then that number grows $180 each year and the device has a distinct EOL. This product was never conceived to be a thousand dollar machine. The launch pricing is just triage because the unexpected happened and tanked the high-end consumer electronic market. Plan is probably to try and break even on the entire venture and maybe keep enough of the lights on to see if there's a viable $600 console market two years from now. One thing Valve has going for them is they can respec and make a Steam Machine 2 with infinitesimally less R&D than a new console. Call up AMD, see what's on the bargain shelf and it either makes sense or it doesn't. No need to go through all the pageantry and ecosystem construction as a new numbered console. It's basically a tweet.

My big takeaway is historically Valve hasn't been as profit motivated as the other gaming hardware makers. I'm fairly confident they are not trying to get rich with this pricing. For it to still be so high should scare the shit out of all gamers looking forward to new hardware at prices they recognize in the next 24 months.
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I am not going to argue specs until we cross that road.

Sony has been doing this for decades. They are an electronics company and have most of their own supply chains covered for a lot of the compents.

You are comparing the big leagues to a novelty project, really.
 
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