Valve is about to win the console generation
Today was a big day for gamers as Valve just introduced three products: the Steam Controller, the Steam Machine, and the Steam Frame. When you add this alongside the Steam Deck, I think it's safe to say that Valve is about to win the next console generation.
Premature celebration much? They haven't even announced pricing. Steam Machine could be $1200 and DOA for all we know.
I might be way off the mark, but I wouldn't be surprised to see it priced like the OLED Steam Deck. At least at launch.
With a later price increase due to RAM and SSD shortages.
Edit: watching more videos, could be north of 600.
It's smart of them to give it a consumer friendly price and it would track with what they did with the steam deck.
Just like the other big names, steam can sell it at a very low margin since they make their money with the store. I wouldn't be surprised if they even sell it at a lost to quickly gain market share.
Sure pricing hasn't been announced, but people can start speculating about the BOM.
So they can start making inaccurate guesses about something only tangentially related to the price. Cool.
It's not the latest and greatest PC hardware, which should drive down the price a ton. I bet they looked at the latest consoles and said "We don't have to innovate at all, we just just have to not be assholes"
A lot of people are talking about loss-leading, but I think what the Steam Machine needs is a dual purpose.
The best the article seems to mention is using it as a desktop. I don't think that's quite on par with the PS3's blu-ray player and use in scientific workloads.
A lot of people are talking about loss-leading
I don't think it could be a loss-leader for Valve. If the price/performance is good enough, what's stopping companies from buying a lot to use as work stations? No company is going to buy Steam Decks for office software, but they might buy a Steam Machine.
If that happens and every Steam Machine is actually sold at a loss then it'd be a big problem for Valve
Valve told LTT that it's not going to be sold as a loss leader.
I got a ps5 as early as i could mainly for 4k blurays so i could watch blade runner 2049 and spiderverse with atmos
It is about as powerful as Minisforum HX100G, except GPU is RDNA3 and CPU is underclocked I guess. Minisforum Neptune series are (were, case try to fucking find a unit now) sold around 800euro. Considering tiny market for miniPCs, price is okay. Valve, on the other hand, will have much bigger market due to brand recognition. And price probably going to be lower since hardware is not exactly fresh new and it going to be mass produced.
My guess, 600euro for 512GB SSD, 650 for 1TB.
Edit: 512, not 256
Whooaaaa, slow down.
It’s going to be awesome, but there’s no way Valve and spin up the production volume of a PlayStation or Xbox that fast. It will probably take a few more Steam Machines to get there.
Given that their system is open-source, other manufacturers will step in, as they did with Steam Deck-style handhelds, further expanding the Steam platform at the expense of XBox, PlayStation and Nintendo,
I mean, we already have Gaming PC OEMs and mini PCs. It’d be awesome if they start shipping SteamOS, but they can’t sell hardware at a near loss + make up for it with Steam sales + guarantee hardware support in software like Valve can.
And most don’t have the volume for “semi custom” AMD SKUs.
EDIT: The only entity I could see doing this is Intel, selling an Arc Steam Machine. That would be awesome, actually.
Good fuck ms with a rusty pipe
4K gaming at 60 FPS with FSR, thanks to a discrete semi-custom AMD desktop class CPU and GPU.
Source: Steam Machine page on Steam
Maybe I'm expecting too much on a small build PC but I'm not too keen on having to use FSR to get decent performance on higher display resolution than 1080p. But we will see how it performs and when reviews are in. I'm cautiously optimistic otherwise.
The key being FSR 3.
If it was FSR 4, that'd much better looking at high res.
pumped for the frame. Hoping its reasonably priced because I do not want to give Meta any of my money
I am so excited for the frame. The only problem with it so far is that my eyes suck ass and their support for glasses is by all accounts not sufficient yet
But aside from that I'm about ready to give them whatever amount of money they ask for it
My eyes also suck ass but it looks like glasses fit just like in the index, and they'll have first party inserts (whereas with the index you had to find third party ones). It also supposedly has a spacer if you need more space, which is something I wish was a thing for the Index because I couldn't let some of my friends try because their glasses were too big and they couldn't see without glasses.
Unlikely, but they will carve a niche for themselves for people who want more than just a console, perhaps it will win over some people who cross shop consoles and PCs. More importantly it will help grow GNU+Linux.
They’ve entered the ring but we have no idea what pricing will look like and the machine is looking like it will be less powerful than the ps5/xsx, even before console optimizations are taken into account.
We do have some idea based upon the price of all the components in the bill of materials, and the expected markup. If the markup is the same as the Steam Deck, which was 34%, then the Steam Machine will be about $570. That makes it very competitive with the current gen consoles.
Probably not but surely will leave a dent on console market.
If it prices comparably to the next Xbox and PlayStation consoles, they may be onto something. I still think it'll just carve Valve a sizeable spot in the market. But who knows, maybe Xbox's business model collapses. There hasn't been much of a reason to buy an Xbox if you already own a PC, and PCs priced like consoles could definitely put a dent in their sales.
Not really interested in the Machine but the Controller v2 and the Frame look absolutely perfect. Especially that controller - every single annoyance about the v1 seems to have been addressed, from the lack of a real D pad to the ease of accidentally touching the trackpad without meaning to.
Unfortunately for Valve, I'm the type of person who will continue using my Index and Controller v1 until they literally disintegrate in my hands, which hasn't happened yet because they made them so high quality in the first go around, so I probably won't be buying either for a while if ever.
lol, wat
That would be terrible in the long run, they said it would be competitive with pc pricing, not consoles (it's a pc after all), so it would just be used as precedent to skyrocket console prices
I doubt the GabeCube will really go anywhere unless it’s 600$ or less, and I doubt it’ll be that cheap. The headset looks good though (I expect that to be 1200$~). Glad there’s a new steam controller too, I need to get one of those
Anything cheaper than PS5 pro and is as good or better performance-wise -> market gonna have a fun time! No one can claim after that PCs are expensive to build/buy than a console and consoles are better for gaming. The line is going to be completely blurred.
Steam Deck made PC handheld gaming possible. I can only imagine what will be possible with a full fledged machine. And if they will release SteamOS for other hardware - that'll be extreme win for PC Gaming in many years.
Steam machine has been a flop in the past and VR is pretty niche. But Xe is usually right about everything so who is to say.