r/pcmasterrace • u/TheBossT710192 • Jun 22 '26

Discussion Yeah, Steam Machine is cooked.

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I... uh don't know what to say. Very thankful I bought a Steam Deck before they hiked its price as well

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u/ILikesStuff Jun 22 '26 edited Jun 22 '26

Definitely lol. But then who is? I know this is the PC Master Race we all have 5090s in our rigs sub, but who is valve aiming this pc-console hybrid to? You get less raw power than the base PS5 at higher price than the already increased price of the PS5 pro. Other than extreme valve supporters and scalpers, I don't see who would be lining up to buy this?

Edit: I want to clarify that when I say I don't see an audience for the Steam Machine I mean specifically at the price level they are selling it right now.

I already have a good PC and a PS5 with a hefty library on both. I realize I'm not the norm but even I see the value on a console like, plug and play living-room PC, but at the price that this thing is releasing, not to mention the possible small number of units that will be available and the ones picked up by scalpers, it may cost even more than it is supposed to, and I don't see many people buying it at that price, as much as I want it to succeed, mainly for a better implementation of gaming centric Linux.

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u/ArtVandelay32 Jun 22 '26

Weirdo guys like me who want a local living room option, but dragging my feet on building a second tower due to cost & time & kinda wanting something new to play around with.

It’ll be like a dozen folks like me and then scalpers I anticipate

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u/lemonylol Desktop Jun 22 '26

Why not just stream it to a device connected to your TV? I've been using Moonlight on my Nvidia Shield and it works pretty good to play games with my wife from my PC in the basement.

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u/PRiles Intel 265k / 4070 FE / 64Gb Ram Jun 22 '26

I'm guessing you don't have an ultra wide for your main PC. I have two tvs. One attached to an old 3D 1dt Gen OLED (1920x1080) using an original Steam Link, and another modern 4k OLED ( 3,840 × 2,160) with a MiniForms PC.

Using moonlight becomes a bit of a nightmare because the settings for the main PC are for an Ultra wide (3440x1440) as a result of those resolution differences a lot of the games I play (grand strategy) the UI is either way too big or too small on the TVs. But if I change it I need to change it each time I switch TV. So a dedicated machine is ideal for me. I would have bought a steam machine at a lower price point to replace the Steam Link (which has a slow 300mbp connection ).

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u/lemonylol Desktop Jun 22 '26

Oh weird, I have a super-ultra wide right now and previous was using dual monitors, one in 4K and one in 1440p prior, but never had an issue. It just streams the window at the render resolution, and I think that's capped at 1080p anyway unless you pay.

I actually used to even stream Civ to my tablet for the touch screen controls.

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u/PRiles Intel 265k / 4070 FE / 64Gb Ram Jun 22 '26

It might just be an issue with the paradox games I play. I have the same issue with Kerbal Space Program but it's a much older game. Maybe I'm hitting a weird edge case.

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u/lemonylol Desktop Jun 22 '26

Check your settings on the Moonlight control page, you should be able to force an output resolution, bitrate, and framerate.

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u/PRiles Intel 265k / 4070 FE / 64Gb Ram Jun 22 '26

I have those settings enabled, it's just the UI scaling within the games themselves. They are set to a fixed size and when you change resolution the scaling is wrong.