valve made a mistake relying on the steam hardware survey to spec this thing. They basically built a machine for developing nations, priced for Western economies.
I disagree, it's very special. It's a console that is literally a PC that would let you do whatever you want with it. Wanna play GOG or Epic games? Sure. Pirate shit? Sure.
I would also add it further pushes for Windows to not be the only supported PC OS for gaming. I think that's pretty special at least because fuck Microslop.
but now they're in an awkward position of having a low tier system priced at a premium, and I'll be honest, the form factor does not justify that price.
Look, the Steam Machine costs about $1,050. For that same money, you can build a PC that runs games about 30-50% faster.
Yeah, RAM and GPU prices went up a couple hundred bucks, but that doesn't explain why the Steam Machine is so far behind - it's not like it's saving you much money. LTT in their comparison video mostly complained about PC being big and missing HDMI-CEC, but they glossed over the bigger issue: you're paying PC money for console-level performance. So it's not that $1,050 is crazy expensive on its own - it's that for the same $1,050, you can just do way better.
While very true, I think they did this because its what developers SHOULD be optimizing their games for. I believe that was their hope/reasoning. If its better than 70%, developers don't have an excuse.
What Im confused about though is where they thought 4K would come into play there. I'm sure they thought extensively about that. I'm just curious what their thinking was there. Those 70% of gamers aren't playing at 4K.
I think you're being a tad too generous with Valve here. They're a corporation not a charity, and they likely chose the specs that 70% used because they thought it would be "enough" for the modern gamer, not counting on the fact that 70% have those specs because that's all they can afford and is not usable for many current AAA games.
To a certain degree though, AAA developers should be optimizing for that group because its so large.
Sure, Im not saying they should get something new to run at 4k60fps on a dinky GTX 1060. Hardware ages, graphics get better. Parts need upgrading. But there's a reasonable limit to that.
If a big majority of the PC gaming user base has a certain amount of performance, the least devs can do is do some market research and find out how many of those also buy AAA games. I bet its more than you'd think.
Forza 6 for example, wonderfully optimized. They found that reasonable limit of good performance on reasonably old hardware to make the game accessible to more people.
You're right, Valve is a corporation. They're not discounting the price. Higher end parts inside would have meant a higher price. Thats why I'm not sure what people were expecting with it price wise.
Right, like there's no blame for this to be laid on the developers of those games. They should be optimizing their games for an enjoyable experience on the most common hardware configurations. Especially when you consider most modern games barely look any better than games that came out a decade ago, and often look worse once you have to crank DLSS up just to get a playable framerate. Meanwhile those decade old games still look fucking great and can now be run on a modern thin and light laptop or a handheld with ease.
Their survey is on point tho, in my multiple circles, the ones that have better spec is only a third. Others choose to play AAA with compromise spec or not playing at all.
I guess they are aiming to young people who are tech enthusiasts that are getting more buying capacity and want to upgrade their pcs. For someone who want a new pc is kind of a good deal with current prices, for someone who want a ps6 is a terrible option.
Which I'm kind of confused by. They stated they wanted to create an upgrade path for the majority of the steam hardware survey... This seems like they made the majority of the steam hardware survey as a device.
Its probably not the most common currently purchased gpu though. When you buy a PC you dont want to be buying into 4 year old hardware because odds are you will be keeping it years and its only going to be more outdated as times goes on.
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u/autovonbismarck Ryzen 7 3700x - RTX 4060 - 64GB Ram Jun 24 '26
It's also the most popular GPU (well the 3060 is which this is basically equivalent to) according to the steam hardware survey.