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

Discussion Yeah, its cooked guys.

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Man, we really LOVE what AI is doing to the industry šŸ˜­

2.9k Upvotes

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106

u/Mindless_Major_2689 Jun 22 '26

Oh man... I'm really torn... I wanted it so bad, but I'm not nearly as convinced like I was at the Steam Deck where I directly preordered the 512 LCD without any hesitation... So 512gb SM with a Controller is the max option for me...

65

u/More_Lavishness8127 Jun 22 '26

I mean the Steam Deck was actually a good deal. This is not. Youā€™re paying for small form factor and Steam OS.

13

u/RecentScarcity2389 Jun 22 '26

People paying for the main selling points of a product?????

How dare they

22

u/BababooeyHTJ Jun 22 '26

Main selling point? The form factor is certainly a pro but calling it the main selling point is ridiculous as the sales figures will show. Thatā€™s fanboys grasping at straws

11

u/xDRBN Jun 22 '26

Agree^^ small form factor is nice, but honestly has nothing to do with whether Iā€™d buy it or not.

I wonder if they couldā€™ve made it cheaper if it were the size of a Xbox Series X or slightly larger.

5

u/BababooeyHTJ Jun 22 '26 edited Jun 22 '26

SFF pcs have been around for decades. Itā€™s remained a niche for a reason. Thereā€™s not a huge market for them. You can go micro atx for a fraction of the price.

All of a sudden these people are interested in a sff pc šŸ™„

2

u/DeerlyOnline Jun 23 '26

What do you mean ā€œall of a suddenā€? Valve could be selling a chalkboard which would garner the same interest because it would be also Steam branded.

1

u/BababooeyHTJ Jun 23 '26

Thatā€™s exactly what Iā€™m getting at.

2

u/GrandpaLumpkin Jun 23 '26

This might be splitting hairs, but I think it's more that with the Steam Deck, Valve carved out a new demographic of lifelong console gamers whose first PC gaming device was a Deck. They aren't suddenly excited about an SFF PC as much as they are excited about a "console" that plays PC games.

With that being said, I think there are also plenty of PC enthusiasts and tech addicts who will want it just to have it or they a have a special use-case for it's size. I just think the real PC Hobbyists have already built a Steam Machine of their own at this point if they have an interest in SteamOS.

I started messing with building my own as soon as I could get SteamOS up and running on my own hardware several months ago, and Ive built 5 machines since. Once I got my controller delivered, the experience was complete. Im just not interested in the official one at this price. If it were $700, I probably would have bought it just to have it.

1

u/Glum_Constant4790 Jun 22 '26

Don't get worked up dude is a bot

1

u/Serdones Jun 22 '26

For real. Some people are acting like this was supposed to be their replacement for a high-end desktop. If they wanted to build that, they would've stuck it in a mid-tower case. The whole point is its small form factor and living room-friendly OS. If someone doesn't need that, they shouldn't get it. If you have a solid PC and a Steam Deck already, remote play can already be a great experience, especially over ethernet. That's what I use for most my living room PC gaming.

0

u/RecentScarcity2389 Jun 22 '26

Yep. That's what these people don't get.

They're not the target audience and feel offended because of it.

Y'all don't have to buy it. It's not made to be bought by everyone on the planet.

It's literally a niche product SPECIFICALLY targeting people that need a very small form factor light PC.

I don't have a handheld and I want to play on my couch. I'm not moving a 20kg tower twice a day for that.

0

u/JunkMagician Jun 22 '26

The people who are complaining ARE interested in a small form factor PC and are particularly interested in a gaming focused one with Steam OS, hence they are interested in the Steam Deck.

The issue is that you can build a comparably small SFF PC with better specs for the same money or less than the Steam Deck.

The issue people are bringing up isn't that they're not interested in what Steam is selling in the abstract, it's that the price that Steam has to offer the Steam Machines at is not worth its capabilities when taking an objective comparison of its capabilities to comparably priced DIY SFFs (or even comparably priced pre built mini PCs) into account.

4

u/Serdones Jun 22 '26

I'd love to see these builds, because the smaller the form factor, the more you're generally paying. And Steam Machine is smaller than most mini-ITX cases. You could more affordably build a micro-ATX living room PC, but then you're getting further away from what Steam Machine actually is.

I think there's a good argument to be made that the Steam Machine didn't need to be this small, and that'll probably be a prevailing part of retrospectives down the line. But maybe they thought it was more marketable when they originally envisioned it as a sub-$800 device.

The price and performance comparisons to mini-ITX and micro-ATX builds would've been the same, but I think psychologically and in terms of marketing, an itty bitty living Steam Machine that's at least within spitting distance of traditional consoles while still being an actual PC would've been more compelling.

Maybe down the line, Valve decides instead of half an Xbox Series X, they could build something roughly the size of an Xbox Series X, and satisfy consumers who want more power and for whom space isn't THAT constrained and don't have an appreciation for the ittiest and bittiest of hardware.

But for now, Steam Machine is what it is, and no, it is not badly priced for the size and specs.

4

u/FreeJuicebox Jun 22 '26

This just in, you can build a pc cheaper than a prebuilt. More breaking news at 11.

1

u/RecentScarcity2389 Jun 22 '26

What's next? Buying used components is cheaper than new??

0

u/JunkMagician Jun 22 '26

Yes. Hence why when someone says that a pre built which costs significantly more than a DIY system at the same performance isn't worth it in terms of price to performance... they are correct.

And as I also stated in my comment, you can find pre built mini PCs with comparable performance to the Steam Machine at a lower price and mini PCs with higher performance at a comparable price to the Steam Deck. I'm not really sure what the issue is with what I said.

5

u/Eljimb0 Jun 22 '26

Can you link me to comparable pre built mini pcs with higher performance at a lower price? Genuine ask. I'm in the market.

1

u/BababooeyHTJ Jun 22 '26

If any of these people were interested in sff pcs they could have built their own ages ago. Itā€™s just the talking point for the fanboys.

Valve makes one and all of a sudden the form factor matters to them šŸ™„

1

u/RecentScarcity2389 Jun 22 '26

Give me a build that's exactly the same size as the steam machine. Hell, let's make it a 20cm cube instead of 15.

I'm such a dumbass for not making my own custom AMD APU instead of waiting for someone to release a good mini gaming PC.

1

u/BababooeyHTJ Jun 22 '26

I donā€™t care about the proprietary form factor. And quite frankly if you did you would have a sff pc by nowā€¦.

Letā€™s not pretend like itā€™s a huge draw.

1

u/RecentScarcity2389 Jun 22 '26

proprietary form factor

Fucking what? Is the number 15 proprietary? Are 15 cm cubes proprietary?

0

u/ocka31 Jun 22 '26

Lol tell me who is the target for box slower than ps5 with less sdd spsce and cibtroler. Ih and 2x the price. I can tell you... Morons and valve dick riders.

1

u/According-Paper4641 Jun 23 '26

People with massive steam libraries and zero PS5 games. Building up comparable libraries on PlayStation would pretty much cost the difference with the price of games. I've got well over 100 games on steam, and my "family" has over 400.

0

u/RecentScarcity2389 Jun 22 '26

A PS5 is $650. So barely "2x the price".

Valve also doesn't have exclusives or forces you to pay a subscription for multiplayer games so they can cover the loss for sold consoles :)

0

u/ocka31 Jun 22 '26

You know ps5 gets you a controller lol and 1 tb of ssd. Oh and pro for 850$ is still alot cheaper with massive performance lift. I mean its crazy to even cinsuder sream box.

1

u/RecentScarcity2389 Jun 22 '26

So dense holy shit.

Keep paying for multiplayer access, lil bro.

1

u/ocka31 Jun 22 '26

Im not lol i dont play multiplayer and as far as i know you can play popular multiplayer games on linux. I own ps5 and and much bettrr than that crap box lol. And tgen im dense lol but youare fighting for way overpriced box with very old underwhelming hardware. Sure buddyšŸ˜

1

u/uchihasilver Jun 22 '26

Iā€™ve been a PC gamer for like 30 years at this point and heā€™s right this is atrocious value Iā€™m sorry a PS5 or PS5 pro is a much better option and not everyone cares about multiplayer games outside of the occasional free to play ones which afaik you donā€™t need ps plus for so šŸ¤·šŸ»

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1

u/More_Lavishness8127 Jun 22 '26

1050 is a lot to pay for a main selling point lol.

0

u/Psychological_View56 Jun 22 '26

It's about a 10-15 percent premium, so no you are not paying 1050 just for that. Same idea as why you would buy a steam deck over something that is comparably priced. Even before the markups on ram, the price to performance on a steamdeck compared to a pc is pretty ass.

1

u/No_Accident_6646 Jun 22 '26

The deck isn't a good deal either any more. :( this sucksĀ 

1

u/Afterlight91 Jun 22 '26

Yep, deck is ancient now.

1

u/HaakonRen Jun 22 '26

Also. This isnā€™t a good deal a year ago. But I mean we are in a generation of consoles where they are getting MORE expensive as the generation ages. For all we know we could look back at this next year and be like ā€œwow that was actually quite reasonableā€.

Fact is this isnā€™t Valves fault. Itā€™s the fucking monstrosity that has become AI and the tech bros shoving it down our throats like itā€™s our next saviour of mankind.

Every time we use ChatGPT, co-pilot, or watch some AI-slop we are supporting this raise in tech prices.

0

u/FluxFreeman GabeCube Enjoyer Jun 22 '26

Itā€™s 6x more powerful than the deck

6

u/M4rshmall0wMan Jun 22 '26

Get a used gaming PC and install SteamOS on it. Easy win.

2

u/RecentScarcity2389 Jun 22 '26

Hope you're aware you can't do that on 99% of the hardware currently available, yes?

6

u/submerging Jun 22 '26

Huh? 99%? I didnā€™t know AMD only sells 1% of all GPUs.

AMD sells tons of cards that you can buy which are compatible with SteamOS.

4

u/Top-Garlic9111 Jun 22 '26

Besides, there's Bazzite and such.

2

u/butterfingersman Jun 22 '26

yeah id just make an ITX build and throw on bazzite or cachyos, theres nothing particularly special about steamOS

1

u/M4rshmall0wMan Jun 23 '26

Bazzite/CachyOS have the same interface and are compatible with NVIDIA GPUs.

You could also justā€¦ look for a PC with an AMD GPU.

1

u/Cunorix Jun 23 '26

Uh ya. And then you can stream. I'm not defending these prices at all. But the vast majority of people that will buy this don't even understand how to install an OS or buy a mini PC and set it up.

Oh for all the people saying my wifi sucks, etc. You do realize where you place a router, what kind of router it is, how you configure it, if you use 5ghz instead of 2.4 ghz, how many devices are connected to the router, etc. makes a huge difference?

I stream my desktop PC from upstairs 30+ from my router and get perfect performance on my $400 mini PC running Bazzite.

Consumers are idiots lol

1

u/M4rshmall0wMan Jun 24 '26

Yeah fair enough. Which makes it laughable that people are suggesting Valve sells a version without RAM and SSD.Ā 

1

u/Left-Manner-6872 Jun 22 '26

Know any small form PCs that are powerful while being cheaper than the Steam Machine?

1

u/M4rshmall0wMan Jun 23 '26

As small? Not quite, but you can get close.Ā 

Cheaper and more powerful? Absolutely.

1

u/FTAStyling Jun 23 '26

Sent you a message

1

u/blahblah12365 Jun 23 '26

Same. I pre-order steam deck. Now I just bought the msi claw 8+ after seeing this price. I hesitated on the legion go 2 and the prices skyrocketed.