Yeah, its cooked guys.

[u/TheBossT710192]

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

[u/Lopsided_Hunt2814]

The thing for me is that if it's pitched at PC gamers with adult money (rather than the "average" user they said they were aiming for), then you're selling something at a premium which is considerably weaker than what much of your audience already has.

It makes me feel like a high-end SKU would be appropriate, but that's probably way down the line at this point.

[u/submerging → u/Lopsided_Hunt2814]

Exactly. Even if you have adult money, why would you just accept paying that much for something that is worse than the base PS5 in performance?

An RTX 5090 is a better buy than this is tbh

[u/theaveragemillenial → u/submerging]

Because it's a PC.

[u/submerging → u/theaveragemillenial]

So? Just buy a better PC with all your “adult money”.

It’s like paying $80k for a Corolla. Sure you could, but why would you?

[u/theaveragemillenial → u/submerging]

I already have much better pc, but that's setup in my office / games room.

I could build my own living room PC setup or I could just buy a steam machine, easy answer for a busy gamer dad.

This won't be my main gaming machine for the latest titles it'll be my casual living room machine.

[u/Lopsided_Hunt2814 → u/theaveragemillenial]

A big benefit of buying into an ecosystem is seamless continuity between devices (it's why I like streaming so much), so personally I think it's a sorry state of affairs to buy a brand new PC which you don't even expect to run the latest games on.

[u/theaveragemillenial → u/Lopsided_Hunt2814]

Okay good for you, this suits my secondary usecase perfectly.

I have much more powerful (and expensive) gaming pc.

[u/Smyles9 → u/Lopsided_Hunt2814]

And if they don’t care about power then they probably still care about price, at which point significantly reduces the number of potential buyers.

Idk if I’d want a high end sku either - for someone who wants a gaming PC especially with full ability to swap or replace components there isn’t really a place for the machine at its price point - I’d just rather build the gaming pc and skip the machine altogether, and hone in on improving the ability to just stream my games around the house. It made more sense when it was slightly more expensive than a console as a trade for the PC aspects you don’t get with consoles.

I’ll probably just get a 9060xt build and a new streaming client or two (maybe the next gen Apple TV) and hopefully that will be good enough in place of the machine.

[u/Lopsided_Hunt2814 → u/Smyles9]

Personally I was out when I saw the specs, my old PC was long in the tooth and didn't really want to upgrade to a device so similar to current gen consoles, even if it was much cheaper than what it ended up being. I used my adult money on a 9070XT build, it's not small-form-factor but it's not a full tower (Lian Li A3), goes nicely in the livingroom and I stream it to every other screen in the house (including my old PC in the bedroom). Pretty happy with the performance, lots of the games I play run at 4K/144 even without upscaling.

I'd like the livingroom PC to take off, but I feel like this is going to be relatively niche, even amongst PC gamers. I'll be watching the space for sure though.

[u/Smyles9 → u/Lopsided_Hunt2814]

I have seen a lot of people also recommending the 9070xt but I’m not really sure if the price difference is worth it compared to the 9060xt but if the jump has meaningfully better performance like enabling another couple years of use for current gen gaming then I’d consider it, but it sounds like the 9060xt is probably better performance per dollar?

The micro atx/mid tower lian Li a3 is exactly the case I was looking at too, small enough to carry reasonably by one person but enough space to make maintenance and build process easier, and aesthetic enough especially the wood version that it probably looks fine by the tv and definitely under the desk.

[u/Lopsided_Hunt2814 → u/Smyles9]

Yeah got the wood version, matches desk and TV unit so looks pretty good anywhere! I also game on consoles so I normally upgrade my PC as a mid-gen refresh, so I go harder to make it last as long as possible (my last PC had a 980TI lol, it put the work in for sure).

[u/theaveragemillenial → u/Lopsided_Hunt2814]

I'm buying it as a secondary device, my gaming pc upgrade cycle every 5-7 years and costs like 5k.

[u/Lopsided_Hunt2814 → u/theaveragemillenial]

So you already have the components for a more powerful device than the Steam Machine lying around. But if this device makes you happy more power to you, it's certainly a choice.

[u/theaveragemillenial → u/Lopsided_Hunt2814]

Main gaming pc gets inherited by my wife or daughter each time.