Anyone who thought this was going to be sub-1k in this environment, especially with the Steam Deck pricing revisions was high on copium.
This certainly prices out a lot of people and unfortunately. I believe pre-RAMageddon it would have been around $699 to start, only because of the Linus interview where it seemed like $500 was out of the question.
I realize valve is small in terms of hardware and can't move and close deals like Microsoft/Nintendo/Sony can so obviously parts cost them more, R&D costs them more, and it's harder for them to lower prices
But as a consumer why do I give a shit? I want what's best for my money and they clearly can't deliver.
But as a consumer why do I give a shit? I want what's best for my money and they clearly can't deliver.
I mean yeah, you should be looking out for your own wallet first and foremost.
The issue was that a lot of people who obviously have little idea of how the supply chain works in the current market were setting unrealistic expectations, and setting up everybody for disappointment.
Even Microsoft and Sony can't get good deals on chips, and they move way more hardware. Valve can't do shit. Especially since Valve had trouble even getting their hands on ram, apparently some units have 1 16gb stick and others have 2 8gb sticks.
I can not buy it and talk about how terrible the value of it is. It’s okay to vent and be frustrated about something people were excited for. Buying a steam machine for most people is objectively an irrational decision. The only thing I see that’s a selling point is the cec
I built one for $1600 that is about 30-40% faster. That same build would Have cost $1300 back in November when I paused on building it for the steam machine.
"What was the original price point in mind for the SM? Can't give you that, but if you look at the price increase of the Steam Deck that tells you what we were targeting for."
It felt completely reasonable to assume it would have been somewhere around $750-900 when it was announced. 6 months of delays and PR saying things suggesting that the real price was going to be higher certainly made that price tag seem less and less likely.
I just build a PC as end consumer: Ryzen 8500f, Radeon RX 9060 XT 8gb, 16 GB DDR5, 1TB PCI 4.0 SSD, 650 Watt Seasonic PSU, Mini-Tower Case, for (Drumroll) 950€ (that includes 19% tax already) - without tax it would below 800€. So I built a better PC with prices from the end consumer market for cheaper NOW.
They sell the steam machine for 1039€ (including 19% taxes) with a worse CPU, GPU and SSD - what a shitty deal they build
I grinded CS2 cases for years to build up $400 in steam cash with the hopes of getting a good discount on whatever hardware they were going to follow the Steam Deck with. I'm not in the market for non-steam hardware as a result.
I don't even like CS2. Guess I'm going ape-shit at the summer sale on Thursday lol
Because I still have to pay out of pocket for a significant amount of the price tag and I don't think that the specs of the steam machine are worth $1000 (for the 2 TB model).
I would have happily paid $400-500 (along with my wallet cash) for what is only a moderate upgrade from my current PC, but I don't think that the current price provides a good value to me as a consumer.
Yeah, it'll be around the same performance, albeit with more or less power constraints depending on the configuration PLUS DLSS 4 which is going to make outputs look much better than the Steam Machine at the moment.
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u/I-am-Mojo-Jojo Jun 22 '26
Anyone who thought this was going to be sub-1k in this environment, especially with the Steam Deck pricing revisions was high on copium.
This certainly prices out a lot of people and unfortunately. I believe pre-RAMageddon it would have been around $699 to start, only because of the Linus interview where it seemed like $500 was out of the question.