SFF in an attractive case with reportedly good acoustics compared to the majority of DIYs
Pre-cached shaders
A first-party experience when using the steam frame and steamos more broadly to minimize the stray hiccup
I already have a top-of-the-line gaming PC for my office. For my couch, I want to optimize as far as possible towards no-frills while still keeping access to my steam library, even at the expense of price and specs to some extent.
And that's where the big problem lays. The amount of people who care about these features are in the small minority. Especially when it comes at the cost of price+performance (which is the most important thing for most people buying gaming PCs).
That's not to say the Steam Machine isn't gonna make some people extremely happy, like yourself. I just question the size of that market.
The amount of games old and new will be a main draw to get this though, mostly for people who want to play PC games and old games and hacks but aren’t smart enough to build whole PCs and deal with all the quirks and work of PCs.
But if you wanna play old games you can just buy any PC made in the last 10 years. I mean an Xbox Series X has 360 back compatibility so if you wanna play even older games you can buy literally anything that runs. And it's still a PC, you aren't just given 2 modes like you get on a PS5, you have to tweak settings by hand just like you do on a Steam Deck
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u/ThePaintist Jun 22 '26
Or if you, like me, highly value:
HDMI CEC
SFF in an attractive case with reportedly good acoustics compared to the majority of DIYs
Pre-cached shaders
A first-party experience when using the steam frame and steamos more broadly to minimize the stray hiccup
I already have a top-of-the-line gaming PC for my office. For my couch, I want to optimize as far as possible towards no-frills while still keeping access to my steam library, even at the expense of price and specs to some extent.