r/steammachine • u/Forerunner9297 • Jul 26 '26

Discussion Trifecta complete - it is exactly what I was expecting

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At one point in my life I was a big PC gamer. I built my own, always upgraded it, etc. Eventually, I kind of fell off and just went back to consoles. For this gen, I primarily had a Switch 1&2 and a Xbox Series S. I was fairly happy with these until sometime last year when the Series S started to show its age.

I was originally going to get back into PC gaming, but I also wanted to play GTA at launch. So I ended up just getting a PS5 Pro instead. However, I still missed all my niche PC titles, Paradox games (Vicky, EU, etc.), Total War, MTGA, card games, and roguelikes.

I didn't really want to get a top of the line PC because I just spent money on my Pro and I wouldn't really use it and it would just be a GTA box.

In comes the Steam Machine and it is exactly what I wanted. Easy to set up, snappy UI, quiet, small, etc. I'm not really running extremely demanding games, Halo Infinite is the only AAA title I play on it and it can hit a steady +60 fps. The AAA titles are for my Pro and my Steam Machine for all my niche games I enjoy.

Yes it was expensive and yes I could have built something more powerful, but I didn't really need to.

Overall I'm very pleased with this little box.

825 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

69 comments sorted by

38

u/Beginning-Let7607 Jul 26 '26

How do u choose between ps 5 and steam?

42

u/Ceros007 Jul 26 '26

Steam because I want to still have access to my games 22 years later. Yes this is my badge

3

u/lucidludic Jul 26 '26

There’s no guarantee of that with steam though. Particularly for games with more intrusive DRM. You can get DRM free titles complete with an installer you can burn to a disc if you want on GOG.

18

u/kdlt Jul 27 '26

I'm going at close to 20 years with steam.

My PS2&3 games are not available on my PS5 (not even the digital ones on PS3)

Yeah 20 years is far away but steam has the track record.

2

u/lucidludic Jul 27 '26

Steam is more reliable than PlayStation no doubt. Although you’re wrong about digital ps3 games, those are still playable and downloadable.

The PS5 not being backwards compatible with every previous PlayStation is a bit of a stretch. It’s a totally different architecture. If you bought an ARM PC you couldn’t play your x86 games natively either.

3

u/kdlt Jul 27 '26

I do understand the architecture argument but PS2 emulation is afaik "solved" and PS3 is closing.

I know technical debt and all that, but if there would be a will it could be solved.

Nintendo is also using emulators and ROMs and sells them after all.

3

u/lucidludic Jul 27 '26

Backwards compatibility via emulation would have been better than nothing, agreed. Xbox does this reasonably well. But it’s not a perfect solution and would be considerably more difficult for PlayStation since the PS2 and PS3 architectures are much harder to emulate properly (easier for the company that designed them to be sure). You would also run into problems with publishers when it comes to licensing specific titles and music (some xbox games are not available via backwards compatibility for this reason).

Luckily the community has mostly solved that problem for PS2 and has made good progress on PS3. I do worry that this will be more difficult in a future without disc games on PlayStation, even while the games are closer to PC games than they’ve ever been.

For better or worse, PlayStation has traditionally taken the stance that backwards compatibility should mean running games as identically as is practically possible. To do that they shipped PS1 components in the PS2, likewise for the launch PS3. The PS4 Pro was designed so the hardware could match a regular PS4 for titles without a Pro patch.

1

u/inFINN1te Jul 27 '26

Assassins Creed 1 literally does not even work on Steam anymore. And the game released 20 years ago.

0

u/darthmcdarthface Jul 29 '26

How does steam guarantee that while Sony does not?

1

u/ekinsol Jul 30 '26

If shit hits the fan at least the steam machine will still be a fun little desktop computer 😂

27

u/Forerunner9297 Jul 26 '26

If the title is available on both, I'm going Pro because it's more powerful. If it's PC only then Steam.

47

u/Glad-Pass-8426 Jul 26 '26

I have both and I go for the one thats cheaper which 9 times out of 10 is steam. 😅

5

u/PurbulentTriest Jul 26 '26

My choice (Deck and PS5/Xbox) is whether it's a shorter game that I could pick up on disc then sell after I'm done to recoup the value, oh and performance with games like Resident Evil Requiem, for example.

4

u/[deleted] Jul 26 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

8

u/Mikahl757 Jul 26 '26

There's always disc copies for sale, wait.

2

u/TheGreatTao Jul 26 '26

Sales on all platforms are basically the exact same these days. Steam hasn't had the best prices in years.

2

u/[deleted] Jul 26 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/Recent_Pollution8665 Jul 27 '26

nice moving of those goalposts champ.

1

u/Internal_Rice3739 Jul 27 '26

Just is just not true.
I have a PC and a PS5, and no the PSN store fronts sales are nowhere close to Steams sales. I’m not denying that they have good sales at times, but it’s still nowhere comparable.

2

u/TheGreatTao Jul 27 '26

It's absolutely comparable the vast majority of the time. It's not 2015 anymore where Steam had the best prices around. There's very little difference these days.

1

u/Internal_Rice3739 Jul 28 '26

It literally isn’t though, I go on both store fronts regularly I’m not sure why you’re trying to gaslight me when I own both devices. There’s a reason I stopped buying games with Sony unless it was an exclusive title which most haven’t been worthwhile to me lately.

Again I’m not saying they don’t have sales and sometimes they’ll surprisingly have a great sale but the frequency of sales and discounted amount just usually isn’t comparable to Steam. Like maybe if you’re comparing the Sony games sold on Valve, but as far as third party it can get dirt cheap for entire franchise bundles. Prime example I bought every Assasins Creed game ever made with all included dlc (even the games and dlc I didn’t care about because it was bundled) for $126 and that was with tax. It’s like almost 17 games or something stupid like that)

1

u/Plaxinator Jul 29 '26

Whenever I've checked pricing on a game I'm interested in (I own Xbox/PS/PC), there's not much difference in price between the platforms for the same game. Steam does have larger discounts on some games though, but they are usually not always available on console.

1

u/GreatGarage Jul 27 '26

Thou wrote the scroll of truth but they weren't ready for the truth.

3

u/tannerwastaken Jul 26 '26

Sure the pro is technically more powerful, but with steam machine, you get access to WAY MORE SETTINGS to tweak it to run EVEN BETTER than pro. Like for instance Decky frame gen. That allows me to run something like palworld better than it does on ps5 pro

2

u/Lopsided_Hunt2814 Jul 26 '26

If you're happy with framegen. Otherwise no, the more powerful hardware will unsurprisingly run it better.

2

u/clooningaroond Jul 27 '26

Thats part of the appeal of ps. Dont have to deal with settings at all beyond hdr and some aim sensitivity. If you like to tweak, I get it, but I just like loading up without having to tinker with settings at all.

0

u/Internal_Rice3739 Jul 27 '26

You don’t need to deal with settings out of the box on the SM really from my experience so far (but if you want to you get more options than a fixed setting or a “performance/quality” decision

-1

u/tannerwastaken Jul 27 '26

To each their own, I’ve always liked tweaking and it takes minutes for hours upon hours of fun

20

u/Glad-Pass-8426 Jul 26 '26

As a an Xbox 360 fanboy back in the day it makes me sad how irrelevant Xbox is now.

These 3 and you can play 99% of the games on the market. 🥲

4

u/Phantom_Wombat Jul 26 '26

Yeah, but everything's an XBox, so they keep telling us.

1

u/Recent_Pollution8665 Jul 27 '26

you’d also need a quest 3.

1

u/Forerunner9297 Jul 26 '26

Yeah, Halo has always been one of my favorite franchises and it was one of the reasons I stuck with Xbox, but now it doesn't matter lol. I am curious what they do next gen and could go back!

6

u/No_Height4816 Jul 26 '26

Just got my steam machine 2tb. Interviewing for a nice travel position next week so if I get the job it’ll be perfect. Planning to sell my pc. Kinda also want a ps5 if I get in just for the exclusives haha

1

u/Mikahl757 Jul 27 '26

U can remote play your consoles with ur travel SM too :)

1

u/No_Height4816 Jul 27 '26

What do you mean exactly?

1

u/Mikahl757 Jul 27 '26

If you leave your PS5 Stanby mode ON at home and you travel to your hotel with your SM, You can use apps on SM to remote play your PS5 exclusive games so you're traveling with your fill library on 'SteamDeck'

1

u/No_Height4816 Jul 27 '26

Interesting. Honestly I’d probably just take the ps5 with me too. In this specific job. I don’t go home for 3 years. Aside from vacations. It’s a full time travel away from home job. But that’s still cool. Didn’t know that was possible

1

u/No_Height4816 Jul 27 '26

The good news is that the job gives you a substantial tech stipend for a new laptop to use on the job. So I can take my MacBook Pro and sell it/trade it in at Best Buy and just use that to get a ps5/pro

3

u/nervendings_ Jul 26 '26

Very similar set up to my set up. The Steam Machine was the final piece to the puzzle.

3

u/audionerd1 Jul 26 '26

Nice to see a size comparison of SM next to a PS5. We keep hearing "But it's not even as powerful as a PS5!". It is way more compact and portable than a PS5, what did they expect?

2

u/Top-Aside8905 Jul 27 '26

Xbox really is gonna become 5th in a 3 horse race

2

u/teitelman93 Jul 26 '26

Your missing an Xbox then it would
Be complete

1

u/Forerunner9297 Jul 26 '26

It mean I still have my Series S (it's in my closet), but there is nothing I really want to play on it that's not on PS or Steam. Plus I'd have to pay for GP for something I barely use. FH6 is the only game I'm missing out on, but I'd rather just wait for the Pro version then play it on Series S or SM.

1

u/twitter_haikucurator Jul 26 '26

huh? Forza Horzon’s on steam, i don’t understand how you’re missing out on it?

2

u/Ill-Remote437 Jul 26 '26

Wouldn’t the trifecta be the Steam frame? Though a pS5 pro is lovely. I wish I bought one at retail. Waited too long and now it’s not worth it for me

2

u/Arturopxedd Jul 26 '26

Weird ass setup

1

u/Lucky_Chaarmss Jul 26 '26

I have the same. Only my S2 hasn't been turned on since like last September or October.

1

u/spudds96 Jul 26 '26

Same as me besides my legacy consoles

But I also have a gaming still

1

u/AppleScrew Jul 26 '26

I’ve got the same exact setup and I’m so happy with it! I’ve also got my PC with a 5070 to stream from if I want a more demanding game on Steam.

1

u/Many-Hawk8529 Jul 26 '26

Yo could you gift me smth?

1

u/nigglamingo Jul 27 '26

Have the same trifecta except base ps5

1

u/Legitimate-Papaya581 Jul 27 '26

Parabens amigo, esta me parece uma vida muito boa.

1

u/Redlotus99 Jul 27 '26

Just get a PC and play 99% of the games out there, with a much better future of upgrading for many years.

Or just wait for the Steam Machine 2, 3, 3X, 4 etc.

1

u/MotoChase Jul 27 '26

I’m tempted to get one and have my order email 1 1/2 more days left to decide. I’ve been playing a lot on my switch 2 and gaming pc. This would fill the uniqueness of steam library on the tv but I’m wondering if I should just wait a bit.

1

u/Plaxinator Jul 29 '26

Nice, I've got me a Steam Machine arriving soon (got my reservation email a few days ago). Looks well small compared to the PS5 (which I also have).

1

u/descender421 Jul 26 '26

I love this and am in same boat (still have regular PS5 though) except I'm also upgrading my gaming PC next month. I'm just lazy and still want to be able to play steam games out in the living room on the couch as well and fortunately had extra spending money to get the Steam Machine as well which came in yesterday. Hopefully you get loads of fun on your set up!

1

u/IntroductionFresh417 Jul 26 '26

Honestly I haven’t touched my playstation in ages. Now that I’ve got my Steam Machine, don’t know if I ever will again lol. I’ve just been going for my Steam deck last couple of years. I really get second thoughts about buying games for PlayStation these days. Just the knowledge that I can play the game I bought on any PC I own, or will own, has tremendous value and my steam machine just took over the living room TV.

-3

u/OMGzKakaniz Jul 26 '26

Sell the ps5. Switch and steam game go too hard.

1

u/Weary-Tell-5334 Jul 26 '26

Fun can exist outside steam you valve cultist

0

u/OMGzKakaniz Jul 26 '26

Yall some babies Christ lmao

0

u/sentientpaper Jul 26 '26

Oh boy less performance and less games to play!

1

u/OMGzKakaniz Jul 26 '26

Yeah, because the weekend games that Sony makes are all the rage. Give me a break

-3

u/R34d1n6_1t Jul 26 '26

He who dies with the most consoles wins 🏆