What do Steam Machines mean for Sony and PlayStation moving forward?

Gaiff

Gaiff

SBI’s Resident Gaslighter
The more time passes, the more it seems that everyone is eating off the same plates. I don't think the Steam Machines will be a threat to the PlayStation any more than the Steam Deck is a threat to the Switch. However, the top brass at Sony has to be looking at this. If the Steam Machines are even half as convenient as consoles and can just be placed in the living room, what incentives will there be to get a PlayStation? Not only do you get Microsoft Studios games day 1, you get a lot of PC games that don't come to consoles, and you get PlayStation games later down the line. This seems dangerously close to stepping on the toes of Sony's console business. Sony is also seemingly planning to release a handheld that will ostensibly play in a similar market to the Steam Deck, but I expect the PS6 portable to be a lot more popular. Still, another market where they overlap.

So, will Sony even give a thought about those machines or are they so irrelevant they won't factor into their strategy in the future?
 
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I'm sure they've been taking something like this into consideration for a long time now. PCs and Consoles are very similar nowadays, and i think their current strategies reflect that notion
 
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Its more of a competitor to next xbox than playstation.

They will be fine like they have been. Next xbox is promoted as being a more convenient pc, that steam cube also offers.
 
Loomy said:
Nothing will change.
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Quoted for truth. As someone currently playing on console and considering going PC I'd rather buy a legit gaming rig than a neutered Steam Box. If I want a console experience I'll stick with Playstation.

In theory I'm Valve's target customer with this but it's not enough for me to be interested in it.
 
Highly doubt it's gonna change much.

Steam machine is more meant for PC folks who want more convenient big screen experience. I doubt it would convert much of PS folks.
 
nothing. Playstation and particularly Nintendo gonna carry foward as usual with their own audience & exclusives etc.


however, it gonna affected Microsoft/Xbox since the space that Steam Machines targetted is basically where they aimed at next. the reason why they suddenly want to do the Xbox handheld with Asus Rog and the reason why handheld like Rog etc. exist also due to the Steamdeck which is also on same space.
 
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Kumomeme said:
nothing. Playstation and particularly Nintendo gonna carry foward as usual with their own audience & exclusives etc.


however, it gonna affected Microsoft since the space that Steam Machines targetted is basically where they aimed at next. the reason why they suddenly want to do the Xbox handheld with Asus Rog also due to the Steamdeck.
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Microsoft is a software company, hardware has never been and will never be their bottom line.
 
The end

Its Over GIF
 
Just another option for people in the SteamOS ecosystem.

It'll bring some new users over, but not enough to have a significant impact.

PCs have an intimidation factor to casual gamers, no matter what coat of paint you put on it. All of my friends will be on traditional consoles for life.
 
Sony will have to explain why it's cool to pay double for the console and a monthly fee for an infinitesimally smaller game library with a bump in ray tracing settings to make up the difference.

Steam Cube owners will have far better access to PSX and PS2 titles.
 
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Actually the real question is what do Steam Machine mean to MS Xbox since MS is about to change into a PC hybrid. PS and Nintendo will be in different category, the traditional console and handheld market.
 
The specs if this system doesn't look promising considering xbox n ps6 would have newer zens and rdna gpu to boot also would have more vram. To sell would have to be incredibly cheap
 
If the PS6 ends up being way cheaper, Steam's hardware won't touch PlayStation at all. Actually, if it's too expensive, even the PS5 will get more attention than a Steam PC. The only one who might really take a hit from that is Microsoft, since they're trying to do the same thing.
 
What machine weaker than ps5 can do to 85m of PS5 and soon to launch PS6?
It'll be sidegrade of cheap laptops for pc-only crowd, zero impact for consoles
 
In the short-term, it comes down to price and popularity. I can see three possible outcomes:

1) Steam Machines are priced too high ($600 minimum) for the mass market. In this case, Sony sleeps well at night. They'll have little to worry about because the machines won't be attractive to the casual audience aka the majority of PlayStation users.

2) Steam Machines are priced just right ($300-500) for the mass market. In this case, the wizards at PlayStation who thought putting PlayStation exclusives on PC was a great idea are going to have to cast a phenomenal spell to stop Xbox and Switch users from picking up a Steam Machine instead of a PS5.

3) Steam Machines are marketed towards PC users and not console/would-be console users (e.g., people who owned a PS4 but haven't bought a PS5). In this case, Valve will fail to attract a bunch of customers because -- much like the original Steam Machines -- the popularity/appeal of a PC that you can't fully upgrade and tinker with is limited. The 40M+ active Steam users just aren't showing mass interest in abandoning PC's for console-like PC's and handheld-PC's.

In the long-term, Valve has a bigger problem on their hands that I spoke about months ago. But with Xbox getting out of traditional consoles and PlayStation console pricing being increasingly unpredictable, Steam Machines aren't as useless as some people might think. It's going to take some real ingenuity and a hyper-aggressive marketing strategy from Valve to make SM's succeed.

Right now, I'm curious to see what their full marketing plan is. They've already started off kinda wobbly (i.e., having PC-loyalists as the face of the initiative) but I'm guessing it has more to do with the expected pricing and early-adopter appeal rather than their full marketing plan being "Let's sell Steam Machines to people who have zero interest in them."
 
Somehow Valve is still able to convince both the console and PC crowds that they are not directly competing with consoles and slowly moving into (and slowly taking over) that space, simply because the box OS isn't locked down.

I don't know what to call this phenomenon, but it is definitely impressive marketing on their part.

They will sit comfortably with one foot planted in each door and no one will make a fuss about it.
 
It's too early to draw conclusions.

But I don't see anything "groundbreaking" to predict huge success for the Steam console.
 
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March Climber said:
Somehow Valve is still able to convince both the console and PC crowds that they are not directly competing with consoles and slowly moving into (and slowly taking over) that space, simply because the box OS isn't locked down.

I don't know what to call this phenomenon, but it is definitely impressive marketing on their part.

They will sit comfortably with one foot planted in each door and no one will make a fuss about it.
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Where does Valve say anything about who or what they are directly competing with? I must've missed it.
 
Maybe not right away, but steam is building a versatile ecosystem. Vr, handheld, and now console. By the time the ps6 launches we could have a Steam deck 2 and a Steam machine pro.

That, plus no monthly online fee and the expansive library on Steam?

Might start peeling away at the Sony user base. Or more importantly, new gamers entering the space may be more tempted by steams offerings than Sonys.
 
At the moment, nothing. If higher end machines are launched and they hit 5+ million sales, Sony will make changes to their PC release strategy. That's about it really. Same applies to their attitude towards Magnus.

Bigger question is what MS will do if Valve starts rolling out higher end steam machines. Outside of BC, that has hell of a lot more overlap.
 
Mister Wolf said:
If publishers like Ubisoft and EA still have stores up then expect Sony to follow suit. Why haven't those disastrous failures been shut down?
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Yep, Sony desperately needs their own PC store with Cross Buy into PSN, and tied to their Cloud and subscription services.

It will be harder to get third parties to do Cross Buy but not impossible, by leveraging Day 1 games on PS+ Premium or smaller store cut.

Stop wasting money on timed exclusivity, and put it toward launching two curated Day 1 games every month, but have each game support full PlayStation Ecosystem, as in PC, Console, Cloud, Handheld with Cross Buy.

For Xbox, it's Play Anywhere, Cloud Enabled, Handheld Optimized.
 
It means making Horizon mobile games.

Perhaps we will now see them create a concord 2 for Mac only.
 
PlayStaytion said:
The middle man is Phil. You don't get it.
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Sony replied to me! And it's only cause they're about to lose their most loyal fan 😒 why couldn't you tell me you're going to release 5 SP games per year from each dormant Sony IP, free online, free upgrades for every gen and a retro gaming program not tied to PSN Premium?
 
Fahdis said:
Sony replied to me! And it's only cause they're about to lose their most loyal fan 😒 why couldn't you tell me you're going to release 5 SP games per year from each dormant Sony IP, free online, free upgrades for every gen and a retro gaming program not tied to PSN Premium?
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I don't know, they need to feel they're hurting cause feeling hurt is a blessing.
 
What this means for Sony is a decline in console sales, as first-party games are becoming available across multiple platforms—including potentially on Steam and GOG for the next Xbox. Microsoft anticipated this shift, which is why they took the hit first. Sony is likely to follow.
 
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It is all about locking users to their eco system, the problem right now your PS library only exist on proprietary hardware, and to keep and grow their user base, they need to keep selling their hardware. Porting their games to PC is a good first step but steam take a cut of their software sales and that is a lot of lost revenue and valvue has is becoming a direct competitors in a living room and portable space. Even a long time follower like me starting to think about skipping PS6 and just wait for everything on PC going forward. But if the rumor PS+PC cross buy is true, I would be less reluctant on keep investing into buying a PS hardware going forward as long as I know I get a PC version either day and day or a few months down the line. I still think the PS portable should be a PC base system rather than trying to design proprietary OS that emulate PS5 games, it just need to be good enough to emulate PS4 games to give you access to your PS4 library, and all the PS5 and beyond titles can be based on PC ports. Just need to keep porting the rest of the missing PS5 games to PC.
 
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With those limped specs it will mean little even to the PC crowds my man.

As PS5/PS5 Pro competitor this box is vastly irrelevant, especially since the expected price will be $499 minimum with current dram apocalypse.

I mean, look at Deck. It's touted as a huge success (and I even own it), but in the vast context of the market it sold less in its lifetime than Nintendo sold Switch 2 in a quarter. Machine has way more lukewarm reception than Deck so I fully expect Valve to sell less boxes lifetime, than Sony sells PS5s during their weakest quarter.
 
Take it easy. You'll likely run games more stable on PS5 and PS6 is being built as we speak. It's not a real threat.
Sony probably just hope you plug in the little cube to a PlayStation Monitor.
 
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