Support NeoGAF

[Themacabre]

But dropping 600 - 700 euros on a box that's basically on par with a 5-year-old console just for convenience? Yeah, no thanks. I don't care if it's also a PC, it's clearly meant to be a console-style device for the TV.

I don't understand this thinking. Consoles are more than just their hardware, there's an ecosystem as well, and that is what people pay for. I don't want to be a part of that ecosystem so I don't own a console. Comparing the hardware of the Steam Machine to random consoles doesn't make sense.

If Gabe can afford a half-billion-dollar yacht, Valve can afford to take a loss, price it at 500 top, and make it back with their 30% cut on game sales.

They can actually afford to do literally nothing and collect cash forever, but they don't. Instead they do neat things like this. Reducing the need for Windows in the gaming space is a noble endeavor, this product doesn't have to sell more than the PS7 any more than the Steam Deck needed to sell more than the Switch to be successful.

 

[LordOcidax]

Engagement farming tards. We know. Which is why we said what we said about this very topic.

We know that… But that Misinformation is probably is going to backfire to Valve…

 

[DeepEnigma]

Pudel do you see my dirty PC. I never open it up. That case fan on the back doesnt even work. Stopped working a long time ago. There is a 5800X3D in it and a 4090. It has never overheated nor does the performance ever throttle. Its the CPU and GPU fans that are essential. Those case fans aren't doing much of anything but putting on a show.

 

[mckmas8808]

Anything above $599 is going to be DOA or Niche.

I'd say anything above $700 is DOA.

 

[MiguelItUp]

Pudel do you see my dirty PC. I never open it up. That case fan on the back doesnt even work. Stopped working a long time ago. There is a 5800X3D in it and a 4090. It has never overheated nor does the performance ever throttle. Its the CPU and GPU fans that are essential. Those case fans aren't doing much of anything but putting on a show.

 

[midnightAI]

Anything above $599 is going to be DOA or Niche.

I'd say even at $500 (heck, even $400, which is unlikely) it will be DOA. For me its in a really weird situation, they say that they have specced it to be similar to the most popular specs for PC gaming, great, except you aren't going to get anyone upgrading to that then as it would be cheaper for those people to upgrade their own PC's or stay as they are, so who are they trying to attract? console gamers? unlikely, there are many reasons why console gamers choose console and this doesn't solve every issue and even at $500 its still competing with PS5, which is available right now, is likely still more powerful. Then again, maybe they aren't expecting console like numbers and instead similar numbers to Steam Deck?

Still, this really is a thorn in MS's side, MS will say theirs is more powerful, but for how long? how long until a Steam Machine Pro is released? (probably right after whatever MS does to undercut them on price), this is where Steam Machine needs to compete, I just don't see it making a dent in the console market, but the hybrid(ish) market that MS want to move into.... absolutely.

(edit: when I say DOA I am comparing that to current console sales, including XBox, I don't think Steam Machines will get anywhere near those types of numbers as things stand)

 

[pudel]

Pudel do you see my dirty PC. I never open it up. That case fan on the back doesnt even work. Stopped working a long time ago. There is a 5800X3D in it and a 4090. It has never overheated nor does the performance ever throttle. Its the CPU and GPU fans that are essential. Those case fans aren't doing much of anything but putting on a show.

Yeah, ofc you can run that thing hot and loud...but you dont have to. Fix yr case fans, dude! You want the hot air out of yr case and cool air coming in.

 

[Bry0]

Here's what they said exactly.

If you're trying to make a PC that has similar features and similar performance, I think the Steam Machine is going to be a really competitive price to that and provide really good value to it. The affordability piece you mentioned is one of the reasons why we think a Steam Machine makes a lot of sense right now. So it's just something that we thought about every time we made a hardware decision, a feature decision, is to make sure that we keep it as approachable, as affordable as possible.

Steam Machine Pricing Will Be 'Really Competitive' with Building a Similar PC Yourself, Says Valve

Valve hardware engineer Yazan Aldehayyat has commented on the pricing of the Steam Machine, which he believes will be 'really competitive'.

wccftech.com

This is why these 849-999 guesses are crazy to me. Best Buy had a rx 7700s 8 core asus a16 laptop going on sale for $750 throughout 2023/2024 before phasing the model out. The cpu and gpu are literally AMDs last gen, and these laptop focused Navi 33 chips did NOT sell well. They probably got a really good price on this stuff because AMD just want to get rid of them. I think it will be priced pretty decently. Zero cost for the screen or keyboard, less materials, and valve will sell direct to consumer. What would worry me more than anything right now are the totally whack RAM prices and if that's going to have a knock on effect to pricing, or if valve will just try to eat that and hope it stabilizes. No way they stockpiled millions of sodimms.

 

[Miyazaki’s Slave]

Nah, this ENMOROUS library of PC exclusives dont worth $600 $700 entry point.

 

[GoldenEye98]

Valve are mistaken in thinking people are not going to compare this to consoles in terms of performance/price/value.

 

[Kacho]

This discussion got me really questioning Valves strategy with this.

If it's supposed to be competitive with regular ass gaming PCs regardless of form factor, who the fuck is going to buy these specs in 2026? I feel like you could do a lot better for a few hundred more... maybe not. I don't keep up with prices.

But for my money, $600+ for a limp dick supplemental device? ...no way in hell man.

 

[Felessan]

$600 to $700 does have a justification...folks that are willing to spend $600 plus on a console like experience for the games that said console provides.

Valve sees this like a business, they are offering a low effort entry point into an ENMOROUS library of exclusive titles ( I am referring to games only available on PC) but "you gotta pay for that privilege".

That pile of trash is of enormous size for sure.

 

[MiguelItUp]

We know that… But that Misinformation is probably is going to backfire to Valve…

I doubt it. If Valve made those comments it'd be a different story.

 

[Senua]

Give that PC to someone who deserves it, I'll make it go from ashy to classy

 

[LordOcidax]

I doubt it. If Valve made those comments it'd be a different story.

I am 100% sure that those guys have more visits than the official Steam machine site… Is going to be an issue for them when they announce the price (If is over $599)

 

[Themacabre]

Valve are mistaken in thinking people are not going to compare this to consoles in terms of performance/price/value.

This discussion got me really questioning Valves strategy with this.

If it's supposed to be competitive with regular ass gaming PCs regardless of form factor, who the fuck is going to buy these specs in 2026? I feel like you could do a lot better for a few hundred more... maybe not. I don't keep up with prices.

But for my money, $600+ for a limp dick supplemental device? ...no way in hell man.

I don't know what the specs are, didn't look at them. Valve can see what specs are out there from their enormous sample size from the surveys, and have likely made this device to beat their average. Will this device beat my gaming PC, well, no, but I never though that it would. Will it beat some specs of whatever console exists out there? Don't know, don't know what those are or why I would care.

 

[poppabk]

Maybe not a 4050 but a 4060 paired with a good cpu will. Especially with DLSS. Remember the cpu is a 6 core on the steam machine. It's going to be shit with cpu bound games. Especially with games like battlefield 6.

It won't even run BF6 outside of SP. But yeah a gaming laptop for $700 is coming with a 6 core CPU.

 

[MiguelItUp]

I am 100% sure that those guys have more visits than the official Steam machine site… Is going to be an issue for them when they announce the price (If is over $599)

Of course they do, because their livelihoods depend on it in most cases. But if people care enough and do their own research they will get the answer.

 

[Midn1ght]

Pudel do you see my dirty PC. I never open it up. That case fan on the back doesnt even work. Stopped working a long time ago. There is a 5800X3D in it and a 4090. It has never overheated nor does the performance ever throttle. Its the CPU and GPU fans that are essential. Those case fans aren't doing much of anything but putting on a show.

Calling CPS right now, that 4090 deserves a better family.

Tom Henderson is speculating that it's going to cost 849/999 for the two models btw.

If true...

 

[viveks86]

Pudel do you see my dirty PC. I never open it up. That case fan on the back doesnt even work. Stopped working a long time ago. There is a 5800X3D in it and a 4090. It has never overheated nor does the performance ever throttle. Its the CPU and GPU fans that are essential. Those case fans aren't doing much of anything but putting on a show.

That print on the power supply is one small step for man....

 

[Sebastian1295]

Calling CPS right now, that 4090 deserves a better family.


If true...

C

Ya if this thing is that expensive than it's DOA. I legitimately don't know how you can justify a price like that with the specs in this thing.

 

[Mister Wolf]

Yeah, ofc you can run that thing hot and loud...but you dont have to. Fix yr case fans, dude! You want the hot air out of yr case and cool air coming in.

It isn't loud. If anything more fans and openings to accommodate the fans would make it louder. It sits on the side of a table completely enclosed. Never gets cleaned out and it runs completely fine. No issues. If I didnt open it up, you guys would just see a plain black case unassuming PC and be none the wiser of what it looks like inside. All the glass openings, neon lights, and excessive amounts of fans are just theatrics.

 

[Senua]

It isn't loud. It sits on the side of a table completely enclosed. Never gets cleaned out and it runs completely fine. No issues. If I didnt open it up, you guys would just see a plain black case unassuming PC and be none the wiser of what it looks like inside.

At least get the dust out bro cmon

 

[Topher]

This discussion got me really questioning Valves strategy with this.

If it's supposed to be competitive with regular ass gaming PCs regardless of form factor, who the fuck is going to buy these specs in 2026? I feel like you could do a lot better for a few hundred more... maybe not. I don't keep up with prices.

But for my money, $600+ for a limp dick supplemental device? ...no way in hell man.

Pretty much. If it isn't $500 then I'm having a hard time understanding the point here. There will be buyers even up to $1000 as is always the case with a new product, but I would think the goal here is to at least sell as much as Steam Deck. To do that, $500 just seems like the right price.

 

[Senua]

Pretty much. If it isn't $500 then I'm having a hard time understanding the point here. There will be buyers even up to $1000 as is always the case with a new product, but I would think the goal here is to at least sell as much as Steam Deck. To do that, $500 just seems like the right price.

1000 dollars is insane, I don't believe it for a second

 

[adamsapple]

Tom Henderson is speculating that it's going to cost 849/999 for the two models btw.

Holy shit.. that's almost 400 higher than my guess for the lower end model.

 

[Geometric-Crusher]

I am confident to say it will not be more expensive than a gaming laptop in its spec range.

even without announcing the price, I guarantee it's more expensive than a laptop with an RTX 5050 that has almost the same performance as this Steam machine, and because it's Nvidia, it has DLSS, which is light years ahead of FSR 3.

 

[SNG32]

This discussion got me really questioning Valves strategy with this.

If it's supposed to be competitive with regular ass gaming PCs regardless of form factor, who the fuck is going to buy these specs in 2026? I feel like you could do a lot better for a few hundred more... maybe not. I don't keep up with prices.

But for my money, $600+ for a limp dick supplemental device? ...no way in hell man.

This for the people who don't know good pc specs or money to burn to put this under the tv.

 

[Bojanglez]

For years PC elites have been saying "just buy a PC" as a response to various console related topics. Now Valve is daring (to potentially) price a PC as a PC, people are complaining that it's not as cheap as a console (no shit).

If you want the benefits of a PC you are going to have to buy a PC and although Valve might not be making much on these, they don't want to be losing money on them as they need to mitigate non gamers buying them on mass as a cheap well packaged PC and never spending a penny on Steam. Hopefully selling them directly of Steam will help that somewhat.

What I really love about all this is that we can stop referring to PC as some kind of monolithic platform, a lot of these elite PC owners are now realising that the vast majority of PCs used for gaming are probably less powerful than a PS5 so when they say " ust get a PC" or "it runs better on PC" they are being purposefully ignorant or obnoxious.

 

[LordOcidax]

Of course they do, because their livelihoods depend on it in most cases. But if people care enough and do their own research they will get the answer.

If people see $699 or $799 is going to be a insta pass, forget about research… That's the issue here.

 

[DeepEnigma]

even without announcing the price, I guarantee it's more expensive than a laptop with an RTX 5050 that has almost the same performance as this Steam machine, and because it's Nvidia, it has DLSS, which is light years ahead of FSR 3.

I have doubts. Otherwise it's pointless.

 

[BlueManifest]

Hardly matters to console gamers.

This thing needs to compete with the console market to be relevant, and having an infinite amount of random Steam games won't matter much, because it's not like we are not getting all the games we want on PS5 and Series. I can't name a single game available on Steam, that I want to play, and that is not Series.

And there are also games available on Series that are not on Steam, on top of it...

The positive of Steam machine is steam is a better platform than Xbox

they let you return games with less than 2 hrs play time

You get free cloud saves

Don't have to pay to play online

Family sharing is better

You know your games will always be backwards compatible even back to 20
Years ago

That's the only reason I would see to add a 100$ premium to the steam machine over other consoles but not more than that, so $600 should be the max for the 512g imo

 

[Topher]

even without announcing the price, I guarantee it's more expensive than a laptop with an RTX 5050 that has almost the same performance as this Steam machine, and because it's Nvidia, it has DLSS, which is light years ahead of FSR 3.

MSRP on such a laptop is $1000 and up. No way is Steam Machine over $1k

 

[LordOcidax]

Tom Henderson is speculating that it's going to cost 849/999 for the two models btw.

So between 499 and 999… Is going to be 649 and 799 then…

 

[Skifi28]

Is not a retarded take… anything above $599 for a Low-Mid spec PC is going to be DOA.

I don't think Valve is going for the console mass appeal or to compete with Sony/ Nintendo. They're doing their own thing here like with the deck, this is a less than 5 million lifetime seller methinks, aimed at very specific consumers. I believe they're absolutely fine with it being niche as long as they don't lose money and help spread linux/Steam OS.

 

[pudel]

It isn't loud. It sits on the side of a table completely enclosed. Never gets cleaned out and it runs completely fine. No issues. If I didnt open it up, you guys would just see a plain black case unassuming PC and be none the wiser of what it looks like inside.

If its idle and nothing going on. If you play a demanding game things look differently. Pls dont tell me otherwise. I have nearly the same system as you (different CPU). And now IMAGINE putting this setup in a smaller form factor with way less room for hot air and way less possibilities for airflow. My whole point was that a gaming pc looks like they look for a reason. It will be interesting to see how that little steambox is performing under heavy duty.

 

[LordOcidax]

I don't think Valve is going for the console mass appeal or to compete with Sony/ Nintendo. They're doing their own thing here like with the deck, this is a less than 5 million lifetime seller at best, aimed at very specific consumers. I think they're absolutely fine with it being niche.

That's why i said is going to be a niche product in the other thread.

 

[SNG32]

I don't think Valve is going for the console mass appeal or to compete with Sony/ Nintendo. They're doing their own thing here like with the deck, this is a less than 5 million lifetime seller methinks, aimed at very specific consumers. I believe they're absolutely fine with it being niche as long as they don't lose money and help spread linux/Steam OS.

They can't compete with Sony because it's a pc. People have gaming portable pcs, desktops and laptops that aren't batting an eye at this. So it going to be super niche. There's a lot of alternatives to approach pc gaming that make it impossible to compete directly with Sony and Nintendo.

 

[Skifi28]

That's why i said is going to be a niche product in the other thread.

I mean yeah, that was almost a given. It's only the usual suspects like IGN or influencers farming for clicks by spreading that Valve is entering the console business.

 

[Kadve]

Would still be cheaper than those NUC mini pc's even at 700, I still think should be less than 700 though

What sites are you buying from? I can find Mini PCs with similar specs for around 300 USD.

 

[BlueManifest]

Tom Henderson is speculating that it's going to cost 849/999 for the two models btw.

way too much that's like double the price to build it

 

[MacReady13]

This isn't a console though, so why are we expecting console like pricing?

 

[StereoVsn]

Would still be cheaper than those NUC mini pc's even at 700, I still think should be less than 700 though

Yep, the small mini-PCs either have much worse GPU performance or will be much more expensive.

Also, At the end Valve is at mercy of memory pricing fluctuations the same as everyone else. Maybe they have a contract for initial shipment, but Valve won't sign up for 20-30 mil units. And this was never to be a full on mass market solution.

 

[yurinka]

Why is he surpised that it won't be priced as a console when it isn't a console? It's a PC, so will be priced like a PC. Is he surprised that it won't be priced like a car?

It will cost around $800 or more and will be aprox. as powerful as a base PS5 or less. And will sell a handful million million or so, maximum around 5 million on its lifetime like the Steamdeck if lucky.

 

[MiguelItUp]

If people see $699 or $799 is going to be a insta pass, forget about research… That's the issue here.

Then it's about the price and nothing else, which, yeah, especially in this day and age. But everything is entirely speculation, and we won't know for sure until it's confirmed. Considering the cost and pricing of the Steam Deck, I definitely think Valve is going to get the best price they can. I'm sure they're aware of the importance there.

I mean yeah, that was almost a given. It's only the usual suspects like IGN or influencers farming for clicks by spreading that Valve is entering the console business.

Exactly. This was never meant to be that. This is meant to be a foot in the door or a stepping stone for those curious about getting in to PC gaming and don't know where to start. Or for those that are already there and wouldn't mind having a separate device in a living room-like setting in another part of their house. When it comes to the PC market (especially PC gaming), Steam might as well be as recognizable of a name as Windows. So, a device from a recognizable name and brand can go pretty far, especially for those new to the game. But the better the price, the better the movement.

Much like Steak Deck, the Steam Machine will be an easy power on and go device because of how SteamOS is setup. Kind of like a console. So, yeah, people that want the PC experience without the "daunting experience of Windows or Linux OS interaction" may be even more curious about it

 

[LordOcidax]

This isn't a console though, so why are we expecting console like pricing?

If the price is not the novelty… Why all the buzz about this thing then?

 

[adamsapple]

MSRP on such a laptop is $1000 and up. No way is Steam Machine over $1k

Those super yatchs don't come cheap, ya know.

 

[BlueManifest]

What sites are you buying from? I can find Mini PCs with similar specs for around 300 USD.

They are pre built too? Show me because I've been looking for a mini pc for the last year and all the weak ones are 900+ and the stronger ones are 1500+

 

[pudel]

Those super yatchs don't come cheap, ya know.

Gabe is BUILDING these mega yachts now...for Billy Boy Gates, Nadella, Spencer....whoever wants one. Just call him.

 

[MacReady13]

If the price is not the novelty… Why all the buzz about this thing then?

The fact it is a PC without Windows and only having Steam OS plus Linux is a big deal for many. Most PC gamers only game through Steam. This is just a convenient way to game without having a bulky PC that can be real expensive. Plus not needing keyboard/mouse to navigate.