Submitted 2 weeks ago by ampersandrew@lemmy.world to games@lemmy.world
https://store.steampowered.com/sale/steammachine
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Gonna get skewered for this take but... that's slightly better than I thought it would be. I thought it would be 1500 USD at the minimum.
They will sell out instantly and this blocks the scalpers.
Oh yeah sorry, I don't mean to say they're wrong for doing it. I just mean that scalpers are now so prolific that this is the only way to ensure fair purchases, that's the fucked part.
OH NO brother they’re RAFFLING IT!? hahahaha that’s fucked
I’m actually glad to see it. A raffle is one of the only realistic ways to deter scalpers while still leaving the console eventually accessible to people who actually want to play on it. Fuck scalpers; anything that hurts them is a win in my book.
I mean, yeah, fuck scalpers. But valve’s global market is atrocious. I could buy a PS5 in a brick and mortar store, I could order any Xbox version I want, I could’ve bought and play a Switch2 on launch day. But somehow 4 years later I would have to find a sketchy online reseller if I wanted a Steam Deck. The Steam controller won’t get to me unless I’m willing to pay 4 times the original cost, and it would probably be years before I see a Steam Machine in person. Valve is right, piracy is a service problem, and I’m starting to suspect that scalping is too.
OH NO brother they’re RAFFLING IT!? hahahaha that’s fucked
I disagree. The Deck and Controller each had their queues announced at least a week ahead of time. The queue for the Steam Machine kinda just shadowdropped in comparison. Plus a raffle doesn’t penalize anyone for having work or living in a timezone where they’d normally be asleep.
Given the circumstances it’s pretty fair.
Even with an announcement ahead of time it’s so much better imo. Doesn’t penalize people for having to work or just living in a timezone where it’s the middle of the night.
Sure it feels like you have less agency over when you get it but it’s so much fairer.
Yeah 10:00 a.m. is perfectly reasonable but it converts to 6:00 p.m. UK time 7:00 p.m. for a lot of Europe, that’s kind of late in the day to be trying to order something and I think it’s the middle of the night in Australia. This does seem better.
It’s a one-per-household, vetted for bots and scalpers raffle, yup. Well, more of a first-wave-shuffling and then waitlist, really.
Each global region has separate quantities and lists, and each version of the box has their raffled/shuffled lists.
What’s nice about that is, not only are they going to actively try to limit to one household, but as long as you get in before the 25th, even if you get shuffled to the very end, you’re still going to be before anybody that comes in almost 4 days later, and have a chance to be literally first. Chaotic, but I think that’s kinda fun.
Each global region that’s supported that is. I wish they’d have some way for regions outside of those list to still try. There was essentially 0 chance I was able to get a Steam Controller being outside of those lists.
randomization is to determine the order of receipt
... that's high demand, sheesh
It’s not a raffle anyone who joins the list will get a device it’s just when you get it. It’s a countermeasure to stop bots from being used to scalp the machines. I’m sure if you’re not that bothered about getting it in the first week or so you can just hold off and then it’ll go to normal purchasing after that.
Valve seem to have been pretty good so far about keeping scalpers from becoming part of their distribution network. Compared to the shit we saw with the PS5, for example.
i mean, i just entered a raffle. but it’s for free music tix at stern grove in san francisco. that’s the kind of raffle i’ll enter.
I actually wish they did concert tickets like this. I might actually occasionally be able to go to one.
So thats pretty much as expected - 7 months ago it would have been ~$700 as predicted
Baseline numbers compared to top end numbers don’t make sense. 700 vs 1050.
The sad part is that Valve really did price all the parts for pretty much as low as they could go:
The hardware prices seem competitive. But the important note is hinting at the real form factor tax: It doesn’t have the same cost / performance ratio as a normally sized PC using the same hardware.
Well it’s little, competing in the little guy bracket.
Wtf? The 16g of ram costs almost as much as the gpu. I really hope my ram sticks don’t fail on me anytime soon.
This really reflects the reverse spiral gaming hardware has seen in recent years. The benchmarks are absolutely laughable for what you could get for the same price just a year ago. Go back 2 years and the gap is even larger. Gamers are being priced out by AI slop generators.
Now also consider that the Steam Machine also has a tiny form factor, extremely quiet cooling, and CEC over HDMI that make it exceptionally suited for a living room PC and it more than makes up for that $71 gap. It really is about as good a deal as it could have been in 2026, but most people are still comparing it against 2024 prices. I think the $99 Steam Controller having a bundle price of $79 shows that Valve really are trying to do what they can here.
Honestly the fact that were able to push sub-1.1k prices with the mess we have now, and at the same time they so SteamOS can be used on your own steam machine (as in made by you) makes me think they knew of the corner they walked in for a long time.
Bruh the lenovo desktop I got on ebay got more ram than that (32 gb ddr5)
When did you get it and for how much?
Where’d you find this?
Looks like Gamers Nexus’ review
AI pushed gaming 10 years back
I’ll throw steam os on my mini PC and just pretend it’s a steam machine. I knew they were going to break $1k but yeesh, breaking it AND only 512gb is tough
Rough timing. My entire gaming PC cost less than this and is much more powerful, judging by the specs. But I built it out with 32 GB RAM and a few terrabytes of SSDs and NVMe before the current silicon panic, and just upgraded the GPU last year before the prices increased.
I don’t see how there was any way of winning for Valve on this with the current market. It’s not worth the cost, but there’s also likely no way they could make it cheaper.
8 GB VRAM :( 16 GB RAM :(
It could or should have been around 700-800. We must be thankful AI companies that it is how it is now.
Funny, cause whilst its very pricey, i spent more than this on my phone. And most flagship phones cost about the lower end of this. But because i get my phone essentially interest free over a 4 year contract i somehow justify the cost without thinking too much about the fact that i spent 1500 quid on a small slab of glass and metal.
Maybe i need to rethink my grasp on the concept of money.
I’m still getting one but this is clearly a luxury item now rather than a competitive console. Sucks to be Valve here, the timing really worked against them.
I just really hope the VR headset is not much worse than this as I just want to play No Man’s Sky on linux VR.
Damn. I can’t imagine this is what they wanted to price it at, I’m very sad to say it is a competitive price in this insane market…
This makes me wonder about the next time we have to buy new phones …
I’m glad they are doing a random selection of people who sign up who can order one, way better than the first come first served model that gives all the product to bots/scalpers (like the say in their reasoning).
Price seems reasonable for what you get in this current market ;(
I wanted one, but not for this much. Glad I got the first gen steam deck when I could. Steam deck + dock is pretty much the same thing.
It’s a brutal time to be releasing hardware like this.
GPU prices, RAM, SSDs, all inflated through the roof.
This should have been the price of a PS5 Pro, with the performance of a PS5 and it’s not even that.
I still want the Frame, but only because my OG Rift died a couple of months back. I really don’t want to have to go crawling back to Meta for a Quest 3 when I see the price of the Frame, but I’m not optimistic. They really need a reduced spec Frame that just does the streaming portion. With RAM and GPU prices as they are, that would at least make some sense.
Could’ve been worse I guess. I know they did their best considering ridiculous market conditions, but it’s a hard sell if this was meant to compete with consoles, you can still buy a normal console for roughly half the price.
In terms of being a prebuilt gaming PC, it’s not bad. Some people have said a similar spec PC is roughly $100 cheaper if you get everything yourself. Now the question is how much stock Valve actually has to sell, because I assume they won’t have that many made because of the component shortages…
Should I even try to build a PC for $1000 or just give up at this point?
Just compared the storage price jump to the current iPad Pro.
512gb to 2tb Steam Machine + £270 (£90 per 512gb) 512gb to 2tb iPad Pro + £800 (£267 per 512gb)
That’s straight up robbery from Apple.
It’s funny to see that when the main console makers all raised their prices for the same reasons as this thing is expensive everyone was like “Nintendo/Sony/Microsoft are so greedy! They hate their consumers!”
And this thing being overpriced it’s “oh sweet baby angel Gabe, we know the hardships upon thee in thine many literal ships at sea. Please accept my money.”
I’m joking here so calm down Steam nerds.
But I do think some folks need to realize none of these companies want to jack up their prices like this. Everyone wants to make a profit, sure, but AI is screwing everyone.
Well, guess I’m sticking with an old laptop and console for the foreeable future.
I wonder how all the people I know are gonna take this, considering they’ve been rubbing “pc specs at console price” for who knows how long…
Not suprised after seeing the deck’s price hike. Thanks AI…
I'm curious what companies like EA are going to do if this continues. If your customers cannot obtain the hardware to run your games, what do you do? Start releasing pixel titles or just hope for a whale?
Sadly thats probably a competitive price for a console now.
Back when the Steam Machine was first announced, I liked the idea, but wanted something cheaper (I assumed $650 - $800) so I got a $375 off-brand mini gaming PC for the living room with a Ryzen 8745HS (780M iGPU, roughly 2x SD compared to 3x for SM), 512GB SSD and 16GB of DDR.
The model I bought is not available now, but similar specs are going for close to $600, so the price is still roughly proportional. The machine I got cut every corner possible, and for example, I never could get Bluetooth to work reliably with my controllers and ended up getting $20 8bitdo dongles for each controller.
The SM, on the other hand, is a more refined hardware and OS combination where everything just works and that Valve stands behind, and where games will be tweaked and certified for that specific hardware. I am enjoying my mini PC, but I’ve put a lot of time into customizing and troubleshooting to end up with games that still stutter at 4K. For anyone who just wants to game instead of tinkering, SM is likely worth the current price.
In this economy?
i still added myself to the raffle queue. even thou the price is steep, I still see it as an option in the diy PC building landscape. it’s a PC, free from the console ecosystem, I can install any os I want, games from my gog library, emulate freely, all in a tiny quiet box.
i think this price is not what they intended, and in the bigger picture valve is tiny compared to console manufacturers, they can’t get deals in hardware like they can.
I also think valve could sell as option a version with no storage and memory, lower price, it would fit the diy/options community like a glove
Not bad, still cheaper than a standard pre-built which is in the 2000 range for most configurations that would be future-proof! I plan on getting one of these as I already play games on Linux, and this will allow me to convert my current PC into a purely productivity/entertainment machine. I totally need to set aside some money for this bad boy!
Honestly cheaper than I thought tbh
quite a deal, as a 262 year old unc, steam machines back in my day took nearly $2000 to make
Angryhumanoid@fedinsfw.app 2 weeks ago
I imagine most of the more tech savvy people on Lemmy would scoff at this and say “Might as well build a PC” (me included, which I already did), but this is aimed at the consumers who do not have that skill set and are willing to pay that price point for a Steam gaming system /shrug
snooggums@piefed.world 2 weeks ago
I wanted the tiny box format for playing my steam library on the TV without needing to run a cable from the PC. Wasn’t sure I could build one this small so I waited to see how much this was.
Around $800 for the 2TB model was my hope when it was announced. Stupid AI data centers screwing over memory prices.
SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I think $800 for 2 TB was still a bit overoptimistic, but I suppose we’ll never really know.
binarytobis@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Exactly, the small form factor is a huge draw. I’ve built as-small-as-possible cheap gaming PCs before and never gotten close to this size.
I currently use one with no video card that just streams my main PC, but the streaming sucks.
grue@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
The cube form-factor is nice, in a “sit on top of the furniture looking pretty” sort of way. However, I think a short-depth 1U form-factor to stack with hi-fi equipment would be a good way to do it as well, and relatively easily achievable to DIY with off-the-shelf parts.
Statick@feddit.online 2 weeks ago
I built a PC last year for my living room and I’m running bazzite on it. Works great. Slightly larger than a console but this is the case I used.
https://a.co/d/09asiNdc
sparky1337@ttrpg.network 2 weeks ago
I mean, you can do the same thing with a steam deck if you have it. I got one of those anker docks with an RJ45 and ran CAT6 from where my fios ONT hits my network switch and where my big gaming pc is. The wireless streaming sucks big time and is completely unreliable.
PonyOfWar@pawb.social 2 weeks ago
I wonder how many people there are that fall in that category but who wouldn’t just buy a much cheaper console instead.
Angryhumanoid@fedinsfw.app 2 weeks ago
Honestly that makes me like Steam even more. Any company that is willing to put up that much money to serve a niche market earns my respect. Sure they’re doing it for the simple reason of Steam machine owners being guaranteed Steam gaming customers but it’s still serving a subset of their customers like few companies do these days.
SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
An existing PC game library, better pricing and flexibility for PC games, wider and more robust controller support …
jordanlund@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I mean, speaking for myself, I already bought the consoles back in 2020. I bought a Steam Deck to access non-console games.
This does what the Steam Deck does only moreso.
THE_GR8_MIKE@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I have friends who only have consoles. This is who I think should be looking at this. People like me who wanted a second PC for the living room may pass on this because of the price, though. I don’t need a second PC that bad. But for my people with no PC, no monitors, no keyboards, this is pretty decent. Not to mention the it’s an alright deal when pricing out a build yourself.
Donjuanme@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I just gave the neighborhood kid my xbox-s (with expanded memory), my switch hasn’t been touched since my deck arrived. I have everything I need already purchased on steam, I’m not building a second library, or paying 50% more than when I started for a rotating library, I’ll buy a few more games on steam but my catalog is insurmountably full as it is. And now I’ll get to enjoy it with slightly higher graphics on a much larger screen!
someguy3@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
With today’s prices how much cheaper would you get building similar yourself?
SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I heard from a trusted colleague that the difference is about $70, but you also get a possible steam controller discount + a sweet-ass form factor.
garbage_world@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
In Poland with already high electronics prices and 23% VAT, I could build something similar for around $1000.
adarza@piefed.ca 2 weeks ago
i pieced together a comparable 2tb on pcpartpicker, using the cheapest reputable choices and vendors. it was about $200-250 less for the pc (without an os).
UnspecificGravity@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
I think it depends on how much time and effort you are willing to put into sourcing and building everything and how important the form factor is. Lots of guys build pretty capable livingroom computers out of old Small Form Factor business computers, but once you have it all together its not a LOT cheaper than this.
Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
There are things this does that would be very difficult to achieve in a custom build. It’s very compact and quiet and has very good driver support without any tinkering. It’s a machine you hook up to your living room TV and for that it works very well, including CEC support which is not standard on PC hardware. The price is of course hard to swallow and performance isn’t great but i think this thing will definitely sell all the units they can possibly make.
grue@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
The first two are real advantages, but I think any random AMD-based system (CPU and GPU) would be damn near equal in terms of driver support.
mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
It’s also a fundamentally different user experience. Sure you could load SteamOS onto a machine you built. But the point is that this targets the couch players, instead of the desktop players. And very few PC players will build a new PC just for their couch.
I love my Steam Deck, because it has caused my wife’s complaints about gaming to dry up almost completely. When I’m at my computer desk, she can’t snuggle with me. But by moving to the couch, we can snuggle while I play. Her complaints weren’t really about my gaming; they were about my physical unavailability. And the Steam Deck allows me to access the vast majority of my PC games on the couch, so we can both be happy.
robocall@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
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UnspecificGravity@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
Or people that just don’t want to bother with building another machine to put downstairs in the livingroom or whatever. There are a lot of middle aged people who have been PC gaming for decades, are perfectly happy to build their primary gaming machine, and have hundreds of games in their library, and the means to consider the couple hundred dollar price difference between $1000 and whatever they could spend to build a machine to be worth the convenience of not having to do it.
bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de 2 weeks ago
I was hoping for a miracle that I could recommend it to a friend’s son as a good entry into PC gaming. But they’re on a tight budget and I guess they could do better for the same money.
Angryhumanoid@fedinsfw.app 2 weeks ago
If their budget is tight enough yeah a Linux build-your-own is likely the cheapest way to go. It probably won’t be able to play high end games without getting close to the steam price point but you can go much cheaper and still play the majority of steam games.
echodot@feddit.uk 2 weeks ago
What I wanted out of this was a product that a complete unit that I can just point people to and say get that. I’m not sure if I’m alone in this but personally I find specking out PCs to be really boring, I spent forever trying to make sure all the components work together. And then inevitably someone else in my family will end up with a different spec.
This way everyone has the same system and there’s a big corporation to do tech support rather than little old me doing it. It’s just a shame it’s kind of expensive.
suxen_tsihcrana@anarchist.nexus 2 weeks ago
Think about how much time and effort can go into selecting hardware, optimizing it, managing drivers, tweaking OS to play nice. I’m a masochist so I enjoy learning all that stuff - can’t really blame those who don’t. For them it is actually a bargain
Donjuanme@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I have the skill, I built all of my families PC’s through the early 2010’s, I’m done with that lifestyle. I don’t want to diagnose and send evidence of wether it’s the ram or the motherboard that needs to be replaced, argue with foreign customer service for weeks, and then wait months for a replacement piece (that now I know has a higher chance of failure) to be delivered.
I’ll trade a slightly higher investment for peace of mind, as long as it’s a good business (sorry apple)
TheEighthDoctor@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
I think it’s more aimed at the people who will buy anything valve
OddMinus1@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
You say “skill” but I would argue that personal motivation and interest plays an important factor.
When it comes to different things like fixing your car, cooking your food or cutting your hair, you have the option between saving money by doing it yourself or pay someone to do it for you.
Personally, I’m fine with building my own computer and I cook my own food, but I get a mechanic to fix my car and a hairdresser to cut my hair. I could definitely see the appeal for someone to get a “ready to go”-system instead of putting time and effort into picking components and building and maintaining their own custom PC.
Regrettable_incident@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Yeah, I’ve built PCs before, could do it again, but I’m busy and I can’t be arsed. Also, it would probably cost about the same as this machine, just with me doing the labour. Plus, this device looks nice and valve have so far got a good record of making quality hardware, at least IMO.
CosmoNova@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
It‘s nit about skill as prebuilt machines that go for roughly the same are more powerful as well. All the Steam Machine really has going for it is the size. That‘s it. Don‘t need your machine to be a tiny cube sitting under the TV? Get literally anything else.
Really the most remarkable thing here is the software with SteamOS and Proton. By a long shot. Those are the big things we should be discussing.
slaacaa@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
It is aimed at people like me, but it’s too expensive for what it is. I have a PS5, would be happy to buy this to play PC only games, but it just doesn’t make sense for this price, given the performance benchmarks
phx@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I have the skill, but no longer the willingness to maintain said PC for the enjoyment of everyone else who is less technical. Updates on Steam Deck has been dead easy, and compatibility fairly straightforward.
I’ll still muck around with my own bigger gaming rig, but for the “this goes on the living room” device the SM seems like a good balance.
kewjo@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
unlocked, cec, full desktop, form factor, silent, plug and play, built in wireless for controllers and a base station for VR.
if you have disposable income and have those requirements i think it makes sense, especially since the market can remain irrational as long as it wants.
i really hope it sells out as it shows there’s demand for support on Linux and that game developers should at least target minimum specs to the steam machine which is a boon to the whole community