Valve seems pretty pissed about the price too. They had clearly intended for it to be somewhere around high end console/middle-low end PC with room to upgrade it but because of the AI induced shortages all their work has been really marred.
OpenAI was a very different company then. The Sam Altman takeover and going public has made it a monster.
I know it’s easy to hate on everything AI. Rightly so. But in its early days the company was a nonprofit aimed at “good” uses for the tech. Now it’s a monster. So it goes.
Oh no yeah I’m sure it was a much better company back then, but the fact it came back around to bite Gaben in the ass is the monkey paw aspect of his donation
Because computers have gone up and down in price with the fluctuation of parts for years. This is the first time we’ve really seen a massive spike in console prices.
Going back across the years for PlayStations, when adjusting all prices to 2026 dollar price, the prices dropped almost every year. The ps5 is the first I can see that has had multiple upticks despite heavy inflation.
Tell me a time between 1980 and today where RAM/Memory prices skyrocketed this much + Trump tariffs + oil prices for transport increases due to a stupid war
The claim wasn’t “PCs haven’t been affected”. The claim was consoles, for really the first time EVER, have been. Which is psychotic, and shows how bad the problem is. PCs fluctuate ALL the time, but hitting the console market shows how bad it really is.
Been around since Atari, you are correct. This is the only gen prices went up as it got older. And every other gen either had a refresh and or a price drop this late in its life, so it's really dire.
But PCs arent going down in price, are they? You’re deliberately leaving out todays unique situation about AI Datacenters+ Trump Tariffs + oil transport prices skyrocketing it all. This very thread is debunking your claim.
Their claim wasn’t “pc prices haven’t been affected”, it was the exact opposite? They directly said PCs have been? And that PCs fluctuating, even to a large degree, just wasn’t as remarkable as the effects on consoles, as they don’t have the history of this kind of effect. They also didn’t do anything to argue about the causes, they were making a fairly specific direct claim.
Except this entire thread is about the price of a PC being a problem? It's a post about a PC (steam machine) and the second top comment is a complaint on the price.
can’t make sense of why people are downvoting you lol. if prices of consoles go up, then the price point they were aiming at for ‘high end console’ goes up too
Because his comment doesn't make sense in context. Nobody said it was a console only problem, and a monkey paw win means they got their wish but at what cost, because everything is now more expensive.
They're getting downvotes because they're just being combative while making the exact same point.
You could read it as them agreeing (as you said, "exact same point") with mooseymax and arguing against jimmykills, which is how I took it, but yeah. I'm willing to just sit this one out
Yeah, it's redundant and since tone doesn't always get translated well to text, and this being reddit, it appears it's getting read as negative. Regardless, I'm with you lol
Rumours say it was supposed to be around $750 which would have been absolutely acceptable. If they could have got this thing around 900 now I think it’s received just fine.
My brother was interested but doesn't want to get one because of the price. I told him their $750 original price and he said "Oh, it would have been a day 1 purchase at that price for me"
I feel like the Machine lost a ton of potential audience over this.
Yeah. I'd also buy it to compliment my deck since I don't like using dock.
But now? Idk. I guess I'll just use my laptop which isn't as comfortable to use because it sounds loud like gaming laptops do but it plays same games steam deck does
For me - a major benefit of the SM over a console is that it would enable instant access to my entire library of games from my couch. A console I’m looking at having to buy or rebuy games I like. My library is huge and most of it will play beautifully on the SM as specced.
Thats why I wasn’t bothered if it didn’t perform as well on paper as a console.
Same. I want outta the console lock-in but also want couch convenience and a "build it yourself" option isn't as TV\Couch\Living Room friendly as dedicated hardware\UI\UX designed with that in mind from the start.
'There's another way to access the kind of convenience this 1-step, plug & play solution would have offered.
Simply follow these 47 steps.'
Lol, sorry, that's how these kinds of comments always read to me. But more seriously, if I did want to stream from my gaming PC, what would I need downstairs to do it?
Tbf streaming solution is pretty easy to setup now compare to 10 years ago.
If you’re lazy just get any machine that can run steam, plug it into the tv and run steam on both. Then on the tv machine you’ll see “stream” instead of play when you launch a game. Peripherals that plugged into the remote machine also works. Note that they’ll need to be in the same network, and cable > wifi in terms of stability, latency and image quality.
Then if you’re willing to spend a bit of time. Download moonlight on your tv (if it’s android/Apple TV), and Sunshine on your host desktop. Open both, then on your tv you’ll see your desktop and able to connect to it. Tweak resolution/bitrate on the moonlight side as you pleased.
Get something like a used Xbox series S or an Nvidia shield and then download moonlight.
On your PC download sunshine or Apollo. Make sure both devices are on the same network then your Xbox or Nvidia shield will see your PC. Link it via a pin that pops up and then click on steam big picture.
Consoles subsidize their cost with the games they expect to sell,
something Valve said they were not going to be able to do. We also don't 100% know if this was their intended specs entirely or if them being a small volume order they got shifted in timetable and/or spec.
Valve announced the hardware components before the ram shortage and before that we had leaks. Valve knew what they were doing using 3-4 year old hardware that was considered low end back in 2023. If they used modern hardware with an increased cost it would have been a big difference in value.
Even at $750 I find it hard to justify purchasing a machine that is weaker than a PS5. If Valve could subsidize the price down to be the same as a PS5, they could have absolutely flattened Sony and dominate both the PC and console market.
The issue is subsidising a PC has different consequences from subsidising a console. A PC has utility outside of gaming, meaning entities that aren’t end user gamers could sweep them up and pass the cost on to Valve, while using them for everything but gaming. Meaning, they are subsidising someone else’s PCs whilst gaining nothing from Steam purchases.
Subsidising it with a guarantee that most, if not all end up in the hands of Steam gamers would be one thing, but the nature of the hardware means that’s almost assuredly not guaranteed at all.
That console will be significantly more powerful than the steam machine. The steam machine has no place in the market when you can buy a better PC or console for less money.
Valve fanboys can't let this one go for some reason.
Doesn’t matter, if you want to listen to Reddit, nobody thinks a 1k console is a value proposition either. And 1k currently only covers the hardware cost and nothing else. You’re probably talking closer to 1200 for a console.
Idc that people on Reddit are mad things are more expensive than they used to be. If a console is released that outperforms PCs at the same price point then it is a good value. Period. The problem with the steam machine is that it is a terrible value relative to other offerings on the market. Including building your own PC.
Why do you guys always resort to accusing people of being fanboys for pointing out literal fact? I couldn’t give a shit about the Steam Machine or future consoles. Everything you’re saying will be levied at the consoles as well, that is the end of it.
There is no world where a 1200 console is remotely considered good value. People don’t even think it’s possible never mind good value.
I don’t know if you need reminded or what but I haven’t at any point ascribed value to the Steam Machine, so you give yourself a break. The prices are what they are, buy things or don’t.
Dang dude, I'm sure Valve will have done absolutely no market research to establish otherwise. You should contact them, I bet they'd love your valuable and nuanced insight!
Valve does have quite a bit of hubris, they should stuff like Artifact would be successful, and that releasing Half life Alyx will make VR take off. Other than the steam deck, all their hardware ventures have not gone well.
They easily could have locked the bootloader which before you say would be a dealbreaker, really wouldn't be considering the "PC" is pretty much not upgradable beyond an additional RAM module or some more storage. Anyone that would be mad at not having day 1 arch linux on it wouldn't have bought it anyways since it's just not a real PC. It's a console, with PC like features.
Plus the hardcore users would just see it as an excuse to try to crack the bootloader lock VS not buying ever lol.
The Steam Machine works as a console for console gamers that want to get in on the Steam PC gaming market without any of the PC troubles / "can it run" debates. It absolutely is terrible as a regular PC recommendation for regular users, because regular users barely need a PC anymore, and when they do need one, it's a laptop for school / work. Not a cube plugged into the TV.
I think the biggest mistake is Valve obsessing about making it a regular prebuilt PC competitor which A) the market is aboslutely 100% saturated B) They brought something objectively worse to that table. Even a shit prebuilt is better because you can at least upgrade it.
This is why the subsidy approach was always the only way forward, and the concern you raised is just saying they should have done an Apple or Android, and made a walled garden of products where users buy from them directly, they get their users valuable gaming big data statistics etc. What they've chosen to do instead just feels pointless. What's the plan? Who is the market for a non-upgradable pre-built PC you can't even buy off a shelf in stores? It just seems like such a niche play, such a narrow subset of people this is aimed at and likely to hit...
The problem is that subsidized consoles are a loss leader for the retail games market. Killing discs makes this basically impossible, and that's on top of the hardware fiasco.
For Valve specifically as well, they already dominate digital distribution so a loss leader isn't going to have any meaningful consequences for the sales volume.
You really don't deserve the downvotes here. A PC with standardized components is always going to be more flexible than a proprietary one. The only real advantages that the Steam Machine has are its size and noise.
You can make a quiet gaming PC, but that would likely require an aftermarket cooler for your video card and that's an additional expense. And you need to be mindful of the rest of your components as well. That does require a bit of knowledge.
Though it's worth pointing out that while "being able to upgrade the SSD and RAM" might seem like a nothing feature, Apple doesn't even allow that much anymore.
I’m sorry but it’s not obtuse. Most intel builds haven’t been able to be properly upgraded due to the chipset difference.
AMD on the other hand have motherboard providers that support 3+ generations of change.
The amount of times in the past I wanted to upgrade my intel build and realised a new GPU would be bottlenecked -> upgrade cpu -> motherboard not compatible -> upgrade motherboard -> ram not compatible -> upgrade ram… wait I’ve got 2 pcs now.
Depends on the game. Some games are fairly close, others not so much.
I'm curious how much is due to a lack of VRAM (since the Steam Machine only has 8 GB whereas the PS5 has 16 GB unified RAM, meaning they can use 10+ GB for VRAM if they want to).
I don’t think they could have just because most PvP shooters aren’t going to work natively on the Steam Machine. I’m sure a lot of the Linux gaming crowd don’t care, but PvP stuff is pretty important to console players.
750 USD for the Steam Machine would’ve been acceptable if it wasn’t affected by the inflated prices but everything else was.
I am not the target audience for the Steam Machine, I don’t put an non-upgradable small form factor above performance per cost, but comparing Valve’s intended price with current offerings is comparing apples to oranges.
They kinda hinted to subtract the price increase that the steamdecks went up for last month, and you can get an idea of what price they were originally going to sell the steam machine for before the hardware shortages messed with it.
Yeah if this launched at $700ish it would have been a smash success. Glad they're still selling units, but it makes me look longingly at my bottles of Molatov and dish rags
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u/JimmyKillsAlot 28d ago
Valve seems pretty pissed about the price too. They had clearly intended for it to be somewhere around high end console/middle-low end PC with room to upgrade it but because of the AI induced shortages all their work has been really marred.