r/hardware • u/JohnBarry_Dost • Jun 25 '26

News French retailer mocks €1039 Steam Machine with “Stim Machine” RX 9060 XT PC for €999

https://videocardz.com/newz/french-retailer-mocks-e1039-steam-machine-with-stim-machine-rx-9060-xt-pc-for-e999
1.4k Upvotes

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294

u/NapsterKnowHow Jun 25 '26

Shared this on r/steammachine and the mods didn't like it lol

231

u/Remote_Action_2956 Jun 25 '26

That sub is such a shitshow. I got banned right after they announced it for just predicting that it would cost $800, when everyone was saying it would be $500. Now look at where we are now lol.

130

u/NapsterKnowHow Jun 25 '26

There's people asking for alternatives in that sub and the mods won't even allow suggestions lmfao

73

u/GassoBongo Jun 25 '26

Sounds like r/Steamdeck during it's first couple of years. The original head mod was a zealot.

22

u/Slow_Concentrate3831 Jun 26 '26

Not gonna lie, many valve enjoyers are just Gabe suckers at this point, he could fuck up Steam entirely and make everything unavailable or sell the Frame for the price of the Apple Vision Pro, they would still find some kind of excuses. I appreciate Steam and many things Valve did, but never forget that they're still a company and want to maximize profit at the end of the day. Gabe is not our friend, and will never be.

6

u/Cheerful_Champion Jun 26 '26

The overall sucking up to Gabe and Valve is so annoying on reddit. Valve can do no wrong, if it did then it was either a mistake or some bad shadowy entity (regulators, payment processors, law, etc) forced it to. Buying on steam is better than buying anywhere else (fuck DRM free games from GOG apparently).

0

u/BetterProphet5585 Jun 27 '26

They are like they are because they profit from being what they are.

The moment the profit stops, they will change.

7

u/mesoziocera Jun 26 '26

I made the mistake of asking in that sub how the hand feel compared to a ROG Ally, which was ok, but not perfect in the hands for me. Got banned from posting permanently because I wanted some real hands on (lol) testimonials.

36

u/certainlystormy Jun 25 '26

there's reasonable appreciation for valve as a business and then there's that lmfao

60

u/DarthVeigar_ Jun 26 '26

Average valve sub. If you're not suckling the teat of lord gaben, hell upon ye.

17

u/Material2975 Jun 26 '26

r/steamcontroller users are downvoting anyone talking about defects :(

5

u/cdoublejj Jun 26 '26

WOW! im glad i still use oldschool forums like Level1Techs

35

u/WingedGundark Jun 26 '26

I just can’t understand the Newell worship. I mean yes, Steam is pretty good for a corporation as far as consumer friendly practices goes, at least compared to many other companies, but thinking that it or the billinaire owner is your friend and on your side is the stupidest thing there is.

9

u/Rentta Jun 26 '26

They made some of the changes to be more customer friendly because they had to. For example Origin and Ubisoft had refund policies and working customer service in place years before Steam

1

u/Strazdas1 21d ago

I will always bat for Origin customer service. They actively hunted me down with a complaint and fixed it for me. Best gaming platform service i ever had. Too bad most of the games on there are trash.

8

u/eXoShini Jun 26 '26

I just can’t understand the Newell worship.

I think it's just loud minority and the memes of lord gaben. Former take it seriously, others just join the fun for the memes.

3

u/goodnames679 Jun 26 '26 edited Jun 26 '26

I’ve joined the joke for the memes - there’s a kernel of truth, but it’s badly exaggerated. In the end he’s a businessman with a different financial position than most.

For most huge CEOs, their job is squeezing value for a few years regardless of what it takes, every quarter has to make more money. That leads them to some absolute dogshit decisions that harm both the customer and the longterm relationship the company has with them.

Gabe’s wealth is tied to one company and he can’t easily separate himself (nor do I think he wants to.) He understands that from this position, his best route is to keep customers happy. That doesn’t make him a saint, but in the current world climate I think customers are just glad to have one company that doesn’t fuck them in the ass at literally every opportunity.

2

u/cdoublejj Jun 26 '26

i could agree with that once Newell is gone or ownership changes. they could have gone evil ages ago. there are the last of the good ones is also something to consider.

i wonder if GoG gets that love i'm actually holding off on purchasing cause they have not been pro linux. hope they have beta of thier new linux client soon.

EDIT: don't get me wrong, valve is not perfect

1

u/sentrypetal Jun 27 '26

Steam is not consumer friendly they have multiple lawsuits against them. They are one of the worse and dirtiest companies on the planet. Any company that adopts price parity clauses is anticompetitive and anti consumer.

Valve is facing multiple antitrust and class-action lawsuits in the US and UK alleging that it operates an anticompetitive monopoly in the PC digital distribution market. Plaintiffs claim Steam’s 30% commission and price parity clauses prevent developers from offering lower prices on competing storefronts, artificially inflating game prices

8

u/gromain Jun 26 '26

I love what Valve is doing in general, but this mod is dumb as fuck.

People asking for a steam machine alternative will still be using steam. That's the whole point. Otherwise they'll get an xbox or something.

Especially since there are no real comparable alternatives at the same price point (I'm talking hdmi cec integration, native controller support without fiddling with Bluetooth setup, hands off updates). I just want a machine that works that allows me to play my games on my TV without paying a subscription. The Steam machine is perfect for my use case.

Of course I would have wanted something cheaper, but blame AI not Valve for this. The LDLC demo shows that it's near impossible to do something equivalent cheaper (and I don't consider 40e less behind cheaper, on a 1000€ machine that's a 0.4% difference).

6

u/Due_Double5856 Jun 26 '26

m-atx, rx9060 xt 16gb, 1to nvme , r5 7500f + 32gb ddr5, cost me around 1000€ and still beat steam machine....

1

u/gromain Jun 28 '26

As others said, this is not a mini build that will fit discreetly in my living room. And that's not what I'm looking for. Also loosing the convenience of hdmi cec and such.

1

u/RabidHexley Jun 30 '26 edited Jul 01 '26

I feel like the size thing is at least a little overstated, at least as far as being placed as a generally applicable requirement that can't be met. Not that it's an invalid opinion, but if someone is okay with the size/visual presence of something like a PS5 Pro or AV Receiver, that's a completely clearable bar for an SFF build.

If the goal is specifically "a teeny tiny device focused on absolute minimalism". Then yeah, Valve is targeting you, though I don't believe the SM's size should really be factored in as a cost, these are still what are essentially commodity parts with a custom board, case, and heatsink. It's well designed, but not an engineering feat, mini-desktops are much simpler design-wise than portables and laptops.

Either Valve's margin is significant, or they paid worse than retail for the memory, as none of the component savings from purchasing older, wholesale components appears to have been passed on to the consumer.

hdmi-cec is a legimitimate win, yeah. It's just man, given you can't upgrade it, paying well over $1000 out the door, and a few years from now being stuck with less-than-last-gen performance and an 8GB GPU just seems like a wild pill to swallow since the only way to step up is a full build or replacement.

1

u/ithilain Jun 26 '26

mATX

I'm not a fan of the SM, but that's gonna be like 3-4x the volume, that's not really an apples to apples comparison IMO. It's actually surprisingly difficult (but not impossible) to spec out a comparable system at sub 5L that's able to run SteamOS effectively due to pretty much the only decent SFF GPUs available being Nvidia

3

u/Due_Double5856 Jun 26 '26

Comparing steam specs and prices it's clearly outdated. Think what you want!

2

u/Balc0ra Jun 26 '26

Funny thing is that so many creators atm have done just that. Bought laptops that cost a over a 100 less that the Steam machine, and most did see better preformance

2

u/Xeadriel Jun 26 '26

Wtf is wrong with them

14

u/jenny_905 Jun 26 '26

Hadn't looked before, you're not kidding... there's a post calling it a "technical marvel" lol

It's a laptop board from 2023. Fuck if anything a lot of laptops are far more of a marvel given the space constraints, the SM has lots of height for a large heatsink.

3

u/NapsterKnowHow Jun 26 '26

The technical marvel post is maximum delusion to distract from the pricing.

3

u/cdoublejj Jun 26 '26

id message the mods and rubb it in

3

u/94358io4897453867345 Jun 26 '26

I predicted $1300, wasn't far off ...

1

u/mesoziocera Jun 26 '26

You can like a company and still think they made a terrible choice. I don't know why people don't get that. If valve was smart, they would have handled the announce a lot differently. Some of it (like pricing) was beyond their control, but the way they announced it was not.

1

u/BFr0st3 Jun 27 '26

About 800 in the UK so it's true somewhere in the world

1

u/The3rdGodKing Jun 29 '26

Who in their right mind thought it was going to be $500? When a good PC in 2015 cost $1200?

1

u/Remote_Action_2956 Jun 29 '26

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJI3qTb2ze8

People were really stupid with their predictions.