Steam Machine Announced; Thoughts & Opinions

[Yousef]

Okay… so in an effort to maintain a semi consistent article/news upload schedule, I’ll provide some thoughts on the new valve announcement, such timing.

As a longtime supporter of steam deck and longtime hater of valve, this has me both optimistic and cautious.

The steam deck was an excellent machine, but not without its set of baggage.

Unfortunately, it didn’t learn from the switch, since it released an OLED version instead of making having that feature from the start. Sure, OLED has more battery, and it may be slightly more powerful, but you’re still good to go if you have a regular deck, especially if you dock it to an OLED monitor (rendering the extended battery and new screen completely moot, unfortunately).

It appears this new machine aims to be less of a condensed console and more of a shortcut to having a pc, so the prices may affect that.


Speaking of that, we won’t really know how much this thing costs until much later, but we will definitely find out somewhere around 2026 as the video suggests.


That’s all. I sounded pretty critical, but that’s just how I talk. I’m pretty excited about this and hope it lives up and is easy to afford. Stay tuned for more news if I don’t forget to write for 6 months again.

 

[SylverReZ]

In terms of the specs, I'm not a fan of their choosing for the video RAM and how much memory the system holds. By default, it is 16GB of RAM and 8GB of VRAM which are quite outdated compared to what you would get for a decent gaming rig these days - from smoother frame rates, performance, and a lag-free experience. But I guess it would also factor in cost too for the manufacturing. My choice would be 32GB of RAM and 16GB of VRAM.

 

[Yousef]

In terms of the specs, I'm not a fan of their choosing for the video RAM and how much memory the system holds. By default, it is 16GB of RAM and 8GB of VRAM which are quite outdated compared to what you would get for a decent gaming rig these days. But I guess it would also factor in cost too for the manufacturing. My choice would be 32GB of RAM and 16GB of VRAM.

Very good analysis, that part has bugged me too. Yeah, could be a cost thing.

 

[ciro64]

Behold, the GabeCube

 

[Cheela]

As the biggest steam bitch and the most south american person. This has me excited for a lot of reason but none of them related to buying the gabecuve at the moment. Mostly in the software side of things cause ever since the release of the steam deck and thanks to the efforts of valve, there has been an increase amount of usability improvements towards linux gaming as a whole, not only because of what they are doing, but because of the amounts of eyes the steam deck has gathered towards linux gaming as a viable option versus the status quo of windows as the only option for pc gaming.

However after my excitement came reality, the steam deck is still not available on a lot of parts of the world, which includes my humble Chile. Sure i can get a steam deck used via Facebook marketplace or do some shared suitcase shenanigans but is all not ideal. Soo i doubt i will be able to get it any time soon.

Still i am excited for it, and the controller. Holy fuck the controller is everything i ever wanted, that i will get no doubt

 

[RiskyAsh]

If it comes in around $600 to be competitively priced with the existing consoles, then it's a really solid deal.

 

[Sir Auriel of Lionel]

Emudeck launched for GabeCube when? When that happens the most normie and non techie casual that held off from the Switch 2 might actually be interested once someone (younger brother/cousin) teaches him how to access an insane backlog from years past after he picked up a discounted Series S or splurged on a PS5 a year back.

 

[Hourai]

Didn't they try this ten or so years ago and have it flop? I get that we live in a different environment than then (especially since the current competitors both have no games five years into their life cycles), but I don't see how this would go any differently.

 

[G.L.a.D.O.S.]

Oddly enough, you would think I would be the very one here wanting one of these, but no. I never bought a Steam Deck and I won't be buying this.
I have enough computers for one, a fairly powerful full sized gaming tower I never use anyway. Honestly, I can't name one modern or ten year old game that I would even want to play, aside from a few indie titles. I definitely don't need a most likely overpriced piece of kit to play those.

My handheld can play most of anything I want to play, so I honestly don't see the need for it personally. Now, I'm not dogging anyone for wanting or buying one, it'll probably be a badass little Steam machine. I'm more looking forward to the public release of SteamOS 3, personally, to chuck it on one of my in storage Ryzen desktops.

 

[G.L.a.D.O.S.]

Didn't they try this ten or so years ago and have it flop? I get that we live in a different environment than then (especially since the current competitors both have no games five years into their life cycles), but I don't see how this would go any differently.

I do believe it was a partnership with Alienware, and yeah, they kind of well as you said, flopped.
But this one has a better shot. Those, as I remember reading, were fairly subpar machines for the time. If I'm not mistaken, Dell had acquired Alienware at this time, and they were cutting corners, as big corporations tend to do.

 

[Cheela]

Emudeck launched for GabeCube when? When that happens the most normie and non techie casual that held off from the Switch 2 might actually be interested once someone (younger brother/cousin) teaches him how to access an insane backlog from years past after he picked up a discounted Series S or splurged on a PS5 a year back.

And considering than xbox is kinda shooting themselves on the foot with recent prices increase at gamepass, which was honestly one of the best deals for normie people and them apparently trying to leave the console market it will be a pretty good deal for those people that only want a console with an storefront

Didn't they try this ten or so years ago and have it flop? I get that we live in a different environment than then (especially since the current competitors both have no games five years into their life cycles), but I don't see how this would go any differently.

this is different for many reasons, but i think one of the most important ones compared to the attempt 10 years ago are:
Valve 10 years ago tried to push steam machines as a cryback to windows 8 shittiness, but acted more like Epic vs them in that regard(ironic i know), cause they did not offer really a compelling alternative, instead they half baked an os based on linux (and linux gaming in the 2010s was rough) and told manufacters to do the job for them. Not really invested in making machine themselves.
Now is more of a mature, on hand approach to releasing hardware. Is not rushed imo considering there has been a lot of companies releasing portable handhelds after the steam deck came out (even if the steam deck was not truly the first handheld on the market based on a pc os) but they need to still compare to the steam deck, a.k.a. a 5 year old handheld pc to even compete on the market. Valve has done its fair share of research on the hardware department. Compared to that valve 10 years ago that realeased the steam controller v1 and those steam links dongles is night and day. Those attempts were marketed mostly at hardcore valve fans (and failed tbh) while this seems more like a serious approach at trying to gather more market offering good products to not just pc gamers, but people new to pc gaming as well.

 

[Sir Auriel of Lionel]

Those attempts were marketed mostly at hardcore valve fans (and failed tbh) while this seems more like a serious approach at trying to gather more market offering good products to not just pc gamers, but people new to pc gaming as well.

Yep they realized the real money isn't at hardcore gamers who will have already invested in PCs to last and know how to upgrade piece by piece but the casual is what really makes the market. The more they can get buzz from gamers to drip to casual conversation onto forums after Nintendo and Xbox and now Playstation have pissed off customers they're going to shop around and if someone makes it easy to adopt emulation they will. I was that casual and a few mentions from my friend of emulation and a sale got me to get the deck and 2 coworkers who gave me websites to hunt roms on and told me the app to look on youtube to install here I am today playing Shadow Hearts 2 on the go while my poor scratched discs can rest easily.

Mostly single people with disposable income, the casual gamer, or someone with a laptop or can't/won't invest time into PC building are the best to snatch up, the only real white whale in this ocean is the parent who after buying a console only has to buy giftcards and let the kid go crazy. If they somehow manage to disrupt that and the parent is willing to learn or make it their own console at home they get in and can stay in. I hope it succeeds and returns back game nights with couch co op indies and then back to Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles on Dolphin.

 

[Octopus]

I think it's going to be successful just like the Steam Deck was, considering it's basically just a desktop Steam Deck. The casual PC gamer market they're clearly targeting is pretty lucrative. It's 16GB RAM is oddly low spec for your average hardcore 'custom PC or nothing' dude, but everything else on it is impressive for what I'm assuming is a less than 1k price tag. It's got a pretty jacked six-core CPU, and even though its graphics card only has 8GB VRAM it's still stronger than the Steam Deck which can handle some surprising stuff. It's pushing AI upscaling of course with FSR I think to try and make up the difference, but I know very little about that stuff to really comment much on it. A 516GB SSD is pretty good too, there's also allegedly a 1TB model that I assume will cost more and both have microSD slots for adding more storage in anyways.

I'm going to guess that it's a little more expensive than the $650 CAD that it would be for a disk tray model PS5, but we won't know until the price is listed. For that hypothetical price, you get a pretty good mid-tier gaming PC with some decent specs, and the fact they're including open support for other OS's and apps is pretty cool so I can see this being becoming pretty popular with emulation chads. Basically, I don't think it's bad and the casual PC market will probably eat it up like they did the Steam Deck.

 

[GardeniaSky]

It seems cool but it's out of budget for the foreseeable future