Here is the pricing. I’m certainly waiting some time.
Oof. Not at those prices. Too bad 
If only they had managed to release this for a few hundred dollars less, sometime last year instead, it would’ve been an instant buy for me…
Another RAMpocalypse victim, sadly. Darn it. I was really hoping they could keep the price low enough to maybe give SteamOS and Proton the push it needed to finally take over Xbox. But at that price, for such an underpowered PC… ouch. I hope it doesn’t suffer the same fate as the 1st-gen Steam Machines (which failed catastrophically in the marketplace and led to what, a ten-year pause before this current attempt?).
PC Gamer review is pretty damning, too… 62/100: Steam Machine review | PC Gamer
For comparison, the Costco gaming PC I got last year right before RAMpocalypse was about 2-3x as powerful and with twice the RAM, for $1500 — $150 more than the 2 TB Steam Machine, but dramatically more powerful. I use Apollo to stream it to my TV and it’s basically a console with Steam Big Picture.
The PCGamer review mentions a few other small-form-factor PCs that have much more performance for the buck, but probably not as streamlined a user experience. (Reminds me of the Steam Deck knock-offs: The Rog Ally Xbox X, for example, is like 2-3x more powerful than the Deck, but had absolutely terrible UX. I returned it a day later. So at least Valve has that going for them… SteamOS is so much nicer than Microslop.)
Oh well. Darn it!
I went on record here that the Steam Deck was overpriced and developers wouldn’t bother targeting its specs to ensure compatibility. I was dead wrong.
This thing is going to sell out in minutes and even with specs on the less impressive side, developers will work hard to make games playable on it.
I hope you’re right!
I think the price is pretty reasonable and valve isn’t price gouging at all. I wouldn’t be surprised if they took a cut on their margins. Hardware prices and scarcity are insane right now. I bought 64gb of ram at the end of 2024 for 170. That exact same product today costs 900. It’s the worst time to get into buying hardware and relief probably won’t come for a few years.
I have no need of a steam machine so I’m not considering it but I am considering getting a steam frame, their wireless headset. I think people are going to be shocked at the price. I see people seriously speculating it will be 600 or 700. That’s purely wishful thinking. Valve was targeting under 1000 and said it would be cheaper than an Index but I’m skeptical. People also have their pricing ideas anchored around the heavily subsidized Quest series.
I believe I read that they decided not to take a loss, which is what would have been required to sell at $899 or something like that.
OK, well…maybe they should have lost $150 per machine since people will spend money on Steam.
Or not. I have no idea.
If they do sales at some point, I might be interested. Considering they just raised Deck prices, probably not soon.
I texted my daughter that maybe if I save up, I’ll ask for it for Xmas 2027.
Despite what I personally think of the machine, I also think Johnny_Bravo is right… it’s probably going to sell out in minutes. They’ve preemptively made it a lottery system, and I’d expect stock to not last very long. It’s not like there’s great deals in the market right now for anything. Even the ancient Xboxes are super expensive now. Meh.
What a shitty time to be a PC gamer.
Silver lining… between this and all the AAA/AA studio layoffs, maybe we’ll see another low-mid-hardware indie resurgence? Especially if the Steam Machine becomes anything close to a living room staple on the scale of the Wii or Switch.
The logic isn’t there for Valve to take a loss the way Sony/Microsoft does. Buying their console basically locks you into their system for years. A steam machine can presumably play games from any source and have a flashed OS and be used for other things. It’s much more of a general purpose computer that the user can use how they see fit than a console is. So yes, maybe more steam machine sales ultimately makes Valve more money, but that’s not a given the way it is with Sony and Microsoft. I appreciate the honest approach of just saying “this is the best product we can build with the money, pay the price if you’re interested” – subsidies screw up all sorts of economic behavior.
And people will probably buy them anyway because it’s not like you can get a better computer for cheaper nowadays. You could probably get a significant better computer for not that much more, but you’d have to be deal savvy, build your own, etc.
$1050 sounds about right to me, even generous, given the hardware market right now.
It’s a shitty time to be a AAA developer with huge corporations/shareholder expectations but it’s a pretty awesome time to be a gamer.
You can apparently, quite soon, install SteamOS to any computer and make, sort of, your own Steam Machine.
Are there any really small PCs that would be competitive with Steam Machine? If so, you could get it and run games through Windows(duh) or just install SteamOS soon.
I tried this with Bazzite and another handheld PC (Asus Rog Ally Xbox), and it went terribly. Both base SteamOS and Bazzite had various issues, most of which are still unfixed months later.
Unless Valve properly wants to support other hardware (as in first-party drivers and fixes), it will be a hit or miss situation, I think, especially around things like sleep/resume (which was a huge part of the Deck).
Am I right that the next Xbox is planning to run Steam games? I thought I heard this was a thing that Xbox was doing to save their product line.
I don’t know about that.
The Rog Ally Xbox was not an Xbox; it’s just a handheld Windows PC that Asus made, then co-branded with Microsoft. The reason I got it was the ergonomic handles (more like an Xbox controller than the typically flat/shallow handles on handhels). Microsoft basically took the original Rog Ally and had Asus mold some extra plastic on it.
What the next actual Xbox is going to do, I have no idea. That entire company and their Xbox division seems be circling the drain, IMHO, unless their new leader can really turn things around (doubtful to me…).
I’m seeing a lot of people who were holding out hope that the Steam Machine somehow wasn’t going to be at this price level now trying to figure out what they should do for an upgrade. I don’t know what to tell them either.
If the cheapest model had been $799, I would have waited for a sale(like 2 years from now) and see if it was worth it at $600-$650.
This was all in my mind before everything went way up.
I wonder how the resale market will be. Will they be $5k on eBay the next day?
I’m not sure there’s a good use case for this for a lot of people. Console users aren’t going to move over and they tend to be very price sensitive and this isn’t even any more powerful than current gen consoles. PC gaming enthusiasts already have way more powerful gaming PCs – so this one, what, a second small form factor PC to connect to your living room TV at 20x the price as the steam link? Not sure who the target audience is. The steam deck makes sense - it’s portable in a way gaming PCs aren’t. Steam frame makes sense, if you want a standalone headset out of meta’s ecosystem. Steam machine? Who is the target?
So… small form factor PC for people who don’t want to build their own, games on your TV for people who don’t know how to stream from their desktop PCs, and console users who are pissed at Sony and realized xbox is dying and this is the main alternative? Maybe it could’ve had more crossover appeal at $600 which would’ve been achievable in 2024. Maybe they’re just unlucky with the timing.
(Speculation)
Apparently, the younger generations these days consider PC gaming as some sort of exotic hobby (compared to console video games). I was confused by this the first time a kid (and by that I mean like a 20-something) told me that, and I asked for an explanation… they said like well, you get the best games, the most games, but it takes so much equipment to get started and you have to learn a whole new controls scheme (mouse and keyboard).
I guess there’s some subset of the population who, unlike most of us here, didn’t grow up with DOS or Commodores and Amigas and such, but instead have only known phones/tablets and console games most of their lives, so PC Gaming was only something they’d only ever heard of anecdotally and rarely experienced for themselves?
If Valve could’ve “broken through” to them with a console-like PC experience (especially paired with SteamOS + Steam Controller and none of the bullshit of Windows), that might’ve suckered in a whole new generation of PC gamers.
I have no idea if this interpretation at all matches the actual market demographics. It’s just my anecdotal impression from having talked to a few people who were surprised (and impressed) that I was a PC gamer.
Heh. When I was their age, I was just the nerdy outcast. How times have changed…
I may get one eventually if my current gaming laptop ever breaks, but not any time soon not at that price.
A flip side of @reply’s theory (again, my speculation) is that for a lot of people who have gaming rigs (including me, but mine is an aging mid-range setup), how much do we need the PC element at all? Sure, I prefer it for surfing the web, writing docs, etc. - but given my smartphone and tablets, I don’t really need my rig for anything other than games.
If you assume you’re surfing the web and doing your other “PC things” on a phone/tablet app, then why NOT buy a steam machine at a noticeably lower price than a new gaming rig? I mean, given the reported pricing for the upcoming generation of consoles it’s similar in price, but you’ll get a wider range of games (fewer exclusives though).
Alternately, like @furryman if my gaming PC died (depending on what died) I wouldn’t be willing to pay the price on a brand new rig - I’d swap over to my gaming laptop (which is a luxury), but if I didn’t have that option, parting out my current machine and buying a Steam Machine wouldn’t be a bad choice.