Valve Announces the Steam Machine

[Valmy]

Yep. That Steam Machine will probably cost more than a PC would a short time ago thanks to RAMpocolypse.

[Grey Fox]

Over 1k USD makes no sense tho.

[The Minsky Moment]

Optimistic read is that they are delaying because they want to hit a reasonable price point and they need to make sure they have enough supply at the right cost.

[The Minsky Moment]

Optimistic read is that they are delaying because they want to hit a reasonable price point and they need to make sure they have enough supply at the right cost.

Nope.

[Grey Fox]

Yeah. Canadian price point is 1500$ to 2000$.

[Valmy]

LOL at paying that much for a console.

[The Minsky Moment]

The price could be justified if it could actually reliably deliver 60fps at 4K resolution across the steam library, as advertised, but it instead it's using a 3+ year-old mobile graphics card plus massive upscaling to hit the performance level of a base PS5.

The device either should have either been shipped last year at 600-700 or should have been delayed and redesigned to use an RDNA 4 level chip.

[Darth Wagtaros]

Reviews are lackluster. 

[The Minsky Moment]

I was looking at various Prime Day promotions and Minisforum is advertising their G1 mini-PC, which makes an interesting point of comparison because it's the same price (1439 US) as the highest end Steam Machine.

The Minisforum has twice the RAM and a better GPU (RTX 5060) and should perform around 50% better.

However . . .  the Minisforum is larger, less aesthetically attractive (my opinion but I think well based), and runs very loud which makes it less desirable in a living room.  It also has half the storage of the high trim SM, and doesn't come with the Steam Controller.  It runs an NVIDIA CPU and so can't run Steam OS at all (and likely won't run other Linux distros well) which means running whatever state the "Windows X Box Experience" happens to be in.  Clearly the Minisforum offers the superior price/performance ratio and better upgradability, but the SM has it beat on everything else.

Taking all in, it does seem like the SM is priced around what the market is for small form factor prebuilt PCs. It's just that the PC market utterly sucks.

That said, I think Valve should have taken a bit of hit to get the price under 1000 for at least the base version.  It's clear they are supply constrained, and they probably are thinking there is no reason to cut price. But the $$ either way aren't significant for them as a company. If they priced it lower, they could have gotten the benefit of better press and consumer FOMO.   It's much better to have people frustrated because they can't secure limited supply of a desirable object, then people frustrated because they feel they are being ripped off by inflated prices.

[Grey Fox]

Valve made the same mistake than the at previous iteration of the steam machines. They sell a PC when they should be selling a console.

[The Minsky Moment]

I think they have the right idea now, because the distinctions between consoles and PCs are breaking down, and the very raison d'etre of having a proprietary hardware console is in question.  It's Valve that really made that happen, with Steam OS.  MSFT is recognizing that now with their next console, which is basically going to be a consolized PC running a windows variant.  And the concept of having a consolized PC in the living room that runs all PC games (including all Steam games) without being stuck in the console walled garden is great.

Where it breaks down is that Sony and MSFT traditionally sell their consoles at or near break-even and try to make it back on subs and software sales. Valve obviously could do that as buyers on their hardware are probably going to buy incremental Steam games.  I think they did come close to that with Steam Deck, which was very competitively priced until a couple months ago.  But they aren't doing it with SM.

[Grey Fox]

I don't think Helix will have Windows and 3rd party stores anymore. Imo, its not a good idea. Exclusives games in a somewhat close system is what drives enthusiasm for your ecosystem and that's the only way to profit in the platform holder game.