The long awaited Steam Machine is finally out. I was once pretty hyped about the device and it's potential for disruption and my girlfriend who wants to get into PC gaming was all but sold on it as soon as I explained it to her. How times have changed.
I wrote that post before the AI bubble steamrolled consumer computing and sent RAM and storage prices to the Moon, which is now continuing on to Mars it seems. Valve delayed the launch of their new hardware as they tried to source reasonably priced components for it. They also took the beloved Steam Deck off sale for a while, only to bring the increasingly dated device back with a 40% price increase. That was the first sign to me that the Steam Machine wasn't going to have a good launch.
Pre-orders went up June 25th, with some outlets getting review units ahead of time. The results were worse than I feared. The base model with an anemic 512GB of storage is $1,049USD, there's no 1TB model and the 2TB model is an eye watering $1,349USD. To add insult to injury, neither of these include a controller, you have to pay extra to get an apparently excellent, but platform locked Steam Controller with it.
To add insult to injury, its two generation old hardware offers middling performance at best, to the point where it gets outperformed by a cheaper PS5 Pro. This is because not only is it dated out of the box, but it runs at a ludicrously capped 140W TDP across both the GPU and CPU for noise and thermal reasons, kneecapping what was already unimpressive performance to begin with.
As usual Gamers Nexus delivered a top shelf detailed review for those who want the details of how weak this is, though a few think they went a bit easy on it:
Valve seems to agree because they kept promising the Steam Machine would deliver 4K 60fps performance--though with heavy use of AMD FSR--and have now quietly removed that claim from its web site. Nice try guys but we noticed.
Not only is this product effectively dead on arrival with this pricing, I now think it was at the originally intended launch pricing. This is outdated tech that Valve released too late because their corporate structure and Steam money press mean they don't care about deadlines. My girlfriend who was excited for this now has no interest in it and I've instead set her up with my old Lenovo Legion laptop that has a 3060 6GB which when plugged in to a TV, performs at almost the same level as the Steam Machine. Did I mention this laptop is 4 years old and was a mid-spec offering when I bought it?
Of course, we are in a component crisis caused by the AI bubble and the console makers are jacking prices too. Valve's position is different though. They are trying to dig their way in to an untapped niche with the Steam Machine. They're targeting the console audience who finds PC gaming either too daunting or too expensive, offering something that gives a pseudo-plug and play way into the ecosystem and by extension, gets more customers and sales for Steam. It's a great idea and one I think Valve and few others are uniquely positioned to pull off. But after all their years of R&D on this thing, they shoved it out the door at a ludicrous price that no console player will think is worth paying and the PC enthusiast audience Valve has already captured won't think it's worth it either because it's underpowered and overpriced.
It didn't have to be this way.
As usual, the valid criticisms of this device have been met with the raving furor of Valve fanboys. These idiots are legion and rival Apple fanboys for people who would defend paying for of a box of human shit if Valve told them they should want it. They are twisting themselves inside out to try to justify why this pricing is reasonable or why something about the Steam Machine is so revolutionary and so unlike anything else that it somehow justifies paying over a grand for something that can't hang with a cheaper, 18 month old console model when it was launched.
They're wrong on all counts and I intend to rip and tear their arguments to point out their stupidiity because fuck fanboys. And before any of you copium addicts leave comments about how I just hate Valve for some made up reason or another, I have a launch era Steam account with over 3,500 games in it (well within the top 1%), a wishlist of over 750 titles, 335 detailed reviews written and though I do use storefronts like GOG sometimes, I still consider Steam unmatched in terms digital distribution basically anywhere on any platform. Try and question my devotion to the ecosystem.
Here are some of the common arguments I've seen:
"It's a plug and play PC!"
No it isn't. This is arguably the closest we've gotten to one, but there's still too many friction points that make this unappealing to console consumers. First, you have to pay extra to get a controller that you get packed in with any other system. Second, games aren't guaranteed to work well or even at all on the hardware and even if you know enough to look for Steam Verified titles, those aren't measured against consoles and could still perform worse. If you buy a PS5 game you don't run the risk of putting in the disc and having it go "Sorry, this device whose name is on the package can't run this." To be fair, Valve isn't marketing this as something that's as plug and play as a console, but it needs to be to appeal to that audience.
"Consoles are walled gardens!"
Yes they are and indeed, Valve has an admirable stance on making their devices open for users to tinker with, especially on the software side. But PCs already offer that. The console audience is what Valve's trying to win over with the Steam machine and you don't do that by offering a weaker device at a higher price. A console player who bought a Steam Machine doesn't care about installing different operating systems or modding the hardware and those that do care about that can do it without one.
"They're making Linux gaming mainstream!"
No they aren't. Even the very successful Steam Deck has only sold an estimated 4 million units, though this is also aided in part by the fact that you can't build your own handheld. That's great for Valve, but it's a drop in the ocean when you consider that despite soundly losing this generation, even the Xbox Series consoles have sold 35 million units.
Linux's claim to fame is about openness but out of the box, the Steam machine locks you into Valve's ecosystem. You can install another OS or setup games from another storefront but console and casual gamers don't know how and can't be bothered because the mainstream audience only plays a few games a year at most and don't care if they always look state of the art, as long as the price is reasonable and they just work. Linux and even Windows gaming still don't offer that simplicity.
On top of that, many games still don't run properly on Linux, either due to anti-cheat or other reasons. Like Windows or hate it, Linux is still a hyper-enthusiast niche in PC gaming and Valve has not significantly moved the needle on it, as admirable as their work on things like Proton has been. I'm not saying they should give up, but let's not pretend they're displacing Windows or consoles.
My next post that I'll link here when it's published is about using Linux for gaming and let me tell you, if you think it's gotten easy enough for mainstream consumers, you're delusional. Even on SteamOS, some games require you to fumble around with different versions of Proton to get them to work right. You make a mainstream gamer have to do that, you've lost them.
"You can upgrade it!"
Except for the motherboard, CPU, GPU, ports, cooling and everything else that you can upgrade on a real PC. If you can stomach the cost of more RAM or a bigger SSD, you can replace those, though both are a pain in the ass to do and you've been able to add off the shelf storage to an Xbox or PlayStation for two generations now.
"Steam Verified takes the stress out of PC gaming!"
This is a cool program introduced for the Steam Deck that can take a lot of the guesswork out of messing around with game settings to get acceptable performance. I have often disagreed with what Valve considers acceptable to get the Verified badge, but the concept is sound. Except, they've already fumbled it with the Steam Machine. To quote from the excellent Gamers Nexus review:
"There are other signs of ill-preparedness: all the directories and usernames on the Steam Machine contain the word "deck," and every time we ping the sensors we get an error because one of the Steam Deck sensors isn't present (because it isn’t a Steam Deck). Valve was supposedly always planning to distribute SteamOS on non-Deck devices, so they should have built this without those dependencies and artifacts.
This is bleeding into game functionality as well: there's now a per-game "Disable Steam Deck Autodetection" toggle, which may be necessary for games that see the Steam Machine running SteamOS and (for example) automatically disable mouse inputs, like Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2. Even with the toggle, there can be dev-side issues like Dragon's Dogma 2 and Resident Evil 4 detecting Linux and disabling ray tracing, or Baldur's Gate 3 temporarily assuming that literally all Linux users are on SteamOS. Also, games like Total War: Warhammer 3 will default to downloading native Linux builds whenever possible, even if those builds are worse and sometimes out of date than just running the Windows builds through Proton."
Again, a great idea but Valve's clumsy implementation due to their unaccountable flat structure has once again resulted in a great idea getting gimped before it ships.
"Look at the form factor!"
So the Hell what? You think the Steam Machine being cube-sized--which by the way required even further performance compromises to achieve--justifies this kind of price? Have you seen the size of an Xbox Series X or a PS5? Those things are monoliths in comparison and no one cares! They aren't decor, they're boxes that go under the TV to play video games. No one cares what size they are or what they look like!
Don't get me wrong, the computing Valve has managed to cram into that little box while keeping it cool and quiet is an impressive feat of hardware design but no one's looking at the price and thinking "Well that's expensive, but look at how cute it is!" Even as fanboy copium goes, this one's a reach.
"But the Steam Deck!"
What about it? It's a cool device and single-handedly took the handheld gaming PC market from basically a non-entity to a minor entity. I have an MSI Claw 8 AI+ that I love and I'm certain it wouldn't exist without the Steam Deck. All credit to Valve for that.
But the Steam Deck is a handheld, a niche that basically didn't exist in PC gaming before. That's a whole other thing from making a non-portable device designed for the living room, where there's been well entrenched incumbents for decades.
At the end of the day, this is an underpowered box that's selling for way too much and though it's design has made strides in bringing PC gaming to the console audience, it's not going to succeed this way. This might as well be the original Steam Machines initiative, a colossal flop of its own time.
The question then becomes, what could Valve have done to make this more appealing in this climate? Simple: Subsidize the hardware like the console makers do. Most consoles are sold at a loss from their launches and often well into their life cycles. This is done to get more people into the ecosystem, and the loss is made up with the cut of game sales the platforms charge publishers. It's been a viable model for decades now and Valve could easily have done the same.
Between the 30% cut of every Steam sale and the ethically questionable lootbox factories in games like Counter-Strike and DOTA 2, both of which are made stronger by the massive illegal gambling industry around them that Valve turns a blind eye to, the company has a pseudo infinite money glitch. When you combine this with the estimated fewer than 400 employees they have, a lack of cash is not a problem. Company founder and CEO Gabe Newell is worth an estimated $10 billion and has a fleet of yachts and properties.
I don't have a problem with either being wealthy but let's not pretend that they couldn't sell the Steam Machine at a loss until the component crisis is over without batting an eye. If they really want this idea to become a thing--and I do too–then they need to get market share and the way you do that is by undercutting the incumbents. Hell, the entire AI bubble that's causing the component crisis is built around selling products at massive losses to make people dependent on them.
Valve's argument is that they don't want to distort the open PC gaming landscape with subsidies that their competitors can't match because they want other vendors making their own Steam Machine variants. Again, that was laudable once but it's not the world we're in now. If my choices were to do that or watch years of R&D put into a noble goal get flushed down the toilet, I know which I'd choose.
Furthermore, if they're so concerned about competition in the industry then why didn't they work with other manufacturers to put out their own versions at the same time, thus creating the competition they applaud? The problem with the original Steam Machines initiative is that there was no standards around it. This time, they could easily have created those and had vendors lining up to back it I'm sure.
Again, with how weak the hardware in the Steam Machine is, it was a tough value proposition even at their original intended price. Maybe with either some competition or a partnership with an established hardware vendor, they could have got something to market faster that wasn't handicapped from the start.
Regardless, their concerns only matter in a world before the AI bubble. Circumstances change and you either adapt or die. They had a great idea in the Steam Machine that I was excited about based on the response I got from console-centric gamers in my life. Not a single one of them cares anymore and by the time the AI bubble pops and this thing becomes affordable, it'll be so outdated that it won't matter anyway. Valve acts as if the only solution here is to raise prices and it isn't. With Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo all doing that on their own aging hardware, this was the perfect time for the Steam Machine to swoop in and be a huge disruptor. Now it's just launching as an overpriced also ran.
The continued excuses made by moron Valve fanboys just further convince the company they're on the right track, when they should be held accountable for their hubris and that is definitely what it is. Companies and brands are not your friend and the rich people who run them don't need your defending. If you care more about them than the audience whose growth benefits everyone, then you're a fucking idiot who should be called such. I want to see PC gaming grow and give the consoles some real competition that they very much need. What Valve's doing isn't the right way and defending that is to fight against your own interests as a gaming enthusiast.
Then again, the Steam Deck is now just straight up dated and even with a 40% price increase, is apparently selling briskly again. Ultimately, whether you're a fanboy or not, buy whatever you think makes sense for you and brings you joy. Just don't complain about how poor you are or how little respect the industry has for you while you do it. You're telling them you're fine with it.
