I am a person who will look at the Steam Machine and cry
blog.zarfhome.com70 points by speckx 4 days ago
70 points by speckx 4 days ago
I am flabbergasted by the negativity. It is more expensive of what we hoped for.
Is it overpriced? I tried to calculate what a PC would cost NOW and it's exactly the same cost.
I have a big Steam Library, a Steam Deck (actually 2), a desktop PC, a very old desktop pc.
We are also a family of 4 and both my kids enjoy gaming (they are my kids after all), recently they started showing a lot of interest for games I play rather than Nintendo games, so I am getting one, here is what I see as positive that others don't:
- I'm buying a console for which I have to buy zero games for. That's probably saving me more than 3k right out of the gate.
- if I buy a game for such console I can play it on a flight, on the go, at my tv, at my desk
- if I want to mod it, I can
- I can finally give a computer to my kid that's not severely outdated, and it has linux, so they learn freedom and power before anything
- I can finally play Nightreign with my wife without using Nucleus Coop (2 instances on the same pc), which makes my PC a furnace
- Buying it puts me in the camp of "I have more linux gaming devices than windows gaming devices"
I don't think the problem is that there aren't people in the market for it, but more that increasingly products that used to be meant for the average middle class are now perks for wealthier individuals - to the point where I think if there's a collapse of the AAA gaming industry is because there's not enough wealthy people time to accommodate for all the titles.
Like GTA VI is speculated to release at around 90$, and any AAA game that will drop around that time will probably have a bad release.
But regarding the steam machine, it's just yet another example that this product isn't at the reach of "the people", it's yet another luxury item.
Not because Valve wanted to, but because this new standard of scalping, hoarding and squeezing the most out of the market is having repercussions across industries.
The sad thing is that Valve used to be on the other side of the fence, at least for some products, it seemed like it was aimed to be accessible for gamers in a pro-consumer way (not all of course, that would be impossible).
In the end even Valve had to fall in line with the rest, and it's just sad to witness it.
So let people grief, they're not just grieving Valve, but also the last hope of a group that still thought there was a counter culture company in the current state of a greedy world, where shared holders value is more important than customers.
For basically my whole gaming life starting in the early 1990s, PC games have been ~$50. It is frankly shocking that the price points have been so sticky. $50 in 2000 dollars is $96 today. Inflation is real. It sucks, but that's the reality of economics. It is completely reasonable for video game prices to appreciate along with everything else.
> In the end even Valve had to fall in line with the rest, and it's just sad to witness it.
It's sad that LLMs have hiked prices so high that economical computers don't exist? I would agree, but your phrasing makes it sound like Valve "had to get involved in shady practices because everyone else did" but the truth is that you can't build a computer at the moment for a reasonable cost because tech bros are speed racing us to a global climate catastrophe.
Yes my phrasing was deliberately like that because I think that's the general sentiment.
I don't think Valve has high margins with this when you factor in assembly and distribution costs, and I don't think Valve has the business model like some console makers had where they could afford to sell at a loss - it would be sold out anyway.
The way you summed it up as the truth, is spot on.
Except others have done the same comparison to current PC prices and still found a ~50% markup.
Grab pc part picker and do it yourself, it's not complex.
How can there be 50% markup if the ram price is alone like 500$
And the parts aren't comparable when it comes to size and acoustics (and, frankly, aesthetics). The Steam Machine is a very small and, by all accounts, very quiet box. Might not be worth it to most people, of course, but I've seen a ton of supposed comparisons that don't take that into account at all. To say nothing of the people who claim to be able to build something cheaper but then talk about buying used parts or reusing RAM and SSDs they had purchased last years or earlier.
I have a desktop with a relatively powerful 5070 (I think) GPU for playing VR games. But my priorities for couch & controller games is not really around super high graphics performance.
Lately I find myself playing classic games on emulator, or generally games without huge graphics demands (been playing that climbing game PEAK a lot lately).
For me, getting a random no-name-brand Mini PC is such a fantastic deal these days. Throw bazzite or now real Steam OS on it, have access to your whole library - it's a linux machine you can configure to your hearts content. I love it. Probably the best deal on amazon right now is this machine, though there's others if you know how to search.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DK34WJ84
Example of real-life gaming performance here - nothing mindblowing, but more than you'd expect from a tiny box that costs like $400.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlup85AxRd0
Just wipe windows immediately and put SteamOS on it and you're good to go
You can also stream games from your powerful PC to the mini PC using Steam, so specs are not as important.
I've always worried about latency for that - but it's ironic since I regularly stream over dedicated WiFi to my Quest VR headset. I'll have to give it a try some time. If they have some asynchronous reprojection tech for streaming that would be ideal
I've co-op games with my friend who lives 2 hours away. Same household should be fine.. It helps if your desktop is plugged into ethernet.
"Nothing is safe, nothing is reliable, and I am looking at the extremely real possibility that I am already unemployable if I have to go back on the market."
Anyone I know who has needed to look for work has had a hell of a time with it. It's a scary world out there.
In the US, unemployment is at 4.3%.
You’ll want the U-6 rate as well for comparison: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm
And U-6 is lower than e.g it has been in ALL of 2008-2018? Generally pretty close to historic lows. Not sure what extra information it provides
Well, the difference is ~13 million people when you scale it to US population. (14.7m @ 4.3 vs 27.8m @ 8.1%)
For perspective that's roughly New York, LA, and Las Vegas, OR Vacaville (CA), Clinton (MI), San Angelo (TX), Allen (TX), Tuscaloosa (AL), San Mateo (CA), Tracy (CA), Tyler (TX), Roanoke (VA), Sparks (NV), Spokane Valley (WA), Las Cruces (NM), Rialto (CA), Hesperia (CA), Renton (WA), Bend (OR), Carmel (IN), Longmont (CO), Sandy Springs (GA), Vista (CA), Davenport (IA), San Marcos (CA), New Braunfels (TX), Edinburg (TX), Mission Viejo (CA), League City (TX), Fall River (MA), Kenosha (WI), El Cajon (CA), Fishers (IN), Flint (MI), South Bend (IN), Green Bay (WI), Roswell (GA), Peoria (IL), Boulder (CO), Greeley (CO), Brockton (MA), Waterbury (CT), New Bedford (MA), Richmond (CA), West Palm Beach (FL), Everett (WA), Hillsboro (OR), Centennial (CO), Conroe (TX), High Point (NC), Pompano Beach (FL), Elgin (IL), Antioch (CA), Burbank (CA), Pueblo (CO), Fargo (ND), El Monte (CA), College Station (TX), Richardson (TX), Daly City (CA), Clearwater (FL), Costa Mesa (CA), Downey (CA), West Jordan (UT), Carlsbad (CA), Miami Gardens (FL), Rochester (MN), Murfreesboro (TN), Temecula (CA), Gresham (OR), Victorville (CA), Arvada (CO), Springfield (IL), Independence (MO), West Valley City (UT), Pearland (TX), Abilene (TX), Norman (OK), Vallejo (CA), Berkeley (CA), Ann Arbor (MI), Allentown (PA), Evansville (IN), Olathe (KS), Beaumont (TX), Cambridge (MA), Peoria (AZ), Lansing (MI), Lafayette (LA), Odessa (TX), Athens (GA), Columbia (MO), Manchester (NH), Billings (MT), Hartford (CT), Concord (NC), North Charleston (SC), Meridian (ID), Surprise (AZ), Santa Clara (CA), Fort Collins (CO), Miramar (FL), Charleston (SC), Denton (TX), Coral Springs (FL), Roseville (CA), Pasadena (CA), Warren (MI), Thornton (CO), Kent (WA), Midland (TX), Waco (TX), Carrollton (TX), McAllen (TX), Sterling Heights (MI), Columbia (SC), Gainesville (FL), Cedar Rapids (IA), New Haven (CT), Stamford (CT), Elizabeth (NJ), Topeka (KS), Kent (WA), Victorville (CA), Syracuse (NY), AND Dayton (OH).
So, ya know, like a couple people.
That has nothing to do with the fact that the hiring market for software engineers sucks right now.
Meaningless considering gig work counts against unemployment, but has none of the benefits traditionally associated with employment. It's 14.3%-19% if you include full time gig work and %30.7-35.4% if you include part time gig workers.
It's ridiculous to say that the "economy works" or is doing well if 99% of people deliver pizzas. Most of the wealth created doesn't come from pizza delivery if people aren't participating in the industries that generate value then they might as well be outside of the labor market entirely.
It's shocking that people don't understand the history or purpose of the unemployment metric. If someone living in a rural town moves to an industrialized city and they cannot find a job then the industrial machine needs more capital allocated to it. Currently we've built a slave economy were low tiers service high tier people. It's a very easy trap to fall into for obvious reasons, but it stalls growth.
Employment numbers don't tell the whole history. You may lose your job as a SWE making 200k/y and to control the hemorrage of your savings, accept a part time contractor role that nets you a fraction of what you used to get, without benefits, or you can start driving for uber, door dash, etc. All of it will make you count as employed.
That's often called "occupational mismatch" and it smuggles in a normative claim that someone always deserves a job matching their prior title, education, or salary. Labor statistics do not and should not assume that.
Also in my experience part time contractor roles are awesome. <20hr/wk = low stress, most of my big purchases like computer hardware were deductible business expenses, and the coveredca subsidy let me get a very good health plan (courtesy of all the full time guys who bleed taxes and get zero subsidies in return)
The point is, I hope you agree that normal people may find a labor market where should them lose their jobs, there's a heightened chance they will find themselves in a situation of "occupational mimatch" a lit bit stressing and not really the ideal, optimal market under their point of view.
It may be that this perception would be particularly amplified when those persons have some doubt whether they would be able, in any single month, to be able to pay both their mortgage and food with their "occupationally mismatched" new income levels.
Despite the fact that you're probably right when you say the labor statistics should not assume that those people are unemployed, I think you can now appreaciate the fact that for some people, the current labor market is not particularly reassuring no matter what numbers the Department of Labor proclaim for this particular statistics.
This doesn't count those who've given up on looking.
U-3 (unemployment rate) is 4.3% like he said. U-4 (U-3 plus discouraged workers, people who want and are available for work but stopped searching) is 4.6%. Practically the same.
If you want more detailed numbers, go look them up. BLS publishes them.
Unemployment is nearly at historical lows. But don't let data distract you from the same tired "everything is terrible" line that's every other post here.
Pretty massive difference between "being employed" and "being employed with a decent wage". Yeah, there's plenty of low-wage service industry or gig economy work available to take you out of the unemployment statistic -- there's a lot less employment available that enables you to live a decent lifestyle (i.e. live somewhere without 4 roommates or raise a family)
Also doesn't count the underemployed.
Very common for people suddenly laid-off from salaried work to turn to part-time gig work and that immediately removes them from the 4.3% unemployed statistic.
That's U-6 (U-5 plus people involuntarily working part-time). It's 8.1%. Pretty low by historical standards, but not as low as it was 3 years ago (6.9%)
The folks who made accurate federal numbers were fired some time ago. the current numbers are about as accurate as someone with an active interest in lying about it cares.
168m of 340m in the US work.
Non-employment is about 51%.
Remove all children and elderly and it’s about 35%.
The 4.3% is contrived - though the decimal is a nice touch.
I think that is a better way to look at it, although you then need to compare the 35% to historical trends, or you will just have an emotional "that's a big number" reaction.
Historical trends is another kind of trap, because employment used to mean something different compared to the necessity an income has become today.
For most of history anybody could just claim land. You literally just said "Mine!" And it was yours. You could shoot anyone who tried to enter it. You could do whatever you want - hunt on it and trade the fur and meat for pure gold, fish, drill for oil, create 100s of acres of opium fields.
Frankly, for most of history, nobody needed a job.
Today all land is owned by somebody, and even if you do own it, you still owe taxes and it comes with all sorts of restrictions and zoning for how you can use it. Often they are managed by POAs and HOAs, so it's not much different than renting. For those that do rent, it's even worse - you stay working forever.
I digress - even as recently as the 1970s or 80s, if you wanted a job, you had one. If you wanted a house, you had one.
Today, you need a job to survive, there's no safety net (at least not the United States) and basically no way to legally obtain the resources, space, and structures a typical human needs to survive well in the world.
So yeah, something like a 35% unemployment rate - where rent is the most expensive thing in the economy, nobody is allowed to build houses, nobody except for a few are allowed to sell goods, nobody is allowed to freely trade or construct anything - is a cause for immense daily suffering for no good reason.
hIsToRy will not look back on this brief era fondly. It's poverty and suffering for no reason, and we could (and will) do better.
> So what now? The short answer is that I have (a) a nice couch; (b) a big TV; (c) a Steam Deck that I never use. I even have a dock for the Deck. So I should hook them all together and try out some games.
This is the real answer. Why lust over new hardware and fret about finances when you have everything you need to play some games right now? There's not even any mention of what games they want to play on the Steam Machine that they can't play on their Steam Deck. They already bought a new TV to use with the Steam Deck and then didn't use it, so why even consider spending more money on more gaming hardware?
The Steam Machine was $250 less before all of the price increases from hardware buyouts. Go complain to Big Tech.
You can install Steam on almost any Linux device. The Steam Machine is great for those who want a portable console-like device. Have you ever tried to build and maintain a shuttle PC yourself? It's obnoxious. This makes the goal of high quality portable gaming much easier.
If you want to maintain the PC (replace or upgrade parts) the Steam Machine seems like a worse choice over a mini-ITX build. The price for the two is comparable.
If you want a console I agree, it's expensive but you can leverage your existing library and use sales, so not too bad if you buy a lot of games.
> Have you ever tried to build and maintain a shuttle PC yourself? It's obnoxious.
The benefit of a SFF PC you made yourself it that it doesn’t use proprietary hardware like the Steam Machine, is easily repaired and easily upgraded.
This is very true. I had a Ryzen Mini PC up until a couple of months ago, when it broke. Low quality VRMs, needed board repair.
Support says I need custom molds to reapply the liquid metal thermal compound, or it would 100% leak. Regular thermal compound just isn’t good enough. It was true. I could send it to China and they would fix it for free, but it would take 60 days and I would have to pay tariffs.
I just cut my losses and harvested the RAM and SSD for something more dependable.
Exactly. This is going to be perfect for my kid as he enters his teenage years. I dont want to mess with building one for him.
Let's hope his friends don't try to drag him into any competitive mainstream games. Valorant, Call of Duty, Battlefield, EA Sports FC, … Kernel-level anti-cheat usually doesn't work on Linux.
Let's hope Valorant, Call of Duty, Battlefield, EA Sports FC and others who explicitly deny their anti cheat from working on Linux react to the increasing demand for gaming on Linux, and begin supporting anti cheat on Linux.
Also, if his friends play Halo, CS2, Ark, War Thunder, Arma, Hell let Loose, Splitgate, TF2, DOTA, Overwatch, or The Finals, he'll be fine.
Okay? You can wipe off your tears and go buy a cheap gaming PC off Craigslist. Toss Bazzite on it, and you're good to go.
I'm not sure what type of sympathy people want to court with the "woe is me" narrative around how they need a third gaming device. The selling point of the Steam Machine is the software. Nothing about the bespoke hardware is worth crying over, it feels like object fetishism for the sake of it.
Exactly - I just built myself a knockoff Steam Machine by putting Steam OS (might switch to Bazzite but so far real Steam OS is fine) on a $300 Mini PC and I'm super pleased with it. 16GB of RAM and a Ryzen 7640HS runs all of my library just fine, though to be fair, I'm not much of a AAA super modern high-graphics gamer. Doing a lot of emulation these days.
End-to-end (hardware, OS, UI software) support from a single vendor for a narrowly-configured gaming PC, with actual serious support in terms of software updates and such, not just "we'll maybe honor the warranty if it breaks", including for TV-attached use cases where PCs (windows or Linux, either) tend to be kinda wonky[0], was appealing enough to me that I planned to buy it day-1 if it was under $700, and probably would still have bought it up to $800, to replace my giant gaming tower with Bazzite on it, even though performance-wise it would be roughly a lateral move or slight downgrade. I was really looking forward to the day I took that thing out of my house, but now... nope, gonna be a while because a few billionaires bid PC hardware up to the Moon.
I'm not aware of a single other product on the market that offers what Valve's device does. Tons of companies offer gaming PCs and you can slap Bazzite on lots of them, but that won't get you everything the Steam Machine offers. It's, AFAIK, unique.
[0] "But I've been running a PC attached to a TV literally for decades..." yeah, you've probably been missing some HDMI features that you don't care about but others do, or had trouble with them, while any gaming console or media player will have those features and have few or no problems with them; do you have surround sound over HDMI to a proper audio receiver, with non-broken mode-switching depending on current output? Use CEC features to wake your PC from sleep? What's your color gamut like? I've done this before too, a lot, hell I did it all the way back when I needed a composite or S-Video out on my video card to make it happen, on a CRT TV before HDMI ports were really a thing. Really good support for the use case looks a lot different than what you usually get by just plugging a PC or laptop into a TV.
Do you want to buy it to play video games on or do you want to buy it as a display/bragging rights piece?
What games do you play now that this specialized piece of hardware would better?
> What games do you play now that this specialized piece of hardware would better?
It'd likely be better as a living room TV PC than any PC I've ever owned or have seen for sale before, and it's likely to enjoy years of good support and frequent updates for its entire software stack by the same vendor that's selling the hardware, which is something I've never seen from anyone but Apple (aside from Valve, of course, for my Steam Deck) in more than 25 years of buying PCs and PC hardware. I tend to use my gaming PCs for five or so years at a time, despite never buying any parts that are top-of-the-line, so I'd expect to use this at least five years, and if the steam deck is any indication, it'll likely have 1st-party support for exactly the device and software I am using that entire time.
It'd be better for approximately all the games I play now than the power-hungry giant tower I have (it's effectively a lateral move on everything except 3D processing speed, which'll be roughly double what I've got now), plus, unlike this bazzite-running franken-PC, I expect it won't do stuff like have a weird whole-screen momentary color-shift every couple minutes (multiple monitors, it's the software, not the monitor's fault), constantly forget how to connect to bluetooth devices it's paired with (this, with a USB-attached bluetooth chip that's allegedly "really good on Linux", LOL; incidentally, it also can't pair with some devices in "desktop mode" [KDE] but can connect to them there once paired in "Gaming Mode", it's so weird), freak the hell out and scream like the damned(!) if a game tries to output something other than stereo audio, et c. I expect it'll have fewer "minor" problems like that on account of the 1st party vendor support and their having very few total hardware configs to test against.
I want it to play video games. Who in god's name would brag about something they merely bought? Especially if that something is mass-produced electronics.
Are the cheap gaming PCs off of Craigslist here in the room with us right now?
Snark aside, the second hand market is off the rails, too... The Steam Machine is cheaper than any DIY gaming PC I can build right now, even from parts off of OLX... And unlike the one I'd make, the Steam Machine will get the Steam Deck treatment as far as optimisation and certification (as in Runs on the Deck) goes.
Be interested to know which country. In USA and UK for the price it is fairly easily match the specs with new parts. And if you leave them on their default power profile in a larger case you get better performance.
you're paying for form factor, 'it just works', and convenience. how have we been having this same apple debate for 30 years, i feel like i'm on slashdot.
People say this about all unjustifiable products. "Why do I want a Juicero? Why do I need a Surface Laptop?" The same form factor, just works, convenience argument.
Nobody wants to acknowledge that it's all marketing halo. It takes less time to install SteamOS on the PC that you already own than it takes to buy and unbox a Steam Machine. But that's not "oooh new thing" retail therapy, so everyone waits with bated breath to see if they can afford the media center equivalent of jewellry. Nobody actually cares about functionality, convenience, or form factor if they're ignoring the most functional, convenient and proximate solution.
Yes, I wasn't criticising just saying a large company who will also be taking a 30% rake on most software run on it is not passing on any bulk purchasing discounts. For some it will be well work the convenience, for me it is not (but the Deck was).
I think SteamOS itself also now officially supports you installing it on any PC. (Ah, actually that's mentioned in this post even.)
Yes, or and hear me out, go ahead and shell out the extra $200 or so as a "hassle fee," if you get the Steam Machine you're much more guaranteed that everything else will just work.
I absolutely agree on your notion of "what is with this 'I need the shiny new thing for sake of having a shiny new thing.' "
The entitlement of the gaming “community” is next to none.
I did what you said last year and it’s been a delight.
Jensen getting gamers to buy CUDA devices on the backs of their endless Reddit induced hardware lust was an incredible move
At this price point they should have never released it, they should have waited. Everywhere I see reviews of it on the internet, come along with forced smiles and talk about how they agree with the philosophy behind it and they should be commended for fighting against Windows. But ultimately no one recommends this to the general public.
The writing is on the wall. This thing is going to flop.
Only thing they can do now is keep it on the market, and in a few years upgrade *and* discount this thing in hopes of reigniting the hype.
If they withdraw it, the very small but existing set of current buyers will scream bloody murder about being abandoned, and if they then try and re-release, trust will already have been broken.
> The writing is on the wall.
This thing is going to sell out.
If prices go back to normal, v2 of this product will be great. This version, at these specs, at this point in time would only be a buy if it was good value (like $500). People will buy them all anyway.
Selling out doesn't equate to success. They've already said the initial launch will be heavily limited.
What matters is if they make a profit throughout the product's lifecycle. Not whether they sell out on initial release.
Steam Deck & Machine appear to be very low margin, so Valve will make very little profit on them whether they sell a lot or a little. So profit isn't the success measure they're aiming for.
They're all just tools to get people to buy more games, which is where the margin is. And the existence of the Steam Machine makes the ecosystem more attractive even if you don't actually buy the Machine.
> What matters is if they make a profit throughout the product's lifecycle.
That may not matter either.
In fact, the most likely outcome is that they sell out of inventory, and the next iteration of the device gets GTA6 level hype. The scarcity of the premium product.
It all depends on how well they support the current iteration, though.
If it turns into a Google Glass or an Apple Vision Pro and is left nearly or actually abandoned, then I think people won't be so interested.
This doesn't make any sense.
They use the OS in multiple products. Tons of people run it on their own hardware.
They could probably not update a single thing on there and it wouldn't matter, the games themselves are mostly running through an emulation layer anyway and will continue to work.
So what are you saying? They can do this single limited release and then discontinue it and everyone is going to be happy about it? People will just flock to the next version when it comes out and not feel burned by what happened?
Not many people run games on linux, only about 5%, amd of those nearly all keep a windows OS around to handle edge cases and upgrading firmware, etc.
This is what the fight is about. If Steam can't get linux based devices into the hands of enough people continuing to support it will remain a money pit for them for as long as they try.
Releasing the Steam box at this price is not helping their cause. They have to recover from this now.
You don't understand how Steam works, the culture around it, or why people are excited about this.
> So what are you saying? They can do this single limited release and then discontinue it and everyone is going to be happy about it?
They're selling a gaming console, of which in their case the hardware is the least important part and a means to an end. It is commodity hardware. No integrated memory. No special sauce.
These are hardware drivers that are a part of the Linux kernel.
What they are selling is a portal (grin) to their ecosystem, and an experience that is different from their competitors. One that unlike many of their competitors, doesn't require a monthly fee to be a part of (multiplayer). AND access to it is now scarce. A limited premium product.
> Not many people run games on linux, only about 5%
You're going to find a bunch of those on this website, myself included. No windows PC laying around though.
I game on Fedora 44 w/ Steam.
> Releasing the Steam box at this price is not helping their cause. They have to recover from this now.
You just don't get it.
I think you're too cloae to take any criticism. Any result seems like it'd be a success to you.