Valve certainly won't win it, but they're bringing the heat where it wasn't before.
SteamOS is the important part here - if it is proven to be a good console experience (which the deck has basically proven already) then licensing of the OS to other manufacturers will put a lot of pressure on integrated h/w s/w manufacturers.
Unlike the handheld format, the tvbox console is fairly easy to manufacture and is tolerant of a lot of spec and price variety. Any slip up by Sony and Microsoft in specs and price will result in steam machine variants carving away market share, which could force more frequent console releases.
The steam machine will almost certainly come in at a higher price point than the PS5, but with no 'online' subscription charge and reasonably priced storage upgrades we may see these revenue streams disappear from the next console generation in order to compete.
SteamOS isn't perfect, and the variety inherent in the platform that is a strength is also a weakness. The core markets for Nintendo and for Sony aren't going anywhere.
My main game console right now is one of those little gaming boxes you can buy on Amazon for about $400, where I have installed NixOS + Jovian to get the "SteamOS" interface.
I really like it. It really does feel like a "game console"; usually when I've made my own console using Linux, it always feels kind of janky. For example, RetroPie on the Raspberry Pi is pretty cool, but it doesn't feel like a proper commercial product, it feels like a developer made a GUI to launch games.
I have like 750 games on Steam that I have hoarded over the years, in addition to the Epic Games Store and GOG, which can be installed with Heroic, and the fact that I can play them on a "console" instead of a computer makes it much easier to play in my living room or bedroom. It even works fine with the Xbox One controllers; I use the official Microsoft USB dongle to minimize latency, it works great.
I think there actually is a chance that Valve could really be a real competitor, if not a winner.
That sounds interesting because with NixOS it should be very easy to move your config to the next thing, and honestly I prefer NixOS over Arch.
What I wanted to ask you: have you converted the device into a STB as well or is that still standalone?
I'm afraid I don't know what an STB is.
I installed NixOS + Jovian on my Steamdeck and it works great as well.
Nix support is built-in to SteamOS already btw, I used that to set up Ship of Harkinian for example.
Which box is that? I personally have a Nvidia Shield with Steam Link to stream games from my gaming computer to my TV. I connected an Xbox controller and it works pretty well. I also use an old iPad for streaming games for games that don't lend themselves well to a controller.
It's obviously not a direct replacement since it still relies on my gaming machine, which not everyone has, but it gets a pretty good console experience, and it's portable.
Do you have link to the little gaming box?
Yep! https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D733JFML?th=1
The one I ordered had 32 gigs of memory; this was more than a year ago so I'm sure there are better ones now, but I have to say that I feel like this thing "punches above its weight" in that it does seem to run a lot more stuff than I thought it would at a decent framerate.
Current OS split of Steam users - 94.84% windows, 2.11% mac, 3.05% Linux.
Valve has fought tooth and nail for a decade to make that 3.05% a reality. Linux means they control their own destiny, instead of being at the mercy of Microsoft. Valve has their eyes on this prize and theyâre willing to play the long game.
Everyoneâs going to talk about âwinningâ the console generation, but winning could mean an increase of Linuxâs share to 5-6%. That would be a massive win, and would be a vindication of Valveâs strategy. Valve could achieve their goals even if Sony and Nintendo sells millions of consoles more.
Valveâs strategy being that Microsoft will continue down this user-hostile and privacy-hostile experience.
Being computer-savvy means Iâm still a relative outlier, but given the renewed shift away from Windows and Office; Windows unfortunately may become niche.
Why unfortunately? Isn't that a good thing? (Assuming > 0% will switch to Linux instead of iOS)
Iâd bet that most PC Windows gamers care a lot more about Steam than they do about Windows. If Microsoft did anything drastic - like blocking Steam like Apple do on iOS - it would hurt Windows severely.
Steam without content loses its value, that content is produced via Windows development tools.
Steam on Linux works really well now. I sort of built my own steam machine a few months back with a framework desktop that now sits in my TV rack. Gaming on it is a really good experience. Had to buy a PS5 controller though because I could not get the XBOX controller to work over bluetooth which was a bit of a bummer. For me the new controller is most interesting as most games have XBOX controller support (with xbox button captions) and the steam controller adopts the button naming.
I just built one of these as well. For your Xbox controller, see if this works: find any Windows PC and download the Xbox Accessories app. Connect the controller (via USB) and update its firmware. Once I did this, I was able to pair it with the framework desktop via bluetooth (under linux) reliably, and it's been rock solid ever since. Apparently some of the models shipped with buggy firmware that linux really doesn't like for whatever reason.
If you still have the xbox controller, I'd recommend the dedicated USB wireless adapter. It's reasonably priced and very solid.
Especially if you ever use more than one controller at a time, a dedicated dongle is essential.
I tried several solutions, including an old PS3, Xbox One controller (with the official dongle) and I ended up buying an 8bitDo xbox controller. They are well manufactured (better than the xbox controller), has a built in batter (unlike the xbox controller) and has a usb dock for charging.
Highly recommend them.
This is only possible due to how the console space has changed over the last 10 years. The killer app for console over PC used to be simplicity - you pop in the disc/cartridge and you just go. This is rarely true anymore. Even Switch 2 games often require waiting to download a bunch of stuff before you can play. Meanwhile the PC experience has generally gotten simpler and most games "just work", in part thanks to Steam itself.
Thank you for calling this out. As a long time console gamer, I hadn't noticed this creeping bloat until I started playing games with my young children. My son begged for a new Madden game after playing it at his friend's house.
When we got the game, it probably took us an hour of fucking around with downloads and accounts. Off the top of my head, I had to set up a parents EA account and kids account, set permissions, had to make my 7 year old an email address, had to set up two factor authentication, accept crazy terms of use, verify emails, etc.) And then once we got all that done we're dodging ads for in game points, coins, cards, card packs, cosmetics, pre-order bonuses, etc. to get to the actual game. It's so SO bad and just not fun.
It completely killed his enthusiasm for the game. My son wandered off multiple times during this process. When I joked with my wife that we could have built a PC in the time it took us to do this bullshit it was an exaggeration, but only a little.
I had this experience playing couch co-op call of duty a few years ago. I had to make a fucking account. It's not even my console.
Nintendo has wavered a tad, but they're the closet to the original experience. You pop in a thingy, hook up another controller, or two, or three, and you're off. It just works, maybe you can input a name for your guy, maybe not, maybe you just always play Waluigi so everyone knows who you are.
This is so very sad and so very ripe for disruption.
So many of the top players in our modern late stage capitalism economy fit this mold of having a terrible user experience with a large unsatisfied user base. Usually it's not even a monopoly, but all the top players are roughly equally awful to their users.
I'm tempted to start some companies to just do the thing in a way that doesn't suck for the actual paying customers. I think just doing a good/competent/user-needs-centric job at the same basic product would be enough to disrupt the market in many cases.
I hardly understand the headline. Steam machine is just a computer, and since it can be used for other stuff than playing games, then it can't have the cheap pricing of a console. Most consoles are sold at a loss, and the benefits are made when selling console-exclusive games. If you sell something at a loss, but users aren't forced to buy your games, then you're not gonna make any money. Hence, the Steam Machine (AKA GabeCube) is gonna be as expensive as a laptop (or slightly less expensive because of the bigger form factor and lack of portability).
On top of that, the base OS can't run a ton of games that run on console, because it runs in the way of kernel anti cheats (think: battlefield, call of duty, valorant, league of legends... the biggest games basically), while consoles are guaranteed to run most AAA games.
So with all that in mind - while I appreciate what Valve is doing a lot - I don't think it'll win the "console generation". I hardly see how it can even be called a console. It's just a PC, and that's how they call it themselves.
> Most consoles are sold at a loss
You're thinking of 'back in the day.' The original XBox's video card was worth more than they sold the entire system for, and the PS3 was a complete beast of computation (even if not entirely inappropriate for games...)! But in modern times (PS4 gen onward) consoles have become relatively vanilla midrange computers designed with the intent of turning profit on the hardware as quickly as possible.
The hardware cost of the PS4 was less than it's retail price from day 0 [1], and they began making a profit per unit shortly thereafter. Similarly the PS5 also reached profit per unit in less than a year. [2] XBox models from the PS4 gen onward are conspicuously similar as well.
[1] - https://tech.yahoo.com/general/article/2013-11-19-ps4-costs-...
[2] - https://www.theverge.com/2021/8/4/22609150/sony-playstation-...
PS2 and PS3 were price-competitive with stand-alone DVD and Blu-Ray players (respectively) at launch.
However, Switch is another console that sold for more than component and manufacturing cost at launch.
But most of the cost that needs to be amortized is R&D.
> PS3 were price-competitive with stand-alone Blu-Ray players at launch.
We got a PS3 at home for this very reason, needless to say my brother and I were ecstatic.
Tariffs/inflation/everything has raised the unit cost to the point that they're probably close to running a loss again sometimes on the latest gen consoles.
> I hardly understand the headline. Steam machine is just a computer, and since it can be used for other stuff than playing games, then it can't have the cheap pricing of a console.
I don't understand this train of thought. It absolutely can have the cheap pricing of a console, as long as Steam is the default store, and the majority of users will use the console as-is and buy games on Steam.
Let me give a quick analogy: Google paid Apple 20B USD just to be the default search engine in Safari, even though users can easily change it. Defaults matter. The vast majority of people are not highly technical users who customize everything in-depth and seek out alternatives. The vast majority of people just use whatever is the default.
The main problem I see is that if this is any cheaper than it's hardware, people will buy 100s of them and stack them in server racks for CI runners or whatever. Generating only losses for Valve and making the hardware unavailable to gamers.
It needs to either be at market rate or locked down to only be useful for gaming.
I don't think they could possibly make it cheap enough for that - especially once you consider all the money being wasted on RGB/Bluetooth/a GPU you won't use.
Messing around with weird consumer hardware in a datacenter context isn't exactly attractive. If all you need is some x86 cores, an off-the-shelf blade server approach gets you far more compute in the same space with far less hassle. Even if the purchase cost is attractive, TCO won't be.
Does it have IPMI? Does it have ECC ram? Racking Mac Minis is a painful enough, this form factor is less rackable than that. If you need to physically adjust the form factor per device, whatever you could've saved will be immediately lost in labor.
you don't remember playstation clusters?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_3_cluster
that said, practically buying hundreds of them should prove to be quite difficult.
I think the limitation on server gear these days is electricity price vs compute, with the hardware price being an up front investment but not dominating the lifetime cost. At least at this end of the price range - it's a consumer GPU, not an A100 or anything.
> It absolutely can have the cheap pricing of a console
Valve hasn't committed to a price yet, but they told Gamers Nexus that it'll be priced less like a console and more like an entry level computer (i.e. more expensive than a console).
Weird statement, because I can search for PS5 pro & see $750 price points, and entry level computers have been far far cheaper. Cheaper than Xbox series X at $650. Getting pretty solid laptops for a bit under $500 has been possible for many years now.
But "entry level computer" has a very broad interpretation available. Could be higher for sure.
I didn't say it "will", I said it "can". And since pricing is not announced yet we have no idea what they will do in the end.
Defaults matter at scale. And as for scale, the Steam Deck has the most generous estimates at 7 million. For a side hustle that's great. For trying to compete with the scale of other consoles, that's not enough.
Hardware is very hard to break into. You can't treat it like software and expect to dominate.
Itâs like android. You sell pixel at relatively high price but create a wave of other with cheaper alternatives, so you end up make money from being default store.
Laptops have lots of components that the Steam Machine doesn't have. The screen, keyboard, touchpad, cameras, microphones, speakers, battery, et cetera are all fairly small costs, but they add up. Plus using a Linux-based OS instead of Windows automatically knocks around $50 off the price because the price doesn't include the cost of an OEM Windows license.
I don't think the Steam Machine will be priced lower than a PS5 or Xbox (unless Valve is willing to burn money in exchange for market share), but I think that it'll be priced significantly lower than an equivalent-spec laptop (which would be in the $600-800 range based on the fact that the Steam Machine has an "AMD RDNA3 28CUs" GPU, which according to Google is roughly equivalent to an Nvidia RTX 4050, laptops containing which are priced around $600-800).
> Laptops have lots of components that the Steam Machine doesn't have. The screen, keyboard, touchpad, cameras, microphones, speakers, battery, et cetera are all fairly small costs, but they add up. Plus using a Linux-based OS instead of Windows automatically knocks around $50 off the price because the price doesn't include the cost of an OEM Windows license.
Yet's all the mini PCs I've come across are more expensive than their laptop equivalent
Because it's also about the demand, and how much you can mass produce them to reduce the cost
The 'AMD RDNA3 28CUs' is likely to be the 7600M, as all the major specs are the same (power draw and clocks is lower, but given that the Steam Machine is not a laptop, it probably will have more headroom for that).
I mean, Valve built this with the profits, at least, in no small part with the profits from selling games, DLC, and gacha skins on their storefront which has many many competitors too bozo-brained to run their stores as well as Valve does.
If any company has a business case for âweâll sell the form factor at a loss with our store preinstalledâ now itâs Valve, especially if they want to make the hardware only to prove the viability of the form factor, and especially since they already have been selling on platforms they donât own.
Are you assuming that nobody who buys a GabeCube is going to buy a game on Steam ever again?
Is it perhaps more likely that users with a convenient box attached to their TV might want to buy more games from Steam?
Now this might be difficult to track, but stay with me. Valve makes the GabeCube. Valve owns Steam. Sales from Steam go to Valve. Users with Steam hardware play a disproportionate amount of games bought from Steam. See where this is going?
There's absolutely no difference. You can run games from other stores on a GabeCube, but most people will play Steam games. People who play more games buy more games. Just like people who mainly play Xbox buy more Xbox games.
I guess you're right, even though it's possible to change the gabecube into a workstation and use it for work, never gaming, it's really unlikely it'll ever be a significant proportion of the buyers.
Since they have the steam deck, they also probably have enough data to back their new hardware strategy
For me, the big killer feature would be if this device is approved for modern media DRM. As much as I'm tired of streaming and its level of control over how I watch TV, it's still a decent part of my media consumption, but any Linux mini-PC I connect to the TV can only do low-resolution streaming from most providers. If the steam machine is approved for high-resolution streaming, it could totally replace the smart TV stack in most homes.
Yeah. This is why I threw that all away and simply pirate for my NAS. Im not watching much new media to begin with. and they make it hell, if not impossible, to stream a lot of older shows. And of I do find them I need to compromise with how I stream it, with what account, and where.
I just got tired of all VPNs, the DRMs, and trying to tune my network just to try and get a decent feed. Instead, map a network drive once, find torrent, save to movies file, and let Plex (or Emby in my case, for historical reasons) find the metadata.
If you pay ÂŁ20/month youâll get 720p. If you pay ÂŁ0/month you get 4k original rips.
Itâs just pointless paying.
Yes, I think one of the most important things we as consumers can do is flood the zone for companies like Netflix, Disney, and Apple and keep asking about native Steam Machine apps installed directly from the Steam store that support 4k streams.
But if more people didn't have locked down devices, the streamers would be forced to open up.
If Netflix can only get approval with Microsoft Edge or their app on Windows, with specific supported graphics hardware, I doubt there is much hope of that. They want essentially all the hardware and software locked down.
To win this console generation and outsell the PS5, Valve would have to sell 85 million Steam Machines (as of today, and likely need to sell 120 million by the end of the generation). About a 0% chance of that happening.
Looks cool, though
The Nintendo Switch also sold over 150 million units, and the Switch 2 has had a faster sales velocity so far.
Steam only has something like 140 million monthly active users, so moving that much hardware is incredibly far fetched.
I'm implying they'd win via a cultural victory TBH
Everyone is sinking culture on real time. So winning by throwing a bread crumb out is technically correct, but not significant.
I am up for a lego pyramid made of Steam machines.
Valve has the advantage of practically infinite backwards compatibility.
Console generations change every decade or so and the previous console gets abandoned. Anyone who buys a Steam Machine will continue to have access to the largest collection of video games in human history. Not to mention there are emulators for every classic console already and even the Nintendo Switch has at least two great emulators for it.
Surely the Steam Machine is in a newer generation than the PS5?
Its specs seem on par with the PS5 Pro, and this doesn't even have a price or a shipping date yet.
The PS5 is already about five years old, has had a slim release and a PS5 Pro. The PS6 announcement is probably a year away, with a 2027 or 2028 release.
Valve is launching a last-gen console, probably at a price that won't be competitive, right before the PS6 comes out.
I think Digital Foundry has expects the performance to be bit below the base PS5 in most cases. It has a new generation of CPU/GPU than the PS5, but less cores/ CUs. VRAM is also only 8GB, PCs generally need more than that to match PS5 settings.
Is console generation really a statement about performance?
Where does that leave e.g. Nintendo Wii, which is generally considered to be the same generation as the Xbox 360 or PS3, despite having not nearly the performance.
As the article says, "The only way that they could mess this up is with the pricing. ... I'd expect the pricing to be super aggressive." The price to beat is the $400-$500 price point of PS5 and XBox. I'm guessing Valve is going to have a very hard time matching that. We'll know soon enough.
All they have to do is market the fact you don't have to pay for online.
PS5 + 3 years of PS Plus = $740
Steam Machine = $700
Add/remove more years of PS Plus if the SM turns out to be more/less expensive.
If you add the fact that games on PC are usually cheaper and have sales more often then it's a no brainer, but that won't convince the FIFA and COD players.
This system won't run FIFA, GTA Online, Battlefield, Valorant or CoD, it's a nonstarter for many.
Sure you don't need to subscribe to PS+, but that's somewhat easier to swallow since PS+ gives you games with the subscription.
I'm still interested in this for playing older games but I have a Steam Deck and it still isn't remotely as seamless as my Switch or PS5.
> This system won't run FIFA, GTA Online, Battlefield, Valorant or CoD, it's a nonstarter for many.
That's largely known now but still a bummer. I wonder if anything will ever change in this area and if Valve will be able to pressure game editors or create an anti-cheat so good and for any platform to be able to change something.
Why not? You can just install windows on it.
*yet
Plus a game catalog that stretches back some 30 years?
More like 50 years if you consider emulators (RetroArch is available on Steam).
And +X years, because you could write your own games for it and install them without begging for permission from Valve.
>All they have to do is market the fact you don't have to pay for online.
All Sony and MS have to do it market that it can't play GTA6 at launch.
All Valve has to do is bundle it with Half-Life 3.
Or Fortnite, Genshin Impact, Roblox, Marvel Rivals or any other popular live service game. Which are the games most people care about now.
They don't even necessarily have to beat the PS5/Xbox. I already own the former but sometimes lament not being able to play the many, many PC exclusives out there (or at least nothing released in the past 10+ years since my daily driver laptop has poor specs). Just recently I was wondering whether one of those all-in-one Lenovo desktop boxes would have decent enough specs to play current-gen PC games at halfway decent settings, and my guess is that they don't, but I don't want to go through the hassle of building a PC and definitely don't want a tower with a huge footprint.
Turns out the Steam Machine is exactly what I'm looking for.
I bought a steam deck to play Age of Wonders 4. Briefly got sucked into playing a Skyrim again.
Exactly. I have both PS5 and Xbox One X, but I still connect my Steam Deck to TV to play Hades II because the game hasn't come out on those two consoles yet.
They told press that it wouldnât be console pricing and would match entry level PC. I think itâs going to be $800
800 is probably already too much for the compromises you need to make. You happily make those compromises for a handheld due to its nature. But a desktop is a harder sell.
Is that the price point of those anymore? I see 550 ish for the base ps5 with a disc drive and closer to 750 for the pro.
I don't expect them to match either in volume but it seems like microsoft is already backing out of the dedicated console hardware space tho
> The only possible flaw I can see is that the strap it ships with doesn't go over the top of your head. If this ends up being an issue in practice, somebody is going to make a third party strap that just fixes this problem
Not even a third party: https://youtu.be/b7q2CS8HDHU?t=380
> the option of an ergonomic strap that you can hook onto the top, hook onto the back, to take more weight off the front of your head.
https://www.pcgamer.com/hardware/vr-hardware/steam-frame-spe...
> There's an optional ergonomic accessories kit for the Steam Frame that adds an extra strap for your head and a pair of straps, one for each controller. These added controller straps are reminiscent of those found on the Index and seem like a reasonable investment, if the price is right.
I don't really understand the early enthusiasm about the Steam Machine, and I happily own a Steam Deck.
"It's on par with a PS5!" You mean the thing that was launched over 5 years ago (exactly!) ?
We don't know its price yet, which is the most crucial detail.
If it can play all games on Steam _today_ at 4k60fps (even with FSR) it means I have about 570 games on my Steam library it can play in perpetuity.
Even if I play 2 hours of each game, it's still a bargain =)
And because this is Valve and I've had a stellar experience with my Steam Deck, I'm pretty confident that future games will run on it too. Most likely gamedevs will add special "Steam Machine" performance profiles like they've done with the deck. And there will be a "Steam Machine certified" checkmark on Steam.
> I have about 570 games on my Steam library it can play in perpetuity.
You presumably have other hardware that can also play the 570 games too? Youâre spending more money on hardware that can do the same job your current hardware can do.
Yes and no. I have a Steam Deck and a Macbook M1 Pro, my previous Windows PC is from 2010, it ran Overwatch 1 at about 30fps on a good day and managed through multiplayer Valheim games during covid lockdowns =)
I _can_ play something like CP2077 on the Deck, but it's not exactly a worthy experience, it's better suited for stuff like Citizen Sleeper or Rogue Trader
Not OP but I happily throw money at companies that help Linux adoption and more open hardware grow. I bought the steam deck, used it for a while and gave it to a nephew (I'm not big on mobile gaming), I've bougt the Pinebook, Librem 5, and will happily throw Valve more of my hard earned cash for enabling a more open ecosystem. We need to vote with our wallets or Microsoft, Apple, Meta, et al will gladly remove your ability to own your hardware.
In my younger years I built gaming pcs. Old me has no time for that. I console game because it respects my time and I can play any major release. Iâm interested in the new offering from steam as a way to play indie games I miss on console with a machine that doesnât look out of place next to my tv.
This, plus I also find that the fact that I'm not going to spend random time thinking about upgrading my console, looking at components, etc, also respects my time (and money).
I don't play games much anymore, so maybe I'm not the right person to respond.
Why would anyone ever buy a console again? This thing has the ultimate library and works on all platforms.
Steam seems to have played the best game of chess in the industry. Sony and Microsoft were battling over exclusives and acquisitions and ways to screw over customers. This came out of left field and looks a million times better than Xbox or PS5. It has people's entire libraries on it, and the games are cheap and portable. There's no lock down. No funny business.
I almost want one. I'm excited about it and I don't even think I'd play it.
In the era of mobile games, hardware really isn't a thing anymore. Even AAA titles are niche IMO given the cost to play them at full settings. All that matters now are the exclusive titles. You refer to this derisively but really that's what made the nintendo switch, clearly the weakest compared to the PS5 and even the steam deck in the last generation the clear winner.
And do you think PC has less exclusives compared to PS5 / other consoles? How many games on Steam has never been released on consoles vs the other way round?
By that logic I'd expect this one to completely dominate.
You can't compare mobile and console players.
They are literally two different markets.
I know they get put together because of "videogames", but a gamer that plays on a console is not going to play mobile games, except those that are ports of console games onto phone.
There are exceptions of course.
I have a family of 4 (and both me and my wife are gamers) and a pc is expensive. A steam machine is a great compromise.
I'm also in the market for a new secondary pc, since the other one is old: the steam machine is exactly what I want with gaming primary and also do general computing.
I use the nvidia shield to stream games, but it has issues at times depending on the game being streamed.
> Yes, Steam Machine is optimized for gaming, but it's still your PC. Install your own apps, or even another operating system. Who are we to tell you how to use your computer?
That makes me very happy.
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