All of this is true, but Valve is one of the best companies I know and for now, I’ll happily give them money.
It’s not about the fact that I’m actually going to use it. It’s about the fact that I want people to keep making things like this. It’s about the fact I want to reward them for not locking it down completely.
I'm looking for it as a general development machine, sometimes I do stuff that requires GPUs so if they can get a competitive price wrt. building a custom PC then I'm all in for the convenient form factor!
I don't need it either. I want it so I'm going to get it. I also don't need the controller and the VR headset. But again, I am going to get it. I am the master of my life. Whatever I say goes. I am getting all 3. But I don't need them. No, no no.
I've been using a somewhat low-spec PC to play games and for general desktop usage. Finding stuff in this form factor, that you can guarantee will be well put together and worth the money is a rarity.
Highly likely this could replace my desktop, as I don't need something much more powerful, just with more modern hardware. I don't do much AAA gaming and nearly game in my Steam library would run on this just fine. My regular daily computing needs can reasonably be satisfied with the compute power of a Raspberry Pi. I can swap flatpak based immutable SteamOS with plain Arch without losing the advantages (i.e. custom hardware settings integration) that one might sacrifice doing so on the Steam Deck.
This is going to be a no-brainer for my next upgrade.
Fair reasons. I won't be getting one, because the Steam Deck is enough for me.
> It’s Steam, not Good Old Games.
Sure it can run GOG games but the Machine is primarily designed to run Steam. You avoid purchasing from Steam like the plague, yet you’re willing to buy a Machine dedicated to it? Are you crazy?
I prioritise getting games on GOG, and the Steam Deck experience with it is good.
I use Heroic Launcher to install them, and Steam mode to play it.
> You don’t have time to fiddle with configuration. Button and trackpad mappings to get the controls just right enough to play strategy games designed to be played with keyboard and mouse will only leave you frustrated.
+1. I don't bother with configuration. If a game only supports keyboard and mouse I just play it when docked.
Steam Machines can become an existencial crisis for PlayStation and Xbox.
A “console” that I can use as a PC? I am in 100%. You’ll get the world biggest game library at a discount, this is why I sold my PlayStation after spending 200 euros and watching it becoming useless.
I also suspect a lot of game devs will optimize for steam machine and finally we’ll get a console like experience on PC.
Don’t let the “low specs” fool you, it has the same specs or better as 70% of steam users.
Given Valve gave money to a lot of open source maintainers , it’s also great for Linux.
Some games just run better on the PS when compared to the PC version, regardless of you having the latest and best PC.
You can see this fairly well on the Nintendo Switch, which is a low spec tablet but the games run very well and the experience is great.
PC Games, generally speaking, tend to favor keyboard and mouse not controllers.
This is why I suspect game devs will start optimising for the Steam Machine, provided it sells well.
I have been trying for a long time to find a way to play my PC games from my couch without dragging my desktop into the living room.
Steam Link works okay but is still noticeable for some games. Docking a Steam Deck wasn’t powerful enough. Running a long HDMI cable isn’t feasible in my current living space. So I’m very intrigued to have this lower powered cube sit under my TV for when I just want to do some couch co-op or play something more casual to wind down at night.
Moonlight/Sunshine is a great steam link alternative if you have a tv box (like an apple tv or similar) that has the Moonlight app available. I'm able to run both steam and non steam games pretty well.
I'm also one of those people who does everything on my mac laptop, but hits a kvm switch to jump onto a PC to play games at night (when I have time, which I don't). At this point I've stopped pretending that I want a PC that I can upgrade and swap out parts. I just want a little box that doesn't make any noise and works as is. Framework desktop and now this steam machine look like good options. I'm a bit disappointed at the 8gb gpu though.
I don't understand the "You can’t buy this without buying the Steam Controller." bit. If you want one, great, if not, it's no more necessary than with any other PC.
I've been gaming for ~40 years without ever touching a controller, why would I start now?
Kudos to the author. I also will not buy a steam Box. But i appreciate the effect it will have on gaming and Linux. I use Mint and use steam to play my games just fine. For some games it is a little bit shaky. Game company’s now have a incentive to make gaming just feel right on a Linux machine much more than like the switch deck. Just my thinking of course
It's the same as the steam deck: I don't enjoy video games anymore, I've actually never really enjoyed gaming except for a handful of titles. But I'll be damned, I love that Valve is bringing gaming to Linux and I'll buy the hardware just to support the cause. The people in my life that have been using the "I need Windows for my games" reason (or excuse ;)) to not switch to Linux are now slowly but surely leaving Windows!
The Steam Machine is "just" a normal Linux PC, with good integration.
The point is the target demographics. And, just like the Steam Deck, this is not something for power users. Most people on here know how to build a PC and install Linux with KDE on it, which is the same experience you would get with a Steam Machine.
Valve is selling this to an audience of gamers, specifically those who want an easy gaming experience on low end hardware. This is the same demographic which Sony and Microsoft are selling to.
I was kind of annoyed at the blog post for being kind of pointless until the last line, which cracked me up.
The Steam Machine is surely meant to be somewhere between mainstream and niche. It’s going to be cheap enough to be a pretty good deal for what it is, but I think those who are already PC builders (at least, those who aren’t unusually high-income and will toss money at a novelty) might not jump on it.
The device does offer some unique features you can’t get on the PC market like HDMI-CEC, which will make it a great living room box.
Perhaps it’s even being somewhat underrated as a PC on your desk type of solution. Perhaps the type of person who wants a small form factor plug and play solution at their desk and isn’t a small form factor expert would want it. The only barrier there is that SteamOS doesn’t bring you to desktop mode instantly, but in that case the user could install their own OS like Bazzite or Windows.
It ultimately comes down to the price. If it’s low enough, I’ll get Steam machine as a living room indie box and for streaming from my main desktop. I would feel bad for overpaying for 8 gigs of VRAM in 2026.
> In two years, you’ll upgrade your M1 to an M4+: there’s the power upgrade.
Only to play almost nothing or very badly if not supported natively. And no devs won't support mac games there is no incentive. Emulation is subpar compared to Proton on Linux, Apple people should really start stop thinking macbooks can do modern gaming, excepts for a couple of Capcom portings that were paid by apple to have them and some retro gaming
Supporting games on Mac is a huge hassle for developers for several reasons.
It is painfully annoying to compile any MacOS application without actually having a machine with Xcode installed. The server solutions you can get a hold of are bad because apple will not sell any rack mounted servers to the public and the machines they do sell are restricted to a max of two instances of OSX virtualized.
Your best bet is to rent a Mac server from one of these providers who just hoarde mac minis and throw them in custom datacenter racks
Back during Covid I bought a PC tower just to play PC games. Later I also bought a PlayStation because the couch experience is better. If the steam machine was available I’d definitely opt for that instead of both.
If steam continues the way it is, it will be hard for me to justify having a gaming PC and a console instead of just one machine.
When I first saw the Arduino I didn't see the point - after all there were boards that cost less, did more, and the Arduino IDE seemed very barebones compared to what you could do with GCC and a custom toolchain.
Then eventually I saw how much community support, ready made hardware emerged around it, to the point that after a while, not going the Arduino route was a decision you needed to justify heavily.
Same thing with the Raspberry Pi - there are commercial devices now running or more or less stock Pi hardware with some accomodations - the power of the community is just too large - you can either spend an insane amount of time getting things working on your custom SBC, or get something well-supported for free.
I hope that the same thing will happen with the Steam Machine - the pull of the community will result in a well-supported 'default' device where people (and Valve) will put in the effort to create a comparable desktop experience to the commercial OSes.
Valve already helped immensely with Wayland - it's crazy to think that the project was stared cca. 2008, and today there's still arguments to be made it's not mature yet - by investing the necessary energy to make sure games run well, the drivers are optimized, and there's a high-quality end-user library (wlroots) for writing compositors has been the push that Wayland needed.
Fully agree with the sentiments here in terms of "you might not need this", and for many of us the Steam Machine is not really marketed toward us in particular. I think it's not marketed away from us, though.
For me, I am considering it, depending on the price. I already have a small form factor PC that I run Bazzite on in the living room. The problem? There's some kind of hardware issue. Unfortunately, it might be the Intel CPU. It results in sporadic issues including periods of time where memory errors spike like crazy. I love the PC ecosystem for what it is, but here's the problem: without redundant parts, I can't reasonably isolate the problem to figure out what to RMA. It's not abundantly clear, because the problem is sporadic. I'd need to replace parts one-by-one. So I've just been working around it for now.
But the Steam Machine is sold as a single unit, and it already runs the KDE desktop that I'm used to using on my TV. (It's better than you'd expect, with a couple of tweaks, though I hope the SteamOS version that ships with the Steam Machine moves to a Wayland session as my TV supports HDR.) If I have a problem with the hardware, I can send it back to Valve. Even better, I kind of actually trust Valve.
So for me it totally depends on price point. I don't game all that much on TV, but I do want a box connected to my TV that can game. Plus, bonus points if it's able to achieve a better idle power usage than my current small form factor build. Plus, even better, the device ships with native HDMI CEC support, which is fairly rare on PC graphics cards, requiring very frustrating workarounds. This is clearly a potential killer option for people who want a living room PC setup for their TV.
(Aside: if you are wondering what the experience with using a living room PC with KDE is like, it's not too bad. You have to crank up the scale factor a bit, but with a Bluetooth keyboard and touchpad device, it's pretty easy to use. There's no easy way to support receiving Chromecasts, though, though there is Shanocast, but it's a bit sketchy. Funny enough, I believe Apple's AirPlay is less locked down and you can use UxPlay to receive AirPlay requests. I mostly just use Librewolf with some quality of life extensions like YouTube Shorts Block and Sponsorblock and the like. It is a little clunky but my previous weapon of choice was Android TV and it has been horrifically enshittified, so those devices are basically ewaste now.)
If they manage an under $800 price point and deliver on performance, thermals and noise, you simply won't be able to beat this thing in almost any dimension buying parts new to make a build yourself. It is significantly smaller than anything you can build, and it theoretically packs significant power per inch in the sub-$1000 price point. As long as you don't mind paying Valve, I absolutely think this is a potential killer deal for many use cases that will involve barely ever actually using Steam.
(But, despite the end of this article, it is definitely worth some consideration whether you really need one. Even if you ultimately decide you want it anyways :P)
What's truly crazy is the VR headset is the same architecture as the Steam Machine. As in, it's a completely open Linux system you can wear on your face. They are literally telling the community to go nuts and hack it and install whatever you want on there.
If there's any time for people who believe in open systems and open software to step up and buy the hell out of something, this it it. It will be very interesting to see if the play works out our not.
I too won't be getting one, especially since I already have enough power at my desk.
But I love how amazing of an idea it is. A form factor and ease-of-setup of a console that brings all the best features of PC gaming (inter-generational compatibility, free multiplayer...) into the living room. And unlike with the original Steam Machine, the market is ready this time.
65 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 67.6 ms ] threadIt’s not about the fact that I’m actually going to use it. It’s about the fact that I want people to keep making things like this. It’s about the fact I want to reward them for not locking it down completely.
So will I, if anything to support the effort, and check it out maybe I'll buy more for my kids or something.
Highly likely this could replace my desktop, as I don't need something much more powerful, just with more modern hardware. I don't do much AAA gaming and nearly game in my Steam library would run on this just fine. My regular daily computing needs can reasonably be satisfied with the compute power of a Raspberry Pi. I can swap flatpak based immutable SteamOS with plain Arch without losing the advantages (i.e. custom hardware settings integration) that one might sacrifice doing so on the Steam Deck.
This is going to be a no-brainer for my next upgrade.
Steam has already failed at this once, and it won’t try a third time.
(And Windows is currently at its lowest point, so it’s the perfect opportunity.)
> It’s Steam, not Good Old Games. Sure it can run GOG games but the Machine is primarily designed to run Steam. You avoid purchasing from Steam like the plague, yet you’re willing to buy a Machine dedicated to it? Are you crazy?
I prioritise getting games on GOG, and the Steam Deck experience with it is good.
I use Heroic Launcher to install them, and Steam mode to play it.
> You don’t have time to fiddle with configuration. Button and trackpad mappings to get the controls just right enough to play strategy games designed to be played with keyboard and mouse will only leave you frustrated.
+1. I don't bother with configuration. If a game only supports keyboard and mouse I just play it when docked.
> Fuck it, I’m getting one.
Haha.
A “console” that I can use as a PC? I am in 100%. You’ll get the world biggest game library at a discount, this is why I sold my PlayStation after spending 200 euros and watching it becoming useless.
I also suspect a lot of game devs will optimize for steam machine and finally we’ll get a console like experience on PC.
Don’t let the “low specs” fool you, it has the same specs or better as 70% of steam users.
Given Valve gave money to a lot of open source maintainers , it’s also great for Linux.
Just take my money
What do you mean by that? The PC experience with adequate hardware is almost universally better than the console experience.
Some games just run better on the PS when compared to the PC version, regardless of you having the latest and best PC. You can see this fairly well on the Nintendo Switch, which is a low spec tablet but the games run very well and the experience is great.
PC Games, generally speaking, tend to favor keyboard and mouse not controllers.
This is why I suspect game devs will start optimising for the Steam Machine, provided it sells well.
Steam Link works okay but is still noticeable for some games. Docking a Steam Deck wasn’t powerful enough. Running a long HDMI cable isn’t feasible in my current living space. So I’m very intrigued to have this lower powered cube sit under my TV for when I just want to do some couch co-op or play something more casual to wind down at night.
I've been gaming for ~40 years without ever touching a controller, why would I start now?
The point is the target demographics. And, just like the Steam Deck, this is not something for power users. Most people on here know how to build a PC and install Linux with KDE on it, which is the same experience you would get with a Steam Machine.
Valve is selling this to an audience of gamers, specifically those who want an easy gaming experience on low end hardware. This is the same demographic which Sony and Microsoft are selling to.
The Steam Machine is surely meant to be somewhere between mainstream and niche. It’s going to be cheap enough to be a pretty good deal for what it is, but I think those who are already PC builders (at least, those who aren’t unusually high-income and will toss money at a novelty) might not jump on it.
The device does offer some unique features you can’t get on the PC market like HDMI-CEC, which will make it a great living room box.
Perhaps it’s even being somewhat underrated as a PC on your desk type of solution. Perhaps the type of person who wants a small form factor plug and play solution at their desk and isn’t a small form factor expert would want it. The only barrier there is that SteamOS doesn’t bring you to desktop mode instantly, but in that case the user could install their own OS like Bazzite or Windows.
Only to play almost nothing or very badly if not supported natively. And no devs won't support mac games there is no incentive. Emulation is subpar compared to Proton on Linux, Apple people should really start stop thinking macbooks can do modern gaming, excepts for a couple of Capcom portings that were paid by apple to have them and some retro gaming
It is painfully annoying to compile any MacOS application without actually having a machine with Xcode installed. The server solutions you can get a hold of are bad because apple will not sell any rack mounted servers to the public and the machines they do sell are restricted to a max of two instances of OSX virtualized.
Your best bet is to rent a Mac server from one of these providers who just hoarde mac minis and throw them in custom datacenter racks
If steam continues the way it is, it will be hard for me to justify having a gaming PC and a console instead of just one machine.
Then eventually I saw how much community support, ready made hardware emerged around it, to the point that after a while, not going the Arduino route was a decision you needed to justify heavily.
Same thing with the Raspberry Pi - there are commercial devices now running or more or less stock Pi hardware with some accomodations - the power of the community is just too large - you can either spend an insane amount of time getting things working on your custom SBC, or get something well-supported for free.
I hope that the same thing will happen with the Steam Machine - the pull of the community will result in a well-supported 'default' device where people (and Valve) will put in the effort to create a comparable desktop experience to the commercial OSes.
Valve already helped immensely with Wayland - it's crazy to think that the project was stared cca. 2008, and today there's still arguments to be made it's not mature yet - by investing the necessary energy to make sure games run well, the drivers are optimized, and there's a high-quality end-user library (wlroots) for writing compositors has been the push that Wayland needed.
For me, I am considering it, depending on the price. I already have a small form factor PC that I run Bazzite on in the living room. The problem? There's some kind of hardware issue. Unfortunately, it might be the Intel CPU. It results in sporadic issues including periods of time where memory errors spike like crazy. I love the PC ecosystem for what it is, but here's the problem: without redundant parts, I can't reasonably isolate the problem to figure out what to RMA. It's not abundantly clear, because the problem is sporadic. I'd need to replace parts one-by-one. So I've just been working around it for now.
But the Steam Machine is sold as a single unit, and it already runs the KDE desktop that I'm used to using on my TV. (It's better than you'd expect, with a couple of tweaks, though I hope the SteamOS version that ships with the Steam Machine moves to a Wayland session as my TV supports HDR.) If I have a problem with the hardware, I can send it back to Valve. Even better, I kind of actually trust Valve.
So for me it totally depends on price point. I don't game all that much on TV, but I do want a box connected to my TV that can game. Plus, bonus points if it's able to achieve a better idle power usage than my current small form factor build. Plus, even better, the device ships with native HDMI CEC support, which is fairly rare on PC graphics cards, requiring very frustrating workarounds. This is clearly a potential killer option for people who want a living room PC setup for their TV.
(Aside: if you are wondering what the experience with using a living room PC with KDE is like, it's not too bad. You have to crank up the scale factor a bit, but with a Bluetooth keyboard and touchpad device, it's pretty easy to use. There's no easy way to support receiving Chromecasts, though, though there is Shanocast, but it's a bit sketchy. Funny enough, I believe Apple's AirPlay is less locked down and you can use UxPlay to receive AirPlay requests. I mostly just use Librewolf with some quality of life extensions like YouTube Shorts Block and Sponsorblock and the like. It is a little clunky but my previous weapon of choice was Android TV and it has been horrifically enshittified, so those devices are basically ewaste now.)
If they manage an under $800 price point and deliver on performance, thermals and noise, you simply won't be able to beat this thing in almost any dimension buying parts new to make a build yourself. It is significantly smaller than anything you can build, and it theoretically packs significant power per inch in the sub-$1000 price point. As long as you don't mind paying Valve, I absolutely think this is a potential killer deal for many use cases that will involve barely ever actually using Steam.
(But, despite the end of this article, it is definitely worth some consideration whether you really need one. Even if you ultimately decide you want it anyways :P)
If there's any time for people who believe in open systems and open software to step up and buy the hell out of something, this it it. It will be very interesting to see if the play works out our not.
But I love how amazing of an idea it is. A form factor and ease-of-setup of a console that brings all the best features of PC gaming (inter-generational compatibility, free multiplayer...) into the living room. And unlike with the original Steam Machine, the market is ready this time.