Gamers Nexus reported cost will be in line with budget PCs and not competing with console pricing
Comment on Valve announces three new products: the Steam Frame, Steam Machine and Steam Controller
BarbecueCowboy@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 months agoSome are estimating around $800, but Steam has commented that affordability is a primary focus.
I feel like they’ve got to beat console prices. I’m hoping we see prices similar to steam deck at launch complete with varying tiers.
tyrant@lemmy.world 4 months ago
thermal_shock@lemmy.world 4 months ago
If it hooks up to the tv and has controllers, it is 100% going to compete.
nogooduser@lemmy.world 4 months ago
They didn’t say that it wouldn’t compete. They said that it wouldn’t compete on price.
thermal_shock@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Very possible. I’d pay a premium to bring over my steam library rather than getting a console and starting over tbh.
baronvonj@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Agree it has be price competitive with consoles. Though I wonder if making a docked Deck be on equal footing with the Machine would have been a better use of R&D. Maybe simply improving having the dock house an eGPU and bumping the Deck specs.
mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works 4 months ago
Though I wonder if making a docked Deck be on equal footing with the Machine would have been a better use of R&D.
No, it would not. Buulding a Steam Deck that’s 6x more powerful (the claimed comparison for the Steam Machine) is NOT possible with today’s technology. For anyone.
The Steam Deck has to be hand portable and get somewhat decent battery life. That leaves little little space for a cooling solution. You cannot beat thermodynamics.
Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world 4 months ago
The deck is a bit underpowered for 4k. Most TVs are 4k these days, so the machine needs to be good at that.
baronvonj@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Right, that’s what I’m saying. Make a v2 Deck with upgraded CPU/memory, and put the GPU in the dock so it can do 4k on a big screen. I’m sure “Deck v2 is 4x more powerful than v1 and you can dock it for 4k @ 60fps on the big screen” would be just as good a marketing line as “Machine is 6x more powerful than a Deck”.
sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 months ago
I don’t think it has an Occulink port.
So… yeah you can maybe try to eGPU it a bit through USB 3.2 Gen 2?
Maybe?
I don’t know that would make much sense though.
Or!
Maybe we do the FrankenDeck thing, take the SSD out, adapt that as an Occulink, run all the storage memory off of MicroSD cards, LOL.
baronvonj@lemmy.world 4 months ago
I mean like a v2 Steam Deck and Dock. Give the Deck a bump in CPU/RAM/storage specs and new external ports to facilitate having the GPU in the dock. It could technically even be an externalized PCIe connector instead of Thunderbolt/USB. In handheld mode you get the iCPU limited to 1080, but dock it on the big screen and now you get full 4k @ 60 FPS. Add an HDMI port so you do 1080 on a big screen without a dock.
sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 months ago
At this point, you would think that if they wanted to go with an Occulink/Thunderbolt thing… they’d make it in the Steam Machine, the thing that doesn’t move around as much.
They… the Valve video says the Steam Machine is 6 times as powerful as a Steam Deck.
… I have no idea what that actually means, maybe its TFLOPs, who knows, but uh, yeah, if you’re making a 6x thing thats more stationary, I would think that would be the thing you’d make with an option or variant to just jam more compute into it via modularity.
I dunno. It seems like more news about the Deck 2 or whatever is coming, at some point, Valve’s whole actual video is basically making fun of how its not talking about the Deck… stay tuned, goth gamer nation…???
sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 months ago
My guess would be that around $800 sounds roughly right… if you try to approximate a small form factor pc with… roughly those specs?
You’d kinda end up around there, but… the architecture is so nonstandard, its hard to say.
You gotta think of it as an SFF PC not a console.
Because its closer to an SFF PC than it is to a console.
Right like, this thing is also a PC, its a laptop or w/e if you plug a mouse and keyboard into it.
I run desktop mode on my Deck all the time, use it as a laptop of sorts.
As far as tiers go, GN has said there are plans for a 512 GB and 2TB variant, so, there’s at least two tiers… I would not expect like, more or less GDDR5/6 RAM variants though, the whole thing is built too much around the exact power draw and thermal load.
Prove_your_argument@piefed.social 4 months ago
There’s no display, no battery, no controller included, no OS fees.. I think it could be cheaper than $800.
Because it’s all custom hardware we don’t really have a great basis for comparison. I’m going to guess that the cheapest variant will be something like $650. Doubt more than $700 though.
Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world 4 months ago
But on the other hand, Valve have economies of scale, so they can build this thing cheaper than a normal person can build a PC. Plus, they don’t need to make a huge profit on this stuff. The purpose of the hardware is to sell games. At least that’s what I’ll keep telling myself until we find out more.
sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 months ago
But on the other other hand, tariffs, and RAM just doubled in cost in like the last month, because… well this time its not bitcoin miners buying all the GPUs, its… the entire AI industry is a multi trillion dollar scam.
Hilariously, one way to read this announcement is that Valve expects the AI bubble to blow up by ‘early next year’, thus lowering RAM costs, ahahaha!
tb_@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Especially with microsoft seemingly giving up on (gaming) hardware