Submitted 4 months ago by simple@piefed.social to games@lemmy.world
This is going to come off as shilling for Valve, but it isn’t my intention.
I could entirely see Valve pricing the Steam Machine relatively affordably and this statement is ultimately a dig at how overpriced pre-built PCs and consoles can be.
“The Steam Machine outperforms 70% of current user PCs…we neglected to say that the majority of user PCs are overpriced for what they deliver.”
I think a lot of people are going to be disappointed in the price. From what I’ve read, and watched, its not going to be competitive like the Deck - it’ll be more expensive than the current consoles. I just have a feeling people are underestimating it this time around.
Even though LTT said valve gave a cold stare at a $500 price tag, the BOM estimate is sitting around $420 (compared to $300 for the deck).
If they follow the same path as the steam deck, they could still comfortably sell the base model at $600 or $550 if they want to get aggressive with consoles.
Valve basically broke even with the base model steam deck, so I’m assuming the remaining $100 per unit cost is all the external stuff like production shipping etc. They make profit on the higher level models by charging more for storage and OLED.
Valve’s plan was never to compete with consoles, but they’re sitting on a golden opportunity here with Xbox flailing in the water and being able to price match without loss. Their major blocker is the anti cheat holdouts though, and I don’t think they’ll be willing to change unless steam machine itself becomes very popular, which forms an annoying loop.
I think they’re probably having some great arguments behind the scenes on what point exactly they should settle on based off of the public response everyone is giving from this statement lol.
Not a number. Not interesting.
Do I want to spend my money for a billionaire floating around in a massive yacht? We’ll see and yes, I’m a Steam user.
Pointless virtue signalling 🥱
Lmao yes please never give a billionaire money again XD
Tomorrow you can stop driving your car, eating food, and paying rent!
Sorry Valve, but you are delusional here. This is going to bite you in the ass like Artifact did.
I don't see the angle of the argument where people are saying that Valve is just going to eat the loss per sale of this machine. My question is - why bother? Because they're going to just bank on the goodwill built up with the Steam userbase and rely on them to buy games to make up the losses, which by the way the prices on even Steam's holiday sales have been quite underwhelming these past few years. So I don't get why they would bank on that when it is again underwhelming.
The freaking device is 40% fan, lol.
I think people are more excited about an OS that doesn’t steal their data is is made for gaming. Bazzite is cool, but the steam deck has showed what a good OS can do for gaming. Fuck windows.
Is PC
Shock and awe when told it MAY cost similar to a PC
It’s moreso because of the actual specs itself, “priced like a PC” is anywhere from $300 to $10,000 which isn’t a good metric if you could guess. However, based on the specs it should be somewhere from $500 to $800, and realistically because they were working with manufacturers for it they should be getting a good deal on the parts and therefore it should ere more towards $500 than anything, which would be console pricing. Of course excluding any peripherals. The issue is the way they’re wording it, and the way they have reacted to people like Linus asking if the price will be around $500. It seems like “PC pricing” means more like $1000, which is honestly overpriced for the specs and if it is said price I highly recommend no one buy it, just build your own, it’s easier than you think.
I find it amusing how much there is discussion around the price of this when it only ships to like 1/4th of the world. If it would be available in stores like nintendo, I doubt people there would be much issue regarding high price.
Im not sure I follow your logic. What would shipping location have to do with complaints about price?
That most of the world isn’t even going to have access to it, no matter the price. Could be imported but that’s not cheap and no warranty on a custom built is terrible.
That’s the first batch, if it will get traction it will be shipped to the rest of the world in no time
Steamdeck still hasn’t been available in many places :( let’s hope. With how pc prices are looking, I just want a decent console that can run my steam library and minecraft.
The worst thing about the hardware unveiling is the endless posts about pricing 😮💨
It will be $750 to undercut the competition, like with the Steam Deck.
Lol, not sure of you’ve noticed but there US is in a pretty shaky situation economically. Of course there’s consumer anxiety about the cost of a luxury item.
I am aware. Not sure what that has to do with my comment.
If it was going to be cheap, they’d have told us. They’ve prepared us for the worst, and we’ve still got people huffing the copium thinking the Steam Frame will be price-competitive with the Quest 3…
If it was going to be cheap, they’d have told us
Not true. The problem is there are a lot of moving targets in the electronics market right now, so even Valve doesn’t know what they’re going to be able to sell it for.
thats cool. still don’t care though.
Thank you for informing us that you care so little that you bothered to type how little you care.
no problem
Facts people forget:
With all of that being said, it seems to me it’s very likely it will be around 800 but less than 1000. For people saying you can build one for that price yourself, sure, go ahead, you’ll have a huge, power hungry loud box, without the same features and you would have saved only a small fraction of the value by having to assemble everything yourself.
Assembling your own Steam Machine with similar parts will cost around 800
No, it won’t. $800 will get you a machine that’s around 50% faster. Controller included.
Even if you assembled it yourself you would be missing features, such as cec, wake by controller, sleep mid game, etc. LTT will try to build one, it will be interesting to see what they come up with, but I’m 90% it won’t have feature parity.
Fair enough.
There’s lots of engineering gone into this machine, they’re way more compact, less power hungry and more quiet than anything you can build yourself.
It’s literally a laptop CPU with a laptop GPU.
Buying the same build as a prebuilt brings a premium and costs around 1000
Also not true. A 1k prebuilt is around 70% faster. Controller not included, though.
Valve purchases stuff in scale so they can diminish their margin and could potentially sell it cheaper than prebuilts, and possibly cheaper than building it yourself.
Sure, but that’s an argument in favour of it costing less.
Consoles are sold at a loss, and they recover it with games because the platform is closed.
Yeah, and the best selling console of the generation is $450 for the digital-only version.
The Steam Machine is not closed, they can’t be sure they’re getting game purchases, because people might be buying this to be their work computer. So they have to price it as a PC, with margin on hardware, not promise of future returns.
Stop this delusion. If this was an actual possibility, it would already be happening with the Steam Deck. Yes, I know you know someone who did it. I know someone who bought a Surface to put Linux on it. There’s dozens of us!
Price might fluctuate between now and announcement, RAM prices are going crazy nowadays.
That I see happening. RAM/storage might triple in price tomorrow which would push the price of the whole industry up.
It’s literally a laptop CPU with a laptop GPU.
Not trying to have a go at you, actually genuinely curious: Do you have a source to confirm this, or is it more of an educated guess on your part?
All I’ve seen so far is that it’s a semi-custom AMD Zen 4 6c/12t CPU and RDNA 3 28 CU GPU.
No, it won’t. $800 will get you a machine that’s around 50% faster. Controller included.
Care to share a link to a PCPartPicker with that? Here’s a link on the same thread of someone building a similarly speck machine for 800 lemmy.world/comment/20649777 and that is without the controller. In case you haven’t noticed, RAM prices are a bit crazy at the moment.
It’s literally a laptop CPU with a laptop GPU.
It’s literally not, they custom developed it for the product, similar to the Steam Deck one, it is based on the architecture used on laptops, but so are Playstation and Xbox AFAIK.
Also not true. A 1k prebuilt is around 70% faster. Controller not included, though.
Can you provide a link to such a prebuilt? Here’s the first prebuilt I could find with similar specs, and it’s 1k periphio.com/…/firestorm-7600-prebuilt-amd-gaming…
Sure, but that’s an argument in favour of it costing less.
Yes, that was my point, the top of what this should cost is the same as a prebuilt with similar specs since Valve buys stuff in bulk it should be cheaper than that.
Yeah, and the best selling console of the generation is $450 for the digital-only version.
And the other one is 700, your point is?
Stop this delusion. If this was an actual possibility, it would already be happening with the Steam Deck. Yes, I know you know someone who did it. I know someone who bought a Surface to put Linux on it. There’s dozens of us!
It didn’t happened with the Deck because it’s not sold at a loss, so it’s cheaper to assemble a similarly built PC for you. But I definitely saw several posts through the years recommending people just buy a Steam Deck as their machine in certain conditions. If the Steam Deck costed 300 I guarantee you people would be using it as their daily drivers or building clusters of them.
…LTT will try to build one…
Jay already tried. It was bigger, didn’t have the custom OS, and cost $1700. He could have done better except he was part limited to what rhe Microcenter he was at had on hand. Doing a bunch or research and getting different parts would probably bring down the price.
They could totally make money selling it at a loss. The reason so many people care is that there’s an opening in the console market for an affordable option
. The reason so many people care is that there’s an opening in the console market for an affordable option
The consoles are the affordable option.
I fully understand that it sucks that this is the reality, but sucking doesn’t make something less true.
No, they couldn’t, have you read about the PS3? They were a lot cheaper than building a similar system so several companies bought thousands to build clusters, I personally worked at a relatively small university that had a cluster made of dozens of PS3s, since each Playstation costed Sony around $200 my university on its own costed thousands to Sony, and I imagine every other university and some private companies did the same.
Buying the same build as a prebuilt brings a premium and costs around 1000
For 1k you can get a 9600 9060XT 16gb system, which is waaaaaay more powerful, so this is quite an exaggeration.
A prebuilt plug-and-play device? Can you share a link to that?
* Even if you assembled it yourself you would be missing features, such as cec, wake by controller, sleep mid game, etc.
I’ve been actively mass downvoted on Reddit for being excited for these features. People are really fucking stupid sometimes.
I have a significantly more powerful PC (in a tower case) currently hooked up to my tv surviving the same purpose and I will likely be getting the Steam Machine entirely for these features.
“But just use a dongle” they say. And I do. It works about half the time and I have to do this weird dance involving pulling up Kodi
I’ve been actively mass downvoted on Reddit for being excited for these features. People are really fucking stupid sometimes.
I’d bet it was more about the phrasing and it probably commented in a way that downplayed concerns other people had.
Consoles are sold at a loss, and they recover it with games because the platform is closed.
Sometimes, but evidently not currently. Sources seem to indicate that only Microsoft seems to say they are selling at a loss, though it seems odd since their bill of materials looks like it should be pretty comparable to PS5…
I’ll agree with the guess of around $800, but like you say, the supply pressure on RAM and storage as well as the tariff situation all over the place, hard to say.
With all of that being said, it seems to me it’s very likely it will be around 800 but less than 1000
maybe more with the way ram prices are skyrocketing… because even though it comes out next year, they are probably being manufactured and stockpiled right now.
Yup, like I said, it depends on how prices will fluctuate, my guess is what the price would be if it was being sold now, if RAM increases they would have to compensate for it.
Also people who like to DIY seem to forget that a lot of people want a turn-key solution, I even dare to say that most people prefer a ready made solution. Even a lot of people who work in tech when they get home want a just work solution.
Yup, I love DIY, had tons of fun building my wife’s mini-itx gaming rig, my NAS and even my desktop (although it was the boring one of the three since it’s just standard). I love poking on my system, trying out stuff, etc. But I bought a Deck and my only mod was getting EmuDeck in it, it just works for what I want it to, and that’s worth a lot to me, it allows me to pour my time on stuff I want to be building and just game on my gaming boxes.
A thousand dollars seems fantastically reasonable for a well-engineered home-gaming machine. I spend that much every several years on upgrading or building a new PC.
My complaint is not the price, I think the price is fair. Let’s talk wages.
And a lot of the prebuilts have a ton of cut corners. A well put-together machine that people can trust to play their games at a base performance could be great for those who don’t want or can’t DIY.
Nail On The Head.
I work in tech. I also have terrible dexterity. While I love my gaming PC, I dread upgrades or things going wrong. I hate applying thermal paste, replacing a motherboard, etc. I’d gladly pay “prebuilt” prices for something from a company I can “trust” (as far as corporations can be trusted).
LTT will try to build one
Time for another video of Linus failing to follow basic instructions and going out of his way to break the OS because Linux gaming bad
I hate LTT, but they did absolutely nothing wrong or anything a normal user wouldn’t do in that video.
failing to follow basic instructions and going out of his way to break the OS
Otherwise known as a typical behaviour of majority of users
Good thing his team has a few linux nerds. So unlike that challenge where he was alone, here his team would work on it.
Yeah, but to be fair that was a shitty thing the system did, anyone with experience would know not to do it, but honestly it should have never happened. On the other hand, Linus is a bit daft and lots of stuff blows over his head monumentally, in the same video where he said he would be building a Steam Machine he also couldn’t seem to grasp that this is just a computer and people would see it as a prevuilt. In short I don’t think he will acknowledge lots of the killer features in the Steam Machine just so he can claim his thing does the same. But at least it will be an interesting watch.
So what’s a PC with the same level of performance?
store.steampowered.com/sale/steammachine
CPU
Semi-custom AMD Zen 4 6C / 12T
up to 4.8 GHz, 30W TDP
GPU
Semi-Custom AMD RDNA3 28CUs
2.45GHz max sustained clock, 110W TDP
16GB DDR5 + 8GB GDDR6 VRAM
512GB NVMe SSD
2TB NVMe SSD
$1,000?
That PC at microcenter is much faster than the Steam Machine.
Here’s some benchmarks for the 7600M, that has the exact same specs as the GPU in the Steam Machine.
notebookcheck.net/AMD-Radeon-RX-7600M-GPU-Benchma…
Here’s some benchmarks for a 9060XT which is the GPU on your link:
notebookcheck.net/AMD-Radeon-RX-9060-XT-16GB-Benc…
And here’s some benchmarks for a desktop 7600 which is another card people are comparing the Steam Machine to:
notebookcheck.net/AMD-Radeon-RX-7600-Benchmarks-a…
In case anyone doesn’t wanna wade through the terrible way notebookcheck presents information, I’ll post the numbers for CyberPunk High Preset at 1080P just to give you an idea of the performance difference. Nothing particular about why I chose that game, it’s just the first I found that was on all 3 links:
RX7600M: 62.3 FPS RX7600: 90.1 FPS RX9060XT: 127.2 FPS
If we set the 7600M as 100%, then the 7600 and 9060XT are 144.6% and 204.1% respectively.
I think people are thinking the Steam Machine will be way faster and that’s why they’re coming up with these outrageous prices.
Spec wise I can get there around $688 on pc part picker. I would imagine valve could hit a lower price point with selling en masse. That being said if you take in the price point of how small it is that could add some extra cost.
With the same form factor, noise level, CEC, wake on USB, optimized sleep/resume? Just having a set of component with similar performance on paper is not having the same device.
It’s a bad comparison to make.
If they subsidized it, wouldn’t that risk businesses buying it as a cheap-for-its-specs option for their office computers? It’s not locked to being a gaming machine like consoles. You can just install windows on it.
Fairly easy fix, there, given this is Valve who own the marketplace:
Unlikely.
Businesses generally aren’t that stoked about anything other than desktops or servers.
To the extent they have desktop grade equipment, it’s either:
On servers, the steam machine isn’t that attractive since it’s not designed to either be slapped in a closet and ignored on slotted in a datacenter.
Putting all this aside, businesses love simplicity in their procurement. They aren’t big on adding a vendor for a specific niche when they can use an existing vendor, even if in theory they could shave a few dollars in cost. The logistical burden of adding Steam Machine would likely offset any imagined savings. Especially if they had to own re-imaging and licensing when they are accustomed to product keys embedded in the firmware when they do vendor preloads today.
Maybe you could worry a bit more about the consumer market, where you have people micro-managing costs and will be more willing to invest their own time, but even then the market for non-laptop home systems that don’t think they need nVidia but still need something better than integrated GPUs is so small that it shouldn’t be a worry either.
That’s the feel good warm marketing Sony spun for the thing. The PS3 sold around 88 million units. It flopped at first because it didn’t have any games for it. The Linux thing was a quirky fun but ultimately useless feature. You had to code custom software for the thing, it had no commercial software for Linux on a PS3. Its sales ballooned after it became the cheapest bluray on the market, and it was after the removal of otherOS support.
Less than 10 thousand were used for distributed computation clusters. The famous navy supercomputer only had 1.7 thousand units or so. Against the global sales numbers it was barely a rounding error.
That’s a tradition with gaming systems, see the Navy’s playstation supercomputer.
That’s the feel good warm marketing Sony spun for the thing. The PS3 sold around 88 million units. It flopped at first because it didn’t have any games for it. The Linux thing was a quirky fun but ultimately useless feature. You had to code custom software for the thing, it had no commercial software for Linux on a PS3. Its sales ballooned after it became the cheapest bluray on the market, and it was after the removal of otherOS support.
Less than 10 thousand were used for distributed computation clusters. The famous navy supercomputer only had 1.7 thousand units or so. Against the global sales numbers it was barely a rounding error.
That’s a bit different IIRC, they purchased them directly from Sony and they didn’t have any of the OtherOS hardware lockouts like retail consoles did.
The discourse around this confuses the fuck out of me. Did people actually expect this to be <$500?
No, but there’s some unhinged people arguing it’s gonna be $800 or even $1k.
Prediction:
$999.99
$500 or bust
A PS5 Pro, which is more powerful, is $750. If it’s not below that it’s too damn much.
D O A O A
If olot really Is going to be priced like that then why? Like you Can Build a PC and Its even fun. You cant make a Powerfull PC that small easly but like…idk
As long as I can buy it with one Troy ounce of pure gold and not more, it’s a good price.
I hope they release the price soon, the discourse on this has become incredibly tiring.
Fair prices are fair, the existence of billionaires is not. Tax Gabe Newell and the rest of 'em too.
They’re letting us discuss this ad nauseam just to understand what prices people consider acceptable for these devices
The top end Steam Deck was like $750 at release. Replace the screen with better CPU and GPU, and there’s your baseline for the Machine. Since it’s “6x” performance, price will probably be a bit higher. People thinking way less are smoking crack.
How many of you have actually had a Linux PC connected to your living room TV? I built one about 13 years ago (and upgraded the guts occasionally) and it’s been awesome. With a regular web browser you can watch YouTube (with uBlock of course), Plex/Jellyfin, or any streaming service, in addition to gaming. Plus I’ve done stuff like vacation planning with my partner, where we can easily bring up maps and hotel listings from our couch without hunching over a laptop or tablet.
While Linux hardware support is quite good these days, there’s still something to be said for buying a machine that you know is fully supported and targeted by game devs.
Quick question, can you buy a pc and run the same OS and version of steam that this pc they built uses? Im assuming its the same as steam deck. Just wondering if you could build it exactly the same outside just installing steam.
That sucks. I hoped Valve would price it competitively to boost the sales and adoption. But why would I buy this “crippled” PC for the same price I can buy retail? The main gripe for me is Gabecube has no room for upgrade, not even second drive, nothing. Which obviously is not the case with self built PC.
Don’t get me wrong I still like the idea, but the price just must make sense.
I know speculation is fun, but until we know the price officially, all of this is moot. Wait until next year when they announce actual pricing and judge it then for its value.
I, personally, don’t think it’ll be a successful product if it isn’t less than $800. They don’t have to have it cost console prices, but it does need to be at least somewhat within spitting distance. If the price is the cost of an Xbox or Playstation plus, say…a year of their online service subscription, I think that could be marketable.
If it’s closer to a grand, it’ll be a flop like the first Steam Machines.
Maybe we will all benefit if the 14 year old kids gets a steam machine, instead of some cheap pos with loads of errors, slowness etc = extra rage in games.
I went to PCPartPicker and tried to assemble a similarly spec’d PC, not with the absolute cheapest components, but definitely from the lower end sorted by price, it came out close to $800.
I guess if Valve can price it at that and be smaller it might have a market, but if much more than that people are better off just buying a PC.
A PC of similar performance is about $550 so I don’t get what they’re saying about it not been priced like a console. That’s about exactly what a Series S would cost.
Think about it this way, people. Yes, it may be more expensive than a PlayStation. However, Steam offers numerous deals several times a year, so it will be worth the investment. In the long run, owning a Steam Machine or PC will pay for itself.
Unfortunately, due to the craze of AI server farms, PC parts are becoming more expensive. For example, the price of RAM has doubled, and analysts say that SSDs will suffer the same fate.
Draedron@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 months ago
The price really seems way too high if they are this scared to put out a number
llii@discuss.tchncs.de 4 months ago
The big problem are the RAM prices at the moment. Hard to set a number if you don’t know if the RAM prices double or quadruple in the coming months.
filister@lemmy.world 4 months ago
I will be very much surprised if they haven’t secured and locked the prices of all their components for a year or two ahead, so this should not be a factor.