ETA Prime : Steam Machine Hands-On First Look! :: Also Price Reveal and Order Waitlist Open!

Gamers Nexus has a whole thurough benchmark video out.

TLDW; the Steam Machine is very expensive for what it can do. Unfortunately that’s just reality because the components cost about as much today…

Yeah, I’m guessing they’re also uh, in addition to the lottery, going to be attempting some backend strategy to attempt to weed out likely ‘this is a fake account for resellers’.

Wasn’t willing to be a lost leader

It’s literally a PC. IT departments all over the world would have absolutely no problem taking this hardware, and using it for their open office hell. Steam would get absolutely zero dollars. Steam needs the hardware to stand on its own

Yep.

I was initially hopeful that this thing might be surprisingly affordable, due to… basicslly the theory/rumor is that the ‘semi custom’ apu was initially intended to be used in a planned but cancelled Windows tablet/Surface kind of thing…

But yeah, then, tariffs, rampocalypse, strait’s closed due to raids = shipping costs go up bigly.

I’m pretty sure the way Valve does their internal finances is that that 30% cut of all games?

Sure some of it goes toward Steam server costs, but I think most of it just goes into a giant war chest fund, from which they ‘experiment’, with things like this.

Makes sense to me that they at least want to break even… business wise, that works if it makes more people use Steam and/or increases their reputation as actually innovating in some way.

But being a loss leader would simply be too dangerous, too risky. They are small fries compared to the major console/pc hw manufacturers, and I am very sure the last thing they would ever want to do is owe some outside actor a lot of money.

We feel that they are happy they already have a gaming rig.

RIP to anyone who bought a home after 2019 and anyone who bought anything gaming after Rampocalypse

I don’t think it’s bad for what they are specs wise, with the current distorted components market. I do think however that the price is higher than what the target audience will be willing/able to afford to pay which is a shame.

It won’t do as well as it should have; I hope that doesn’t put valve off the concept. The idea is right, it was just very bad timing for this particular launch.

I am totally open to other people having different stances, but at least for myself, worth it.

I already have an OLED Deck with a 1 TB drive… lost my old pc in lets summarily call it a series of unforunate events, been daily driving the Deck with a dock thingy and M+KB as my main PC for a few years now.

So, I can get the 512 GB + controller bundle, and just swap the drives, reflash em with appropriate OS.

$1128 for a ‘pc’ that can run RDR2 and Cyberpunk 77 at pretty darn good graphical settings, at 1440p, at or over 60 fps average? And fancy pantsy controller?

Good enough, my eyes are starting to go a bit anyways lol, 4K is very likely wasted on me, and I’d love to have a Steam Deck that’s basically easier to hold and lighter, as a control option.

That’d be a steal, imo, looking at it in PC pricing terms… which is the way I’m looking at it, because that’s the way I’ll mostly be using it.

Also I can dress it up as a companion cube.

Ratman loves companion cube, cannot stop testing, needs to keep testing.

They are exactly what I originally thought, 1-1.5 and and I kind of don’t really know how you couldn’t see this coming. I think it’s fair given the external factors. It’s a pre built so add 20% to the “parts list” and you get cool features.

For reference I currently run bazzite on a 6700k/2080 ti and also have a steam deck.

Let’s wait to see the perfs? From my understanding of the specs I don’t regret building my new pc earlier this year.