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Are you ready for a $1,000 Steam Machine? Some analysts think you should be. (arstechnica.com)
submitted 11 months ago by to c/games@sh.itjust.works
143 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

The title is a bit misleading, as the article lists diverging analysts’ opinions, ranging from Valve willing to sell at a loss or low margins, to high prices due to RAM and SSD price volatility.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.blackeco.com/post/2330473

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[–] 54 points 11 months ago* (5 children)

People seriously underestimate the performance that you can pull out from some medium-level hardware with an highly-optimized OS. I mean, just watch what they were able to archive with the Deck.

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  • [–] 8 points 11 months ago (4 children)

    Seriously! Just started replaying cyberpunk on my base model deck and it is buttery smooth! Very impressive for an igpu!

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago (3 children)

    Yes, but also consider you are running a more updated, optimized version of Cyberpunk than what everyone experienced when it first launched (and more optimized drivers/FSR/etc). So the true performance gains of mid-low range hardware is masked by the fact that the game is not so horribly unoptimized anymore.

    In other words, the actual performance increase of hardware over the years is perceived to be higher than it actually is due to other factors.

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  • [–] 5 points 11 months ago*

    But the existence of a steam machine would incentivize releasing games in this kind of optimized state.

    You can’t optimize “for pc” because “pc” could mean any configuration of components. Obviously you can optimize, but you can’t “target”, you can’t say “we got it running at 60 fps stable on ‘’pc’.

    You can “optimize” for a pre defined steam machine. You can say “we got it running at 60fps stable on the stock steam machine”

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    • [–] 36 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

    It's likely in everybody's best interest that this is a wild success. Not only will game developers be incentivized to actually optimize their games for reasonable setups; this will unseat Nvidia's monopoly over gamers with their ridiculously overpriced graphics cards and also Microsoft's monopoly of a gamer's operating system.

    Nvidia's partnership with Palantir is incredibly concerning and any blow to Nvidia is a welcome one. Encourage these developments and hype this all up.

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    • [–] 46 points 11 months ago* (7 children)

    Doubt they'll be that pricey. I think they're aiming for 600ish or thereabouts. I'm not the target audience (beefy gaming pc) but I love the concept and what it'll do to further indie gaming. It'll probably also pull people from consoles to pc gaming. Valve can't stop winning.

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  • [–] 17 points 11 months ago (4 children)

    The problem is dram prices right now are crazy so the price might get pushed up quite a bit

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  • [–] 21 points 11 months ago (3 children)

    Depends on whether they negotiated contract pricing beforehand. The price increases aren't because of manufacturing cost increases, they're because of high demand. Retail pricing isn't really related to bulk wholesale contract pricing at all.

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  • [–] 5 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    I think they might eat the extra costs because they know they'll more than recuperate it from increased software sales. Hell, XboX as a console was a loss leader for MS for over a decade.

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  • [+] 5 points 11 months ago (1 child)
    [removed by mod]
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  • [–] 0 points 11 months ago

    It doesn't come with windows. For a lot of businesses that is a requirement. The other thing valve has done is require you to have a steam account with purchases, and limit the number you can purchase on that account, before you buy a hardware device from them. This was to prevent scalping but also would prevent the scenario you present limiting sales to those that have already purchased games is a solid strategy for their new devices imo.

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    • [–] 75 points 11 months ago* (36 children)

    Valve willing to sell at a loss

    I don't think that Valve will sell the Steam Machine at a loss.

    Closed-system console vendors often do, then jack up the prices of their games and make their money back as people buy games. So why not Valve?

    Two reasons.

    1. They sell an open system. If Valve sells a mini-PC below cost, then a number of people will just buy the thing and use it as a generic mini-PC, which doesn't make them anything. A Nintendo Switch, in contrast, isn't very appealing for anything than running games purchased from Nintendo.

    2. They don't have a practical way to charge more for games for just Steam Machine users

    their model is agnostic to what device you run a purchased game on. So even if they were going to do that, it'd force them to price games non-optimally for non-Steam-Machine users, charge more than would be ideal from Valve's standpoint.

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  • [–] 33 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    While I think you’re ultimately right, 6 years ago I would have said the same thing about the Steam Deck idea, so I’m compelled to offer counterpoints.

    Valve, very uniquely, does offer the best Linux-based digital games storefront to use on that Linux gaming PC you bought. So, they’re very much positioned to take advantage of the hardware purchase. Users aren’t “locked in”, but they are compelled in, and users may have a smoother time getting games on Steam than trying to set up controller-based launchers on Heroic or something.

    It’s like when the pet isn’t literally fenced into the house, and is allowed to roam free, but is reminded that its fluffy toy and warm meals are all back at home, so it’ll never go far.

    Valve also might just be more forward-thinking than most game companies most COMPANIES these days. They build goodwill this way and get people obsessed with their brand by having more wins like this.

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  • [+] -22 points 11 months ago* (32 children)

    Hah, this is where they get you and I’ve been dogpiled for raising this as an issue continuously. This is an illusion of an open system. Where are you going to buy games for Steam Machine? Steam obviously, there’s no competition. Then as your library grows you get more and more vendor locked. Then Valve does an Android application notarising switcheroo and you have Linux machine that’s no different from a Mac or an Android phone. Of course they can subsidise it because they can recoup it thanks to 30% cut and it’ll only accelerate the process.

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  • [–] 19 points 11 months ago (26 children)

    Where are you going to buy games for Steam Machine? Steam obviously, there’s no competition.

    Simply not true.

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  • [+] -11 points 11 months ago (25 children)

    What is the competition on Linux? What’s their market share?

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  • [–] 18 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    GoG, epic, any other store really. Proton is made by valve but it works in whatever, and there are tools now to use proton (not wine, proton) outside of steam to get all the goodies you got on top. Heroic launcher does that for the games you get from the Amazon store, gog, epic, and any other exe you got.

    I even installed battle net, and once you open it everything you install from there works in that bubble and work, I played plenty HOTS games.

    I play modded D2 without much issues.

    You know why the steam market share in Linux is so high? Because they are the ones that put the work to make windows games work on Linux. Yes, wine existed before but they both adapted it for games and contributed to the overall wine project a ton. Also, iirc, steamdecks make up for 30% of the Linux machines from valve's yearly reports. The market is tremendously tiny yet.

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  • [+] 8 points 11 months ago* (3 children)
    [deleted]
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  • [+] -6 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    Does Heroic launcher guarantee that the game you bought will not break Wine compatibility when patched by the developer? What kind of consumer experience are you trying to sell here?

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  • [–] 3 points 11 months ago (18 children)

    The competition on...

    Okay, so, it's an OS right?

    So for free linux-native stuff, there's the default package manager that comes installed. Switch your steam deck to desktop mode. There's a lot there, including emulators that will run on steam deck from ancient Atari shit to Nintendo switch.

    But you can also run non-steam executables with proton. Heroic, lutris, etc are great tools from that. You can buy your games anywhere without rootkit DRM. Most things from itch.io or gog.com will run. Or, you know; other places. You can just pirate shit.

    You can in fact uninstall the stock OS and run anything you can compile for midrange x86 hardware.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago* (17 children)

    You missed the part where Android wanted to lock people out of installing their own apps. They postponed it for now due to pressure but it will happen eventually. Also the part where bootloaders lock you out of changing OS. This thing is possible when you vendor lock people in a vertically integrated system and people here are completely oblivious to the trap they’re walking into because they think Valve will be forever cool.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago* (16 children)

    Yeah those cases were bad, steam deck just has Linux on it though. Arch based I think with two DE's: KDE plasma and a modified' 'steam big picture' mode.

    I don't think anything is locked, and they aren't fucking with that in any way dell lenovo or system76 couldn't.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago (15 children)

    Not yet but they hold you by the balls because you buy license most of your games through Steam. Once they’re entrenched enough they can do whatever. Android was a very open platform in the beginning, now it’s almost iOS. You can fork Android / SteamOS but without Play Store / Steam consumers aren’t that interested.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago (14 children)

    But it's much easier to pirate a program than an OS, and they can't fuck with the bios too terribly easy once the thing's in your hands.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago* (13 children)

    It’s pretty hard to pirate on iOS (and it will be hard on Android too eventually). Their plan is to do this gradually, definitely not in a single generation of hardware. They’ll have pretty strong arguments for locking down the bootloader (kernel level anti-cheat for games like CoD or Valorant) or just plain locking Steam to supported platforms to lock you out of other OSs first.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago (12 children)

    And when they do, that hardware will be worthless shit, but steam still has to run of my 15 year old Debian/Fedora x86 box, and other companies are making handhelds like this now.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (11 children)

    Why does it have to? Valve isn’t known for maintaining legacy software. You assume your software will run forever as-is but you can see how that looks like in accelerated timeline in the case of Valve games on Macs.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago (10 children)

    Because most people play on the 300$ dell their mom got them for school ten years ago.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago* (9 children)

    The equivalent of that $300 Dell in 10 years is even more likely to be locked down. Open hardware will become more and more niche, and therefore even more expensive comparatively. This is where the entire industry seems to be going.

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago* (8 children)

    Okay. I agree this is likely abd a problem. But like, is valve's hardware locked down? How are they different from dell?

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (7 children)

    Valve, unlike Dell, has the power to vertically integrate an ecosystem. They own an app store with de facto monopoly over PC gaming. If Valve says that starting 2030 you can only run Steam on Windows and their own locked down OS (and enforce that via bootloader or some other measure) what can you do about it? You only licensed games from them, never bought them.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago (6 children)

    Why can't they take back shit you 'bought' rather than just licensed?

    Ownership is just a licensing agreement under capitalism.

    I agree the problems are real, but they are not specific to valve.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago (5 children)

    I’m dying on this hill because people act like Valve is different. If I had to guess it’s PC players that want to feel superior to others, even though they were first to lose access to physical copies of games and second hand market it provided.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago (4 children)

    The thing is: they're not different.

    And their hardware isn't, like; special; it's a single board computer running the standard x86/64 architecture that ships with a lightly customized OS most users won't change.

    I'm more worried about what nvidia Intel and and are getting up to. They'll fuck you first.

    I guess valve kind of is special? They are a games company, so they don't have big government contracts, they don't work with palantir, and they dont work at a low enough level that they can easily install something my electrical engineer or hacker friends can't possibly fix with a soldering iron.

    Theyll fuck me, sure, yes, but the chip makers already have their pants down.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago (3 children)

    What are Nvidia and Intel doing?

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago (2 children)

    Intel management engine, then whatever its successor is called. Same concept. I think there was some other more specific collaboration with the regime.

    Nvidia straight up contracted with palantir.

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  • [–] 10 points 11 months ago (3 children)

    Theoretically people could use it for a cheap non-gaming PC, except the cheapest non-gaming PC would be non-gaming specs.

    Anyone using it for cheap crypto-mining is an idiot, the cheap option there is a rack full of bang-for-buck GPUs.

    Are there any other use-cases that involve gaming-PC specs? Making videos, perhaps?

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago*

    If it's priced well and idle power usage good, it can be a great home lab. Run all sorts of services on it. Host your own Google Drive/Docs/Photos alternatives with all the automated categorization like face detection sorting. Should be strong enough to run a lot of unrelated services off one machine. If I ever had gigabit internet, I'd probably try stuff like hosting a Matrix server. Self hosted RSS feed.

    Would be great for videos. RDNA3.5 has good AV1 and HEVC encoder and decode I believe. I think h.264 got solid with RDNA3.5. Good for video usually means good for photos too. Probably audio. Blender support for AMD graphics cards continue to improve and game engines have generally always been good. Great for a computer lab to teach something like Godot

    The compact media creation thing would be the big thing for me if I needed a computer and this was substantially cheaper than a Strix Halo minipc. Darktable, Kdenlive, Krita, Ardour, Godot, Blender. I'd have people in mind where a $500-600 just under an ~RX 7600 would be a huge upgrade for their personal art workstation and the compact form is a big plus

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago*

    In this context, "generic mini-PC" doesn't need to even be "non-gaming-PC", just not a platform for buying Valve's games; a razor-and-blades model requires that you be the one selling the blades. If someone just goes and runs games purchased from GOG, that's already an issue for them.

    It's why inkjet printer manufacturers, who do use this model, try to make it so stupendously difficult to use ink from competitors (outside of the bottled-ink printers, which don't use that model, where the manufacturers are fine with you doing that).

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    • [–] 16 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    Some analysts think Great headline

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    • [–] 12 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    I don't think it would make sense for them to sell it at a loss. On the other hand, they don't have to make a huge profit from it either. I really hope it'll come down to a range of about €600. That would make it a no-brainer for me.

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  • [–] 3 points 11 months ago

    Benefits of being a non publicly traded company, they can actually take risks which they did with the deck. It performed way better than they expected, so while they might not sell it at a loss they will definitely be competitive. I mean considering development costs, it has an integrated on board but discreet GPU, so the r&d budget will be factored in. But I honestly don't see it >$700. Without knowing the exact chipset they're using that is. But memory is the big cost constraint right now thanks to ai.

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  • [–] 3 points 11 months ago

    Right. I don't believe they're hurting for profits, and at the same time, having Linux and specifically Steam OS become much more widely adopted would greatly benefit them (for breaking out of the Microsoft jail they still find themselves partially in). Also, hardware is not their primary business. It seems that they could sell this to cover their costs and reap all the rewards from that besides immediate profit.

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    • [–] 11 points 11 months ago (4 children)

    Can get an 'aoostar GODY' on AliExpress for US$1000. Basically the same GPU, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD. The steam machine has less cores and less ethernet. Though it also has a way bigger heatsink, LEDs and extra Bluetooth/valve gamepad antenna.

    Comparing the deck to comparative brands, it is wayyy cheaper. I think valve are going to be aggressive on price, especially when the CPU/GPU are fairly old and meek.

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  • [–] 9 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    The Steam Machine seems to be using the Nintendo model of using low cost off-the-shelf parts instead of expensive custom components.

    Then again the Steam controller and VR headset seem kind of fancy.

    Hopefully, they get very popular and manages to steal significant market share from Windows.

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  • [–] 5 points 11 months ago

    And beyond the aggressive pricing, the one major benefit over other miniPC makers is the extensive support.

    I have a Minisforum mini PC. Took Minisforum over a year to release BIOS updates that were finished in March 2024... and against all CS promises it still hasn't fixed the initial discrepancies (advertised as the only 8945HS mini PC that can go over 57W due to their improved cooling, and the only Ryzen 8000 series APU that can handle RAM at 5400-5600MT/s - still can't get power over 57W and even though I have compatible RAM, it refuses to clock over 4800MHz, and there's no option to configure it either).

    Meanwhile Valve is still dropping improvements on the Steam Deck, 3.5 years after release.

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    • [–] 20 points 11 months ago (3 children)

    I built a $700 Bazzite-based Steambox with some parts used and the Steam Machine seems about par on performance and is both better looking and has additional features so ... yeah

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  • [–] 4 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    What GPU/CPU did you go for to fit into that budget?

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  • [–] 5 points 11 months ago

    Asus B360 Prime with 32GB RAM i5 9400F CPU 6700 XT GPU w/ 12GB VRAM

    (all of that used)

    ... however, I originally bought it all for a virtual pinball build so I'm sure it could be done better with Bazzite in mind from the start.

    I went with a white+birch Lian Li A3-mATX to get something barely good looking enough to fit with the rest of the gaming room.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago

    Yeah, but the hardware in these machines is part custom and Valve buys in bulk to be able to sell at an affordable price. Remember: their main business is in selling games, but you need hardware to play those games

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    • [–] 6 points 11 months ago (11 children)

    ...I might pick up the controller if it's not a hundred bucks.

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  • [+] 0 points 11 months ago (3 children)
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  • [–] 4 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    The original steam controller was $50, I would hope they'd be able to keep it under $100.

    Not to mention a steamdeck is $400, and that's got a lot more going on than just a controller.

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  • [+] 1 point 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 child)
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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago

    I mean the original controller had gryo, track pads, USB dongle and Bluetooth, haptics, and buttons on the back.

    However, I do agree the controller felt cheap (I think really just how light it was).

    We'll have to see. I think they could pull it off as they've been more aggressive with pricing than other companies.

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  • [–] -1 points 11 months ago (6 children)

    The controller is going to be closer to $200

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  • [–] 4 points 11 months ago (5 children)

    Ain't no way. I got my steam deck during the first sale for around $330. There is no way their controller based off it will cost about half of something that came with a screen, soc, and bigger battery.

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  • [–] 3 points 11 months ago (4 children)

    Ps5 controller is like $70, the Steam Controller has more features than that, and the OG Steam Controller was pretty expensive. I’d be shocked if it’s under $100. I’m expecting it in the $150-$200 range. But we’ll see, I’d love to be proven wrong

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  • [–] 3 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

    the OG Steam Controller was pretty expensive

    Wasn't the OG steam controller $50 ?

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    • [–] 11 points 11 months ago (4 children)

    For $1k I think this would be DOA.

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    • [+] 8 points 11 months ago (3 children)
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  • [–] 3 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

    Good guess. For reference, Xbox series X without optical drive is $600 currently. PS5 Pro without optical drive is $750 currently. The specs on Valve Machine seem more similar to PS5 Pro, I think.

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  • [–] 3 points 11 months ago* (1 child)

    The hardware is stronger than Xbox Series S but weaker than base PS5. It doesn't even get close to PS5 Pro. I recommend watching Digital Foundry video about it.

    This article is pure sensationalism and speculation. The reason GabeCube's hardware is mid is because it was made with affordability in mind. It's supposed to be cheaper than if you would build a regular PC with similar specs. Expect something around $500-$600 price point.

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