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Valve confirms Steam Machine will be priced ‘like a PC with the same level of performance’ (www.videogameschronicle.com)
submitted 11 months ago by to c/games@lemmy.world
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[–] 98 points 11 months ago (21 children)

They're letting us discuss this ad nauseam just to understand what prices people consider acceptable for these devices

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

    100%

    But that's not a terrible thing, I suppose.

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

    Fair pricing means a reasonable profit on the base cost. Trying to gauge what people are willing to pay means that you want to maximise your profit at all costs, consumers be damned.

    I understand that's what Americans consider "fair", but I don't fully agree.

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

    In most cases, yes. But you have to remember, this is Valve and not some ordinary company. They have extremely deep wallets and a lot of responsibility and expectations on their shoulders (importantly, not the stock market!). If they charged what it cost for hardware and what it cost them to do r&d, it would likely not be in consumers favor.

    Like even just get off the American-bad thing for one second: pricing it as a standalone pc basically just means "the cost of the parts". They've put a lot of time and effort into this across their core employees and likely outsourced stuff because they couldn't, in-house. Actually listening to people and charging relative to that is actually a great way to be fair and make people happy, guaranteeing positive impact of your product. I guarantee they're paying attention to what people say ALL over the place. Like.... Why do you think "it's done when it's done" is their pace?

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

    They're buying the parts directly from the manufacturers though, so cutting out the retailer middle-man could offset the R&D costs.

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

    Research and development is probably very high when you consider Proton, SteamOS, and the semi-custom CPU and GPU. Something between $50 to $100 million would be typical. Silicone is famously expensive in R&D, Proton has continuous costs (and has for quite a while now) that rack up, and SteamOS is literally an operating system. That's a lot of salaries to pay.

    I reckon they're taking advantage of being private and playing the long game. Very, very long game. They're not really in danger as long as Steam is successful, but I can't blame them for wanting a decent gross margin so they can at least cover hardware costs. Especially with memory prices right now, I wouldn't be surprised at 1000€ here in Germany, though I wouldn't be happy about it. I would happily buy at 900€ (≈$1040), and be ecstatic at 800€ (≈$920).

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago

    Personally, I wouldn't include Proton in the costs of the Steam Machine. The Deck already is benefiting from it immensely, and I would consider it to be a cost of expanding into Linux gaming in general - especially with the Lenovo handheld and other devices starting to jump on the bandwagon as Microsoft continues to take repeated dumps on their userbase. Its R&D costs are being won back by the market % Steam takes on any games bought and played in Linux, which means that it can benefit from that continued revenue stream rather than the one-off hardware sale.

    The hardware has to break even. The software already has.

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  • [–] 6 points 11 months ago

    Fair pricing means a reasonable profit on the base cost.

    Under many circumstances, this is true. However, console makers have historically sold consoles either at or slightly below cost, expecting to make their real profits on game sales, online store sales, etc… In the business world, it’s called a loss leader. Meaning it’s something popular that the company takes a loss on, while expecting it to encourage more sales elsewhere.

    The classic grocery store example is a rotisserie chicken. You can go get a whole rotisserie chicken from the grocery store deli for like $3. It’s so cheap because the store is selling it at a loss. It’s a loss leader. Very few people will simply buy the chicken by itself. Instead, they’ll buy a tub of potato salad, some roasted corn, a can of green beans, and a gallon jug of sweet tea to go along with it. By selling that chicken at a slight loss, they were able to get the customer to buy all of those other things at a profit.

    That being said, Valve has already stated that they’re not planning on having the Machine be a loss leader. Which is why people expect it to cost as much as a prebuilt with similar specs.

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

    Anything more than $500 and we riot!

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

    Get ready to riot because there's no way it's that cheap. My money is on $800-1000.

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

    If it is priced higher than $600 they won't sell enough to justify their existence. It will just be a repeat of last time.

    This is perfect for people wanting a new console with a large games library, but Valve seems to be trying to force the square block in the round hole by placing it in the PC market space.

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

    Why? Look at how many people here say they want Steam OS, and Lemmy skews heavy toward Linux users. This is that, but OOTB.

    I don't think it'll sell anywhere near as well as the Steam Deck, but it's also a less exciting form factor. I do think it'll sell a fair number of units though.

    The cheapest equivalent prebuilt I can find with similar specs (RX 7600 is slightly better than the Steam Machine) is $850, and a DIY build is more like $900 (lots of corners cut), so there's probably not much margin on the prebuilt. Valve is probably saving some cash with their custom CPU, and they're probably shipping it with a Steam Controller, hence the $800 target. If component prices rise significantly before launch, I could see $1k.

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago

    It depends on how many Valve have already manufactured. If they were smart they'll be quietly manufacturing these and only just now announced it. You don't announce a product until you've got some units sitting in a warehouse somewhere, or else a competitor might see the opportunity to make things difficult for you.

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

    That's a bad take. Look at PC prices. What equivalent PC could you build for $1000? This is going to be 800+ and still the best value in the PC market. Until they get steam OS on arm and you can put it in a 600 Mac mini.

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

    An equivalent PC would have a full fat non-mobile graphics card. They keep trying to claim it'll do 60 FPS at 4K with AI upscaling. Which is the same as saying it'll do 60 FPS at 1080p.

    This would be a compelling product as a console, the PC capable parts are a nice bonus but no one's going to be buying this to be their primary computer unless they are going to replace a potato.

    Regardless of what the market is doing if it's anything more than $700 it'll flop. Which would be an incredible shame but it is what it is. No one is going to pay $1,000 for a PC that cannot be upgraded.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago

    I don't think this is accurate. The majority of IRL gamers I know are casual people with crappy Minecraft-level pre-builts (hugely overpriced usually; I know someone who spent 1.1k on a 3060 Ti pre-built) or 10 year-old computers built by their neighbors. A lot of casual gamers exist and the steam machine will be very appealing to them as an easy upgrade.

    In a way, you're right. A lot of people will be upgrading potatoes. Or replacing thin air next to their TV's.

    Even I, with a custom built with a 7900 XT running openSUSE TW, am considering this for doing stuff in the living room (or similar, I live in a tiny apartment lol) with friends or just casual-TV gaming and media. I don't have that right now, and even 900€ sounds appealing for doing that with a Linux-based computer (and gamescope!!!, which I can't get working on my device) I have full control over, but know will work.

    I don't know of something equivalently priced, but it there is something, please tell me. I think they have a market here. I personally, at least, have been waiting years for something like this to recommend to friends and to an extent to myself.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago

    Equivalent doesn't mean much when it's not a standard, upgradable PC. This device competes with consoles, not desktop PCs, and needs to be in that price bracket, as the equivalence is not on the hardware or performance, but just "can it play current-gen games?"

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

    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.

    P.S. Since Valve is not buying retail I think there is room for lower than that, and it'd definitely be welcome, but I'm not sure Valve will make that decision.

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  • [–] [S] 128 points 11 months ago (14 children)

    2x8 GB RAM for 130 dollars? What the fuck? I knew theyve gotten more expensive recently but that stings.

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

    Brother it's so bad. I've been trying to help a friend do one recently, or at least plan it, and I've watched my previously $85 2x16 sticks of GSkill DDR5 (like the cheapest option I had) shoot up to like $260 in under a month has been insane. It's not even good ram....

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  • [–] 20 points 11 months ago

    I recently (a few months ago) built a new high-end server for my homelab, and bought 512GB of DDR4 ECC RAM for around $510. I just looked it up, and those exact same modules are around $2.5k to $3.5k for the same amount. That's more than I paid for the entire machine.

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  • [–] 6 points 11 months ago

    In the same boat actually. Helping a friend with a build and RAM is ridiculous right now. crappy slower 2x16 kits costing $350 and far beyond. Their desired upper end CPU is less than most RAM kits. I was trying to find a middle ground for them with 2x24 but I can't even find those kits anymore. Doesn't help that these days 32 is recommended for some games, let alone aminimum for productivity software. I got lucky when I built. Prices were bad (~150 for 2x24!!) but shot up not even days after I built last month and my kit hasn't even been in stock since I got it.

    This bubble can't burst soon enough...

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  • [–] 8 points 11 months ago*

    Most gamers don't want to get involved with PC building and just want something as convenient as a console to play their Steam games with good performance on a big screen. This can be priced quite above what a nerd would be able to build by himself with PCPartPicker.

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  • [–] 7 points 11 months ago

    I've seen estimates put the materials cost somewhere around the $425 - 500 USD range because of the specific, semi-custom hardware that they're using. It's also good to note that Valve will be able to get a better deal than any of us will because they can get bulk discounts and aren't buying each part at a market rate profit from retail vendors.

    Some people seem to be of the mind that it will be somewhere around the $500 - 800 USD range if tariffs and the RAM situation don't screw with the price, and that it will probably price out the Xbox with Microsoft's 30% profit demand and be slightly more expensive than the PS5 while having comparable but not quite as much power.

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

    I hope they release the price soon, the discourse on this has become incredibly tiring.

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  • [–] 46 points 11 months ago*

    I doubt they will. The market for NAND and ram is insane at the moment, RAM has gone up 100% in the last 3 months. Announcing a price too early could lead to having embarrassingly increase price shortly before or after launch, or take a loss on the products.

    That's not to say I don't share your sentiments. I too hope they announce it sooner rather than later, but understand why they may be apprehensive.

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    • [–] 108 points 11 months ago (31 children)

    1. 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.

    2. 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.

    3. 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.

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  • [–] 34 points 11 months ago (5 children)
    1. Ooh! Me! My TV has been a Linux box since 2016, and I'm NEVER going back
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  • [–] 6 points 11 months ago (4 children)

    Same, but I'm much more recent. Got a rpi 5 running Arch. Been happy with it for 2-3 years now

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

    How is ALARM recently?

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

    Did you mean ARM? As in arm cpu support?

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  • [–] 12 points 11 months ago

    Just set this up after the whole windows 10 support drop thing, and holy shit!!!! This is awesome! Not only no ads but I can Strawhat everything! Just got a figure out how to do this for my phone now

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

    I had a PC connected to my tv for a while, main issue was I didn’t want to use a mouse or keyboard to interact with it. I tried desperately to get more ways of starting via controller or other lite interface devices, but nothing convenient. It was an old machine, so eventually I gave it away.

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  • [–] 9 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (5 children)

    I use a Logitech K400 to control the PC connected to my TV and I generally find it to be much more convenient and responsive than using the remote on a smart TV or the controller for a console when over at someone else's place. To each their own though.

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago

    Typing anything like a website for the apple TV is the most excruciatingly annoying thing ever, it could only be described as torture. I would punch the executives that approved the design.

    The shitty iOS input via annoying notification prompts when anyone in the house uses the TV are not a solution either, since they get so annoying you have yo disable them.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago (1 child)

    I feel like a lot of these pointer devices miss the simplicity of a remote. A simple one will have a tough time entering passwords, but it’s perfect and simple for the most common actions: Turn on without walking across the room, open the most recent application, play the next episode of the series I was watching last, usually just by mashing confirm. (Nothing to tell it to go fullscreen: Because that’s an obvious assumption for everything)

    Running it all on a PC just adds more steps, unless you follow a LOT of guides to configure it to get through those things easily.

    I’d really like it if web standards were better at allowing a video website to be navigated with an “Up/Down/Left/Right/Confirm/Back” device, so that you didn’t need apps for everything. That would be good for consumer devices like Apple TVs as well as people running home PC setups.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago

    That's kinda why I said to each their own. I personally find a full fledged keyboard with integrated touchpad controlling a PC using a media center UI to be my control/interface preference. The keyboard is small enough and light enough that it sits on the couch or end table with the other remotes or controllers without any issue. Until Logitech decided to be cunts there was actually a great solution more on your end of the spectrum in the form of the Harmony remote, but well, they killed it. Luckily though, there are a couple of open source efforts to create equivalent hardware as well as to dump their database of IR codes.

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago

    Something like ten years ago I got into a console vs PC argument on reddit, and everyone unanimously told me that starting up a PC with a controller was such an easy feature to add that it wasn't even a consideration. I stuck with consoles.

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago*

    That's a tough one. The new Steam Controller will probably let you use the trackpads with an onscreen keyboard (as long as you're running the Steam app), just like the Deck. But personally I can't get used to that.

    You generally need some kind of keyboard with a PC. I have a little handheld Rii i4 with a thumb keyboard, maybe that would be better for you?

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

    I'm happily running an Intel NUC as TV computer since 2013, and it's awesome for exactly the reasons you state. I invested in it when I realized how fully crap the "smart" features of my Samsung TV are. The ultimate controller for it is a combo keyboard and touchpad, I have the Logitech K400r.

    The NUC is starting to show it's age now with its 4th gen i5, and I'm in the process of replacing it with a mini PC with an Intel N100.

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  • [–] 7 points 11 months ago

    The majority of the steam deck SKUs were produced prior to the AI memory crunch.

    These steam machines are being produced in a market where memory is 3 or 4 times more expensive.

    This box will be more than a steam deck. Probably 1000 bucks or so.

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  • [–] 6 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (4 children)
    1. Personally don't think it's as easy to compare the deck to a box. It's harder to stuff the power of a steam deck into such a small package. I've seen the compute of the machine be related to about 600$ if you purchased parts on your own to build the pc, but considering Valve have economies of scale, custom deals for customized chips with amd and having priced "painfully" in the past, there's a good chance it's less than 750$. All the Steam decks had the same performance too, the expensive ones just came with more storage and a case (so using the top end price in your example seems unjust?).
    2. Very true, those keyboard/mouse combo things that resemble a gamepad are the best!

    (Not usually one to dive into speculation, but "priced like a pc" can literally mean anything so we really have no clue other than looking at the specs)

    (I had another thought; i think it's probably a blunder from a "get all the customers" perspective to have the machine cost upwards of 1k, but maybe they don't care about that and simply want to set a high standard for linux pcs like they have done with the deck, so yeah i have no clue, based on the specs though, ~600 seems like a good base. The cheaper it is the more customers they stand to gain who have looked at pc gaming and sighed because they didnt know how to get started. Really feels impossible to know their motive rn tho, the machine could simply exist as a "gold standard" to get other oems making this stuff like they have done with the deck as i said above i think)

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

    It's harder to stuff the power of a steam deck into such a small package.

    The new Steam Machine is very compact for a gaming PC of its caliber. That took some real engineering to find the right combination of component size, TDP, thermals and noise for such a small box. There's obviously no screen and battery but otherwise it's similar design work as on the Deck.

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

    Makes sense, I haven't seen dimensions, but the space for pure compute has definitely increased greatly.

    It is still very small, but the deck (in comparison) is quite thin which I assume made it much harder to engineer. I'm sure a lot of knowledge has transferred over though and i'm not gonna act like i'd know anyways lol

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

    If you look at a teardown of the Machine, it's almost all heatsink inside. The remaining space isn't really a lot bigger than a Deck. But the components run much higher wattage (not constrained by battery) and put out a lot more heat, hence the need for the sink.

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  • [–] 4 points 11 months ago

    Had a Windows PC hooked up to my TV in I think 2008, before streaming boxes and mass adoption of Netflix. Then it was dualboot for a while starting in I think 2015, originally with Ubuntu. Now it's full time CachyOS Linux as of 2023.

    It's always been great. Wireless keyboard with the built in trackpad, plus originally 360 controllers but now 8BitDo Ultimate controllers. Plus I use it for homelab tinkering.

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

    Did you get streaming services to stream 4k? That was some bullshit I discovered when I bought my first 4k TV, that streaming services artificially limit quality for browser and Linux streaming.

    What is you solution for remote controlling? I used one of this mini keyboard+mouse combo in a shape of controller, but mine was really trash. Most of the time I used a good mouse that worked ok on the couch surface and some mouse binds to pop up a virtual keyboard. But I was never completely happy with the solution.

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

    Never tried 4K, sorry. I've only had a 1080p plasma TV (which recently blew a capacitor so I may have to get something else).

    For control, I use an old Logitech K830 which has a trackpad right on it. It's a good step up from the K400 series (lithium rechargeable and backlit keys) but sadly appears to be discontinued 😞

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  • [–] 4 points 11 months ago
    1. Yeah, I'm guessing $800-1000, and they'll probably throw in a Steam Controller. That's about how much a comparable PC would cost
    2. I've been debating it, but it needs to be something my 5yo can use.
    3. And that's Valve's target market here, those unwilling to DIY.
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    • [–] 82 points 11 months ago (6 children)

    It’s $2,400 – 6 Steam Decks – the end.

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  • [+] 29 points 11 months ago (5 children)
    [deleted]
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