Well, It's a game box that doesn't record everything you do, shove it into AI, and sell all your secrets to the highest bidder.

It's basically a linux PC from a reputable vendor that comes with support.

And yeah, you could build your own cheaper.

It's a linux gaming PC where you do not have to worry about hardware compatibility.

It is so bizarre that even when something like this is announced, a unique phenomenon in gaming and modern pc history, which is sure to make a lot of pc linux converts because of its accessibility, the pc linux masterrace is still being gatekeeping about it.

The box in question is tiny: about the size of a GameCube. Extremely portable, light, and quiet. Valve has a strong profit motive to ensure games can actually run on it without Windows, doing nearly all of the troubleshooting for you. Yeah you could install Linux on a system you built yourself. You can eat the responsibility of expensive mistakes you could possibly make in building it and setting it up. But if the steam machine doesn't work ALREADY, straight out of the box, without the expectation for you to fuck with it, it's valve's problem. For grown ups who have a job and limited free time, not having to waste that time on unfucking shit may in fact be worth it.

I can build a better PC for less money

Can you?

First of all, Valve has not even announced a price yet. Everything is still pure speculation.

Second, have you seen the price of GPU's, RAM, and SSD's these days? Consumers for gaming PC parts are competing for supply with industrial buyers now. AI is hoovering all the supply up with the backing from private equity. The GPU market never fully recovered from the cryptocurrency era either.

I've been wanting to build a new mid-range gaming PC for years now. I've kept an eye on prices. I spent ~$1k on a machine in 2019, with the GPU costing a mere $175. Nowadays a comparable tier of GPU starts at $600, and the cost fo a mid-tier machine is over $1,500, getting closer to $2,000 with the RAM and SSD prices.

Valve can get better bulk pricing on components. Their primary profit center is software sales, and it's really hard to sell software when no one can afford hardware. So Valve is incentivized to design these machines that are resistant to being scalped or scrapped for specific components, and to sell them for relatively low margin in order to drive game sales. We already saw this with the Steam Deck- it was hardware that could play games without mining crypto.

I do think the RAM and maybe SSS supply could throw a wrench into Valve's plans though. Just because if the prices go high enough, people could start buying steam machines to rip out the RAam modules and sell them separately. But we are nowhere near that level of RAM pricing yet.

It's smaller, it has build-in wireless steam controller/frame/deck connector, iirc it switch on your tv when you turn on the machine, it has minimal amount of programmable LED, and it's powerful enough to play the latest release. The form factor alone is quite enticing, building my own pc with the same spec probably will be a lot more bigger.

Have they announced a price yet?

I'll just repost the same comment I wrote the first time someone posted this meme:

It's a small form factor PC, pre-installed with Linux and steam. Period.

Can you build something more powerful cheaper? Probably

Can you build something more powerful with the same form factor for cheaper? Maybe, probably not... We don't know.

All of those are beside the point.

They sell millions of desktop PCs pre-installed with windows, they often make terrible hardware choices, and don't even have a small form factor, if they do they have the computing power of a laptop. All of this at an unreasonable prices. At the very least the steam machine will be better value than those. Anyone who would consider one of those PCs, might consider a steam machine instead.

Steam box

It's got what nerds crave!

I like the idea that it's a targetable hardware profile personally.

Quite a bit of speculation in these comments considering we don't even have a price yet

How do you not get it? Didn’t you buy an eggs box when you were a kid? What was in it? Eggs. Now this is the same thing but with Steam. Your just pretending you don’t get it.

I'll repeat what others likely mentioned before:

Valve specifically chose to build a mid range PC, so more people can afford it.

Also they priced it in a way where it's still affordable while offering the convenience of not having to build it yourself. The majority of people never built a PC themselves, nor do they want to.

I remember that guy on hacker news who said Dropbox would never take off because he could build something similar with rsync. He's not wrong, people who looked for something rsync could solve continued just use rsync. Meaning, people who want to build a PC for less will continue to build a PC less. The Steam Box isn't for people who want to build a pc for less, though.

Meh. You can’t beat the economy of scale with boutique retail PC part prices. That said, you’re probably going to get the min quality for specified performance.

By the time it arrives you won’t even be able to buy the memory for whatever the Steam Machine ends up costing.

Funny meme, but I would genuinely worry for the people who don’t understand the value proposal of a pre-built, console-like PC for Steam gaming. We will see if it’s worth it based on price and specs later, but the logic is definitely there, especially with MS, Sony and Nintendo dropping the ball so much.

I can build a PC for cheaper

How the flying fuck would you know? The price for the SM hasn't been announced yet and at the same time parts are increasing in price by a pretty huge margin.

As a PC Linux gamer I hear you...I really do, but listen...I really just wanna stick something Steambox-esque on my face and finally have a smooth open source VR experience.

I'm really looking forward to that.

And I know when they announce it, it'll probably be way out of reach for me, but I'm still looking forward to it lol.

from my wife - we sit in front of a computer all damn day. we don't want to sit in front of a computer all damn night too. we want to sit down in front of our TV and play games together in the evening. we just want it to work. we've built PCs and we have no interest in cobbling something together and supporting it for it's lifetime. don't act like that doesn't come with a huge cost of time.

Its a *gabecube*

1. We don't know the price yet
2. Not everyone knows how to build a PC
3. Not everyone wants to learn to build a PC
4. Not everyone knows how to install a new OS
5. Not everyone wants to learn to install a new OS

(Talking about OS because I'm assuming they want a console experience, not a windows desktop experience)

How do you know you can build one for cheaper if we don't know the price?