memes

“I can build a better PC For less money.”

How would you know? They literally haven’t announced a price, yet.

EDIT: The only official word we’ve had on pricing is that it will be priced “like a PC”. Their stated reasoning is that because it’s a general purpose PC on an open platform, making margin back on games isn’t a guarantee.

If they priced it too low, there would be nothing stopping volume purchasers (like companies) buying them all up at scale because it’s the best compute / $ and then not using them for actually playing games.

No, the interesting part is not that Valve is releasing a box.

The interesting part is that they are releasing a desktop platform linux OS that is basically a commitment from the largest and most integrous digital distribution platform in the world that has an unshakable chokehold on gaming, past, present, and future. It's a declaration of war upon Microsoft, in a time in society where the people also desperately need a champion for home computing.

The interesting part is Valve is positioning themselves to potentially do an incredible amount of good for a lot of people fed up with publicly traded companies min-maxing extraction of money and forced reliance upon inferior service and software.

It's not a box with steam on it. It's an OS option for those of us that want to game in peace.

It’s not for people that build their own PCs. It’s for console people that are Steam-curious. People that bought the Steamdeck but don’t have a PC. I know a few of them.

I’m excited to see an expansion away from MS and Sony and see what improvements Steam makes for Linux. Steam (combined with Win 11) is a big reason why Linux is growing in use and development.

I like Steam as a whole but I do wish the PC market was a little more decentralized.

Until we know the price point, it’s really hard to judge if the SteamCube is going to be a good entry point for Console > PC gaming, but I’m hopeful. Mostly because I don’t have time to build a PC and don’t wanna pay out the nose for pre-builts.

1. Its better than 70% of Steam users PCs
2. Its standardized hardware thats consistent and has a level of quality that you can expect, if it breaks you can get it fixed
3. You're paying for software support, specifically SteamOS
4. Its not meant for ultra hardcore PC gamers who build PCs with used parts to get the absolute maximum value, its meant for console gamers who explicitly dont want to do that
5. It looks pretty yet it fits in with any entertainment center
6. It has greater integration with other Valve products, specifically the Steam Controller

Bold of you to assume you can build an equivalent PC in terms of price/performance without knowing Steam Machine's price. Good luck with RAM

You are clearly NOT the target audience of the gabecube. The steam machine is fricking useful for whoever want a tiny PC and not a fucking tower, a machine that is quite good and that is plug and play

The difference between the Steam Machine and an off the shelve gamer pc, is that Valve has created a viable pathway to move away from Microsoft's dominance in the PC gaming market. This is Valve showing to PC hardware makers that a PC gaming market without Windows is possible. Valve just needs to prove that consumers are willing to buy a Linux gaming machine, so the Steam Machine is the litmus test. Microsoft is Valve's biggest threat to the survival of their business. Since MS's anti-consumer behavior will push consumers away from PC gaming. Valve wants to create a PC gaming market where MS's choke hold has been destroyed. Remember this isn't Valve's first attempt, the first Steam Machine was released when Win8 was released where MS tried to push the Windows Store as the default way to download software.

There's a hidden advantage here apart from moving away from Microsoft, or having 1st party controller support.

Game devs will have a precise target to optimize for.

If enough steam machines and steam decks are out there, it simplifies porting software since you have a handful of fixed targets to hit. A studio could easily buy a few of these appliances for testing and development, and know for certain the product will run as intended. It's a luxury currently enjoyed by consoles, and it really does help their dominance in their respective niches.

This also helps smaller studios since the bare minimum means targeting a known steam platform, rather than pulling machine specs out of thin air and taking their best shot. It's a much easier problem to solve and takes a lot less time and money.

I think there will always be room for high-end gaming, but as long as you're "steam machine 2025 compatible" or whatever, you know what you're going to get.

Many people seem to ignore the fact that its a 3.7l case :D I love small PC's. My PC case is 20l with a 4070. I could go down to maybe 15l if I wanted but that would be pushing it. This thing is small af!
You can always build a PC yourself. You wont be able to get it this small with the same performance.
Not gonna buy one, but I just think its neat!

Typical, "it is not for me, therefore I declare it is stupid and not for anyone!"

It's ok to not be marketed to. It's good that a product was not designed for you specifically. "I can build the same PC…" Shhhh, shut up. Go do it, let other people like and enjoy their stuff. You don't have to buy it if you don't like it.

So I have both. A built pc and consoles and nothing irks me more than pcmasterrace folks straight up lying and misrepresenting the facts about building a pc.

First of all it hasn’t been economically viable to build a pc since Covid. Graphics card prices and now ram. In a few years it’ll be something else.

Second you got 1 person that finds a steal of a deal from someone on eBay and they preach to the universe that parts are out there and readily available for cheap. Not to mention all the risks associated from buying used parts.

Third a lot more multiplayer games are made with console in mind and are poorly optimized for pc and run like shit and look like shit. That doesn’t happen much on console because the graphics are already capped to a certain maximum most of the time.

Lastly pc players are much fewer than console players and on certain games you’ll be hard pressed to have queue times under 5 minutes. Even brand new games! I bought black ops 3 and 2k18 at release for pc and queue times were ABYSMAL.

If you are a tech savvy person it makes sense to make that investment because you have a lot more options on pc for modding and you’ll save on the multiplayer side because you won’t be paying for a live service but for the average person building a pc makes no sense.

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.

What you are paying for is a standardised experience.

There is a reason people visit Rome or Vietnam and still go to McDonalds: predictable, reliable experience.

Not everybody knows how to build a PC or how to install Steam OS on it. Here we also get support from the vendor so we know everything should work fine with the components.

I think it is a great idea! If you dont like it, then there is no downside, just don't buy it.

How do you know you can build something cheaper when you don't know the price?

"bUiLD mY oWN Pc"

in this economy?????

I feel like the biggest thing everyone always overlooks is the amount of researchyou need to do to build a PC. Understanding what motherboard, ram, cpu, and gpu will let you play the games you want is not very clear, especially now we have AMD making good cpus and Intel making Gpus.

The naming conventions are all over the place and the specs on what's best and what's compatible is opaque at times.

Building the PC is easy, but making sure you didn't waste your money by buying a motherboard that won't work on the next generation of chips or you misunderstood the 10+ gpu models distributed by multiple different distributors is also easy.

Steve from Gamers Nexus was just on Ed Zitron's podcast talking about Steam stuff. He said in the day they hung out with valve and checked out hardware, they didn't mention AI once. Isn't that blissful?

You're not seeing the big picture. It's not a box. It's much more than that.

It's a cube.

Honestly, I'm not the target audience for it, but like what steam is doing. It's giving me confidence to plan my next build as a linux pc.

I'm not the target audience for this, but I'm still happy to see GNU/Linux installation numbers getting pumped up in the near future. That's why I like it.

I want an unmolested computing experience, and the more people use said unmolested computing experience, the better for the entire platform.

"Its got what gamers need..."

For the average PC user, the (modern) Steam Machine is a mediocre 3rd-party prebuilt system with the interesting quirk of being Linux native with no Microsoft licensing.

For the average gamer, the Steam Machine is a console-like experience to a game library stretching back to nearly the dawn of gaming with little worry that the next release will have you purchasing your favorite titles again.

For the average game developer, the new lineup is excellent reference hardware. Having something real to target helps combat scope creep, whereby a game has fancy features that look nice until you realize the game only runs properly on a $15K machine for example.

For Valve, they are in a life or death battle to sever their dependency on Microsoft. Their hardware is mostly an excuse to build out their platform capabilities

• The 2013 Steam Machine coincided with releasing a Linux native version of their client.
• The OG Steam controller encourages devs to implement their Steam Input virtual control package.
• The Steam Link upgraded their remote play capabilities.
• The Steam Deck coincided with the deployment of Proton, so they can make their back-catalog run outside windows on any x86_64 machine. It also served as a testbed for improving their power efficiency and standby mode operations.
• With the Steam Frame, they're implementing both FEX and Lepton:
  • FEX runs x86_64 games on ARM devices (meaning that it can run any windows game on any average smartphone/tablet/etc if it's powerful enough)
  • Lepton is based on Waydroid to run Android apps on Linux, allowing game developers for Android and the Quest to easily import their titles into the Steam platform
• The Box is an important accessory to the Frame, as the headset is going to be lightweight system comparatively.

I can build a better PC for less money

Maybe we should wait until we know the price before making memes about this?

Especially with how RAM and SSD prices are increasing. A huge part of the Steam Deck's success was because they partnered with AMD to get a great price-to-performance APU in a market where GPU prices were inflated by crypto, and now AI.

Of course if RAM and SSD prices get too high these machines might get bought up and scrapped for parts anyways, but let's at least see if that happens first.