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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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I’m sure being a handheld had nothing to do with it.
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.
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.
Yeah true the index headset wasn’t a bargain compared to the quests that were clearly being sold as cheaply as possible.
Meta sold Quest headsets at a loss to cover the market. Valve sold the Index for profit.
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.
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.
The problem is dram prices right now are crazy so the price might get pushed up quite a bit
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.
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.
The issue is that if you sell the PC at a loss, you’re effectively subsidzing every person and business who wants an SFF-PC but may not necessarily buy games for them. It’s not like the Steam Deck where you can bet the majority of those devices are ending up in the hands of gamers.
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.
Also, they use standard components. You can get the cheaper Version and upgrade in e prices drop. The beauty of pc gaming.
$600 and more would be embarrassing because that’s how much base Mac Mini costs and I’m not yet convinced which one is more performant.
I have an old old old gaming rig think 2 270s sli’d with a second Gen i7. I would totally buy this thing at $600. I’m so impressed with the steam deck, that I might actually try some vr if I have the spare change.
At 1000 bucks you are dangerously close to a 9600 9060XT 16gb build, which would run circles around this performance wise.
There is no way its this expensive. It would be deader than a doornail on arrival.
If this thing isn’t 750 or less, itll be an impossible sell.
It’s going to be more than an Xbox, but not too crazy. Probably $800 is my guess.
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.
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.
Thanks for the correction. Obviously an uninformed opinion on my part. Although I was also thinking they would try to make it price competitive with current consoles.
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.
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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.
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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.
Steam deck has customization you can buy with their points, I could see them getting some extra game sales that way
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.
This is an illusion of an open system.
Well that’s certainly an…unusual position.
Steam obviously, there’s no competition.
There’s definitely competition. Is the competition great? Not really. But you can still buy and install games from Epic, Itch and GOG and run them on Steam hardware. It’s just not as convenient. There’s not really anything they can do about that. I hope one day soon someone makes a better frontend that supports other platforms better, and if they do, you’ll be able to install it on Steam hardware, because that’s what an open system means.
Closed hardware looks Like PS5, XBOX and Switch. No browser. No desktop. No access to any files. No mods. No emulation. No third party stores AT ALL. And in fact if you try to do any of those things, they will remotely brick your device.
Then as your library grows you get more and more vendor locked.
Not sure how you get there…
hope one day soon someone makes a better frontend that supports other platforms better,
Heroic Games Launcher isn’t that bad IMO. Though I haven’t checked if it has something equivalent to big picture mode, which is kind of a necessity to compete with Steam on the Steam Machine. But on PC it’s fine. I use it for my free Epic games lol
Heroic doesn’t have controller support. It also doesn’t have all the menus.
What you’re saying doesn’t contradict that on Steam Machine you’re going to buy games from Valve only so it doesn’t matter that you can, in theory, buy from somewhere else. The bigger your library grows, the less likely you are to start buying games in another ecosystem. Valve doesn’t care if you „jailbreak” with a web browser for now. They’re in for a long game and there was no better time than now because in the US they can get around tariffs by selling this console as a PC.
What you’re saying doesn’t contradict that on Steam Machine you’re going to buy games from Valve only so it doesn’t matter that you can, in theory, buy from somewhere else.
What you’re saying is just false. I’ve owned a “Steam machine” for several years and regularly acquire and play games from other stores. Whether you buy games from Valve is entirely up to you.
The bigger your library grows, the less likely you are to start buying games in another ecosystem.
No. That makes zero sense.
Valve doesn’t care if you „jailbreak”
There is no jailbreaking. There’s nothing to break. The system already allows you to do whatever you want. Just go into the menu and select “exit to desktop”.
they can get around tariffs by selling this console as a PC.
Why would you think PCs aren’t impacted by tariffs?
Why would you think PCs aren’t impacted by tariffs?
Different rates for different products. I don’t follow US domestic politics but that closely but last I’ve heard computer parts, displays and smartphones are at least temporarily exempted while toys (that’s consoles too) are subject to highest tariff rates.
Also, I’m describing how Valve plans to corner consumers, not the current state. So far they’re very much on track.
They are using a modified arch distro with KDE, yeah it defaults to steam big picture on launch but that can be changed, specially on the GabeCube. It’s a computer, a literal computer with all the capabilities and support systems of arch Linux with KDE.
The amount of contributions they have done to the Linux gaming world to then use it in their consoles is insane. They didn’t built it for themselves, they built it for everybody, then made it popular in their consoles so they get money back from increased sales on the games.
They did sell the deck at a loss, but that was a new concept and people were weary, price needed to be good. Now people know that the idea works, the picture changes.
I don’t really care if they sell at a loss or no, I’m not buying one when I basically have the equivalent already at home, but saying that their plan is to corner consumers sounds like the other side of the lunacy spectrum as those that treat steam as religion.
Hmm. It seems you’re actually correct on that one. Although I think they might have a hard time arguing that it’s “just a PC” when it launches straight into a dedicated gaming environment on boot.
They import Steam Decks as PCs currently. I’m pretty sure this is also a part of consideration regarding next gen Xbox.
Where are you going to buy games for Steam Machine? Steam obviously, there’s no competition.
Simply not true.
What is the competition on Linux? What’s their market share?
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.
What is their current market share on Linux?
Why is that even relevant? You said people can only get games on Steam and that’s just not true
If they have no market share then that competition exists in theory only.
Heroic launcher lets you install games from other launchers although Steam experience is better. But, biggest thing is you can just install Windows, which those who play games that refuse to enable anticheat on Linux will end up doing if this is going to be their main PC.
Like imagine if you could pick up a PS5 or Xbox and install Linux or Windows on it. Id pick one up for that purpose completely negating the reason Sony and Xbox put out the hardware, which is to get people to buy from their store and take 30% of every sale so even if they sold at a loss they are guaranteed to recoup it. Open that hardware up though and they’ll have system that are just going to be a loss.
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?
What’s to keep Windows from deciding to get rid of allowing people to install any exe? What’s to stop them from deciding to charge a 30% fee of all transactions from exes that they allow to be published? Whats to stop them from banning Steam, Epic, GOG from existing on their OS so everything is through the Microsoft Store?
What if? What if?
What stops Windows? Business consumers paying for the OS and the fact that they don’t have any successful app store. What stops Valve?
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.
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.
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.
Not yet but they hold you by the balls because you
buylicense 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.
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?
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
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 companiesmost COMPANIES these days. They build goodwill this way and get people obsessed with their brand by having more wins like this.deleted by creator
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I’m supportive of the effort, but unless it’s under $500 (it’s not) it’s garbage and DOA.
Prebuilt PC market is fucked, it could be 800 and sell like crazy, if the experience is good
Doubt it.
The steam deck provides at least a compelling reason and it didn’t sell all that great. This is just pissing money away on shitty hardware.
Console buyers are not going to be pulled away from their eco systems and PC builders are going to know better. At best they’re going to get a sliver of the pre built market and they will quickly adjust while the box sku will remain largely untouched.
I’m looking for small cheap boxes to put in other rooms for the family and to replace consoles and it’s a non starter for me. Who is actually going to purchase this thing?
You could buy a refurbished laptop, or spend a few extra bucks and get twice the GPU 🤷♂️ and a machine with proper RAM and vRAM.
Price out a build that will compete with this and not require an ATX tower.
Have you seen a PS5? ATX is what people already do at this price point.
ITX isn’t the pull here.
The success of the Steam Deck clearly proves how many pc users prefer a ready to go console-like experience, over high performance. Anything under 850 will sell like crazy. And considering that this is a Linux pc, i saw this as an absolute win. 2026 could really be the year of Linux.
They already tried that with the original steam machines and it flopped hard. It’ll be significantly better value or it’ll flop again, simple. They’re clearly optimizing for price based on the vram/ram specs. Yeah maybe it’ll go up after launch but out of the gate it’ll be sub-$500/512gb otherwise the whole exercise is pointless
This isn’t why it failed. It failed because the software, user experience, and compatibility was immature. That is no longer the case, as proven by the steamdeck, and offering a mature ecosystem with VR, controller, and console/PC that all interact seamlessly will be the major selling point.
I’m expecting $799.99 for the low storage model, and if it performs as well as a typical $1000-$1200 PC, I think they’ll enjoy the same level of adoption seen by the Steamdeck. The target will be people looking for an entry level to PC gaming, and current PC enthusiasts on lower end hardware looking for an upgrade that’s simple and reasonably positioned price wise against traditional PCs.
It failed for multiple reasons, but a big reason was that they tried to outsource the hardware and basically just got reskins of existing gaming-PC prebuilds, which didn’t actually make PCs any less confusing. And they didn’t actually save money (and some were overpriced scams) so buyers were basically forced to do as much research as buying an actual gaming PC.
All of that will be solved, and the software/UX/other stuff you mentioned are far more mature, like you say.
VR, controller, and console/PC that all interact seamlessly
I don’t see it as a killer feature. In fact, the main advantage of these individual devices (as in the new ones, not Steam Deck) is that you don’t need the others, rather than that they interact seamlessly.
e.g with Steam Frame, you don’t need a gaming PC to actually run Half Life Alyx to be able to play it. If you already have a gaming PC, at most it offers minor advantages over any other VR headset.
e.g with Steam Machine, you don’t need a gaming PC to engage with the Valve ecosystem and play on your TV. If you already have a gaming PC, you can already stream it to your TV for free.
Also, ecosystem maturity won’t fundamentally change that as a prospective steam machine customer, you will still need to configure game settings. You will still accidentally touch the trackpads in a way that causes issues in some games. Granted, the relative maturity and design improvements will make a big difference. But it’s more of a difference in customer retention and satisfaction than a difference that will get Valve’s foot in the door with someone invested enough in gaming to prefer a more open ecosystem, yet not invested enough to already own an equivalent console or equivalent/better gaming PC.
There are many ways they could leverage a lower cost which Sony/MS can’t/won’t, e.g. make generic controllers compatible, sell the console without one, recoup margin on steam controllers (one of the highest-margin tech product categories around these days)
Also some of those old steam machines were comically expensive, in part because all the different vendors wanted a cut, in part because some of them made new cases
edit: found a spec sheet for the cheapest version of Bolt II, for almost $1800 you got a gtx 760 and i5 4590, 16 gigs of ddr3, 120gb ssd + 1tb hdd. All of it air cooled. I don’t remember new hardware prices back then but it seems steep. And it’s far from the most expensive one.
edit2: on the other end of the spectrum, for $400 (without an OS) you could get ibuypower’s SBX with an athlon x4 840, 4 gigs of ram and an r5 250X
Competing with the console prices is not likely. Not only will they probably sell hardware at a loss, but they step on Sony and Microsoft territory, with whom they have deals to bringing games to steam.
Selling at a loss works for consoles because games will recoup the loss. For pc there is no guarantee. If the steam box is that cheap, corporate sector will order steam machines (by the 100s or 1000s), without guarantee to recoup the loss.
Microsoft and Sony have no leverage at all over Valve when it comes to PC sales. Reneging on their deals to bring their published games to Steam would only mean fewer sales.
No. It’s going to be sub PS5 in terms of performance and should be priced accordingly. You can make the argument that games are a bit cheaper on Steam so they can maybe charge a premium for that, but I would only consider one if it could do the things my PS5 does at a similar price.
I’ve wondered for lot of PC gamers why they don’t get a fiber optic hdmi cable to connect their PC to the TV, since seems a waste to have such a powerful machine then be stuck to a monitor when playing a cinematic graphics driven title like Cyberpunk 2077.
Makes sense if the PC is on another floor or too far to do. But, I’ve seen 30m hdmi 2.1 fiber optic cables that can push 4k/120 over that distance.
That alone wouldn’t solve most of the problems of playing on the couch.
Does for me since my main goal is to sit on the couch and use a controller and be able to take advantage of the 4k resolution and the 120 hz panel with freesync on a larger screen and HDR.
And all it took was the price of a hdmi cable to get it to happen versus hundreds or thousand more to get another separate system for the TV.
You still need a controller that will go that far and an OS/frontend that works on the TV.
Not an issue either. If you can have the money for a fiber optic hdmi cable then you have the money for a powered usb cable to extend the wireless range.
I’ve been gaming on PC that wasn’t near my TV for years since back during the 360/PS3 era. And hdmi and usb cable is all that’s been needed to get started. Nothing more complicated beyond that.
And OS front end? There’s Steam big picture mode or just use a cheap wireless keyboard like the K400 to navigate the desktop. You are talking to pc gamers who built a powerful pc. Im not talking about this set up to some console player and trying to convert them to PC. And I’m not trying to convince someone who wants a dedicated system for the TV so might want a dumbed down UI, but someone who has a powerful PC they use for desktop use and gaming and wants to play on the TV too without moving their PC.
Just showing there is a cheap affordable option using existing powerful hardware that one already has on hand if they want to also utilize it on their TV. But if someone insist on dropping hundreds or thousands more for a secondary system to play on the TV that’s fine too.
I’ve tried these couch keyboard mouse setups and they always suck.
I’m using the k400 to navigate desktop. I’m using my controller to play games. Kind of weird to go through the set up of playing on the couch in front of a TV away from the desk and thinking about using a mouse and keyboard instead of a controller.
Honestly, they could sell at a loss and still profit. Steam has the biggest selection of games bar none, they’ve built a culture of buying games too collect them with no intention of playing them, and they get a decent cut of every sale. If they thought of it as a 10 year plan they could sell this thing for $400, and undercut the entire rest of the condole scene, land this in the living room of every kid who wants to game world wide, and literally crush the big 3 in sales.
And then Microsoft or Sony would bulk buy 10k steam machines to use in their server rooms. They can’t sell at a loss because the hardware is not locked, otherwise people could just buy these and use them for whatever and Valve wouldn’t see a cent from those machines. At the very least they need to be sold at a neutral price point, but more than likely they’re looking to get some profit over them.
And then Microsoft or Sony would bulk buy 10k steam machines to use in their server rooms
They’d need 10k steam accounts tho
Number of investors think you should be willing to invest in a machine that you probably don’t have money for to enrich them. They think you should buy games at $70 or something instead of wait for them to be $30 like on sale. Like I wait. Not all of us want to be in debt.
You’re fundamentally misunderstanding what this development means for gaming affordability. Not having to buy a scarce, way overpriced Nvidia (or even AMD) external GPU to play the latest games means that PC gaming is a whole lot cheaper. If game developers are optimizing for hardware like the Steam Machine - budget external graphics cards and iGPUs suddenly become viable again as well.
Especially with the llm crash, this may keep the fabs running
Its some degree of good from like every direction.
Investors? Valve is a private company
That doesn’t mean it doesn’t have investors. It means it’s not publicly traded. Private investment buy company stock directly. That’s the premis behind VC fundraising
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 on 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.
Holy crap I’d forgotten about that.
Yeah, nvidia needs to die. Nothing tied to palantir should survive.
Yaaas let’s smash the Nvidia monopoly and Palantir’s evil plans.
From the GPU specs in expecting a firmly mid range machine. Probably about the price of a PS5 Pro, but with the performance of a base PS5.
They could sell me a wrapped up bc250 and I’d still buy it before any other brand just because.
For $1k I think this would be DOA.
You can always just build your own today even.
Yeah, if it isn’t like $600 USD or less, the thing is as toast as the previous generation of Steam Machines.
It’s a PC after all, and Valve has access to chipsets the average consumer normally doesn’t. I can see me upgrading my current rig with this if it competes with traditional PCs
Some analysts think Great headline
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.
Seriously! Just started replaying cyberpunk on my base model deck and it is buttery smooth! Very impressive for an igpu!
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.
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”
So the problem was the game, not the device…? The hardware was fine?
You know what’s wild? I was a day one buyer on a $30 rebuilt PS4, and had almost no bugs my first 2 playthroughs.
