They lost me at that price point, sadly. And I was really looking forward to this thing launching.
Valve makes damn good products, I’m rocking a Steam Deck and a SC in my personal collection, and love them both.
But my next PC upgrade was looking to be just that… a power upgrade. That was the main focus.
The small form factor, the excellent presentation, and the Valve quality that we all know this is going to have… they would have been nice. But right now I’m looking for equal or better than SM performance regardless of form factor, and I have my sights set on several possible options to get that, all of which are at least a couple of hundred dollars cheaper. Sorry Gabe.
8gb of vram in 2026 is not what a “good product” would have. It also costs more than a similar diy pc, performs worse and can’t be upgraded. This thing is doa.
It can absolutely be upgraded, DIY is always going to be cheaper, and at current prices more ram would cause an outsized price increase compared to the performance gains.
8GB vram is perfectly acceptable for the performance level of this box.
8GB vram is perfectly acceptable for the performance level of this box.
I think the argument being made is that the performance level of this box is not really acceptable for a game-console-replacement product in 2026.
The performance is pretty bad when compared to the PS5 Pro, which is much cheaper. And comes with a controller.
You can’t bring your Steam library to a PS5, which might be a significant factor, but also if you’ve heavily invested in a library of Steam games, you probably already have a gaming PC, this probably isn’t in any way an upgrade from it, which makes it a pure convenience product for $1k+.
Yeah I was thinking of just grabbing a steam machine for my next box instead of a framework or something. If this pricing isn’t stable for the next, idk, decade? Probably not.
They lost me at that price point, sadly. And I was really looking forward to this thing launching.
Valve makes damn good products, I’m rocking a Steam Deck and a SC in my personal collection, and love them both.
But my next PC upgrade was looking to be just that… a power upgrade. That was the main focus.
The small form factor, the excellent presentation, and the Valve quality that we all know this is going to have… they would have been nice. But right now I’m looking for equal or better than SM performance regardless of form factor, and I have my sights set on several possible options to get that, all of which are at least a couple of hundred dollars cheaper. Sorry Gabe.
8gb of vram in 2026 is not what a “good product” would have. It also costs more than a similar diy pc, performs worse and can’t be upgraded. This thing is doa.
It can absolutely be upgraded, DIY is always going to be cheaper, and at current prices more ram would cause an outsized price increase compared to the performance gains.
8GB vram is perfectly acceptable for the performance level of this box.
I think the argument being made is that the performance level of this box is not really acceptable for a game-console-replacement product in 2026.
The performance is pretty bad when compared to the PS5 Pro, which is much cheaper. And comes with a controller.
You can’t bring your Steam library to a PS5, which might be a significant factor, but also if you’ve heavily invested in a library of Steam games, you probably already have a gaming PC, this probably isn’t in any way an upgrade from it, which makes it a pure convenience product for $1k+.
The performance is terrible compared to the PS5 Pro. The performance is pretty bad when compared to the base PS5, which is half the price.
At $900, the PS5 Pro isn’t THAT much cheaper…
So… it’s only $528 cheaper…???
PS5 Pro is 2TB and comes with controller. It is also way faster hardware than Steam Machine and can play native 4K. For $528 less.
It’s 2TB with memory Sony stockpiled before things went crazy. Valve had to buy after things went crazy. 😉
Watch the PS5 price go up again.
Not in any way that matters. It has a non-upgradeable SoC. You can’t just take out the CPU or GPU and replace them.
Yeah I was thinking of just grabbing a steam machine for my next box instead of a framework or something. If this pricing isn’t stable for the next, idk, decade? Probably not.