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Steam Machine launches today

store.steampowered.com

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Re: Steam Machine launches today

#171

Post by Insanity »

xinayder wrote: post #71
radium3d wrote: post #46

I imagine Valve Software wanted to release the Steam Machine for $549-$699. The great RAM hoarding of 2025-2026 killed this product on arrival sadly.

According to LTT the original price was in the $800 range, but thanks to Sam Altman it increased to what we saw today.

LTT was only speculating, they did not know the actual price as far as I remember. (They had a video doing some educated guesses, or maybe a WAN show, can’t exactly recall).

No doubt the price was lower before this hardware shortage, but the $800 is not a reliable number afaik.

Re: Steam Machine launches today

#172

Post by gdhkgdhkvff »

tmoertel wrote: post #146
sailingparrot wrote: post #38

> Why a randomized reservation order? [...] we wanted to create a system that would be less frustrating and more fair for everyone. A launch that starts at a specific day and time tends to reward bots, people with fast internet connections, talented gaming fingers for quick F5/refresh reactions, and those who can schedule their life around that moment. By accepting reservation signups over the course of a few days, w…

Yeah, this is a promising solution to scalping. Previously, if you had only small numbers of consoles available at launch, scalpers and their bots would claim a large share of them. With Valve's new policy, that share is reduced to s/g , where s is the number of verified Steam accounts controlled by scalpers and g is the number of legit gamer accounts. Since s is likely to be much less than g , s/g is close to zero,…

So what you’re saying is we should see an increase in account hijacks and spamming account creation as scalpers now try to optimize for max s.

Show me the incentive structure and…

Re: Steam Machine launches today

#173

Post by raincole »

Forgeties79 wrote: post #148
raincole wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what you mean by 'killed.' It'd be sold out faster than hot cakes.

No way. $1100+ to play games with medium/high settings at 1080p? You can probably buy a prebuilt tower that does better than that at that price.

No way people will buy more games when their libraries are full of unplayed games...

No way players will ever accept microtransactions...

Ok, Asia is doomed but no way western players will ever accept microtransactions...

No way...

Re: Steam Machine launches today

#174

Post by poly2it »

redox99 wrote: post #156
andy_xor_andrew wrote: post #93

This is a weird thing to call out, when there's so much else to talk about (price, specs, etc) buuuuuut- Check out the gameplay video partway down the page, where the two people are on the couch playing Cuphead. Right under "Your Steam library in more places." It's just... a real clip of real people playing a real game and reacting in a real way. It's funny. I know it's stupid to call out, but how many exaggerated ve…

If you sampled 100 steam players at random, it would look nothing like that.

No average pilot.

Re: Steam Machine launches today

#175

Post by nananana9 »

emadabdulrahim wrote: post #141

I'm not familiar with SteamOS and Valve hardware in general. Could I play something like Overwatch on this, and connect keyboard and mouse? Could I play other PC games like World of Warcraft?

It's just a Linux box, you can do anything that you can on any other Linux machine (including install Windows).

Linux more or less runs most Windows games. The ones that don't run are ones where the developer is going out of their way to make them not run - mostly with kernel-mode anti-cheats that just find themselves staring at the wrong kernel.

Steam makes that pretty seamless and Steam games "just work". For non-Steam games you need to do some tinkering, it's stuff that most people browsing this forum can do.

Re: Steam Machine launches today

#177

Post by thewebguyd »

eudamoniac wrote: post #110
mixologic wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"killed" is a bit of a stretch. High prices on all gear is here to stay. This is the new normal. Unless that simply means that nobody buys consoles/pc's. But you cant compare the price point with what it used to cost and imagine that its overpriced now and that people will seek alternatives. There aren't any cheaper alternatives.

There is no guarantee that these prices are here to stay...

It almost certainly is. Once people get used to the higher prices, and the companies see that the units sell anyway, there is no meaningful incentive to lower costs again.

This has played out time and time again during every other supply-side shock. Once prices go up, they don't come back down.

Re: Steam Machine launches today

#178

Post by Reubachi »

diath wrote: post #132
YuechenLi wrote: post #89

Surprised that they have 4 USB-A and only 1 USB-C. With their power profile, Steam Machine should be powerable by a single USB-C cable on extended power range which should reduce the need for the power supply altogether and greatly simplify mechanical as well as thermal design, although the power electronic design would be more complex as a result. I would also be expecting Wifi 7 support as well as unified memory co…

Why is it surprising? This is essentially a pre-built PC in a small form factor and most PC peripherals are USB-A.

My 4 year old (maybe 5?) work laptop has 3 usb C ports. My macbook is all usb c, and my home media/gaming PC has a mix and match.

All my cables I would connect to my home PC/macbook are USB C. IE bluetooth adaptor, sd card adaptor, external ssd, mouse/keyboard, a soundbar etc.

I have several chinesium clones of dewalt batteries/tools, IE lights, compressors etc. They all have USB c output.

"most pc perihpials are USB-A" is not exactly correct for some time now. (not that I'm a fan.)

Re: Steam Machine launches today

#179

Post by retired »

sudobash1 wrote: post #103

I am pleased to see hardware not being locked down as a selling point: > Yes, Steam Machine is optimized for gaming, but it's still your PC. Install your own apps, or even another operating system. Who are we to tell you how to use your computer? It feels very commonsense that you should be able to run whatever you want on the computer that you have purchased, but it is surprisingly uncommon.

I do hope they will release drivers for the Steam Machine, otherwise the openness isn’t very useful. Or at least make it possible for others to make drivers by publishing specifications.

Edit, reply to bjord as I am rate limited: HDMI CEC, the chipset, GPU drivers, controller receiver etc.

Edit, reply to robhlt: Thanks! Hope we can get that ported to Windows

Re: Steam Machine launches today

#180

Post by all2 »

tonymet wrote: post #167
sudobash1 wrote: post #103

I am pleased to see hardware not being locked down as a selling point: > Yes, Steam Machine is optimized for gaming, but it's still your PC. Install your own apps, or even another operating system. Who are we to tell you how to use your computer? It feels very commonsense that you should be able to run whatever you want on the computer that you have purchased, but it is surprisingly uncommon.

And I like knowing that I will own the hardware long term. I have so many bricks at home with great hardware and locked boot loaders.

The urge to tear down the stack of cellphones I have and pull the boot flash chip hits me occasionally. It would be a substantial project, though, so I haven't done it. Yet.
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