Steam Machine launches today • Hacker News Board

Re: Steam Machine launches today

#301

Post by ilivethere » Mon, Jun 22, 2026, 7:05 PM UTC

buellerbueller wrote: post #290

saltamimi wrote: post #266

It's just dead-on-arrival. I'm not convinced this hardware is "an extension of PC gaming, not a console" when the hardware is generations out of date. To credit Microsoft, Sony, and other players, the reality is that unless you are "in the game" for decades, you HAVE to provide a convincing differentiator from the other console markets. Steam had this with the Steam Deck and personally, I see the world moving to thin…

>It's just dead-on-arrival...the hardware is generations out of date Some people say this same thing about the Nintendo Switch and its successor, but here we are, with the former closing in on highest selling console of all time, and the latter tracking above that.

Not OC, but I believe the RAM price surge is what will kill the Steam Machine. For the same price, you can get a gaming laptop with better specs.

Re: Steam Machine launches today

#302

Post by triveal » Mon, Jun 22, 2026, 7:06 PM UTC

saltamimi wrote: post #266

It's just dead-on-arrival. I'm not convinced this hardware is "an extension of PC gaming, not a console" when the hardware is generations out of date. To credit Microsoft, Sony, and other players, the reality is that unless you are "in the game" for decades, you HAVE to provide a convincing differentiator from the other console markets. Steam had this with the Steam Deck and personally, I see the world moving to thin…

[dead]

Re: Steam Machine launches today

#303

Post by arbll » Mon, Jun 22, 2026, 7:06 PM UTC

saltamimi wrote: post #266

It's just dead-on-arrival. I'm not convinced this hardware is "an extension of PC gaming, not a console" when the hardware is generations out of date. To credit Microsoft, Sony, and other players, the reality is that unless you are "in the game" for decades, you HAVE to provide a convincing differentiator from the other console markets. Steam had this with the Steam Deck and personally, I see the world moving to thin…

Same here. My home computer only runs Windows because I play competitive online games. It would be incredible if Valve built some kind of certified, locked-down kernel, but I doubt that will happen.

The online discourse around this is also incredibly toxic, filled with utopians who don’t understand how serious cheating is in these games, or that kernel anti-cheat, while not perfect, is the best solution available today.

Re: Steam Machine launches today

#304

Post by CobrastanJorji » Mon, Jun 22, 2026, 7:06 PM UTC

buellerbueller wrote: post #290

saltamimi wrote: post #266

It's just dead-on-arrival. I'm not convinced this hardware is "an extension of PC gaming, not a console" when the hardware is generations out of date. To credit Microsoft, Sony, and other players, the reality is that unless you are "in the game" for decades, you HAVE to provide a convincing differentiator from the other console markets. Steam had this with the Steam Deck and personally, I see the world moving to thin…

>It's just dead-on-arrival...the hardware is generations out of date Some people say this same thing about the Nintendo Switch and its successor, but here we are, with the former closing in on highest selling console of all time, and the latter tracking above that.

Sure, but I didn't buy a Switch because of its power or because of its form factor. I bought it because that was the way to play Zelda.

Re: Steam Machine launches today

#305

Post by nehal3m » Mon, Jun 22, 2026, 7:07 PM UTC

ajmurmann wrote: post #291

tmoertel wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

Does it solve scalping? It seems like there is still money in sighing up with the goal to resell. Granted this is better in that I don't have to race the scalpers. Till the sales price matches the market value scalping will exist. The best way to address that is a vickery auction. Till then scalping will continue.

I think account age and activity should be weighted into that equation.

Re: Steam Machine launches today

#306

Post by theshrike79 » Mon, Jun 22, 2026, 7:07 PM UTC

robmccoll wrote: post #32

For reference, a PlayStation 5 is $600-650 for the base models (lower performance than Steam Machine) and $900 for the Pro model (likely higher performance). I know this is a PC and thus an open platform, but for most buyers in living room gaming, that's the competition. I don't think this will reach mass market success, but I'm not sure that was the goal. Who are they selling to? Note: I ask as someone with a Steamd…

I have about 500 games in my Steam library and maaaybe 20% of them are available for the PS5 (which I own).

And I've paid full retail price for maybe two of them, the vast majority is from 50-90% sales. You don't get those for the PS5 that much.

I also don't have any need for a "Gaming PC", what I've always wanted is a console but with my Steam games. This is it.

Re: Steam Machine launches today

#307

Post by gonzalohm » Mon, Jun 22, 2026, 7:07 PM UTC

prhn wrote: post #96

I want to buy one just to raise the signal that Linux support is important. When these machines were announced I switched to Fedora as a daily driver on my high end gaming rig. It’s been awesome. I still have to go back to Windows for music production unfortunately. I may switch to Mac for that so I can completely abandon Windows. I run an optical HDMI cable from my office to my TV and get to play games and use Linux…

You are lucky. A lot of the games I play with friends use kernel level anticheat crap that doesn't work on Linux

Re: Steam Machine launches today

#308

Post by koolala » Mon, Jun 22, 2026, 7:07 PM UTC

nottorp wrote: post #253

16 Gb system ram... i'd bet that they originally planned it with 32. Note that you can order more storage but not more RAM. Although that may also be to force vendors to target this exact architecture. Also: oooh internal power supply! Someone thought about elegance too.

You can upgrade the ram yourself.

Re: Steam Machine launches today

#309

Post by crooked-v » Mon, Jun 22, 2026, 7:07 PM UTC

nananana9 wrote: post #175

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-S…

Note that the "just" is overlooking that it's more locked down than a typical Linux box, in that the OS filesystem is read-only and all app installs live in userland (though you can turn off the read-only behavior). For what it's worth I'm very much a fan of it as a default for a mass-market machine, but you'll run into weird gotchas if you want to do "programmer stuff" with it.

Re: Steam Machine launches today

#310

Post by Levitz » Mon, Jun 22, 2026, 7:07 PM UTC

baggy_trough wrote: post #169

tmoertel wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

Scalping is a good thing, because it gets consoles in the hands of those who want them the most, as evidenced by willingness to pay.

Scalping adds no value to the product.

Scalping also actively damages the pricing, which is part of the product. Valve wants to sell this product at a specific price, which is targeted to an audience. By scalping and ultimately changing the price, you are hurting both the consumer, who now pays more, and the company, who doesn't see a cent of this increase and is now failing its target.

Scalping also damages the demand for the product, since it creates a submarket that is volatile and unpredictable.

Scalping is a bad thing because by basically any measure, a market with scalping is worse for everybody involved than one with scalping. Except for scalpers, who make money off it by making it worse for everybody else. Which is why scalpers are bad people.