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Steam Machine launches today

store.steampowered.com

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Re: Steam Machine launches today

#561

Post by smith7018 »

mwkaufma wrote: post #550
pseudosavant wrote: post #72

I know the price for PC parts is terrible these days, but $1049 for a 6-core 16GB RAM, with a 512GB SSD, and no controller, is a terrible value. For reference, the PS5 Pro has more than twice the number GPU CUs, an 8-core CPU, a 2TB SSD, a controller, and costs $899.

PS5 sells at a loss & makes up the difference collecting rent on a closed system. With Steam you're buying an open system.

Does Valve take a cut of software sales on Steam? If so, why do we expect Sony to sell its consoles at a loss, while not holding the same expectation for Valve?

Re: Steam Machine launches today

#563

Post by mercwear »

vessenes wrote: post #136
iLoveOncall wrote: post #10

I know they will sell, but at this price point I don't understand who is supposed to be the target for this. Either you want a gaming computer, and you'll get a much better one that can be upgraded in the future for the same price, or you want a console, and you'll never pay a grand for it. 4 years old hardware and poor connectivity.

I thought about it, but don't think I'll push the button. I have a falcon nw gaming rig in my living room right now running windows / steam big picture and an NVIDIA 3060Ti -- and it's .. fine, but long in the tooth. I wouldn't mind a more console-ish hardware experience for steam gaming, and compared to a new falcon box, this thing is cheap. I experimented with just running SteamOS on the falcon hardware a few years…

Falcon gaming computers start at $3K, I don't think Valve is after that level of consumer with this, it's more of a "Bring the console players into Steam" move imho.

Re: Steam Machine launches today

#564

Post by njovin »

mwkaufma wrote: post #550
pseudosavant wrote: post #72

I know the price for PC parts is terrible these days, but $1049 for a 6-core 16GB RAM, with a 512GB SSD, and no controller, is a terrible value. For reference, the PS5 Pro has more than twice the number GPU CUs, an 8-core CPU, a 2TB SSD, a controller, and costs $899.

PS5 sells at a loss & makes up the difference collecting rent on a closed system. With Steam you're buying an open system.

I would guess that users of the Steam machine would mostly be as locked-in to Steam purchases as PS5 users are to PS Store purchases.

I stopped PC gaming about a decade ago and my current daily driver is a Macbook. I periodically play games on my a PS5 or XBOX, but there are a ton of great games on my Steam wishlist.

I feel like I'm the exact target market for this (although I'm not going to buy at this price point at this time). I don't want to bother with Windows and would love a 'console' allowing me to play most Steam games without a lot of hassle.

Re: Steam Machine launches today

#565

Post by gt0 »

himata4113 wrote: post #154
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…

I am more surprised there's people lining up to buy this when it's genuinely cheaper to get a used PC off a local marketplace. I feel like this is unnecessary as I am pretty sure they'll be able to fill it in one shipment.

In Australia, it wouldn't even need to be a used PC. The Steam Machine is $1600 AUD here, you can get a brand new gaming PC for that. Not a particularly amazing machine of course, but you can walk into a shop and buy it right now.

Re: Steam Machine launches today

#566

Post by izacus »

mwkaufma wrote: post #550
pseudosavant wrote: post #72

I know the price for PC parts is terrible these days, but $1049 for a 6-core 16GB RAM, with a 512GB SSD, and no controller, is a terrible value. For reference, the PS5 Pro has more than twice the number GPU CUs, an 8-core CPU, a 2TB SSD, a controller, and costs $899.

PS5 sells at a loss & makes up the difference collecting rent on a closed system. With Steam you're buying an open system.

PS5 NEVER in it's lifecycle sold at a loss. That hasn't happened for generations now.

Re: Steam Machine launches today

#567

Post by panicinducer »

You could build the equivalent PC for quite a bit cheaper or a PS5 and 7 full price AAA games for the same price. No way this is a console-killer, but will be a nice novelty for Gaben fans for whom $1049 is not a significant amount of money.

Re: Steam Machine launches today

#568

Post by chrisco255 »

baby wrote: post #559

The deck is such a good console compared to the switch and switch 2 that I can’t be stop being happy that they released this now. How is Valve, a tiny company, doing so much better than Nintendo?

They're not. The Deck is hundreds of dollars more expensive than the Switch 2. The Switch 1 sold 155 million units, making it the second most popular console of all time. Switch 2 is also selling very well.

Re: Steam Machine launches today

#569

Post by Snacklive »

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.

That's just bad ragebait

Re: Steam Machine launches today

#570

Post by tyre »

boca_honey wrote: post #236
redox99 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yeah those people are definetly not a realistic sample of the average Steam user. I wonder why they chose them in particular.

They want to expand the public's perception of who a gamer is, to make people feel more comfortable identifying as a gamer. If you included a sweaty CSGO player farming loot boxes with bloodshot eyes at 3am, that doesn't give you a new market. They're already going to buy.

Marketing is made so they you identify with the product or identify with an aspirational version of yourself. Gaming is seen as heavily male-dominated. Expanding that is smart.

(And yes, I know why you're asking and what answer you're looking for.)

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