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Steam Machine launches today

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Re: Steam Machine launches today

#891

Post by ragazzina »

danielodievich wrote: post #135

back in 2019, I was thinking of getting an MBA and as part of the exploration, shadowed an MBA class at University of Washington for a day. It was so fun. One of the things they were discussing in the class that day was a case study of Valve, specifically around the Steam Machine. The team's consensus was that Valve was carefully arranging money in a barrel, lovingly soaking it in high octane gasoline, and was about…

Why is the gasoline high octane in your metaphor? It's not like it's going to burn better.

Re: Steam Machine launches today

#892

Post by veber-alex »

zipy124 wrote: post #863
ricardobayes wrote: post #854

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still, how does a PS5 cost half, and arguably, has better/fast hardware? I can't imagine Sony selling them at a loss.

The PS5 can only play games that you pay Sony a tax to play. The steam machine can play any game, including those bought outside Steam and thus without paying valve a tax. This means the PS5 is subsidised, whereas Valve hardware does not tend to be. They have confirmed that internally all divisions must be roughly profitable/break-even.

While you are technically correct, 99% of all games that are going to be played on this device are going to come from steam where they take a 30% cut.

I don't know how much money they make from each unit but major profit is not the goal here. They want to sell more games to more casual people who don't even own a PC anymore.

Re: Steam Machine launches today

#893

Post by ozgrakkurt »

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…

This would also be a very good idea for university course selection systems

Re: Steam Machine launches today

#894

Post by r0fl »

theshrike79 wrote: post #306
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.

How do you find time to play 500 games?

Even if a game takes 5 hours that’s 2500 hours

That’s mind blowing to me

Re: Steam Machine launches today

#895

Post by muyuu »

branon wrote: post #428

I respect what Valve is doing here and I loved the Steam Deck but a prebuilt desktop PC with 16 GB system memory and 512 GB storage for $1,000+ is insulting. Those are specs that belong on a laptop or a lowend console offering like the Series S. I think this product is going to be hamstrung by its attempts to present as a midpoint between a PC and a console. The way this is being achieved seems to be by selling a dev…

If you look at how extremely overpriced console hardware typically gets away with being, this is not a bad deal if the system is durable, relatively quiet and there are good games well optimised for it. The deal is sweetened by the fact that you will be eventually be able to upgrade the RAM and storage easily and for cheap if/when prices eventually come down from the current AI insanity levels.

Re: Steam Machine launches today

#896

Post by brachkow »

360MustangScope wrote: post #883
brachkow wrote: post #872

It is interesting to know how it compares in terms of performance to 500$ Mac Mini with Crossover? Of course Crossover support is worse than Proton, so it will not be viable alternative in real gaming scenarios. But Proton is made by Crossover team. And Apple hardware is 2x cheaper.

Due to the memory and storage crisis, you actually cannot buy the $500 mac mini anymore. It starts at $799

Just checked what your claim, and... its even worse – 1000$ in my part of EU (m4 + 16gb, aka base configuration)

Re: Steam Machine launches today

#897

Post by remix2000 »

jeppester wrote: post #890
branon wrote: post #428

I respect what Valve is doing here and I loved the Steam Deck but a prebuilt desktop PC with 16 GB system memory and 512 GB storage for $1,000+ is insulting. Those are specs that belong on a laptop or a lowend console offering like the Series S. I think this product is going to be hamstrung by its attempts to present as a midpoint between a PC and a console. The way this is being achieved seems to be by selling a dev…

I don't disagree that this device is very likely too expensive to sell well. But! The price is not insulting. You can built a slightly faster PC for a little less, but that PC would be ~10 times larger, it would be louder, it would lack features like HDMI-CEC and good wifi/bluetooth. It really wouldn't compare for living room usage. In order to get anywhere near the size of the Steam Machine, you'd have to exceed its…

Isn't CEC available for all in-tree GPU drivers using DP-to-HDMI passthrough? (although I do imagine Nvidia would still be preferred for a custom build, perhaps with a USB CEC injector)

Re: Steam Machine launches today

#898

Post by cubefox »

bgirard wrote: post #496
WithinReason wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here, try your hand at assembling one much cheaper at the same performance: https://pcpartpicker.com/

I don't recognized the CPU/GPU and PC building isn't my field so I could way off. But here's my honest attempt at it without paying a premium for the form factor which isn't an important feature for me: PCPartPicker Part List: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/3WkCdq Price: $1021

The RTX 5060 will be significantly faster than the Steam Machine on games with hardware ray tracing effects, which tend to be the more demanding games.

Re: Steam Machine launches today

#900

Post by taintlord »

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…

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