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Steam Machine launches today

store.steampowered.com

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Re: Steam Machine launches today

#901

Post by DiskoHexyl »

For the inevitable minisforum machines comparisons - it's not as bad for Valve as it seems. You can't just add a dedicated GPU to a cheap miniPC with an integrated graphics- power delivery and airflow will have to be different, and you may be surprised to find out that even the cheapest mini PCs with dedicated graphics aren't significantly cheaper than a Steam machine (if at all).

And then my personal experience with these cheap no-brand mini-computers is that their Linux compatibility is spotty, BIOS updates are non-existend, quality control is severely lacking, and you have basically no support. They are also often pretty loud, overheat and die within a year or two. If something doesn't work properly, you are on your own- the manufacturer will have forgotten about this model in a couple of months, and user base is so low that it's unlikely someone will find a workaround.

So comparatively, a Steam Machine would be much preferable to me, considering that it will likely work out of the box with no compatibility issues, will have a typical valve support (which, judging by Steam Deck, is quite fair), is well-built and near silent.

The problem is once the price crosses a thousand, I'd rather add, say, 500 eur, and get a much more powerful machine. I see a point for the cheapest bottom of the barrel gaming pc/handheld (which would be 700-750) with many performance tradeoffs, but this doesn't look like a good enough upgrade from that. A 12+ GB RTX4070-class videocard, 24-32GB of RAM and maybe even an 8-core CPU for $1500+ would likely be more usable in the current market

Re: Steam Machine launches today

#902

Post by empath75 »

Lucasoato wrote: post #684

> Steam Machine, like our other hardware products, is made up of many components that we source from manufacturers around the world. The price at which we sell our hardware is a direct result of the cost of these components. We felt like we had a good understanding of how those costs might change over time when we first started sourcing them for Steam Machine back in 2023. That understanding was born from the many ye…

This is why Apple locks in supplier prices years in advance.

Re: Steam Machine launches today

#903

Post by empath75 »

ricardobayes wrote: post #854
Lucasoato wrote: post #684

> Steam Machine, like our other hardware products, is made up of many components that we source from manufacturers around the world. The price at which we sell our hardware is a direct result of the cost of these components. We felt like we had a good understanding of how those costs might change over time when we first started sourcing them for Steam Machine back in 2023. That understanding was born from the many ye…

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

They were originally sold at a loss, then became per-unit profitable at some point, and now they might be eating a loss on them again. But they lock in hardware prices years in advance.

Re: Steam Machine launches today

#904

Post by internet101010 »

Zenst wrote: post #488
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…

Interesting, as it sounds like a lottery reservation system, which is kinda a neat way to deal with many issues. I'm always supprised that companies don't do a tiered price release, offer it at 200% price, you get it, 150%, you lower down the list and then 100% lottery time, that way they gain from those who can afford to pay more(maybe able to subsidise other sales later and price cuts down the line). Why feed scalp…

In my limited experience of seeing Dutch auctions in practice it actually has the opposite of the intended effect, as the people that are willing to pay the highest are also the people that will have a way to profit, just on a lesser scale.

For example, Panini (sports card manufacturer) did Dutch auctions on boxes of new card sets during the peak of pandemic collectible mania. The majority of customers that were willing to pay the highest prices on Panini's website were card breakers, which are people/companies that sell "spots" in livestream box openings (i.e. customers buy the right to all cards containing players from a certain sports team before the box is opened).

Re: Steam Machine launches today

#905

Post by eric_h »

fdye wrote: post #616
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,…

I've never understood why anti-scalpers just don't work backwards from shipping address. Are these scalpers all really keeping hundreds of actual physical addresses they can receive packages at? Like if you see the limited product has 100 orders going to the same building, or apartment, or whatever then flag it before it goes out. Limit PO Boxes, etc. Sure they can find mules to buy+receive one and then sell to the s…

I really wanted a PS5 when it was first released, and I refused to pay the scalper tax to get one, so I spent a few minutes a few times a day over a couple of weeks trying to snag one from one of the many retailers selling them. Extraordinarily frustrating, I was not so interested in this process that I was going to script it or any such nonsense, I just wanted to eventually get lucky and snag one.

I eventually did, and when it finally arrived at my doorman building I mentioned what was in the package to the doorman, and how happy I was to finally get my hands on it after the effort expended and he said "oh really? there's a guy on the 5th floor who's bought dozens of them - he sold me one at cost".

At the scale of the PS5 release (I don't know how many they first shipped in 2020, but they're at >80M sold now so undoubtedly X million in the first year) - would an address match intervention have been able to differentiate my order from the dozens of orders the scalper on the 5th floor had placed, presuming some cooperation from the doorman to allow for variance in the details of the shipping address the scalper used? I'm reasonably confident the answer is no and I would have been caught in the net that attempted to prevent the scalper from scalping.

Re: Steam Machine launches today

#906

Post by SCdF »

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…

Valve makes it very very easy to be a PC gamer, and, importantly, slightly harder to be a PC gamer who buys games in places other than Steam.

Yes you can buy games on GoG or Epic and play them on a steam deck or a steam machine. But it's juuuuust enough faff to be annoying enough, that you'd rather just get them on steam. I know people (and am a person) who have rebought games they already own so they are on steam, to make playing between steam deck and desktop more reliable.

It's the same with the steam controller. You _can_ use it with games outside of steam, but it's enough of a faff that you find yourself avoiding it.

It's incredibly effective, and why they are an effective monopoly in PC gaming.

Re: Steam Machine launches today

#907

Post by tiahura »

Lucasoato wrote: post #684

> Steam Machine, like our other hardware products, is made up of many components that we source from manufacturers around the world. The price at which we sell our hardware is a direct result of the cost of these components. We felt like we had a good understanding of how those costs might change over time when we first started sourcing them for Steam Machine back in 2023. That understanding was born from the many ye…

Is that the coupon code that brings it down to a competitive price?

Re: Steam Machine launches today

#908

Post by Aperocky »

empath75 wrote: post #902
Lucasoato wrote: post #684

> Steam Machine, like our other hardware products, is made up of many components that we source from manufacturers around the world. The price at which we sell our hardware is a direct result of the cost of these components. We felt like we had a good understanding of how those costs might change over time when we first started sourcing them for Steam Machine back in 2023. That understanding was born from the many ye…

This is why Apple locks in supplier prices years in advance.

That would only works until it doesn't. The suppliers got supplier too and those in turn have their own supplier. I don't know about any specific contract but I bet there's a force majeure or price excluding input cost somewhere.

Re: Steam Machine launches today

#910

Post by c0n5pir4cy »

mlrtime wrote: post #874
whazor wrote: post #829

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Steam Machines raises the bar on PC Console gaming. Because: - GPUs don't support HDMI CEC by default, nor does the operating system offer it - Suspend mode on motherboards often suck - Many game controllers with 2.4Ghz don't properly import USB Wake events. Or the motherboard didn't implement it properly I see the Steam Machine as an expensive open source concept car that moves the needle for us PC gamers.

Hasn't all this been mostly solved on the Nvidia Shield Pro for ~7 years now?

Not really - it's not a PC.
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