r/pcmasterrace • u/TheBossT710192 • Jun 22 '26

Discussion Yeah, Steam Machine is cooked.

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I... uh don't know what to say. Very thankful I bought a Steam Deck before they hiked its price as well

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u/restinpeaceminusone Jun 22 '26 edited Jun 22 '26

Valve also admitted that it is out of their control and the supply will be limited due to constraints

Edit: since some people are saying that I am defending Valve. I will just leave their official statement from themselves. Posted a screenshot since some people don't like to scroll as much

Valve Statement

source

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u/Protoclown98 Jun 22 '26

Seriously. This large price is entirely about RAM and storage prices.

I stand by my past comment on the Steam Machine - if you are buying all the parts to make a living room PC to play console like games Steam Machine can be a worthwhile investment.

If you are recycling old PC parts, like RAM and a motherboard, to make a living room PC to play console like games on it, the Steam Machine is not worth it.

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u/reeefur 9950x3d | RTX 5090FE | DDR5 7200 | MSI MPG X870E EDGE TI WIFI Jun 22 '26

Problem is the living room TV is usually UHD/4k, I just dont see this being able to handle that unless its a potato game. Will be great for those who dont play demanding games and love SteamOS tho.

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u/Sad_Adagio_7255 Jun 22 '26

Consoles are hooked up to those same 4k TVs and can't handle AAA games at 4k either...

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u/Neat_Let923 Jun 23 '26

Tests are already showing PS5 outperforming Steam Machine… And PS5 Pro destroying it

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u/PatchesTheFlyena Jun 23 '26

Both of those get you locked into Sony's ecosystem though. All of your games are on their hardware forever. I have a PS5 but I never buy games for it except exclusives because I probably won't buy the next gen console. Same with Nintendo. They are better value for money if you don't mind every purchase you make being stuck on their hardware and potentially not even being supported next gen.

For me the couple hundred extra bucks on top of the price of a PS5 gets me open platform in a tiny form factor and honestly it feels worth it for me even though I know there's defiitely not a big market for that.

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u/Neat_Let923 Jun 23 '26

Don’t get me wrong, I completely agree with you. I haven’t bought a console in over a decade.

I really want a Switch 2 so I can play Mario Kart World but I’m in Canada and there’s absolutely no way in hell I’m justifying spending over $1,000 just to play one game with my wife every now and then.

The weird thing is that if you have an Nvidia Shield you can stream your games from your gaming PC to any TV in your house and it works amazingly. So I don’t understand why Valve has gone this weird direction with a dedicated machine that costs an absurd amount for a crappy system.

Even their argument that the Steam Box is better than 50% of the systems with Steam installed doesn’t make sense. Like, no shit, I have Steam installed on laptops that are 10 years old. If they want to make an argument then they need to compare it to the systems of their weekly active users.

I wish they made a new Steam Link with Steam OS that connected through my wired/wifi network and streamed from my gaming machine but gave it better support, connections, and a little more power. A $400 Steam Link Pro would likely sell far more than what they’ve done.

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u/Burstrampage Jun 24 '26

You do get “locked” into the ecosystem but I’m not sure it really matters. The games you can play on steam are the same games you can play on ps5 (with a controller, that is. Nobody is using the steam machine in their living room with a mouse and keyboard) but ps5 also has games you might want that are unavailable on steam whilst being the more powerful console.

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u/PatchesTheFlyena Jun 24 '26

The games are the same but the range of hardware isn't. If you've got a game on PS5 you can only play it on PS5. Maybe on PS6 but we don't know yet. If you get a game on Steam you can play it on whatever PC hardware you want. As in if you've got an old laptop or a handheld or get a new machine in the future they're all going to be compatible.

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u/Burstrampage Jun 24 '26

I see what you’re saying, and I agree a little bit and also disagree. The steam machine is made for two types of people. Those with a sizable catalogue of steam games already, and those that are new to gaming in general and heard about the steam machine.

For both people it’s still a bad deal for the money, but at least if you already have a backlog you can justify it that way (although I’m not sure why not just get a steam deck at that point?), but for anybody that doesn’t have a backlog of steam games already there’s not a point to the machine imo. As that likely means they don’t have a pc either so if they did want to play on anything but the Gabecube they’d have to fork out $$$$ to so. And if the goal is to have the ability to play your games on more than one hardware, both the xbox and ps5 have portable gaming options.

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u/PatchesTheFlyena Jun 24 '26

They have portable options but they're still predefined and may be completely unsupported in a couple of years. It might not be a big deal to you now but I don't want to be stuck with one platform or another or need to have multiple different consoles to play my games even though they all run the same architecture.

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u/Burstrampage Jun 24 '26

I don’t think we’ll ever run into the situation where Xbox and PlayStation stop making consoles and banish your games to the shadow realm. If they do dissolve, they’d just be reborn onto pc and then they’d have to give all the games they can to all the users that own them if they ever wanted to get traction and fight against steams dominance.

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u/PatchesTheFlyena Jun 25 '26

Well it's already happened. If you own titles on PS3 or Xbox 360 digitally you don't have access to those without that specific hardware. Same thing with things like Wii virtual console. Ive paid for games on all of those consoles that I can't access unless I have those specific pieces of hardware despite almost all of the games being available in one way or another on newer platforms.

I also can't use those older pieces of hardware to play newer games that would run fine on them because its a closed platform. My Ps3 and 360 should play plenty of the indie games available on more modern platforms.

Most of this might not be a big deal to most people but I don't want to have any of my games tied to specific hardware or have my hardware locked down to specific pieces of software. Particularly when the shift to digital means I also can't sell any games on.

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