DeltaPolarBear
Member
Current Gen will stay for another 5-7 years. Makes no sense to pay for next gen when it isn't here yet.
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The Problem With The Steam Machine: Its Current Gen
- Thread starter TikiLagoonSam
- Start date
TikiLagoonSam
Member
The responses to this thread have become 1000x entertaining with todays news and I am loving reading every page 
I just want to take a step back and ask:
Is videogaming even worth $1000?
Think about this through the eyes of the general consumer a company needs to make their business profitable. ONE. THOUSAND. DOLLARS. And thats before you buy any games to play on it.
I just want to take a step back and ask:
Is videogaming even worth $1000?
Think about this through the eyes of the general consumer a company needs to make their business profitable. ONE. THOUSAND. DOLLARS. And thats before you buy any games to play on it.
mckmas8808
Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
The responses to this thread have become 1000x entertaining with todays news and I am loving reading every page
I just want to take a step back and ask:
Is videogaming even worth $1000?
Think about this through the eyes of the general consumer a company needs to make their business profitable. ONE. THOUSAND. DOLLARS. And thats before you buy any games to play on it.
For 90% of the planet, the answer would be no.
DeltaPolarBear
Member
It is also a pc. All my laptops cost more. Just the way the cookie crumbles.The responses to this thread have become 1000x entertaining with todays news and I am loving reading every page
I just want to take a step back and ask:
Is videogaming even worth $1000?
Think about this through the eyes of the general consumer a company needs to make their business profitable. ONE. THOUSAND. DOLLARS. And thats before you buy any games to play on it.
IDKFA
I am Become Bilbo Baggins
This aged well.
To be fair, this was in November and before the AI crisis really got into full swing.
Also, I was technically correct about it not being a four figure sum as the cost of the base model is £879 in the UK.
It might be below a grand, but that's still an insane price that makes it DOA.
I wonder why people act as if rest of the pc market prices were significantly below that. Like people have this weird idea that they want to buy their pcs now with pre-crisis prices and judge everything based on that.
430$ is a cost of 32gb of ddr5 sticks where i live. Nearly HALF the price of valve cube. 16gb is half of that at around 215$. VRAM on gpus is even more expensive. So before you go to the drawing board you end up with 500-600$ in just memory prices of ram and VRAM. Then there is SSD.
Actual cost of this thing before crisis would be like 500 top, maybe 600 and that would include controller too.
CraZed
Member
And many of them spent less that $1000 and especially $1400 on their setups. Doesn't take away the fact its over priced. You can actually build an AM5 SFF PC with a better CPU, 2tb storage AND a 9700 XT for less than the 2tb Steam machine with or without a controller. It's just not good enough.
And the prices. On Steam you could buy almost all capcom games for like $80 sans latest re. Try that with PS or MS.
DeltaPolarBear
Member
You can build for cheaper. Always been this way. But WILL you build?
Clearly Steam Machine is not for builders.
YeulEmeralda
Linux User
Why do you think mobile phone gaming got big? Because everyone already has a smartphone and the games are free.The responses to this thread have become 1000x entertaining with todays news and I am loving reading every page
I just want to take a step back and ask:
Is videogaming even worth $1000?
Think about this through the eyes of the general consumer a company needs to make their business profitable. ONE. THOUSAND. DOLLARS. And thats before you buy any games to play on it.
Topher
Identifies as young
Now it makes more sense on why some users were defending Valve today
You had nothing to say in this thread before the price reveal, so how are you now here gloating?
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duck_sauce
Member
I plan to buy a steam machine. My reasons are:
- small form factor
- steam Os
- I plan to play smaller indie games that only release on steam and not on PS5
Cr1ptkeeper
Member
Yes.The responses to this thread have become 1000x entertaining with todays news and I am loving reading every page
I just want to take a step back and ask:
Is videogaming even worth $1000?
Think about this through the eyes of the general consumer a company needs to make their business profitable. ONE. THOUSAND. DOLLARS. And thats before you buy any games to play on it.
So many hobbies that cost around or more than a 1000$.
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The responses to this thread have become 1000x entertaining with todays news and I am loving reading every page
I just want to take a step back and ask:
Is videogaming even worth $1000?
Think about this through the eyes of the general consumer a company needs to make their business profitable. ONE. THOUSAND. DOLLARS. And thats before you buy any games to play on it.
PC has always been more expansive than console. in the beginning of the 90's, a decent config to play doom was easily $3000 with inflation adjusted . The truth is that pc gaming was always a luxury except for a little period around the 2010's.
Guilty_AI
Member
Whats the point of making fun of predictions done before the AI bubble? The price was originally set to be 750 (which was much closer to the 699 people were throwing) then everything went to shit and everyone is losing, including console users.The responses to this thread have become 1000x entertaining with todays news and I am loving reading every page
I just want to take a step back and ask:
Is videogaming even worth $1000?
Think about this through the eyes of the general consumer a company needs to make their business profitable. ONE. THOUSAND. DOLLARS. And thats before you buy any games to play on it.
MisterXDTV
Member
Not sure a RTX 3050 equivalent GPU is considered "Current Gen" in the PC space
It's better than Series S, that's it
It's better than Series S, that's it
PeteBull
Member
Switch2 is current gen handheld, has weak gpu and pretty weak cpu too but it has 12gigs of vram, ssd, ai upscaling and rt capabilities(not saying they are great, but they exist), which is staple of current gen.
rodrigolfp
Haptic Gamepads 4 Life
PeteBull
Member
Or we can just get similary priced much stronger midrange pc and if some1 is exclusively console gamer he waits 1,5year to buy much better value ps6
Except the Switch 2 is less than half the price of the GabeCube, and still features modern architecture and features.
rodrigolfp
Haptic Gamepads 4 Life
Which is better than anything current gen consoles can say.
rodrigolfp
Haptic Gamepads 4 Life
RCX
Member
You mean the 99% of indies that I already included that anyone could run on a $400 laptop, which can be plugged into a tv with an hdmi cord? Its the AAA space where its going to be judged and its already obvious that its struggling mightily in that area.
People are being asked to pay an insane premium for a SFF box. End of story. Feel free to burn that money if you want to but dont kid yourself that its something that its not.
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rodrigolfp
Haptic Gamepads 4 Life
RCX
Member
So....old games?Indies like WoW Midnight, Skyrim, Doom's, yeah... /s
You're just being willfully ignorant now. You know exactly what I mean when I say AAA but I'll make it crystal clear for you: big budget games from the last couple of years. They're the benchmark and it cant compete with a base PS5 on that level while costing nearly twice as much (with no controller
). I get it, you like the idea of the machine and want to help yourself justify a possible purchase by overlooking its significant problems. Price being the real one that all of its other issues stem from.I cant overlook it. I have no need for it as my PC is already a living room rig and I'm very happy with it that way. The reason I'm so annoyed at what they've done is that I hoped the Steam Machine would be able to spread the field beyond Valve fans and make a real dent in turning the living room PC into something mainstream. But at this price its only going to sell to a select few Valve die-hards and once again the chance to bring PC gaming, and linux gaming, has ended before it even began. They've failed, again. And it'll be another 10 years at least before we get another crack at it.
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rodrigolfp
Haptic Gamepads 4 Life
So the entirely library of PC + emulation don't count, only the most heavy to render games, because reasons. Got it.So....old games?
You're just being willfully ignorant now. You know exactly what I mean when I say AAA but I'll make it crystal clear for you: big budget games from the last couple of years. They're the benchmark and it cant compete with a base PS5 on that level while costing nearly twice as much (with no controller
I cant overlook it. I have no need for it as my PC is already a living room rig and I'm very happy with it that way. The reason I'm so annoyed at what they've done is that I hoped the Steam Machine would be able to spread the field beyond Valve fans and make a real dent in turning the living room PC into something mainstream. But at this price its only going to sell to a select few Valve die-hards and once again the chance to bring PC gaming, and linux gaming, has ended before it even began. They've failed, again. And it'll be another 10 years at least before we get another crack at it.
Price of PS5 doesn't matter as it is not a PC. Only other PC prices matter.
You can use any controller on this thing as it is a PC, even the most cheap ones.
I don't like this machine, you got that notion out of yours ass. I am just point some facts.
RCX
Member
The PC library certainly counts, I'm suggesting that nobody needs a thousand dollar box to play these. A 4 year old laptop will probably do the job in 95% of cases.
Its intended for the living room, like it or not, PS5 is its competition. Thats the point. It was supposed to expand the PC market to a new location and bring in new customers. At this price it has zero chance of doing that.
rodrigolfp
Haptic Gamepads 4 Life
M1chl
Currently Gif and Meme Champion
Pretty much this yeah, not even including HDMI 2.1 is so strange I couldn't believed it. At least try these quick and cheap updates, given that VRR is not going to work probably on most TVs due to HDMI 2.0, etc... weird as fuck, did they prototyped it 6 years ago or something?
MisterXDTV
Member
A product with a built-in 13" screen and keyboard???
Valve marketed this as a PC with console form-factor
Completely different use case than a laptop
rodrigolfp
Haptic Gamepads 4 Life
Since when laptops screens stop at 13"??
"Small form factor". https://store.steampowered.com/hardware/steammachine?
ResilientBanana
Member
The Gabecube is more powerful and can play hundreds of thousands of games and 3rd parties will support it for years even without needing to. Switch 2 will have 3rd party support, but like previous nintendo consoles, that support will fall off or not look as good when then new generation hits.
Sevyne
Member
If we were just now getting the release of PS5/Series X this would be a slightly easier pill to swallow (but still too expensive). I know this is probably aimed more towards a gamer who doesn't want to do any of the tinkering many PC gamers would do to optimize, but when you go to PC gaming you try to future proof your build at least a little bit. This thing has little to no future.
TikiLagoonSam
Member
Nobody is using this as a pc. The whole point of this thing is to pay a premium to play pc games in your living room. No one is using a webbrowser or making a word document on this thing.
TikiLagoonSam
Member
We have been dealing with this AI stuff for a while already. Thats why this thread was made back in Nov 2025. I saw the writing on the wall. My original post was proven correct.
Hero_Select
Member
Of course it's current gen.
A next gen PC costs $3,000+ now.
A next gen PC costs $3,000+ now.
TikiLagoonSam
Member
Because gaming on a PC was always cutting edge and you used it for productivity. This is doing neither
TikiLagoonSam
Member
Can you play that in your living room?
Guilty_AI
Member
Things only truly went to utter shit late november, and you said absolutely nothing of this on OP so dont go trying to larp as nostradamus now.
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TikiLagoonSam
Member
This is from my first post:
And people argued with me it wouldn't be $1000. If that doesn't tell you it 'truly went to utter shit' I can't help you.
ShadyAcshuns
Gold Member
Welcome to the correct time line for hardware. Get comfy, stay awhile. The tech is where a large majority of people want it to be. I know my words will not change the minds of the tech adopters no matter how many times and people shout it in their ears. You few still have the PC to play with so that's where your money will be going if you want top end for the next decade.
Guilty_AI
Member
I read no predictions of rampocalypse there.
And like i said, valve engineers themselves said this saw a price increase of around 40% due to the crisis.
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dcx4610
Member
The benefit to the Steam Machine is it's ALL gens. Games from the 80s will work, and games 20 years from now will work. You aren't locked to 1-2 gens like consoles. SteamOS is the selling point. You buy a game once and you have it forever on multiple devices.
I do think the price is absurd, but considering Valve is only making $70 profit on each machine, it's not like they are pricing this thing at $1049 and laughing all the way to the bank. They are pricing it based on what parts cost now. My company recently had to order new laptops, and they were literally double the price what we paid the last time we placed an order. We are in the absolutely worst timeline when it comes to PC parts. Consoles will suffer the same fate when their next versions come out. Switch 2 is going up $100 later this year, Microsoft already said Helix is going to be a premium product and they will have payment plans (I'm guessing $1200-1400 at least). Then Sony is saying they might just extend the lifecycle of PS5 longer than anticipated since PS6 would be too expensive to make.
This is our lives now and I don't see it getting better until the AI bubble pops. AI will be here forever, but all of these companies hoarding parts thinking they will all become trillionaires isn't going to last. Most of them will fall just like the dot com companies when they realize they can't make money off their investment.
I do think the price is absurd, but considering Valve is only making $70 profit on each machine, it's not like they are pricing this thing at $1049 and laughing all the way to the bank. They are pricing it based on what parts cost now. My company recently had to order new laptops, and they were literally double the price what we paid the last time we placed an order. We are in the absolutely worst timeline when it comes to PC parts. Consoles will suffer the same fate when their next versions come out. Switch 2 is going up $100 later this year, Microsoft already said Helix is going to be a premium product and they will have payment plans (I'm guessing $1200-1400 at least). Then Sony is saying they might just extend the lifecycle of PS5 longer than anticipated since PS6 would be too expensive to make.
This is our lives now and I don't see it getting better until the AI bubble pops. AI will be here forever, but all of these companies hoarding parts thinking they will all become trillionaires isn't going to last. Most of them will fall just like the dot com companies when they realize they can't make money off their investment.
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