You must log in or # to comment.
- We don’t know the price yet
- Not everyone knows how to build a PC
- Not everyone wants to learn to build a PC
- Not everyone knows how to install a new OS
- Not everyone wants to learn to install a new OS
(Talking about OS because I’m assuming they want a console experience, not a windows desktop experience)
I can build a better PC for less money
Can you?
First of all, Valve has not even announced a price yet. Everything is still pure speculation.
Second, have you seen the price of GPU’s, RAM, and SSD’s these days? Consumers for gaming PC parts are competing for supply with industrial buyers now. AI is hoovering all the supply up with the backing from private equity. The GPU market never fully recovered from the cryptocurrency era either.
I’ve been wanting to build a new mid-range gaming PC for years now. I’ve kept an eye on prices. I spent ~$1k on a machine in 2019, with the GPU costing a mere $175. Nowadays a comparable tier of GPU starts at $600, and the cost fo a mid-tier machine is over $1,500, getting closer to $2,000 with the RAM and SSD prices.
Valve can get better bulk pricing on components. Their primary profit center is software sales, and it’s really hard to sell software when no one can afford hardware. So Valve is incentivized to design these machines that are resistant to being scalped or scrapped for specific components, and to sell them for relatively low margin in order to drive game sales. We already saw this with the Steam Deck- it was hardware that could play games without mining crypto.
I do think the RAM and maybe SSS supply could throw a wrench into Valve’s plans though. Just because if the prices go high enough, people could start buying steam machines to rip out the RAam modules and sell them separately. But we are nowhere near that level of RAM pricing yet.
People say the same about a Mac, and they are usually correct but a Mac is built to last and be energy efficient. Hardware/software integration is also tight.
You’d spend less building your own or buying a cheap windows machine but in terms of performance, energy efficiency, build quality etc you’ll struggle to get better value in the long run.
Except they don’t. Sure, if your comparing a $500 Windows laptop to a $2000 MacBook, then yes this is correct, but once you start comparing computers of the same price tag then it gets different. The parts on the Windows devices tend to be newer, faster, better screen/touch screen, and longer supported. Apple supports their computers for around 7 years before they can’t be updated, Windows on average 10 years. And yes, Windows computers do last 10+ years, everyone is complaining very loudly how their 10+ year old Win10 machine isnt getting updates anymore and cant install Win11.
OK but who said that the RAM isnt firmly soldered?
Gamer’s Nexus has reported that it is upgradeable SO-DIMM modules, though they did not confirm whether it is 1 or 2 sticks.
Okay, thx for clarify.
Have they announced a price yet?
Nope, it’s fucking hilarious how they already go crazy about the price and the bad stats with nothing concrete being announced yet.
I’m not worried about the stats since it’s better than my rig lol, but with ram and other hardware prices increasing, it does worry me a little that it could flop due to the price.
I can build a PC for cheaper
How the flying fuck would you know? The price for the SM hasn’t been announced yet and at the same time parts are increasing in price by a pretty huge margin.
deleted by creator
It’s a linux gaming PC where you do not have to worry about hardware compatibility.
That’s exactly what I believe about it. If Valve sold it without their monopolized software on it, I would be interested.
Er, why would you expect the software on this to be any more restricted than the Deck’s? Have you seen some information to that effect?
No, I just don’t trust Valve. They poached the better Cassali off Doomworld, and they’ve monopolized gaming without physical media.
TBH, if Tim, Romero, or Carmack relaunched the Big Blue Disk, I would get in, in a heartbeat.
Well, OK, let me ask this a different way then…
How could they possibly distribute a device that was end-user ready with any less control?
They went out of their way to make the Deck user-repairable and partnered with iFixIt to make replacement parts and documentation easily available. They built in a simple way to switch to the Arch desktop so the user could easily access non-Steam applications or take control of the OS if desired. I don’t see how the device could be more open to end-user control and still ready-to-use out of the box.
Valve does not have a monopoly by any definition of the word, especially the legal definition. They don’t have a majority of the business because they buy out the competition or use their position to drop prices to a level that others can’t compete with. They have a majority of the market because they provide a better service than the competition and have been doing it long enough to have developed a cultural gravity in the same way that Xbox, PlayStation, and Facebook and Twitter have.
They allow you to install whatever you like on their hardware. This is the same case with the steam deck - the bootloader is accessible with a button combination.
So if you don’t like steamOS, you can just install another OS from a USB device before the first login screen.
… Their… monopolized… operating system?
Which is completely open source, and thus free to everyone… and also forkable, modifiable?
… Genuienly, what are you talking about?
So is it ‘never obsolete’ like the EMachines were?
But can you mod games like on PC?
Many mods work. I have tried some GTA SA mods, and have seen people using Minecraft mods.
Need for Speed mods work too. There even was a fix somewhere for Frosty Mod Manager to make it work properly under Linux, for modding modern NFS titles.
It is a PC, so yes, it can mod games.
Yes.
Windows has MO2?
Linux has Limo.
Very, very comparable mod managers.
If you mean… actually develop your own mods?
Also yes, but personally I’d recommend swapping out SteamOS for Bazzite.
Does it go to 11?
It’s from Valve. It doesn’t even go to 3.
“v2.5 is all the game anyone is ever going to need” - Gabe
How do you not get it? Didn’t you buy an eggs box when you were a kid? What was in it? Eggs. Now this is the same thing but with Steam. Your just pretending you don’t get it.
But i could just buy chicken and wait for the eggs.
No one is stopping you buddy
Seriously. I have like 3 egg boxes. Can’t wait for all the Steam I could be putting in boxes.
Bro have you seen the prices for storage, graphics cards, memory? I’ll take 2 Steam whatever shape it is.
Well, It’s a game box that doesn’t record everything you do, shove it into AI, and sell all your secrets to the highest bidder.
It’s basically a linux PC from a reputable vendor that comes with support.
And yeah, you could build your own cheaper.
that comes with support
biggest point.
When you build your own linux pc, you will always have a big risk of some unexpected problems. Lowering the bar of technical expertise to run linux is the main selling point here IMO.
Yeah, I think the missing point is the average Lemmy user is not the target market. This is Steam’s attempt to grab market share from the other consoles. People with gaming PCs are probably already using steam. People with Xbox or PS are probably not. Steam needs to provide an out of the box ready product to let them existing console players play steam.
And it will be a development target, meaning devs will put in some effort to get their games working nicely on it.
NGL, I kinda want one as a desktop. I have better gaming systems, but having a little borg cube on my desk with an ok amount of horsepower pushing two monitors would be pretty neat. I’d either give it a Tardis siege mode skin or a borg cube skin
This is me. I used to be a PC tinkerer back in the day. But now, ain’t nobody got time for that.
deleted by creator
And yeah, you could build your own cheaper.
I call BS.
At what theoretical price point for a Steam Machine, can you match the or exceed the specs, for less cost?
Ok, now also try to do that, and match the Steam Machine’s power draw, and form factor.
… Go on, show me your build, with current US prices.
Unless I somehow missed an actual price announcement for the Steam Machine, I wanna see how cheap you can get an actually comparable build done for.
Hey troll, go find a hobby.
I’m still waiting for a build and a price point for it.
Would you like to see the build I’ve been planning out for a while?
Its not an attempt to replicate a Steam Machine, its more of a… maximum possible bang for your buck build… it does have a similar form factor though, and an unconventional kind of architecture…
…though I did try to replicate a PS5 price point/performance parity build a while back… turns out, its not as easy as you may think to just lay out a PC build that’s actually pretty close in price/performance to a non PC standard architecture, made by a large corporation.
Or did you just want to do some namecalling, and entirely avoid actually backing up your claim?
You said you could probably make that build.
I’m just asking you to actually do that.
And yeah, you could build your own cheaper.
Notably, though, this is the case with any pre-built PC; the Steam Box isn’t an exception. We don’t know the final price or specs yet but presumably it’s no worse value than buying something from e.g. Dell. Probably better value purely based on it coming with Linux and without the bloatware.
And also cheaper because steam expects to make additional money on each user in the future via steam purchases, so they can keep the margin smaller in the hardware price
Steam has explicitly said they are not subsidizing the steam machine as other console makers do
iirc they said they weren’t selling at a loss, but that’s not the same thing as selling at a low margin. PC manufacturers have to make essentially 100% of their profit from the initial sale of the device, but valve can make a smaller profit from the sale of each device because they know each device will lead to additional profit through game purchases
I thought pc makers made side profits with all the bloatware they install. And possibly some weird deals with M$ too.
Like everything else, you can find some that do and some that don’t. Best yet, it goes both ways. When someone sells you a bloated PC, they often share a bit of the payoff with you making the price slightly cheaper than would be possible otherwise.
Historically M$ has even threatened manufacturers NOT to sell with Linux installed. They attacked some major retail brands, threatened to pull their license to sell windows.
it’s a great big clusterfuck
They don’t know that, if they sell cheap enough it might be worth it for a random office somewhere to order a hundred and use them as work computers with no intention to ever buy a game in them. Also they aren’t going to be locked, nothing prevents you from getting one and run games purchased in every market under the sun that isn’t steam (and/or pirated games).
I don’t think they have any certainty that they’ll even make decent money on them. I am hopeful that this will be good for everyone but can’t exactly see how at the moment.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/valve-finally-confirms-leaked-steam-machine-price-rumors/
Well, it’s true we don’t have actual numbers yet, we do have some pretty solid info on the hardware. And we have some statements from Valve themselves that it’s not going to be console-priced, even though the hardware is clearly console specced.
Don’t get me wrong. I really really want it to work out well. I would love to have well, supported Linux workstations in people’s hands.
But I think we’re going to find its price is going to shove it into a niche audience.
With the prices of RAM…
Valve would have secured a pipeline prior to announcing the news at least for the first however many thousand/million/whatever units
This article says absolutely nothing except here say from a YouTuber?
They didn’t confirm anything?
Not just the highest bidder. All bidders.
Steam box
It’s got what nerds crave!
Damn it, beat me to it. Though I was going to say gamers instead of nerds, though both work.
It’s got what PvsZ craves.
American bs product. boycot!
Its a *gabecube*
It is so bizarre that even when something like this is announced, a unique phenomenon in gaming and modern pc history, which is sure to make a lot of pc linux converts because of its accessibility, the pc linux masterrace is still being gatekeeping about it.
