The Machine, the desktop/living room console… It has a 300W PSU. GN has the Valve designer saying its generally just a tad over 200W of draw.
So uh… that’s practically nothing, you could probably actually power that out of a homebuilt steam turbine + power station (like for solar panels, home backup power unit type thing).
For reference, an Nvidia 5090 needs 575W… just by itself.
An AMD 9070, non XT, on its own, uses 220W, approximately what the entire Steam Machines uses.
The Steam Machine does not even have a 3 prong connector.
Imagine. Product is released, people buy the Steam Machine, and Half-Life 3 is just… there. Preinstalled on some of the units. The buyers post it on the internet and get called bullshitters. Then Half-Life 3 is officially announced the next day. The internet loses it. Gaben ascends to godhood. He. Has. Cooked.
Agree it has be price competitive with consoles. Though I wonder if making a docked Deck be on equal footing with the Machine would have been a better use of R&D. Maybe simply improving having the dock house an eGPU and bumping the Deck specs.
I mean like a v2 Steam Deck and Dock. Give the Deck a bump in CPU/RAM/storage specs and new external ports to facilitate having the GPU in the dock. It could technically even be an externalized PCIe connector instead of Thunderbolt/USB. In handheld mode you get the iCPU limited to 1080, but dock it on the big screen and now you get full 4k @ 60 FPS. Add an HDMI port so you do 1080 on a big screen without a dock.
At this point, you would think that if they wanted to go with an Occulink/Thunderbolt thing… they’d make it in the Steam Machine, the thing that doesn’t move around as much.
They… the Valve video says the Steam Machine is 6 times as powerful as a Steam Deck.
… I have no idea what that actually means, maybe its TFLOPs, who knows, but uh, yeah, if you’re making a 6x thing thats more stationary, I would think that would be the thing you’d make with an option or variant to just jam more compute into it via modularity.
I dunno. It seems like more news about the Deck 2 or whatever is coming, at some point, Valve’s whole actual video is basically making fun of how its not talking about the Deck… stay tuned, goth gamer nation…???
Either way, we always have this:
Oh god are there going to be some very very salty Nintendo fans, very soon.
At this point, you would think that if they wanted to go with an Occulink/Thunderbolt thing… they’d make it in the Steam Machine, the thing that doesn’t move around as much.
I hadn’t heard of OCuLink before, apparently it’s an external PCIe connector! Eh, that would seem like a waste of engineering team to build that into a stationary desktop PC. They can just build the PC case to whatever size is needed to house the GPU and related cooling, which they did. This is the second desktop PC they’ve released, no? They had one like 10 years ago that was a commercial failure? My impression as a console gamer is that the Deck is very successful and popular, but it’s under-powered for playing on a big screen.
They… the Valve video says the Steam Machine is 6 times as powerful as a Steam Deck.
Right, my point was just bumping the chipset/CPU/memory would give a nice marketing tagline like that without designing a whole new desktop PC. Obviously, you can’t put a giant modern CPU and heat sinks and fans in a handheld. So spend that engineering R&D money on giving the dock a GPU so now the Deck performs as well as the Machine would have, and you have it using a successful branding rather than reviving a brand that already failed once.
It seems like more news about the Deck 2 or whatever is coming,
This is the second desktop PC they’ve released, no?
No. They have never designed a desktop before. The original Steam Machine was mainly a branding program for system integrators coupled with the release of the original Steam OS.
rather than reviving a brand that already failed once
Or do what they’re already doing and just call it something else.
But there’s one major thing you’re missing/ignoring: a big reason why the Steam Deck was a hit is because it has good price/performance. EGPU’s are the antithesis of that. They don’t scale well, and they add extra hardware and complexity, driving up price and limiting performance.
Right, that’s what I’m saying. Make a v2 Deck with upgraded CPU/memory, and put the GPU in the dock so it can do 4k on a big screen. I’m sure “Deck v2 is 4x more powerful than v1 and you can dock it for 4k @ 60fps on the big screen” would be just as good a marketing line as “Machine is 6x more powerful than a Deck”.
Though I wonder if making a docked Deck be on equal footing with the Machine would have been a better use of R&D.
No, it would not. Buulding a Steam Deck that’s 6x more powerful (the claimed comparison for the Steam Machine) is NOT possible with today’s technology. For anyone.
The Steam Deck has to be hand portable and get somewhat decent battery life. That leaves little little space for a cooling solution. You cannot beat thermodynamics.
My guess would be that around $800 sounds roughly right… if you try to approximate a small form factor pc with… roughly those specs?
You’d kinda end up around there, but… the architecture is so nonstandard, its hard to say.
You gotta think of it as an SFF PC not a console.
Because its closer to an SFF PC than it is to a console.
Right like, this thing is also a PC, its a laptop or w/e if you plug a mouse and keyboard into it.
I run desktop mode on my Deck all the time, use it as a laptop/tablet of sorts.
As far as tiers go, GN has said there are plans for a 512 GB and 2TB variant, so, there’s at least two tiers… I would not expect like, more or less GDDR5/6 RAM variants though, the whole thing is built too much around the exact power draw and thermal load.
But on the other hand, Valve have economies of scale, so they can build this thing cheaper than a normal person can build a PC. Plus, they don’t need to make a huge profit on this stuff. The purpose of the hardware is to sell games. At least that’s what I’ll keep telling myself until we find out more.
But on the other other hand, tariffs, and RAM just doubled in cost in like the last month, because… well this time its not bitcoin miners buying all the GPUs, its… the entire AI industry is a multi trillion dollar scam.
Hilariously, one way to read this announcement is that Valve expects the AI bubble to blow up by ‘early next year’, thus lowering RAM costs, ahahaha!
Holy shit, Valve is clowning on MSFT so fucking hard right now.
There’s no display, no battery, no controller included, no OS fees.. I think it could be cheaper than $800.
Because it’s all custom hardware we don’t really have a great basis for comparison. I’m going to guess that the cheapest variant will be something like $650. Doubt more than $700 though.
GLaDoS may or may not flood your home with neurotoxin if you try this, but uh, you could run a local LLM on it, and thus just have your own AI catgirlfriend or maybe lightweight coding assistant w/e.
I’ve futzed about with OpenLlama on a Bazzite Deck, there aren’t too many models lightweight enough to run, but some of them work!
I have a PSVR2 and I don’t consider the capability of VR to be its failure. I have to assume it’s just that much harder and more expensive to develop for VR. Like the FPS genre is hugely successful, and that’s such a natural fit for VR.
I think it’s just an accessibility thing. VR is expensive, and it takes people pushing through some disorientation/nausea to really enjoy it. Many will simply feel sick the first few times they try it, decide it’s not for them and leave it.
Just place a fan on the floor in front of you. Bam! No nausea. Because now your body instinctively knows your position and orientation in the space you’re in.
As someone who experienced nausea. I’ve tried all kinds of tricks. They all help, just like Dramamine or those bands with the beads that 1/10 pain.
It took quite a while to get over the nausea. A lot of starting and stopping with slightly longer sessions each time.
I fully expect that most people would not be willing to do that but I received the system as a gift and I really liked it. I wish they had more longer games. I’m so tired of the games that are 30s of concept and then do it over-and-over.
Nope, turns out, thats a whole game in and of itself.
Also, while vanilla Kenshi doesn’t really do specific organs… you can always just peel somebody, swap some limbs around, or just toss a torso down a hole, I guess…
I mean I know “Alleged” has to be there for legal purposes, but what are the chances Rockstar ISNT guilty of union busting?
I’ve watched UNION’s union bust when their staff unionizes, no way a for profit capitalist nightmare like rockstar isn’t busting as hard as they can, especially with the NLRB currently muzzled by a felonious rapist who steals from children with cancer.
I’ll at least hold them accountable, by being that jerk on the internet who reminds people of union busting every time someone mentions Rockstar or one of their games.
Why yes I am still boycotting Sony over that time they booby trapped their CDs. Businesses might not go under when they do amazingly evil stuff, but they’re dead to me.
GTA will proceed to break all media sales records because why do the right thing when you can buy a new shiny toy to spend your hard earned capitalism bucks on
why do the right thing when you can buy a new shiny toy
It’s not like they’re plastering “We Busted A Union To Get This Game Out Six Months Late” on the packaging. The overwhelming majority of retail customers have no idea how the sausage is made. Those that are curious enough to ask typically aren’t the ones going in on the “Rape And Loot Simulator” franchise to begin with.
Gotta get off this hobby horse of blaming the anonymous gooner gamer at the bottom of the food chain for decisions made in a smoke-filled board room long beforehand.
The “anonymous gooner gamers” or uninformed consumers are why the companies get away with shit like this. Because they keep throwing money to buy the next best thing
No they aren’t. Games flop all the time and the companies don’t quit this bullshit. No business executive has ever walked out of a tense call with their investors and re-committed themselves to being nicer to the staff. You’re delusional if you think people not buying a game results in the quality of life of that game’s staff improving.
What improves the lives of game developers is going indie and doing well. What improves the odds of doing well as an indie developer is producing games that can compete with the GTAs absent the absurd marketing budgets. That requires a symbiosis between indie games media, indie developers, and early adopters. But the gooner gamer is at the end of the line in any event. They don’t even know the game exists until it gets a splash ad on the Steam Store.
Your retail consumer market is a consequence of industry practices, not a cause.
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