How many times has this happened now? They just repeatedly steal others’ artwork and then only pay up when someone complains…
Reminds me of those old Wells Fargo bank scams where they steal like 2 or 3 cents from millions of customers and then only return in when the customer complains.
That’s why there is a thing called risk assessment in business. The money they earn from doing these shitty things outweighs the money they will pay in the future and nobody is lobbying to punish such business behaviors.
I will be very much surprised if they haven’t secured and locked the prices of all their components for a year or two ahead, so this should not be a factor. Probably they are just waiting to see what will happen with the tariffs and tasting the sentiment of the market for such a device.
I presume they will sell it almost at cost or even at loss, as this will eventually increase their game sales overall.
This is going to come off as shilling for Valve, but it isn’t my intention.
I could entirely see Valve pricing the Steam Machine relatively affordably and this statement is ultimately a dig at how overpriced pre-built PCs and consoles can be.
“The Steam Machine outperforms 70% of current user PCs…we neglected to say that the majority of user PCs are overpriced for what they deliver.”
Even though LTT said valve gave a cold stare at a $500 price tag, the BOM estimate is sitting around $420 (compared to $300 for the deck).
If they follow the same path as the steam deck, they could still comfortably sell the base model at $600 or $550 if they want to get aggressive with consoles.
Valve basically broke even with the base model steam deck, so I’m assuming the remaining $100 per unit cost is all the external stuff like production shipping etc. They make profit on the higher level models by charging more for storage and OLED.
Valve’s plan was never to compete with consoles, but they’re sitting on a golden opportunity here with Xbox flailing in the water and being able to price match without loss. Their major blocker is the anti cheat holdouts though, and I don’t think they’ll be willing to change unless steam machine itself becomes very popular, which forms an annoying loop.
I think they’re probably having some great arguments behind the scenes on what point exactly they should settle on based off of the public response everyone is giving from this statement lol.
I think a lot of people are going to be disappointed in the price. From what I’ve read, and watched, its not going to be competitive like the Deck - it’ll be more expensive than the current consoles. I just have a feeling people are underestimating it this time around.
Sorry Valve, but you are delusional here. This is going to bite you in the ass like Artifact did.
I don't see the angle of the argument where people are saying that Valve is just going to eat the loss per sale of this machine. My question is - why bother? Because they're going to just bank on the goodwill built up with the Steam userbase and rely on them to buy games to make up the losses, which by the way the prices on even Steam's holiday sales have been quite underwhelming these past few years. So I don't get why they would bank on that when it is again underwhelming.
I think people are more excited about an OS that doesn’t steal their data and is made for gaming. Bazzite is cool, but the steam deck has showed what a good OS can do for gaming. Fuck windows.
It’s moreso because of the actual specs itself, “priced like a PC” is anywhere from $300 to $10,000(at least semi-reasonably on a consumer scale) which isn’t a good metric if you could guess. However, based on the specs it should be somewhere from $500 to $800, and realistically because they were working with manufacturers for it they should be getting a good deal on the parts and therefore it should ere more towards $500 than anything, which would be console pricing. Of course excluding any peripherals. The issue is the way they’re wording it, and the way they have reacted to people like Linus asking if the price will be around $500. It seems like “PC pricing” means more like $1000, which is honestly overpriced for the specs and if it is said price I highly recommend no one buy it, just build your own, it’s easier than you think.
I find it amusing how much discussion there is around the price of this when it only ships to like 1/4th of the world. If it would be available in stores like nintendo, I doubt people there would be much issue regarding high price.
Steamdeck still hasn’t been available in many places :( let’s hope. With how pc prices are looking, I just want a decent console that can run my steam library and minecraft.
That most of the world isn’t even going to have access to it, no matter the price. Could be imported but that’s not cheap and no warranty on a custom built is terrible.
That most of the world isn’t even going to have access to it, no matter the price.
What relevance is this to how the price is recieved?
More than that, it is probably the case that excluding china (because of tight government control), that 1/4th probably covers 4/5ths of the reachable customers for this device.
Is there even a criticism here or did you just have to resort to generic insults due to being unable to support your point of view? This is just more evidence to support my assumption.
Reddit and lemmy claimed Switch 2 would fail when the prices were revealed. Having your console in stores plays a role here. What’s truly irrelevant here is reddit/lemmy 's reactions.
Reddit and lemmy claimed Switch 2 would fail when the prices were revealed.
This is just not true. You must have used some pretty extreme confirmation bias to garner that this was the consensus opinion just so you could feel superior at a later date.
Having your console in stores plays a role here.
What is that role and how is that connected to the first thing they said; the thing I am questioning the most about the relevance of not having complete market coverage?
If it was going to be cheap, they’d have told us. They’ve prepared us for the worst, and we’ve still got people huffing the copium thinking the Steam Frame will be price-competitive with the Quest 3…
Not true. The problem is there are a lot of moving targets in the electronics market right now, so even Valve doesn’t know what they’re going to be able to sell it for.
Lol, not sure if you’ve noticed but the US is in a pretty shaky situation economically. Of course there’s consumer anxiety about the cost of a luxury item.
Assembling your own Steam Machine with similar parts will cost around 800
Even if you assembled it yourself you would be missing features, such as cec, wake by controller, sleep mid game, etc. LTT will try to build one, it will be interesting to see what they come up with, but I’m 90% it won’t have feature parity.
There’s lots of engineering gone into this machine, they’re way more compact, less power hungry and more quiet than anything you can build yourself.
Buying the same build as a prebuilt brings a premium and costs around 1000
Valve purchases stuff in scale so they can diminish their margin and could potentially sell it cheaper than prebuilts, and possibly cheaper than building it yourself.
Consoles are sold at a loss, and they recover it with games because the platform is closed.
The Steam Machine is not closed, they can’t be sure they’re getting game purchases, because people might be buying this to be their work computer. So they have to price it as a PC, with margin on hardware, not promise of future returns.
Price might fluctuate between now and announcement, RAM prices are going crazy nowadays.
With all of that being said, it seems to me it’s very likely it will be around 800 but less than 1000. For people saying you can build one for that price yourself, sure, go ahead, you’ll have a huge, power hungry loud box, without the same features and you would have saved only a small fraction of the value by having to assemble everything yourself.
Yeah, but to be fair that was a shitty thing the system did, anyone with experience would know not to do it, but honestly it should have never happened. On the other hand, Linus is a bit daft and lots of stuff blows over his head monumentally, in the same video where he said he would be building a Steam Machine he also couldn’t seem to grasp that this is just a computer and people would see it as a prevuilt. In short I don’t think he will acknowledge lots of the killer features in the Steam Machine just so he can claim his thing does the same. But at least it will be an interesting watch.
It was known beforehand and was fixed already by the time he released his video, he just happened to luck out and encounter it during the short spam it existed.
I disagree that he approached it as a complete idiot, he approached it as someone who knows what they’re doing, when he definitely doesn’t, and that was the issue. Anyone without technical know-how would have panicked at the system asking him to type “I know what I’m doing”, and anyone with enough technical know-how would have paused at that and read the message carefully and moped the fuck out. He had enough knowledge to think he knew what he was doing, but not enough to actually do, and the boldness to think he knew better.
That being said, I agree that there’s plenty of other stuff to bash him for, and that was not a great example, lots of people would have found themselves in that same situation, and I don’t think it’s unfair to say the fuck up there was not entirely on his part.
I don’t think so, I think a normal user would pause when the system asks him to type “Yes, do as I say” as that is clearly a sign that you’re about to shoot yourself in the foot.
Most people rarely read warnings or signs. They’re used to needing to just click accept and move on. More than that, their entire experience thus far will have trained them to just type in the magic command line words and get it over with. This is what linux enthusiasts beat into them while pretending everything is a cake walk. “Don’t trust anything” while simultaneously telling them to use this and that script, and copy this and that text into the terminal. Its not at all a wonder to imagine that behaviour.
It wasn’t a standard accept/continue/yes prompt, it wasn’t something that he could just press enter or something easy and continue without noticing, he had to have read the message to know what to do, it was something akin to:
WARNING The following essential packages will be removed. This should NOT be done unless you know exactly what you’re doing! … You’re about to do something harmful, if you’re sure of what you’re doing type the phrase “Yes, do as I say!”
The message couldn’t have been more clear about it. Plus most users wouldn’t need to use the terminal, he just happened to use the distro during the brief window that that bug existed.
As a Linux enthusiast I can definitely tell you I never encourage people to just type words in the magic box and get it over with, and always tell them to understand what they’re typing.
Doesn’t matter. This is an opinion that is 100% formed in an echo chamber where you are far removed from what a regular user would think going through this process. All of these prompts you think look different, to a normal person might as well be literally exactly the same. “I don’t know what I am doing, but the program says to do the next thing, with some warning that probably doesnt matter because I’m not doing something hard or critically important”.
Of note:
WARNING The following essential packages will be removed. This should NOT be done unless you know exactly what you’re doing!
That is a message that would not impede a regular user at all, or would completely stop them from using the OS.
They’re trying to install steam. Why would they have any reason to believe that whatever programs are mentioned matter, or think that this message matters when they’re doing something that is in theory extremely simple?
Plus most users wouldn’t need to use the terminal, he just happened to use the distro during the brief window that that bug existed.
How does this negate the fact that the actions taken were reasonable and absolutely not the users fault? In fact, the fact that this was fixed and treated so urgently betrays what a flaw it was.
As a Linux enthusiast I can definitely tell you I never encourage people to just type words in the magic box and get it over with, and always tell them to understand what they’re typing.
Lets for the sake of not stating what I actually assume to be true take your word at face value.
What you recommend is simply incompatible with the majority of people. They don’t have the time or effort to devote into actually learning as much as you’d need to learn for this to actually be useful advice.
A great amount of information must be completely skipped over and ignored to be proficient in a reasonable amount of time.
I’ve used Linux at multiple jobs, and used it as my main desktop OS for more than a year. I know this to be true. For the average person to follow your advice, they’d need to have a firm grasp of BASH. Expecting people to learn even one scripting language, especially an old esoteric one with many gotchas and vestiges of its time is an absurd ask, so of course no one would listen to your advice as it is utterly unreasonable on its face, and completely incompatible with the level of user adoption people hope for.
So then, there is the other advice, from people who are also elitists, but in a different way. They believe these people must be stupid to not figure out the problems on their own, and casually tell them to just RTFM or use X, Y or Z script with reckless abandon.
Neither of these lead to anything remotely resembling the ease of use of operating systems these users will have come from, no matter how much Linux enthusiasts insist their weird edge cases where they feel those OSes are inferior mean that somehow, magically their opinions apply to the users they are appealing to.
I have a lot more to say honestly, as I have certainly thought about this a lot, but by this point and given the excerpt I am replying to, I’ve learned to never expect good faith discussion, so I’m just limiting my losses by stopping here as I expect toxic positivity as a response.
I agree with lots of what you’re saying, this was a serious bug, it wasn’t the user’s fault, and users can’t be expected to learn bash.
My point is that the message tried to be as scary as possible, because if that message shows then something is about to uninstall critical components from the system, the bug here was that trying to install steam triggered that. I agree that it wasn’t Linus fault, but I think that most users would stop at that message, he didn’t because he thinks he knows what he’s doing, but he doesn’t, he’s in that middle ground where he knows enough to be confidently wrong.
Let me ask you, how would you have given that message in a way that would make people stop?, remember that the message is valid, the bug was installing steam doing that.
I agree that it wasn’t Linus fault, but I think that most users would stop at that message, he didn’t because he thinks he knows what he’s doing, but he doesn’t, he’s in that middle ground where he knows enough to be confidently wrong.
This is the part I disagree with.
Even with my background as stated, similar things have happened to me over time with weird dependency nonsense with what should have been simple updates, not even installs. The types of things you just run, because you expect them to be tested as they are official updates by the team behind the OS.
Luckily Tumbleweed Snapper snapshots saved me, but if I wasn’t savvy, such experiences, while not normal, being semi annual or annual occurrences would absolutely break me as a user. In speaking with other users in relevant channels, I ascertain that my experiences aren’t super uncommon, but it really did hammer home a point: People deep into linux really don’t get how much they’ve learned to deal with and learned how to deal with.
I think people have a hard time thinking that something that happened so casually and over time for them could be challenging, or imagining just how far they themselves had come or that they themselves are significantly different to the average user.
I know the whole idea and how its used in pop culture is pretty much just pop science, but I think reverse dunning kruger is absolutely a good way to describe this. People often develop competencies, and then just believe that they surely can’t be that much more competent at whatever thing than the average person, leading them to be perplexed when said thing is indeed challenging for others.
Let me ask you, how would you have given that message in a way that would make people stop?, remember that the message is valid, the bug was installing steam doing that.
I don’t think there is any problem with the wording. I think there is a problem with the UX. There is a big problem with the way package managers in linux work and the way they share dependencies/can easily get into dependency hell.
I think Flatpaks and to a lesser extent Snaps and even lesser, Appimages, are much more sane/user friendly ways to install applications on linux and so I don’t think there was anything wrong with the message, but the situations that lead to that message being anything a regular user would ever need to see on any semi regular basis.
Really, and this is the hottest take there might be about linux and user adoption, one of the biggest problems with linux, is that there are no nannies, and that the core users right now not only (claim to) like it that way, but are actively hostile to nanny features.
I think computers should be forgiving. You should be able to make a mistake as a user, and quickly correct it. You shouldn’t semi regularly need to go into an environment where typing something incorrectly could result in your machine being out of commission until you resolve said problem (part of why snapshots should be part of every computing experience… Windows included…)
Again, I agree with the majority of what you’re saying, and yes, I think most of us might suffer from xkcd.com/2501/ but in this particular instance Linus only needed the terminal because of the bug, otherwise he should have been able to install it via the GUI, so the bug was even more disastrous to the UX.
I think that nanny features are okay on the GUI, which is exactly what happened here, but I should be allowed to do what I want on my system if I have the know how, and I’m okay with danger style messages to let me know I’m about to do something potentially dangerous, but I’m against being forbidden from uninstalling X (which is the short version of what Linus did).
Flatpacks/snaps/etc are great, and I agree that there should be a push for user space to be mostly there. Also I know it’s not for most users, but you might be interested in checking out NixOS which allows you to rollback almost anything, so while not a solution for the majority of people if this is something you have problems with and have the time and energy to learn Nix language it’s a great distro for having a system that’s almost impossible to break.
but I should be allowed to do what I want on my system if I have the know how, and I’m okay with danger style messages to let me know I’m about to do something potentially dangerous, but I’m against being forbidden from uninstalling X (which is the short version of what Linus did).
I’m not in favour of losing autonomy. Not what I was trying to say. Im just saying that if you fuck up, you should be able to unfuck up reasonably. With linux as it is most of the time, you could get got with a typo.
I also agree that this fault is mostly there because of an error, but I think the point is kinda that, if it wasn’t that it’d be something else eventually. Thats just how it is. Its not to blame any developers as I completely understand their constraints, goals and incentives, but its just a reality, and one I think Valve is poised to help with tremendously given than they are a big company whose usability goals are somewhat aligned now.
Also I know it’s not for most users, but you might be interested in checking out NixOS which allows you to rollback almost anything, so while not a solution for the majority of people if this is something you have problems with and have the time and energy to learn Nix language it’s a great distro for having a system that’s almost impossible to break.
I was quite interested in NIX, but it seemed at the time I was using linux as a daily that it would be a rough ride to use as a desktop computer/seemed more optimized for use as a server. I do have plans to use a spare machine in such a capacity, so I would say maybe, but then their association with Anduril is pretty fucking disgusting and kinda left a really bad taste in my mouth.
Anyhow, I think that really, just something like BTRFS snapshots are probably good enough for 9.9/10 fuck ups one might face where they want an emergency undo button (If BTRFS fixed raid 6 write hole issues I would be soo fucking happy btw).
I also obviously given the past tense kinda gave up on the linux daily because well, games, and its like, why am I fighting my computer. This is not a hill to die on. Maybe later or maybe for a secondary build, but given I just got a 5090 and wanted to fuck around with it, I just set the whole idea aside.
Also people who like to DIY seem to forget that a lot of people want a turn-key solution, I even dare to say that most people prefer a ready made solution. Even a lot of people who work in tech when they get home want a just work solution.
I work in tech. I also have terrible dexterity. While I love my gaming PC, I dread upgrades or things going wrong. I hate applying thermal paste, replacing a motherboard, etc. I’d gladly pay “prebuilt” prices for something from a company I can “trust” (as far as corporations can be trusted).
And a lot of the prebuilts have a ton of cut corners. A well put-together machine that people can trust to play their games at a base performance could be great for those who don’t want or can’t DIY.
Eh, I dont want steam machine becoming a standardized PC.
having CPU and GPU baked into the board and unchangable will just increase e-waste cause it will age out much faster than a PC which you could, 3-4 years down the line, max out the CPU in, throw more ram into, or upgrade teh GPU, to keep it relevant for another 4+ years
It serves its niche purpose, but it should not become standard.
I feel the standardization they mean is in the spec and not the specific build. Like, a lot of games are terrible optimized, not only on runtime but also in space needed, it is getting out of hand. But if you have to target a popular machine like steam deck or the steam machine that is not super high-end and have lower capacity storage you have no option but to put some attention on optimizing you game at least a little.
Except that just means they’d optimize for that specific hardware in the steam machine and still run like shit on anything else.
Power wise, they said the steam machine is equivalent to what 70% of the steam users already have and use. If developers arent already optimizing for that, then one more machine out of thousands wont encourage it.
A thousand dollars seems fantastically reasonable for a well-engineered home-gaming machine that can play current gen PC games at high quality. I spend that much every several years on upgrading or building a new PC.
My complaint is not the price, I think the price is fair. Let’s talk wages.
Yup, I love DIY, had tons of fun building my wife’s mini-itx gaming rig, my NAS and even my desktop (although it was the boring one of the three since it’s just standard). I love poking on my system, trying out stuff, etc. But I bought a Deck and my only mod was getting EmuDeck in it, it just works for what I want it to, and that’s worth a lot to me, it allows me to pour my time on stuff I want to be building and just game on my gaming boxes.
With all of that being said, it seems to me it’s very likely it will be around 800 but less than 1000
maybe more with the way ram prices are skyrocketing… because even though it comes out next year, they are probably being manufactured and stockpiled right now.
Yup, like I said, it depends on how prices will fluctuate, my guess is what the price would be if it was being sold now, if RAM increases they would have to compensate for it.
Consoles are sold at a loss, and they recover it with games because the platform is closed.
Sometimes, but evidently not currently. Sources seem to indicate that only Microsoft seems to say they are selling at a loss, though it seems odd since their bill of materials looks like it should be pretty comparable to PS5…
I’ll agree with the guess of around $800, but like you say, the supply pressure on RAM and storage as well as the tariff situation all over the place, hard to say.
Even if you assembled it yourself you would be missing features, such as cec, wake by controller, sleep mid game, etc.
I’ve been actively mass downvoted on Reddit for being excited for these features. People are really fucking stupid sometimes.
I have a significantly more powerful PC (in a tower case) currently hooked up to my tv surviving the same purpose and I will likely be getting the Steam Machine entirely for these features.
“But just use a dongle” they say. And I do. It works about half the time and I have to do this weird dance involving pulling up Kodi
Wait did you seriously put effort into searching for my posts just to try and be right?
Mate. I appreciate your absolute derangement here but it was like a week ago in a circlejerking thread and I got downvoted because it was a circlejerk. The same kinda post has probably happened like 2 million times at this point across reddit.
Wait did you seriously put effort into searching for my posts just to try and be right?
Its always amazing when people act like less than 15 seconds of effort is a monumental amount of when things arent going their way to try to attack someone for attempting to verify their claims.
Literally 2 searches, but apparently thats big effort to you. You spent more time typing out this comment.
it was like a week ago in a circlejerking thread and I got downvoted because it was a circlejerk
You said something not jerking in a thread that was openly for jerking, that also is not possible to find, and this proves that reddit has an unreasonable opinion on this box.
This all sounds ridiculous and now I just don’t believe you at all, especially with the ridiculous jump to hostility.
Knowing what parts to buy, I don’t think most average people can cite every piece in a desktop
Selecting parts that are compatible, try plug-and-play an AMD CPU on an Intel MOBO.
Selecting parts that fit the chassis you selected, unless you went with a full ATX that’s a concern.
Now that you bought the components:
Knowing to ground yourself before doing anything, currently I’m getting static shocks daily where I live, if I didn’t know about this I could very easily fry a RAM by picking it up wrong.
Cable management is not easy, most cheaper chassis don’t have enough or dedicated space for it.
Correct amount of thermal paste is something lots of people get wrong.
Some pieces require strength to lock in place, others break if you even look at them sideways.
Now that you’ve assembled everything:
Installing OS
Installing drivers
Installing Steam
Depending on your OS and controller of choice pairing controller and getting it to work could be difficult
I’m not saying that assembling a computer is hard, but is definitely far from plug-and-play, and not something I would recommend for someone without technical knowledge who just wants something to play games.
That’s the wording a lot of other people would use, I’d say. I wouldn’t be able to put together a PC, and most people I know are like that. I have maybe two cousins that can. But we’d probably all agree that plug-and-play means that you buy something and it works just like that. For example, a refrigerator is likely plug and play, because you don’t expect to have to put together the components to make it work. You just plug it in and it works.
Valve’s Pierre-Loup Griffais claimed that the Steam Machine price had not been nailed down internally, but that Valve’s aim was to offer a “good deal” in line with equivalently powered PCs.
“I think that if you build a PC from parts and get to basically the same level of performance, that’s the general price window that we aim to be at,” he said.
There going to be price competitive with building from parts, apparently.
The answer I’m replying to suggested you can get a prebuilt with a 9600 for 1000, since they’re replying to my point that a prebuilt with similar spec is 1000.
Oh, weird. I just read the whole chain going up and I don’t see any indication the figures were for prebuilt systems. Maybe someone edited their post or something isn’t federating?
Regardless, Valve is apparently going to be competitive just in hardware costs, which makes sense—they can’t expect to extract extra value from software sales, but they should still be able to have an acceptable profit margin with their scale and lack of layers in their distribution model.
They could totally make money selling it at a loss. The reason so many people care is that there’s an opening in the console market for an affordable option
No, they couldn’t, have you read about the PS3? They were a lot cheaper than building a similar system so several companies bought thousands to build clusters, I personally worked at a relatively small university that had a cluster made of dozens of PS3s, since each Playstation costed Sony around $200 my university on its own costed thousands to Sony, and I imagine every other university and some private companies did the same.
Only after they closed their system, which they did because they were losing money to every single enterprise in the world who wanted a cluster and PS3 were the cheapest option.
The PS3 was using a rare CPU that you could only get from it or from some enterprise dealer at a much higher price. The Steam Machine is a standard x86 computer that can’t match the ubiquitous ThinkCentres in price/performance.
If it’s sold at a loss like a console it would beat the price/performance of any other x86 chip on the market, which is why they can’t sell it at a loss, ergo my point.
And then we could make money having people riding her. If you’re going to start a hypothetical scenario of Valve still being able to make money selling at a loss you can’t be angry that people are replying on the basis your premise is true.
I never said $800 would be selling at a loss, in fact I said that there’s a good possibility that they can sell it cheaper than 800 and still make a profit because they buy things in bulk. You were the first one who even mentioned it being profitable for them selling at a loss:
They could totally make money selling it at a loss.
Which is completely false, if they sold at a loss by definition they would lose money on each sale, and because it’s an open platform people would just buy the cheap hardware to be used for any project which would make Valve bleed money like Sony did with their PS3 until they closed the system.
Regardless, this is a thread about whether Valve could still make money selling at a loss, you stepped into it claiming they couldn’t compete in price/performance, which implies that they couldn’t compete even selling at a loss (since that was the central point of the discussion)
You’re the one that brought up Valve selling at a loss
I wasn’t, it was the person I’m replying to, the one I mixed out with you. Sorry for that, thought it was the same person.
you think anything under $800 would be selling at a loss
No, it’s a thread about the market differences between the PS3 and the Steam Machine. You’re just being so irrational in your obsession with being right that you don’t know what you’re talking about or with whom.
Nope, the PS3 was just an example of why you can’t sell at a loss with an open platform. Selling at a loss was the central point of the discussion, if that flew over your head it’s fine, but don’t try to make it my fault that you jumped in the middle of a discussion about why Valve can’t sell at a loss and said:
The Steam Machine is a standard x86 computer that can’t match the ubiquitous ThinkCentres in price/performance.
Which implies that even with the Steam Machines being sold at a loss a ThinkCenter would have a best price/performance which is just impossible.
This is going in circles and bringing nothing constructive.
Thry could absolutely do that. Valve makes a cut off every Steam game sold. If anything, it’d be MORE viable for them than any other console maker given the wider library
You’re completely missing the point. People can buy steam machines and use them as a PC without ever opening steam, or worse, use them as servers or parts of a cluster. If Steam Machines were sold at a loss they would , by definition, be cheaper than equivalent hardware, so companies would buy 10k of them to put into a warehouse to run stuff because it would be cheaper than buying the same thing from other places. This is what happened to the PS3, non-blocked systems can’t be sold at a loss because you can’t guarantee that whoever is buying it will use them for your intended purpose.
I personally think, that if your are gaming on linux you should value valve alot for how much money they have put into the linux ecosystem and it's not bad to buy at their store. On the other hand there is alot of gaming happing outside of steam (including things which won't make it to steam).
I do absolutely celebrate the contributions they’ve made, Proton beats the shit out of every alternative and it’s not even close. Black hole vs mouse levels of curbstomp
I also think people with bad values should suffer for those values. I am an ideologue
Yes, but my whole point was that PCs have other uses, so Valve selling a PC at a loss can’t recover the money with games because people won’t necessarily play games on that machine. Saying “if you’re playing games” to that point is like someone explaining to you why seatbelts are needed in cars and you replying with “if you never crash they’re useless”, like OF COURSE that if we enter your hypothetical example everything works, the whole point is about the disaster that would happen if that wasn’t the case.
Re-read my answer, if they were sold at a loss like you suggested it would be beneficial for companies to purchase them to be office, servers or anything, costing Valve money without bringing them any profit afterwards because those machines would be purchased without gaming in mind, only because they were the cheapest available option (since all of the others have some profit margin and steam machines would be sold at a loss).
Yeah, because business can’t simply ask employees or random people to buy the machines, rebuy from them and still get them cheaper. Hell, they can even advertise they will be buying machines for 10% higher price and let random people offer it to them. It’s an open platform, you can’t prevent people from getting it. Selling the machines at a loss is a sure way to have Valve bleed money, just like it happened with the PlayStation 3 until they closed the system. I would rather the hardware costs a bit more so that the platform can remain open.
Jay already tried. It was bigger, didn’t have the custom OS, and cost $1700. He could have done better except he was part limited to what rhe Microcenter he was at had on hand. Doing a bunch or research and getting different parts would probably bring down the price.
Assembling your own Steam Machine with similar parts will cost around 800
No, it won’t. $800 will get you a machine that’s around 50% faster. Controller included.
Even if you assembled it yourself you would be missing features, such as cec, wake by controller, sleep mid game, etc. LTT will try to build one, it will be interesting to see what they come up with, but I’m 90% it won’t have feature parity.
Fair enough.
There’s lots of engineering gone into this machine, they’re way more compact, less power hungry and more quiet than anything you can build yourself.
It’s literally a laptop CPU with a laptop GPU.
Buying the same build as a prebuilt brings a premium and costs around 1000
Also not true. A 1k prebuilt is around 70% faster. Controller not included, though.
Valve purchases stuff in scale so they can diminish their margin and could potentially sell it cheaper than prebuilts, and possibly cheaper than building it yourself.
Sure, but that’s an argument in favour of it costing less.
Consoles are sold at a loss, and they recover it with games because the platform is closed.
Yeah, and the best selling console of the generation is $450 for the digital-only version.
The Steam Machine is not closed, they can’t be sure they’re getting game purchases, because people might be buying this to be their work computer. So they have to price it as a PC, with margin on hardware, not promise of future returns.
Stop this delusion. If this was an actual possibility, it would already be happening with the Steam Deck. Yes, I know you know someone who did it. I know someone who bought a Surface to put Linux on it. There’s dozens of us!
Price might fluctuate between now and announcement, RAM prices are going crazy nowadays.
That I see happening. RAM/storage might triple in price tomorrow which would push the price of the whole industry up.
No, it won’t. $800 will get you a machine that’s around 50% faster. Controller included.
Care to share a link to a PCPartPicker with that? Here’s a link on the same thread of someone building a similarly speck machine for 800 lemmy.world/comment/20649777 and that is without the controller. In case you haven’t noticed, RAM prices are a bit crazy at the moment.
It’s literally a laptop CPU with a laptop GPU.
It’s literally not, they custom developed it for the product, similar to the Steam Deck one, it is based on the architecture used on laptops, but so are Playstation and Xbox AFAIK.
Also not true. A 1k prebuilt is around 70% faster. Controller not included, though.
Sure, but that’s an argument in favour of it costing less.
Yes, that was my point, the top of what this should cost is the same as a prebuilt with similar specs since Valve buys stuff in bulk it should be cheaper than that.
Yeah, and the best selling console of the generation is $450 for the digital-only version.
And the other one is 700, your point is?
Stop this delusion. If this was an actual possibility, it would already be happening with the Steam Deck. Yes, I know you know someone who did it. I know someone who bought a Surface to put Linux on it. There’s dozens of us!
It didn’t happened with the Deck because it’s not sold at a loss, so it’s cheaper to assemble a similarly built PC for you. But I definitely saw several posts through the years recommending people just buy a Steam Deck as their machine in certain conditions. If the Steam Deck costed 300 I guarantee you people would be using it as their daily drivers or building clusters of them.
Nope. Already closed the tab and can’t be bothered to do it again. I did check the link you provided and I see where you went wrong. We’ll get to that in a bit.
It’s literally not, they custom developed it for the product, similar to the Steam Deck one, it is based on the architecture used on laptops, but so are Playstation and Xbox AFAIK.
It literally has the exact same specs as a Ryzen 5 7400F and an RX7600M. But hey, you were right, the CPU is actually not a laptop CPU.
Sure I could. I won’t because you already did and your prebuilt even is a $50 cheaper than the one I had found. Remember that I said we’d get to why the part list you posted was wrong? Here we are. An RX7600 has 32 compute units and a boost clock of about 2.6GHz. The RX7600M “custom GPU” in the Steam Machine has 28 CUs and a boost clock of about 2.4Ghz. This results in the full size 7600 being anywhere from 30% to 70% faster than its mobile version depending on the game and about 50% in synthetic benchmarks. So those PCs with “similar specs” you brought up are not similar at all.
And the other one is 700, your point is?
What other one? The one nobody bought? I guess Valve could go the same route if their goal is for nobody to buy their product.
It didn’t happened with the Deck because it’s not sold at a loss, so it’s cheaper to assemble a similarly built PC for you. But I definitely saw several posts through the years recommending people just buy a Steam Deck as their machine in certain conditions. If the Steam Deck costed 300 I guarantee you people would be using it as their daily drivers or building clusters of them.
It didn’t happen with the Deck because it’s one of the worse ideas ever conceived. It won’t happen with the Cube because it will remain one of the worst ideas ever conceived.
An educated guess. The specs of the “semi-custom” components perfectly match with existing products. However, if I were to put my tinfoil hat on, I’d point out that the 7600M has been out for 2 years and you still cannot find a laptop with one. Almost as if someone snatched up all of the supply.
Edit: Forgot to mention what those existing products are. Ryzen 5 7400F and RX7600M. (The M is very important. Don’t forget the M).
Spec wise I can get there around $688 on pc part picker. I would imagine valve could hit a lower price point with selling en masse. That being said if you take in the price point of how small it is that could add some extra cost.
With the same form factor, noise level, CEC, wake on USB, optimized sleep/resume? Just having a set of component with similar performance on paper is not having the same device.
The final experience have to take into account all of that.
Sure it does, but that doesnt mean that you can’t make a comparison.
all those features may hold higher value than more ram.
The VRAM may actually be a deal breaker if you look at the trend of current games and how many games have problems with even modest settings especially at higher resolutions like they’ve said this will support.
It’s like comparing two cars looking only at the engine. Discarding of one has AC and the others don’t.
Not at all. Its comparing the engines understanding that they are obviously different, but selectively talking about one aspect. You can bring up the other aspects but its not unfair to make the comparison.
Maybe for a thinkerer that could be a sensible comparison but for a non thinkerer like myself now (I used to be) those features holds a lot of value.
This has nothing to do with tinkering and everything to do with if this can deliver a good value for money for any sizeable target market.
If it only applies to a small niche, it can’t be a successful product and wont do what they want it to do.
If it can’t adequately pass the baseline, its out of steam before the starter gun fires.
In case anyone doesn’t wanna wade through the terrible way notebookcheck presents information, I’ll post the numbers for CyberPunk High Preset at 1080P to give you an idea of the performance difference. Nothing particular about why I chose that game, it’s just the first I found that was on all 3 links:
RX7600M: 62.3 FPS
RX7600: 90.1 FPS
RX9060XT: 127.2 FPS
If we set the 7600M as 100%, then the 7600 and 9060XT are 144.6% and 204.1% respectively.
I think people believe the Steam Machine will be way faster and that’s why they’re coming up with these outrageous prices.
If they subsidized it, wouldn’t that risk businesses buying it as a cheap-for-its-specs option for their office computers? It’s not locked to being a gaming machine like consoles. You can just install windows on it.
That’s a bit different IIRC, they purchased them directly from Sony and they didn’t have any of the OtherOS hardware lockouts like retail consoles did.
I’m not entirely sure on the difference here, valve is selling them directly and by all the reporting we’ve seen, there aren’t going to be hardware restrictions on any of the models.
At launch and for a good while PS3 came with a boot to Linux enabled by default, some universities around the globe bought some “from the shelf” to make some server farm and such.
Yeah, but in relatively small volumes and mostly as a ‘gimmick’.
The Cell processors were ‘neat’ but enough of a PITA is to largely not be worth it, combined with a overall package that wasn’t really intended to be headless managed in a datacenter and a sub-par networking that sufficed for internet gaming, but not as a cluster interconnect.
IBM did have higher end cell processors, at predictable IBM level pricing in more appropriate packaging and management, but it was pretty much a commercial flop since again, the Cell processor just wasn’t worth the trouble to program for.
That’s the feel good warm marketing Sony spun for the thing. The PS3 sold around 88 million units. It flopped at first because it didn’t have any games for it. The Linux thing was a quirky fun but ultimately useless feature. You had to code custom software for the thing, it had no commercial software for Linux on a PS3. Its sales ballooned after it became the cheapest bluray on the market, and it was after the removal of otherOS support.
Less than 10 thousand were used for distributed computation clusters. The famous navy supercomputer only had 1.7 thousand units or so. Against the global sales numbers it was barely a rounding error.
I think it’s a response to the sentiment that Sony somehow got bit by selling PS3 at a loss because it triggered some huge supercomputing purchases of the systems that Sony wouldn’t have liked, and that if Valve got too close to that then suddenly a lot of businesses would tank it by buying too much and never buying any games.
Sony loved the exposure and used it as marketing fodder that their game consoles were “supercomputer” class. Just like they talked up folding@home on them…
That’s the feel good warm marketing Sony spun for the thing. The PS3 sold around 88 million units. It flopped at first because it didn’t have any games for it. The Linux thing was a quirky fun but ultimately useless feature. You had to code custom software for the thing, it had no commercial software for Linux on a PS3. Its sales ballooned after it became the cheapest bluray on the market, and it was after the removal of otherOS support.
Less than 10 thousand were used for distributed computation clusters. The famous navy supercomputer only had 1.7 thousand units or so. Against the global sales numbers it was barely a rounding error.
Edit: replied to the wrong comment but I think it is still relevant. The risk of companies snatching steam machines in bulk is null, stop listening to LTT.
Businesses generally aren’t that stoked about anything other than laptops or servers.
To the extent they have desktop grade equipment, it’s either:
Some kiosk grade stuff already cheaper than a game console
Workstation grade stuff that they will demand nVidia or otherwise just don’t even bother
On servers, the steam machine isn’t that attractive since it’s not designed to either be slapped in a closet and ignored on slotted in a datacenter.
Putting all this aside, businesses love simplicity in their procurement. They aren’t big on adding a vendor for a specific niche when they can use an existing vendor, even if in theory they could shave a few dollars in cost. The logistical burden of adding Steam Machine would likely offset any imagined savings. Especially if they had to own re-imaging and licensing when they are accustomed to product keys embedded in the firmware when they do vendor preloads today.
Maybe you could worry a bit more about the consumer market, where you have people micro-managing costs and will be more willing to invest their own time, but even then the market for non-laptop home systems that don’t think they need nVidia but still need something better than integrated GPUs is so small that it shouldn’t be a worry either.
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