The Steam Machine is DOA. It’s severely underpowered even at like a USD$399 price, so when it’s > USD$1000 it’s an absolute joke.
$399? Are you talking about the steam deck? I think the article is talking about the steam machine.
Agreed tho, the cost of the steam machine will overpower what little value the hardware could provide. I don’t see it succeeding at this time. Especially when you can still cobble together a reasonably powered Linux machine.
Will also be interesting to see what future AAA titles do with the stagnant system hardware for the next few years.
No, talking about the steam machine. There are still people that think it’s going to release at like $400-$500 lol. It’s going to be over $1k for PS4 level power.
Some people may not want to spend time on cobbling together a Linux machine. There’s some research involved in figuring out which hardware works best, and maybe fiddling around with configuring a system. There is value in know that all of the hardware in your system will get priority support from the OS maintainer and game developers. Some glitchiness in a game on a steam machine will get fixed before some glitchiness on someone’s custom rig.
And many of us don’t buy a new PC every year. What benefit is it to me if a new AAA game has higher resolution options that aren’t available on my 2+ year old PC unless I spend a thousand dollars to buy video card or whatever?
No idea if this will be a success or not, but there is a lot of upside to having a standardized platform (there’s a reason consoles are so popular) and little downsides for anyone that’s not spending more money on hardware than on the actual games. Sure the PC Master Race types won’t want this, but I think that’s a very small group of people.
I wonder if they’re going to have a sku for the Frame with drastically reduced ram that’s required to be tethered to a host PC and not run anything on its own until upgraded.
Being a standalone unit is nice, but I wasn’t planning on using it that way, and being able to save money by reducing ram would be nice
The Frame is an embedded mobile device with space constraints, it’s going to have soldered ram and storage. At least it has a Micro SD card slot so you don’t have to necessarily pay for the biggest SSD.
This would be smart. Like it would have been a bonus for me but it’s not worth the premium on ram right now.
That’s what I’ve been wanting, but I don’t think so, at least not yet. I have a pretty powerful PC, and I don’t care to use this away from it. I’m totally fine with a tethered requirement. Being standalone is cool, but it isn’t worth the additional price in my opinion.
if you reduce its ram to the point it’s no longer practical to run games on it anymore, then all the compute power it has will also be wasted. at this point might as well redesign from ground up to be a tether device…
at this point might as well redesign from ground up to be a tether device
That’s literally my point. Let me buy the non-Meta headset now, and upgrade it with more ram in 2 years when the prices aren’t as stupid
edit: My brain somehow completely glossed over Steam Frame not Steam Machine. I haven’t actually thought about VR in years. my bad.
You basically just got a bigger more expensive Steam Link at that point. Which the original one should still work?
The Frame is a VR headset. How is that comparable to the Steam Link that is meant for display on a screen?
I believe you are thinking of a Steam Machine with this response.
You’re right, kinda threw out that comment before leaving the the house.
On that note, though; I’m sure the RAM in the steam machine will likely be upgradeable, since it’s basically a small form prefab PC with Arch / SteamOS pre-loaded on it.
In fact, I hope this means we will see a desktop release of SteamOS that isn’t just turning your PC into a bulky Steam Deck.
There are advantages to soldered RAM. It can be faster without extra cost. The issue is it’s not upgradable. It depends if they’re targeting people who will upgrade their device or people who won’t on which is the smarter option.
If you want SteamOS though, there are already plenty of options. SteamOS is just another distro based on Arch. It isn’t doing anything special (except on the actual Steam Machine which will have extra hardware to, for example, turn on when you press the button on your controller). There is literally no reason you should be waiting for it, especially if you want just a desktop OS that can play games. If you want a console-like experience, where it’s harder to access the desktop and more restricted, then there still isn’t a reason but it is a thing you can do.
The nice thing about Steam OS in Desktop mode is that you can get the Arch experience without setting up Arch.
I tried Steam OS for a while, locked into desktop mode, and it was great; but I got tired of having to reinstall aur after every update. Ended up going back to an Ubuntu build and using KDE Plasma Desktop, since that was the main thing I enjoyed.
But you can get the same with Garuda, CachyOS, or other Arch based distros, without any limitations. There’s no reason for people to be waiting for SteamOS because it’s not even the best option for most users.
If all I had was a big screen beyond with a steam link strapped to it that’s still a pretty great vr headset for the price
They’re not the same. The OG Steam Link isn’t a VR headset
And I’m still waiting on my steam controller reservation 😮💨
I kind of feel like the Nvidia Spark reveal lit a bit of a fire under their ass. As well as several other announcements at Computex, such as the Intel Arc G3 stuff. I k ow the G3 is more in line with Steam Deck competition, but it shows what kind of power can be put in a small form factor. The Steam Machine is already looking like “last Gen” and it’s not even out yet. Price is really going to be what makes the SM make or break. I feel like they had a good plan, and then the RAMocolypse happened and it’s not looking so great now. I love Valve, and what they have done with Proton and for Linux Gaming is nothing short of amazing, but I’m worried about this one. The Steam Deck was amazing when it came out because of the price point. The current price is absolute insanity. Not worth it at all in my opinion, especially given it’s age.
I dunno. I really want this to work out, but it seems like every day things get more challenging.
And honestly, the Steam Machine isn’t even a thing for me. I have a great gaming PC that’s already hooked up to my TV. Don’t need it, never will. I am much more interested in the Steam Frame because it runs on ARM. I wholeheartedly believe that ARM is the way of the future, but the software side needed the pressure. Between Steam Frame, Nvidia Spark, and Apple Silicon, I feel like it’s actually finally happening.
