Tariffs, component volatility, and Valve’s tolerance for losses all lead to uncertainty.
The title is a bit misleading, as the article lists diverging analysts’ opinions, ranging from Valve willing to sell at a loss or low margins, to high prices due to RAM and SSD price volatility.
I don’t think it would make sense for them to sell it at a loss. On the other hand, they don’t have to make a huge profit from it either. I really hope it’ll come down to a range of about €600. That would make it a no-brainer for me.
Benefits of being a non publicly traded company, they can actually take risks which they did with the deck. It performed way better than they expected, so while they might not sell it at a loss they will definitely be competitive. I mean considering development costs, it has an integrated on board but discreet GPU, so the r&d budget will be factored in. But I honestly don’t see it >$700. Without knowing the exact chipset they’re using that is. But memory is the big cost constraint right now thanks to ai.
Right. I don’t believe they’re hurting for profits, and at the same time, having Linux and specifically Steam OS become much more widely adopted would greatly benefit them (for breaking out of the Microsoft jail they still find themselves partially in). Also, hardware is not their primary business. It seems that they could sell this to cover their costs and reap all the rewards from that besides immediate profit.
Doubt they’ll be that pricey. I think they’re aiming for 600ish or thereabouts.
I’m not the target audience (beefy gaming pc) but I love the concept and what it’ll do to further indie gaming. It’ll probably also pull people from consoles to pc gaming. Valve can’t stop winning.
I have an old old old gaming rig think 2 270s sli’d with a second Gen i7. I would totally buy this thing at $600. I’m so impressed with the steam deck, that I might actually try some vr if I have the spare change.
Depends on whether they negotiated contract pricing beforehand. The price increases aren’t because of manufacturing cost increases, they’re because of high demand. Retail pricing isn’t really related to bulk wholesale contract pricing at all.
I think they might eat the extra costs because they know they’ll more than recuperate it from increased software sales. Hell, XboX as a console was a loss leader for MS for over a decade.
The issue is that if you sell the PC at a loss, you’re effectively subsidzing every person and business who wants an SFF-PC but may not necessarily buy games for them. It’s not like the Steam Deck where you can bet the majority of those devices are ending up in the hands of gamers.
It doesn’t come with windows. For a lot of businesses that is a requirement. The other thing valve has done is require you to have a steam account with purchases, and limit the number you can purchase on that account, before you buy a hardware device from them. This was to prevent scalping but also would prevent the scenario you present limiting sales to those that have already purchased games is a solid strategy for their new devices imo.
Can get an ‘aoostar GODY’ on AliExpress for US$1000. Basically the same GPU, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD. The steam machine has less cores and less ethernet. Though it also has a way bigger heatsink, LEDs and extra Bluetooth/valve gamepad antenna.
Comparing the deck to comparative brands, it is wayyy cheaper. I think valve are going to be aggressive on price, especially when the CPU/GPU are fairly old and meek.
And beyond the aggressive pricing, the one major benefit over other miniPC makers is the extensive support.
I have a Minisforum mini PC. Took Minisforum over a year to release BIOS updates that were finished in March 2024… and against all CS promises it still hasn’t fixed the initial discrepancies (advertised as the only 8945HS mini PC that can go over 57W due to their improved cooling, and the only Ryzen 8000 series APU that can handle RAM at 5400-5600MT/s - still can’t get power over 57W and even though I have compatible RAM, it refuses to clock over 4800MHz, and there’s no option to configure it either).
Meanwhile Valve is still dropping improvements on the Steam Deck, 3.5 years after release.
I don’t think that Valve will sell the Steam Machine at a loss.
Closed-system console vendors often do, then jack up the prices of their games and make their money back as people buy games. So why not Valve?
Two reasons.
They sell an open system. If Valve sells a mini-PC below cost, then a number of people will just buy the thing and use it as a generic mini-PC, which doesn’t make them anything. A Nintendo Switch, in contrast, isn’t very appealing for anything than running games purchased from Nintendo.
They don’t have a practical way to charge more for games for just Steam Machine users — their model is agnostic to what device you run a purchased game on. So even if they were going to do that, it’d force them to price games non-optimally for non-Steam-Machine users, charge more than would be ideal from Valve’s standpoint.
While I think you’re ultimately right, 6 years ago I would have said the same thing about the Steam Deck idea, so I’m compelled to offer counterpoints.
Valve, very uniquely, does offer the best Linux-based digital games storefront to use on that Linux gaming PC you bought. So, they’re very much positioned to take advantage of the hardware purchase. Users aren’t “locked in”, but they are compelled in, and users may have a smoother time getting games on Steam than trying to set up controller-based launchers on Heroic or something.
It’s like when the pet isn’t literally fenced into the house, and is allowed to roam free, but is reminded that its fluffy toy and warm meals are all back at home, so it’ll never go far.
Valve also might just be more forward-thinking than most game companies most COMPANIES these days. They build goodwill this way and get people obsessed with their brand by having more wins like this.
Hah, this is where they get you and I’ve been dogpiled for raising this as an issue continuously. This is an illusion of an open system. Where are you going to buy games for Steam Machine? Steam obviously, there’s no competition. Then as your library grows you get more and more vendor locked. Then Valve does an Android application notarising switcheroo and you have Linux machine that’s no different from a Mac or an Android phone. Of course they can subsidise it because they can recoup it thanks to 30% cut and it’ll only accelerate the process.
In this context, “generic mini-PC” doesn’t need to even be “non-gaming-PC”, just not a platform for buying Valve’s games; a razor-and-blades model requires that you be the one selling the blades. If someone just goes and runs games purchased from GOG, that’s already an issue for them.
It’s why inkjet printer manufacturers, who do use this model, try to make it so stupendously difficult to use ink from competitors (outside of the bottled-ink printers, which don’t use that model, where the manufacturers are fine with you doing that).
If it’s priced well and idle power usage good, it can be a great home lab. Run all sorts of services on it. Host your own Google Drive/Docs/Photos alternatives with all the automated categorization like face detection sorting. Should be strong enough to run a lot of unrelated services off one machine. If I ever had gigabit internet, I’d probably try stuff like hosting a Matrix server. Self hosted RSS feed.
Would be great for videos. RDNA3.5 has good AV1 and HEVC encoder and decode I believe. I think h.264 got solid with RDNA3.5. Good for video usually means good for photos too. Probably audio. Blender support for AMD graphics cards continue to improve and game engines have generally always been good. Great for a computer lab to teach something like Godot
The compact media creation thing would be the big thing for me if I needed a computer and this was substantially cheaper than a Strix Halo minipc. Darktable, Kdenlive, Krita, Ardour, Godot, Blender. I’d have people in mind where a $500-600 just under an ~RX 7600 would be a huge upgrade for their personal art workstation and the compact form is a big plus
Heroic launcher lets you install games from other launchers although Steam experience is better. But, biggest thing is you can just install Windows, which those who play games that refuse to enable anticheat on Linux will end up doing if this is going to be their main PC.
Like imagine if you could pick up a PS5 or Xbox and install Linux or Windows on it. Id pick one up for that purpose completely negating the reason Sony and Xbox put out the hardware, which is to get people to buy from their store and take 30% of every sale so even if they sold at a loss they are guaranteed to recoup it. Open that hardware up though and they’ll have system that are just going to be a loss.
Does Heroic launcher guarantee that the game you bought will not break Wine compatibility when patched by the developer? What kind of consumer experience are you trying to sell here?
What’s to keep Windows from deciding to get rid of allowing people to install any exe? What’s to stop them from deciding to charge a 30% fee of all transactions from exes that they allow to be published? Whats to stop them from banning Steam, Epic, GOG from existing on their OS so everything is through the Microsoft Store?
So for free linux-native stuff, there’s the default package manager that comes installed. Switch your steam deck to desktop mode. There’s a lot there, including emulators that will run on steam deck from ancient Atari shit to Nintendo switch.
But you can also run non-steam executables with proton. Heroic, lutris, etc are great tools from that. You can buy your games anywhere without rootkit DRM. Most things from itch.io or gog.com will run. Or, you know; other places. You can just pirate shit.
You can in fact uninstall the stock OS and run anything you can compile for midrange x86 hardware.
You missed the part where Android wanted to lock people out of installing their own apps. They postponed it for now due to pressure but it will happen eventually. Also the part where bootloaders lock you out of changing OS. This thing is possible when you vendor lock people in a vertically integrated system and people here are completely oblivious to the trap they’re walking into because they think Valve will be forever cool.
Yeah those cases were bad, steam deck just has Linux on it though. Arch based I think with two DE’s: KDE plasma and a modified’ ‘steam big picture’ mode.
I don’t think anything is locked, and they aren’t fucking with that in any way dell lenovo or system76 couldn’t.
Not yet but they hold you by the balls because you buy license most of your games through Steam. Once they’re entrenched enough they can do whatever. Android was a very open platform in the beginning, now it’s almost iOS. You can fork Android / SteamOS but without Play Store / Steam consumers aren’t that interested.
GoG, epic, any other store really. Proton is made by valve but it works in whatever, and there are tools now to use proton (not wine, proton) outside of steam to get all the goodies you got on top. Heroic launcher does that for the games you get from the Amazon store, gog, epic, and any other exe you got.
I even installed battle net, and once you open it everything you install from there works in that bubble and work, I played plenty HOTS games.
I play modded D2 without much issues.
You know why the steam market share in Linux is so high? Because they are the ones that put the work to make windows games work on Linux. Yes, wine existed before but they both adapted it for games and contributed to the overall wine project a ton. Also, iirc, steamdecks make up for 30% of the Linux machines from valve’s yearly reports. The market is tremendously tiny yet.
It’s likely in everybody’s best interest that this is a wild success. Not only will game developers be incentivized to actually optimize their games for reasonable setups; this will unseat Nvidia’s monopoly over gamers with their ridiculously overpriced graphics cards and also Microsoft’s monopoly of a gamer’s operating system.
Nvidia’s partnership with Palantir is incredibly concerning and any blow to Nvidia is a welcome one. Encourage these developments and hype this all up.
Number of investors think you should be willing to invest in a machine that you probably don’t have money for to enrich them. They think you should buy games at $70 or something instead of wait for them to be $30 like on sale. Like I wait. Not all of us want to be in debt.
You’re fundamentally misunderstanding what this development means for gaming affordability. Not having to buy a scarce, way overpriced Nvidia (or even AMD) external/discrete GPU to play the latest games means that PC gaming is a whole lot cheaper. If game developers are optimizing for hardware like the Steam Machine - budget external graphics cards and iGPUs suddenly become viable again as well.
That doesn’t mean it doesn’t have investors. It means it’s not publicly traded. Private investment buy company stock directly. That’s the premis behind VC fundraising
Bro, the steam deck was $400 for the base model when new. I got a base model for $330 a few months after release. $400 is really low for this, but it also doesn’t have a screen and battery. I’m guessing (hoping) for $600 base model.
Wont be that low, but Steam Deck needed a screen, battery, portable form factor, and inputs.
So just needing a case and less size and battery power restrictions might make it easier to do more with the same money for the same reason smartphones can be more expensive than PCs and laptops and consoles because of the use case expected of them and the challenge portability adds.
All of this is going to be based on the fluctuation of RAM prices and tariffs, as well as whether or not Valve has an existing stockpile of RAM from 6 months ago.
FWIW, Sony just announced a Japan-only PS5, sans optical drive, for about $350. Now, US prices are remaining higher, but the GabeCube is likely to have less performance than a PS5. I can’t see them going much over $600 and still having a value proposition. Even that is going to be based on the gigantic library of Steam games that can be played on it that aren’t on the PS5.
People seriously underestimate the performance that you can pull out from some medium-level hardware with an highly-optimized OS. I mean, just watch what they were able to archive with the Deck.
Yes, but also consider you are running a more updated, optimized version of Cyberpunk than what everyone experienced when it first launched (and more optimized drivers/FSR/etc). So the true performance gains of mid-low range hardware is masked by the fact that the game is not so horribly unoptimized anymore.
In other words, the actual performance increase of hardware over the years is perceived to be higher than it actually is due to other factors.
But the existence of a steam machine would incentivize releasing games in this kind of optimized state.
You can’t optimize “for pc” because “pc” could mean any configuration of components. Obviously you can optimize, but you can’t “target”, you can’t say “we got it running at 60 fps stable on ‘’pc’.
You can “optimize” for a pre defined steam machine. You can say “we got it running at 60fps stable on the stock steam machine”
Original Steam controller felt like it was made with really cheap looking materials to cut costs.
This controller looks like the build quality is much more premium and has a lot of inputs and tech put in than the expensive Xbox Elite. The dualsense edge getting removable joysticks and grips raised the price too.
So when its those controllers that this controller will be closer to in terms of features than the base Sony and Xbox controllers. Being only $100 would be a bargain.
I would be happy if I was proved wrong. Please prove me wrong Valve.
Ain’t no way. I got my steam deck during the first sale for around $330. There is no way their controller based off it will cost about half of something that came with a screen, soc, and bigger battery.
Ps5 controller is like $70, the Steam Controller has more features than that, and the OG Steam Controller was pretty expensive. I’d be shocked if it’s under $100. I’m expecting it in the $150-$200 range. But we’ll see, I’d love to be proven wrong
You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account, for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search field of your instance: [email protected]
Video game news oriented community. No NanoUFO is not a bot :)
Posts.
News oriented content (general reviews, previews or retrospectives allowed).
Broad discussion posts (preferably not only about a specific game).
No humor/memes etc…
No affiliate links
No advertising.
No clickbait, editorialized, sensational titles. State the game in question in the title. No all caps.
No self promotion.
No duplicate posts, newer post will be deleted unless there is more discussion in one of the posts.
No politics.
Comments.
No personal attacks.
Obey instance rules.
No low effort comments(one or two words, emoji etc…)
Please use spoiler tags for spoilers.
My goal is just to have a community where people can go and see what new game news is out for the day and comment on it.
I’m sure being a handheld had nothing to do with it.
I don’t think it would make sense for them to sell it at a loss. On the other hand, they don’t have to make a huge profit from it either. I really hope it’ll come down to a range of about €600. That would make it a no-brainer for me.
Benefits of being a non publicly traded company, they can actually take risks which they did with the deck. It performed way better than they expected, so while they might not sell it at a loss they will definitely be competitive. I mean considering development costs, it has an integrated on board but discreet GPU, so the r&d budget will be factored in. But I honestly don’t see it >$700. Without knowing the exact chipset they’re using that is. But memory is the big cost constraint right now thanks to ai.
Right. I don’t believe they’re hurting for profits, and at the same time, having Linux and specifically Steam OS become much more widely adopted would greatly benefit them (for breaking out of the Microsoft jail they still find themselves partially in). Also, hardware is not their primary business. It seems that they could sell this to cover their costs and reap all the rewards from that besides immediate profit.
Some analysts think Great headline
“9 out of 10 dentists recommend…”
Doubt they’ll be that pricey. I think they’re aiming for 600ish or thereabouts. I’m not the target audience (beefy gaming pc) but I love the concept and what it’ll do to further indie gaming. It’ll probably also pull people from consoles to pc gaming. Valve can’t stop winning.
I have an old old old gaming rig think 2 270s sli’d with a second Gen i7. I would totally buy this thing at $600. I’m so impressed with the steam deck, that I might actually try some vr if I have the spare change.
$600 and more would be embarrassing because that’s how much base Mac Mini costs and I’m not yet convinced which one is more performant.
The problem is dram prices right now are crazy so the price might get pushed up quite a bit
Depends on whether they negotiated contract pricing beforehand. The price increases aren’t because of manufacturing cost increases, they’re because of high demand. Retail pricing isn’t really related to bulk wholesale contract pricing at all.
I think they might eat the extra costs because they know they’ll more than recuperate it from increased software sales. Hell, XboX as a console was a loss leader for MS for over a decade.
The issue is that if you sell the PC at a loss, you’re effectively subsidzing every person and business who wants an SFF-PC but may not necessarily buy games for them. It’s not like the Steam Deck where you can bet the majority of those devices are ending up in the hands of gamers.
It doesn’t come with windows. For a lot of businesses that is a requirement. The other thing valve has done is require you to have a steam account with purchases, and limit the number you can purchase on that account, before you buy a hardware device from them. This was to prevent scalping but also would prevent the scenario you present limiting sales to those that have already purchased games is a solid strategy for their new devices imo.
Can get an ‘aoostar GODY’ on AliExpress for US$1000. Basically the same GPU, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD. The steam machine has less cores and less ethernet. Though it also has a way bigger heatsink, LEDs and extra Bluetooth/valve gamepad antenna.
Comparing the deck to comparative brands, it is wayyy cheaper. I think valve are going to be aggressive on price, especially when the CPU/GPU are fairly old and meek.
The Steam Machine seems to be using the Nintendo model of using low cost off-the-shelf parts instead of expensive custom components.
Then again the Steam controller and VR headset seem kind of fancy.
Hopefully, they get very popular and manages to steal significant market share from Windows.
Yeah true the index headset wasn’t a bargain compared to the quests that were clearly being sold as cheaply as possible.
Meta sold Quest headsets at a loss to cover the market. Valve sold the Index for profit.
And beyond the aggressive pricing, the one major benefit over other miniPC makers is the extensive support.
I have a Minisforum mini PC. Took Minisforum over a year to release BIOS updates that were finished in March 2024… and against all CS promises it still hasn’t fixed the initial discrepancies (advertised as the only 8945HS mini PC that can go over 57W due to their improved cooling, and the only Ryzen 8000 series APU that can handle RAM at 5400-5600MT/s - still can’t get power over 57W and even though I have compatible RAM, it refuses to clock over 4800MHz, and there’s no option to configure it either).
Meanwhile Valve is still dropping improvements on the Steam Deck, 3.5 years after release.
For $1k I think this would be DOA.
You can always just build your own today even.
Yeah but this is what I mean. Valve buying in bulk would be able to offer a better deal than someone try to build their own…
Yeah, if it isn’t like $600 USD or less, the thing is as toast as the previous generation of Steam Machines.
No way its that close to steam deck prices
I don’t think that Valve will sell the Steam Machine at a loss.
Closed-system console vendors often do, then jack up the prices of their games and make their money back as people buy games. So why not Valve?
Two reasons.
They sell an open system. If Valve sells a mini-PC below cost, then a number of people will just buy the thing and use it as a generic mini-PC, which doesn’t make them anything. A Nintendo Switch, in contrast, isn’t very appealing for anything than running games purchased from Nintendo.
They don’t have a practical way to charge more for games for just Steam Machine users — their model is agnostic to what device you run a purchased game on. So even if they were going to do that, it’d force them to price games non-optimally for non-Steam-Machine users, charge more than would be ideal from Valve’s standpoint.
While I think you’re ultimately right, 6 years ago I would have said the same thing about the Steam Deck idea, so I’m compelled to offer counterpoints.
Valve, very uniquely, does offer the best Linux-based digital games storefront to use on that Linux gaming PC you bought. So, they’re very much positioned to take advantage of the hardware purchase. Users aren’t “locked in”, but they are compelled in, and users may have a smoother time getting games on Steam than trying to set up controller-based launchers on Heroic or something.
It’s like when the pet isn’t literally fenced into the house, and is allowed to roam free, but is reminded that its fluffy toy and warm meals are all back at home, so it’ll never go far.
Valve also might just be more forward-thinking than
most game companiesmost COMPANIES these days. They build goodwill this way and get people obsessed with their brand by having more wins like this.deleted by creator
Steam deck has customization you can buy with their points, I could see them getting some extra game sales that way
Hah, this is where they get you and I’ve been dogpiled for raising this as an issue continuously. This is an illusion of an open system. Where are you going to buy games for Steam Machine? Steam obviously, there’s no competition. Then as your library grows you get more and more vendor locked. Then Valve does an Android application notarising switcheroo and you have Linux machine that’s no different from a Mac or an Android phone. Of course they can subsidise it because they can recoup it thanks to 30% cut and it’ll only accelerate the process.
Theoretically people could use it for a cheap non-gaming PC, except the cheapest non-gaming PC would be non-gaming specs.
Anyone using it for cheap crypto-mining is an idiot, the cheap option there is a rack full of bang-for-buck GPUs.
Are there any other use-cases that involve gaming-PC specs? Making videos, perhaps?
Could be good for some home automation workflows- plex server, transcribing security cam video, doing object detection on said video.
In this context, “generic mini-PC” doesn’t need to even be “non-gaming-PC”, just not a platform for buying Valve’s games; a razor-and-blades model requires that you be the one selling the blades. If someone just goes and runs games purchased from GOG, that’s already an issue for them.
It’s why inkjet printer manufacturers, who do use this model, try to make it so stupendously difficult to use ink from competitors (outside of the bottled-ink printers, which don’t use that model, where the manufacturers are fine with you doing that).
If it’s priced well and idle power usage good, it can be a great home lab. Run all sorts of services on it. Host your own Google Drive/Docs/Photos alternatives with all the automated categorization like face detection sorting. Should be strong enough to run a lot of unrelated services off one machine. If I ever had gigabit internet, I’d probably try stuff like hosting a Matrix server. Self hosted RSS feed.
Would be great for videos. RDNA3.5 has good AV1 and HEVC encoder and decode I believe. I think h.264 got solid with RDNA3.5. Good for video usually means good for photos too. Probably audio. Blender support for AMD graphics cards continue to improve and game engines have generally always been good. Great for a computer lab to teach something like Godot
The compact media creation thing would be the big thing for me if I needed a computer and this was substantially cheaper than a Strix Halo minipc. Darktable, Kdenlive, Krita, Ardour, Godot, Blender. I’d have people in mind where a $500-600 just under an ~RX 7600 would be a huge upgrade for their personal art workstation and the compact form is a big plus
🏴☠️?
Simply not true.
What is the competition on Linux? What’s their market share?
Heroic launcher lets you install games from other launchers although Steam experience is better. But, biggest thing is you can just install Windows, which those who play games that refuse to enable anticheat on Linux will end up doing if this is going to be their main PC.
Like imagine if you could pick up a PS5 or Xbox and install Linux or Windows on it. Id pick one up for that purpose completely negating the reason Sony and Xbox put out the hardware, which is to get people to buy from their store and take 30% of every sale so even if they sold at a loss they are guaranteed to recoup it. Open that hardware up though and they’ll have system that are just going to be a loss.
Does Heroic launcher guarantee that the game you bought will not break Wine compatibility when patched by the developer? What kind of consumer experience are you trying to sell here?
What’s to keep Windows from deciding to get rid of allowing people to install any exe? What’s to stop them from deciding to charge a 30% fee of all transactions from exes that they allow to be published? Whats to stop them from banning Steam, Epic, GOG from existing on their OS so everything is through the Microsoft Store?
What if? What if?
What stops Windows? Business consumers paying for the OS and the fact that they don’t have any successful app store. What stops Valve?
The competition on…
Okay, so, it’s an OS right?
So for free linux-native stuff, there’s the default package manager that comes installed. Switch your steam deck to desktop mode. There’s a lot there, including emulators that will run on steam deck from ancient Atari shit to Nintendo switch.
But you can also run non-steam executables with proton. Heroic, lutris, etc are great tools from that. You can buy your games anywhere without rootkit DRM. Most things from itch.io or gog.com will run. Or, you know; other places. You can just pirate shit.
You can in fact uninstall the stock OS and run anything you can compile for midrange x86 hardware.
You missed the part where Android wanted to lock people out of installing their own apps. They postponed it for now due to pressure but it will happen eventually. Also the part where bootloaders lock you out of changing OS. This thing is possible when you vendor lock people in a vertically integrated system and people here are completely oblivious to the trap they’re walking into because they think Valve will be forever cool.
Yeah those cases were bad, steam deck just has Linux on it though. Arch based I think with two DE’s: KDE plasma and a modified’ ‘steam big picture’ mode.
I don’t think anything is locked, and they aren’t fucking with that in any way dell lenovo or system76 couldn’t.
Not yet but they hold you by the balls because you
buylicense most of your games through Steam. Once they’re entrenched enough they can do whatever. Android was a very open platform in the beginning, now it’s almost iOS. You can fork Android / SteamOS but without Play Store / Steam consumers aren’t that interested.GoG, epic, any other store really. Proton is made by valve but it works in whatever, and there are tools now to use proton (not wine, proton) outside of steam to get all the goodies you got on top. Heroic launcher does that for the games you get from the Amazon store, gog, epic, and any other exe you got.
I even installed battle net, and once you open it everything you install from there works in that bubble and work, I played plenty HOTS games.
I play modded D2 without much issues.
You know why the steam market share in Linux is so high? Because they are the ones that put the work to make windows games work on Linux. Yes, wine existed before but they both adapted it for games and contributed to the overall wine project a ton. Also, iirc, steamdecks make up for 30% of the Linux machines from valve’s yearly reports. The market is tremendously tiny yet.
What is their current market share on Linux?
Why is that even relevant? You said people can only get games on Steam and that’s just not true
If they have no market share then that competition exists in theory only.
From the GPU specs in expecting a firmly mid range machine. Probably about the price of a PS5 Pro, but with the performance of a base PS5.
They could sell me a wrapped up bc250 and I’d still buy it before any other brand just because.
It’s likely in everybody’s best interest that this is a wild success. Not only will game developers be incentivized to actually optimize their games for reasonable setups; this will unseat Nvidia’s monopoly over gamers with their ridiculously overpriced graphics cards and also Microsoft’s monopoly of a gamer’s operating system.
Nvidia’s partnership with Palantir is incredibly concerning and any blow to Nvidia is a welcome one. Encourage these developments and hype this all up.
Holy crap I’d forgotten about that.
Yeah, nvidia needs to die. Nothing tied to palantir should survive.
Yaaas let’s smash the Nvidia monopoly and Palantir’s evil plans.
Number of investors think you should be willing to invest in a machine that you probably don’t have money for to enrich them. They think you should buy games at $70 or something instead of wait for them to be $30 like on sale. Like I wait. Not all of us want to be in debt.
You’re fundamentally misunderstanding what this development means for gaming affordability. Not having to buy a scarce, way overpriced Nvidia (or even AMD) external/discrete GPU to play the latest games means that PC gaming is a whole lot cheaper. If game developers are optimizing for hardware like the Steam Machine - budget external graphics cards and iGPUs suddenly become viable again as well.
Especially with the llm crash, this may keep the fabs running
Its some degree of good from like every direction.
Investors? Valve is a private company
That doesn’t mean it doesn’t have investors. It means it’s not publicly traded. Private investment buy company stock directly. That’s the premis behind VC fundraising
i swear i read somewhere that they were shootin for around $400 for a base model
There is absolutely no way they’re selling it for less than $400. Whoever said that has absolutely no idea what they’re talking about.
They told LTT that they were planning to price it competitively with entry-level PC’s, not consoles
Just saying
The steam deck was 600€
The steam Maschine is 4x faster
I think your math dosent math
Bro, the steam deck was $400 for the base model when new. I got a base model for $330 a few months after release. $400 is really low for this, but it also doesn’t have a screen and battery. I’m guessing (hoping) for $600 base model.
Wont be that low, but Steam Deck needed a screen, battery, portable form factor, and inputs.
So just needing a case and less size and battery power restrictions might make it easier to do more with the same money for the same reason smartphones can be more expensive than PCs and laptops and consoles because of the use case expected of them and the challenge portability adds.
All of this is going to be based on the fluctuation of RAM prices and tariffs, as well as whether or not Valve has an existing stockpile of RAM from 6 months ago.
FWIW, Sony just announced a Japan-only PS5, sans optical drive, for about $350. Now, US prices are remaining higher, but the GabeCube is likely to have less performance than a PS5. I can’t see them going much over $600 and still having a value proposition. Even that is going to be based on the gigantic library of Steam games that can be played on it that aren’t on the PS5.
At 1000 bucks you are dangerously close to a 9600 9060XT 16gb build, which would run circles around this performance wise.
There is no way its this expensive. It would be deader than a doornail on arrival.
If this thing isn’t 750 or less, itll be an impossible sell.
People seriously underestimate the performance that you can pull out from some medium-level hardware with an highly-optimized OS. I mean, just watch what they were able to archive with the Deck.
Seriously! Just started replaying cyberpunk on my base model deck and it is buttery smooth! Very impressive for an igpu!
Yes, but also consider you are running a more updated, optimized version of Cyberpunk than what everyone experienced when it first launched (and more optimized drivers/FSR/etc). So the true performance gains of mid-low range hardware is masked by the fact that the game is not so horribly unoptimized anymore.
In other words, the actual performance increase of hardware over the years is perceived to be higher than it actually is due to other factors.
You know what’s wild? I was a day one buyer on a $30 rebuilt PS4, and had almost no bugs my first 2 playthroughs.
But the existence of a steam machine would incentivize releasing games in this kind of optimized state.
You can’t optimize “for pc” because “pc” could mean any configuration of components. Obviously you can optimize, but you can’t “target”, you can’t say “we got it running at 60 fps stable on ‘’pc’.
You can “optimize” for a pre defined steam machine. You can say “we got it running at 60fps stable on the stock steam machine”
So the problem was the game, not the device…? The hardware was fine?
…I might pick up the controller if it’s not a hundred bucks.
Going on off the price of the dualsense edge we will be lucky if it is only a 100 bucks.
The original steam controller was $50, I would hope they’d be able to keep it under $100.
Not to mention a steamdeck is $400, and that’s got a lot more going on than just a controller.
Original Steam controller felt like it was made with really cheap looking materials to cut costs.
This controller looks like the build quality is much more premium and has a lot of inputs and tech put in than the expensive Xbox Elite. The dualsense edge getting removable joysticks and grips raised the price too.
So when its those controllers that this controller will be closer to in terms of features than the base Sony and Xbox controllers. Being only $100 would be a bargain.
I would be happy if I was proved wrong. Please prove me wrong Valve.
I mean the original controller had gryo, track pads, USB dongle and Bluetooth, haptics, and buttons on the back.
However, I do agree the controller felt cheap (I think really just how light it was).
We’ll have to see. I think they could pull it off as they’ve been more aggressive with pricing than other companies.
The controller is going to be closer to $200
Ain’t no way. I got my steam deck during the first sale for around $330. There is no way their controller based off it will cost about half of something that came with a screen, soc, and bigger battery.
Ps5 controller is like $70, the Steam Controller has more features than that, and the OG Steam Controller was pretty expensive. I’d be shocked if it’s under $100. I’m expecting it in the $150-$200 range. But we’ll see, I’d love to be proven wrong
Cool, let’s have a gentleperson’s bet. I’m going sub $100.
Wasn’t the OG steam controller $50 ?
I got the steam link for ~$10 but that was after it was discontinued.
Yeah, it was. So it had more features than most controllers at the time and I think was still cheaper.