*** Valve Steam Machine ***

Noxia said:
Isn’t the cheapest PlayStation plus subscription £50? So if you’ve had one since 2020 you’ll have hit £300 for the privilege of online features this November. And yet the value word is thrown about like people forget that lol.
Not that Steam thing is good value (IMO) at current price, but it seems some are just discovering the economics of scale for the first time. Watch and see the justification though when the new console prices are released ;)
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F2P games don't need PSN so a lot of the player base don't need it.
 
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Grim5 said:
Once NVIDIA works properly with Linux there could be a huge influx of these little boxes now that SteamOS supports custom builds

I might even buy one as my next PC if it's got decent hardware inside and by decent I mean it needs to be order of magnitude more powerful than the current steam machine
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Linux does not work with kernel level Anti-cheat that the biggest multi-player game employ. Until that happens it's going to limit the appeal.
 
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Noxia said:
Isn’t the cheapest PlayStation plus subscription £50? So if you’ve had one since 2020 you’ll have hit £300 for the privilege of online features this November. And yet the value word is thrown about like people forget that lol.
Not that Steam thing is good value (IMO) at current price, but it seems some are just discovering the economics of scale for the first time. Watch and see the justification though when the new console prices are released ;)
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I think someone put it quite well on Resetera when they said the Steam Machine 'feels like the canary for our new reality'; as the first new piece of hardware coming out post this AI-fueled tech crisis reality. Some of the comments in here remind me of the those around the RTX 2,000 launch, or as GPUs rose massively in price. The shock is everything is, or has gone up massivly in price and it will bring about hard choices for some.

Equally I'm sure Helix & PS6/handheld are not going to be great prices either.

Regarding subscriptions, as mentioned they aren't mandatory unless you're playing online, non-f2p games. Or include cloud saves, potentially cloud streaming and access to a game library - if that's your jam.
 
It's not just the price, it's the performance and use of ancient (in terms of technology a 3 year old chip is!) tech.

I haven't upgraded my PC since 2020, and this still doesn't even come close.
 
Fubsy said:
It's not just the price, it's the performance and use of ancient (in terms of technology a 3 year old chip is!) tech.

I haven't upgraded my PC since 2020, and this still doesn't even come close.
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Yep that's fair.

Although I think the horrible truth is that if it had stronger components (i.e. 16GB VRAM, or a newer GPU etc.) it would have meant an even worse price. I don't think Valve are insisting on massive profit margins, or anything, but reaching the limits of their buying power. I think they can be criticised for not-subsidising the hardware even a little bit as I don't personally buy the open platform excuse given the vast majority will be spending more on Steam as a result of buying this machine.
 
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MOOGLEYS said:
They claim the cost of components for the high price but the first batch have been built for months and parts would have been purchased far cheaper before the ram apocalypse.
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Source? Not that I'm about to take Valve at their every word, but the delays and uncertainty around pricing (along with Steam Deck price increases) would suggest that they did face issues, otherwise they'd have got it out the door sooner at a somewhat more palatable price.
 
b0rn2sk8 said:
A 5060 laptop is not going to be as fast as a 5060 desktop GPU. It’s not 2 times faster than the steam machine.
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Of course RTX 5060 desktop GPU is about 2 times faster than RX 7600 Mobile in most games benchmarks.

I found Hardware Canucks benchmarked Blackwell desktops and Laptop GPUs to see how desktops GPUs compared to Laptop GPUs. It showed RTX 5060 laptop GPU can matched RTX 5060 desktop GPU peformance in some games like Black Myth Wukong and Warhammer 3: Total War, overall it is average 8% slower than desktop GPU in 1440p games.

 
Noxia said:
Isn’t the cheapest PlayStation plus subscription £50? So if you’ve had one since 2020 you’ll have hit £300 for the privilege of online features this November. And yet the value word is thrown about like people forget that lol.
Not that Steam thing is good value (IMO) at current price, but it seems some are just discovering the economics of scale for the first time. Watch and see the justification though when the new console prices are released ;)
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While it is a relevant point when comparing PCs and consoles, I don't think it's much of a gotcha when compared to the steam machine itself.

- it's entirely optional for many people. Most of the games you need a subscription for won't even work on the SM out of the box.

- Most, if not all, F2P games don't require a subscription.

- Even in your own example the person that has had 6 years of use out of a machine that trades blows with the SM has spent less than the cost of a SM that doesn't even come with a controller. Someone choosing between the two right now will have the best part of ten years before they equal the amount they'd have spent on a SM by which point any game released in the last 5+ years will run like crap. Grab a used PS5 for £200-250 and that gap widens even further.

- Free games every month if that's your jam. Can't comment on the quality in recent years but they gave out a decent number of bangers when I had plus.

The only monetary value proposition that the SM offers over consoles is cheaper games in general,.but you still have to stomach the middling performance for a premium price.
 
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Moothead2 said:
While it is a relevant point when comparing PCs and consoles, I don't think it's much of a gotcha when compared to the steam machine itself.

- it's entirely optional for many people. Most of the games you need a subscription for won't even work on the SM out of the box.

- Most, if not all, F2P games don't require a subscription.

- Even in your own example the person that has had 6 years of use out of a machine that trades blows with the SM has spent less than the cost of a SM that doesn't even come with a controller. Someone choosing between the two right now will have the best part of ten years before they equal the amount they'd have spent on a SM by which point any game released in the last 5+ years will run like crap. Grab a used PS5 for £200-250 and that gap widens even further.

- Free games every month if that's your jam. Can't comment on the quality in recent years but they gave out a decent number of bangers when I had plus.

The only monetary value proposition that the SM offers over consoles is cheaper games in general,.but you still have to stomach the middling performance for a premium price.
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I don’t disagree with any of that, Steam Box, much like the deck is aging hardware that people make excuses for, but I can’t relate to the f2p stuff as I’ve never, and likely will never play one in my life.

Value is always a tricky one as it’s subjective, not everybody looks at the monetary value as the primary factor, which you address, which is why I moved away from consoles in general as middling performance isn’t something I want when I decide to actually play a more recent title. If I was on a shoestring budget then I’d absolutely just have a ps5, enjoyed Astrobot (not the sequel) but as it stands I get everything I want with PC + whatever Nintendo are doing.

Bet all the GTA FOMO crowd end up getting a sub for the first of their inevitable double dip lol.
 
DIABLO said:
Really? It would take quite a lot of closed source code which is kind of against what Linux is. I'll believe it when i see it.
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Nvidia drivers are closed sourced blobs yet many use them. There’s nothing stopping closed source code running on Linux though it’s against the ethos of the GNU project.
 
Noxia said:
Bet all the GTA FOMO crowd end up getting a sub for the first of their inevitable double dip lol.
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I did read yesterday that an NA retailer was moaning about not being to source enough PS5s for the holiday season for GTA 6. There's a certain irony in that, but at the same time this thing has so much riding on it. Sony has already said it intends to sell less consoles to ride out this crisis in its recent financial reporting.
 
I got Gemini to compare prices of recent top ten games across ps5 Xbox and pc using key sites like Loaded. The price difference between them is barely a tenner most of the time.

People going on about pc games being so much cheaper to justify steam seems deluded to me.

Most of the time people use worst cases to support their claim. Like a £60 ps5 disc vs a £20 digital key. But reality is they tend to be much closer these days.
 
Hedge said:
I got Gemini to compare prices of recent top ten games across ps5 Xbox and pc using key sites like Loaded. The price difference between them is barely a tenner most of the time.

People going on about pc games being so much cheaper to justify steam seems deluded to me.

Most of the time people use worst cases to support their claim. Like a £60 ps5 disc vs a £20 digital key. But reality is they tend to be much closer these days.
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But for the last 20 years they haven't been as close.
 
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