I'd expect it to be slower than what you have to be honest
*** Valve Steam Machine ***
- Thread starter kakarott
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Steam OS has a full desktop mode, the big picture overlay runs on top of what is a fairly ‘normal’ Linux OS.
As much as I’ve been playing devils advocate in this thread, I genuinely don’t see the value if you are willing to put together your own PC.
It’s got all the downsides of a proprietary pre built and the only upside is it comes in a near box with the OS pre installed.
But as above if you are content to spend an hour building your own and installing steam OS, you’ll probably end up with something which is more powerful or cheaper for the same price. You can then also upgrade it as you see fit unlike the steam machine.
TLDR, the hardware does actually need to be competitively priced with a comparable PC.
As much as I’ve been playing devils advocate in this thread, I genuinely don’t see the value if you are willing to put together your own PC.
It’s got all the downsides of a proprietary pre built and the only upside is it comes in a near box with the OS pre installed.
But as above if you are content to spend an hour building your own and installing steam OS, you’ll probably end up with something which is more powerful or cheaper for the same price. You can then also upgrade it as you see fit unlike the steam machine.
TLDR, the hardware does actually need to be competitively priced with a comparable PC.
Oh no, that's surprising and disappointing
Ok thanks I will give this some thoughtThank you b0rn2sk8, I will have a good think
Have had a closer look and i'm not ruling it out yet, there are things I like and things i'm not too sure of yet. Will keep a watch on the price I think.
I didn't really think about this until I was writing in another thread about consoles. I legit think there is a place for one of these for me to play the indie games that are generally low system requirements in living room or in bed. Many of the games are on consoles but I don't really want to split my library across platforms (I've fallen into the trap of buying the same game on multiple before).
I don't feel I can be bothered to build my own mini PC currently (also RAM prices) and go through all the setup so paying for the convenience of this seems attractive.
That said, if there was a one click install type thing to have the same OS on your own hardware, I may be tempted by the challenge of my own build. I love ITX cases but I doubt I could have a very small case for my main machine due to size, I've seen those T1 cases with hefty builds in but it's still big compared to this.
I don't feel I can be bothered to build my own mini PC currently (also RAM prices) and go through all the setup so paying for the convenience of this seems attractive.
That said, if there was a one click install type thing to have the same OS on your own hardware, I may be tempted by the challenge of my own build. I love ITX cases but I doubt I could have a very small case for my main machine due to size, I've seen those T1 cases with hefty builds in but it's still big compared to this.
Soldato
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Why not just buy an LCD Steam Deck right now if you want an indie machine? You can get one for £349 right now and just get a £10 dock from Ali Express. I am typing this message on such a setup. You will get an essentially identical experience just with a bit less power.
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Unless they have a lot of product already built/in build I think the only sane thing for Valve to do is postpone it. Either that or they eat the losses on each unit & are up-front about it.
Spot price of memory is forecast to double (again) in the next 3-6 months.
Not sure how anyone can reliably price any product which uses memory now. What do you do - sell cheap now then bump the price up when you run out of stock? Drop the amount of memory? There's no good answers for the target market (gaming).
Spot price of memory is forecast to double (again) in the next 3-6 months.
Not sure how anyone can reliably price any product which uses memory now. What do you do - sell cheap now then bump the price up when you run out of stock? Drop the amount of memory? There's no good answers for the target market (gaming).
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Good suggestion that you wouldn't have made if I didn't imagine I posted some additional stuff. Thought I added it in my post but I didn’t post the draft it seems before I lost it.... I didn’t get on with it as it was too under powered. Had to make too many compromises on games that allegedly “ran great” on the deck and that was at what, 1280x768?. I also wrote that if there was an updated deck with the hybrid dock solution like Switch I'd be happy with that for sure. Had the OLED one for a bit.
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Soldato
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If they delay it until memory prices improve that would be at least a year long delay. It will go from 6 year old hardware to at least 7 year old hardware with a new PS6 and a new Xbox console even closer to release. I don't think they will delay it.
OK then.
They're a big boy company and have no shareholders to grovel to.
They could say the market sucks too much and put it on ice. Give it another go in a few years, work on it in the background and release when memory supply isn't so garbage.
Soldato
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That would depend on how far down the manufacturing road they are and you have to imagine they already have thousands sat in a warehouse somewhere as you wouldn't announce a release date only 3 or 4 months away if you weren't full steam ahead on manufacturing.
Valve could eat the loss without blinking. They're cash rich and not owned by asset strippers
People are still going to buy games on Steam so the core business goes on.Edit - of course that leaves SteamOS as a handheld device market rather than the console/PC market Steam (& I suspect AMD for their APUs) would like to be in.
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Soldato
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Valve could eat the loss without blinking. They're cash rich and not owned by asset strippers
Edit - of course that leaves SteamOS as a handheld device market rather than the console/PC market Steam (& I suspect AMD for their APUs) would like to be in.
Yeah they could.
Has that actually ever happened before with a big console like product where the company has just cancelled it even though it was ready to go and units had been made?
I can't think of a console that was cancelled after manufacturing had commenced.
Loads of old ones like the Konix Multi-System, Atari Panther, Sega Neptune and Panasonic/3DO M2. But they were also shelved prior to being made. So in some cases just a few prototypes appear.
Closest I can think of was NEC bringing the PC Engine officially to Europe and the PAL TV system. Rumoured for ages and then never happened. And then back in the late nighties loads of new old stock PC Engines with R-Type appeared. Grey ones based on the black US Turbo Grafx with similar branding.
Soldato
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So it would be pretty unprecedented if Valve cancelled the launch. They could delay it but I don't think that would be beneficial to Valve.
Yes, again there might be other electronics, or PC that fit the scenario, but I think it wouldn't be good for Valve to have loads of stock of these machines.
My assumption is that as everything is going up in price they'll just have to ride it out and it's going to be extra challenges. Microsoft will have similar issues next year for Xbox Magnus, particularly given thats going to be a PC based console too and is very unlikely to sell in the quantities of a Switch, or PS.
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If they're built (which they must be if they were talking "early 2026" to commence shipping) then there's not really any point cancelling, you might as well launch it and see how it goes.
Worst case, it dies on it's arse like it did 10 years ago and they try again in 2035.
Worst case, it dies on it's arse like it did 10 years ago and they try again in 2035.
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Depends how many are built
Like you can have stock and assuming you'll keep building up stock, but if prices of a component have basically doubled/tripled it's a bit different
Bumped into these posts from another forum, with the news that both 'PC boxes' are still on-track for their respective releases. There is some speculation as to whether Sony has committed to both new PlayStation consoles, but I don't know how much is guessing, or based on insider info. It may simply be AMD's agreements to do the following announcements don't extend to Sony, but either way the news seem relevant to the Steam Machine.
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Soldato
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If the new Xbox is launching next year, which will be considerably more powerful than the Steam Machine, that has to exert some pressure on Valve to price it lower. I don't expect the new Xbox to be cheap but many people are talking about $1000 Steam Machines.