*** Valve Steam Machine ***

[Grim5]

The Steam Machine is anticipated to be slightly less performant than a base PS5. And it’s looking like it could be nearly twice the cost. That’s going to be a hard sell for most people, even if they do like the form factor & ecosystem.

Valve doesn't care, as shown with the recent $1k steamdeck, valve makes so few units for sale that their hardware always sells out. Valve isn't trying to sell 100 million units like the ps5 is so they don't need to price match it, for Valve if they sell 1 million total lifetime it will be a massive success

 

[xaldub]

Valve doesn't care, as shown with the recent $1k steamdeck, valve makes so few units for sale that their hardware always sells out. Valve isn't trying to sell 100 million units like the ps5 is so they don't need to price match it, for Valve if they sell 1 million total lifetime it will be a massive success

That may be partly true, but from a consumer's perspective the SM isn't an attractive purchase. I'm confident Valve would prefer to offer the SM at a much better price point. They've simply been caught out by the AI boom.

 

[Moothead2]

The predicted prices are genuinely crazy. I could see it's niche being worthwhile at £400-500 maybe but double that and then some makes me genuinely question the mental capacity of anyone who buys it. 8GB of RAM, in 2026 lmao.

Given the fact that you can pick up a used PS5 for sub £250 (one was up for £190 in the MM a few days ago) and that basically any game the average consumer will be interested in playing is available either directly on the PS5 or through PS4 BC on top of a number of extremely popular games that won't work on Linux and I'm genuinely curious what the target audience is outside of valve fanboys and people with too much money who see the shiny new toy and have to buy it.

 

[Emlyn_Dewar]

The predicted prices are genuinely crazy. I could see it's niche being worthwhile at £400-500 maybe but double that and then some makes me genuinely question the mental capacity of anyone who buys it. 8GB of RAM, in 2026 lmao.

Extreme consumerism created a group of people frothing at the mouth to get one, not really thinking of what it was they were actually going to be buying, I feel... The Steam Machine subreddit after the Steam Deck price hikes was amusing to watch. Like the spell or hypnotism had worn-off and there was a sudden realisation of "WTF am I doing?"

At projected prices, I'm not sure how many games you'd need to buy on Steam to actually start saving anything...

 

[Martini1991]

The predicted prices are genuinely crazy. I could see it's niche being worthwhile at £400-500 maybe but double that and then some makes me genuinely question the mental capacity of anyone who buys it. 8GB of RAM, in 2026 lmao.

Given the fact that you can pick up a used PS5 for sub £250 (one was up for £190 in the MM a few days ago) and that basically any game the average consumer will be interested in playing is available either directly on the PS5 or through PS4 BC on top of a number of extremely popular games that won't work on Linux and I'm genuinely curious what the target audience is outside of valve fanboys and people with too much money who see the shiny new toy and have to buy it.

It's got 16GB RAM.
But I agree with the sentiments.

The GPU isn't particularly great.

Even with the RAM/storage issues, you can make a better machine at £800, and pre RAM/storage issues that would have been like £650

 

[Moothead2]

It's got 16GB RAM.
But I agree with the sentiments.

The GPU isn't particularly great.

Even with the RAM/storage issues, you can make a better machine at £800, and pre RAM/storage issues that would have been like £650

Meant VRAM .They'll probably be able to squeeze more out of it than your standard GPU and Windows but even at 1080p there's far too many unoptimised games coming out where 8GB isn't enough.

Built a SFF PC for my living room with a 5800x and a 9070XT and I suspect that will have cost me less than this thing will go for. Isn't as convenient as thing will inevitably be but it's a price worth paying for a huge jump in performance.

 

[Absolutely Clueless]

The predicted prices are genuinely crazy. I could see it's niche being worthwhile at £400-500 maybe but double that and then some makes me genuinely question the mental capacity of anyone who buys it. 8GB of RAM, in 2026 lmao.

Given the fact that you can pick up a used PS5 for sub £250 (one was up for £190 in the MM a few days ago) and that basically any game the average consumer will be interested in playing is available either directly on the PS5 or through PS4 BC on top of a number of extremely popular games that won't work on Linux and I'm genuinely curious what the target audience is outside of valve fanboys and people with too much money who see the shiny new toy and have to buy it.

I would go as far as saying it is borderline criminal. Releasing straight up e-trash in 2026

 

[Martini1991]

If it had launched at £500, I'd fully understand the appeal of it

It'll still sell, but I'd much rather they have worked on having SteamOS available on mass by now

 

[Timber]

If it had launched at £500, I'd fully understand the appeal of it

It'll still sell, but I'd much rather they have worked on having SteamOS available on mass by now

I think there's a hardcore market of maybe a few million (before the price rises - may be smaller now) that's want a more powerful Steam Deck and don't have the interest/knowledge to build a small PC. I'm not sure the market is as big as handhelds.

Its going to be interesting to see if Valve ever release Steam OS beyond the handful of supported machines. I know so many people write I'm not leaving Windows until Steam OS comes out. I was reminded of an interview the other day where Valve were talking about components of their software like Gamescope, Vulkan, Proton etc. and how it's all open-source by design so that all of the linux community can build those features into their software (i.e. CachyOS, Bazzite etc.).

 

[Martini1991]

I think there's a hardcore market of maybe a few million (before the price rises - may be smaller now) that's want a more powerful Steam Deck and don't have the interest/knowledge to build a small PC. I'm not sure the market is as big as handhelds.

Its going to be interesting to see if Valve ever release Steam OS beyond the handful of supported machines. I know so many people write I'm not leaving Windows until Steam OS comes out. I was reminded of an interview the other day where Valve were talking about components of their software like Gamescope, Vulkan, Proton etc. and how it's all open-source by design so that all of the linux community can build those features into their software (i.e. CachyOS, Bazzite etc.).

The biggest problem with Linux adoption is Nvidia

I've got a Lenovo Legion Go 2 with SteamOS on the beta builds and it's generally really good

I'd install Linux on my laptop (With a 4060) but I don't really want the frame rate hit over Windows

My main PC (AMD 9070) is Windows, but to be honest I could probably get away with Bazzite on ot these days.

 

[Mark1989]

I love my ally even more since putting steam os on.

My PC is windows which will remain so as that does have games on that require it such as BF6 with its anti cheat

That being said if some how SteamOS could run the games like BF6 which have the kernel anti cheat I’d ditch windows however from chats with friends etc my understanding Linux based stuff won’t ever give that type of access so it’s down to the devs and well I’m pretty sure there too lazy to do it another way

Document wise, admin stuff I can easily get by with my phone / tablet

 

[TheVoice]

Given the fact that you can pick up a used PS5 for sub £250 (one was up for £190 in the MM a few days ago) and that basically any game the average consumer will be interested in playing is available either directly on the PS5 or through PS4 BC on top of a number of extremely popular games that won't work on Linux and I'm genuinely curious what the target audience is outside of valve fanboys and people with too much money who see the shiny new toy and have to buy it.

That isn't really who it's for though, I suspect Valve know the people who would be buying this thing are those who already have large Steam libraries and are a looking for a way to access that from their TV. To me it looked like the ideal system for getting through the backlog I've accumulated over the years.

It was a bit underpowered and a bit overpriced (based on indications of pricing at the time) when first announced but unfortunately time and component costs have only worsened that. I'm not about to feel sorry for Valve as they can easily afford the Steam Machine to fail, but it is unfortunate that it'll be launching having been largely written-off already, and I hope it doesn't deter them from having another go at it when it can be specced and priced a bit more competitively.

 

[b0rn2sk8]

If it had launched at £500, I'd fully understand the appeal of it

It'll still sell, but I'd much rather they have worked on having SteamOS available on mass by now

It was never going to be £500 even before the RAMpolcalipse.

Remember, its just a pre-built PC with Linux instead of Windows. It was always going to be priced like one and you could not get a PC with a dedicated GPU at that kind of money in a pre-built back in late 2015.

The likes of Dell, HP etc are only paying £20 for windows at the kinds of volume they shift. That's really the only saving you can expect over not having it, otheriwse, it is just a PC.

 

[Marky]

Reading rumours of this finally getting a release end of this month… very interested in the price point… with the Steam Deck having had a price increase, I cannot see it being priced well in this market, but we’ll have to see!…

I’m in the process of building a new PC and will look to load SteamOS on it if possible anyway - I’ve been really impressed with it on the Deck. If that fails, I’ll probably use Bazzite.

 

[kkelly]

You can get a 5060 amd4 machine for 700 odd notes, anything more than that will be a hard sell i think.

 

[Hotwired]

You can get a 5060 amd4 machine for 700 odd notes, anything more than that will be a hard sell i think.

But you won't have the system that's the showcase for SteamOS on a pc with the custom case and widgets.

I don't see any reason for a steam machine to be competing for sales with a cheap (for todays prices) gaming pc. If you buy the cheap pc and then put SteamOS on it, Valve still gets an outcome they want.

 

[GIBURROWS]

They should sell it with some valve cards to make it more enticing.

I can't wait for the videos of it trying to play Ark and 7days....

 

[Timber]

They should sell it with some valve cards to make it more enticing.

I can't wait for the videos of it trying to play Ark and 7days....

I think that's a great idea. Even if it's £30-50, or something small it's a cheaper way to add value if they really cannot/won't move on subsidies, or prices. I remember with the original Steam Deck line-up the top-end 512GB LCD model had those special profile badges added to your account.

 

[Marky]

But you won't have the system that's the showcase for SteamOS on a pc with the custom case and widgets.

I don't see any reason for a steam machine to be competing for sales with a cheap (for todays prices) gaming pc. If you buy the cheap pc and then put SteamOS on it, Valve still gets an outcome they want.

What do you mean by Widgets?

You can get a 5060 amd4 machine for 700 odd notes, anything more than that will be a hard sell i think.

This is what I mean - the cheapest Deck at the moment is £649. It just makes me think it’ll be more like £900 which is too expensive for what they have showcased so far

 

[Hotwired]

What do you mean by Widgets?

Get a wireless adapter for the steam controller built in alongside the wireless and bluetooth.