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Steam Machine pricing announced (from $1049-$1428 USD), reservation lists open
(store.steampowered.com)
this post was submitted on 22 Jun 2026
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I wonder how many people there are that fall in that category but who wouldn't just buy a much cheaper console instead though.
Honestly that makes me like Steam even more. Any company that is willing to put up that much money to serve a niche market earns my respect. Sure they're doing it for the simple reason of Steam machine owners being guaranteed Steam gaming customers but it's still serving a subset of their customers like few companies do these days.
Tbf, they can't sell it at a loss because they aren't guaranteed Steam customers.
If it was sold at a loss, businesses could easily buy a bunch of them as workstations. Plus, it's just a PC with no lockdowns. If you buy a Steam Machine, there's no reason you couldn't reflash it with Windows and exclusively play games via EGS and Ubisoft Connect.
That isn't even the most important reason, IMO. I think they're doing it mostly to actively push Steam OS and thus normalize Linux for gaming. Not because they care about Free Software in principle, mind you, but as a hedge against the existential threat of Microsoft locking them out of Windows.
Shit I'll take that as a reason too and gladly back them for it.
Bless Valve for investing money purely for the goodness of making money
Sure, but they're one of the only companies proving that consumerism doesn't mean you have to be a complete asshole of a company. They make money, people get the product they want at a price point they are satisfied with.
They also profit off child gambling
I'm a data analyst by trade so rhetoric like that can fuck right off. You want to talk about loot box mechanics? Sure. But bullshit scare mongering descriptions like that have no place in reasonable discourse.
That’s what loot boxes are, and I won’t sugarcoat it.
I'd call the irony delicious if it wasn't for that username
An existing PC game library, better pricing and flexibility for PC games, wider and more robust controller support ...
All true. If you already have a large library of PC games, it wouldn't make much sense to get a console. But then you probably already have a PC as well, and can ride it out until the AI bubble pops. That's certainly what I'm doing, as now is probably the worst time in history to buy new PC hardware.
Of course, some may say it's only the worst time in history for now...
They said this is more powerful than 70% of steam user's PC.
I believe it. I'm sure there are millions of people using Steam to play Dota or CS2 on stuff like old laptops. But how many of those are willing and able to spend 1000+ for an upgrade?
Ultimately, stock may be so low that it doesn't really matter though.
That means there are a shitload of potential customers, not "I wonder how many people there are that fall in that category but who wouldn't just buy a much cheaper console instead though."
If you ignore the price, sure.
What are you on about? There are people that will still want/need to upgrade, and those are the customers. It's not ignoring price, that is simply the price whether it's a PC or a steam machine. Something tells me you just want to disagree so ciao.
My point is that you can't take the price out of the equation. If your standard for "potential customer" is everyone for whom a Steam Machine would be an upgrade, that's not a useful metric in my opinion. As many of those either can't afford to pay that much or wouldn't want to pay it for an upgrade they don't necessarily need. Dota plays just fine on older systems. My initial statement was in the context of the pricing, not "I wonder if anyone would get it if it were $100".
Seriously what are you on about? It doesn't have to be every single one of that 70% that's chomping at the bit to upgrade. That is the easy customer pool. PCs users are on a continuous upgrade cycle, it's not like consoles where they have to upgrade every generation. It's more of a cycle. Can't afford? You seem to want to focus on the cheapest users and act as if that's all 70%, which sorry to say is just wrong and bad thinking. Sure there's a long tail in that bell curve and some at the very end are on strict budgets, but there are tons that are just on the normal upgrade path. Plus others whose PC's break. The 30% above steam specs can wait it out, but 70% may still want/need to upgrade. No one is ignoring price, this is simply the price of PC gaming now. And what are you quoting? You're just making things up now, so that's my sign I really need to peace out. Ciao.
And those people cant afford the steam machine. I just don't see how the steam machine isn't DOA.
... There are plenty in that group that can afford a steam machine. Why is everyone acting like that 70% is living on gruel.
If they could then they would have already bought better hardware for less money than the steam machine.
I just gave the neighborhood kid my xbox-s (with expanded memory), my switch hasn't been touched since my deck arrived. I have everything I need already purchased on steam, I'm not building a second library, or paying 50% more than when I started for a rotating library, I'll buy a few more games on steam but my catalog is insurmountably full as it is. And now I'll get to enjoy it with slightly higher graphics on a much larger screen!
I have friends who only have consoles. This is who I think should be looking at this. People like me who wanted a second PC for the living room may pass on this because of the price, though. I don't need a second PC that bad. But for my people with no PC, no monitors, no keyboards, this is pretty decent. Not to mention the it's an alright deal when pricing out a build yourself.
Except a PS5 Pro is $1100CAD and this is $1500CAD ($2000CAD if you match storage with the PS5 Pro, which is 2TB.) That is a huge jump. This is too underpowered for enthusiasts, and too expensive for console only gamers. Early indication is that it’s also underpowered vs a PS5 Pro, so I think it’s underpowered even for console gamers.
I know why they have the price pressure they do. But I can’t say I’m not wildly disappointed. This had the potential to end the console market entirely and now it’s looking like another also ran.
I was almost definitely going to buy this. At this price vs performance, I don’t think I’ll even put my name on the list. Much of this is out of Valve’s hands, but maybe they should have just scrapped it until pricing is better. This might be worse than nothing.
One thing I will say is I love the form factor. If was looking to build a living room PC this would be a serious contender because the design is great. But it’s just not enough to pay $1500 for a PC that matches the spec of my $800 PS5.
I agree. their best play here would have likely been to just delay release until the hardware market stabilized. its going to flop at it's current pricing.
Except there's ongoing costs to have manufacturing equipment and warehouse stock sitting around doing nothing. Plus they likely had minimum quantity manufacturing contracts signed
If Valve decided to sign hardware contracts at the prices that are forcing them to do this, that's on them. I'm saying they shouldn't have done that in the first place. The project should have been held off until it stabilized.
clarification: There is no way they didn't have some form of forecasting on how much they would be paying per unit prior to signing said contracts. I agree with you, they probably have contracts in place now, but there's no way they agreed to these contracts without knowing the price of hardware they ate buying. It's not like they can sign a contract, and then two months later, AMD can be like, hey, by the way, you know that hardware market issue we have? Yeah, so that agreed upon rate you're gonna have. We're adding $300/p unit to it. Usually it's a I will buy X amount of units at Y cost over Z period, and then they renew/negotiate the contract as needed.
I mean, speaking for myself, I already bought the consoles back in 2020. I bought a Steam Deck to access non-console games.
This does what the Steam Deck does only moreso.
Yeah, but Steam Deck had an extremely attractive and competitive price when it launched.
"Equivalent" consoles are much more expensive now as well. The entire playing field is fucked.
"equivalent", base ps5 has equivalent performance while being half the price lol.
PS5 pro is $900, champ, and it's got vendor lock-in.
My point is that everything is more expensive. Sony jacked those prices up by hundreds of dollars already.
equivalent performance to a base ps5, lol
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66QzlDewigE
I'm not watching a video. Share something serious.
Dubious comparison aside, the lack of total vendor lock-in + wider and vastly deeper controller compatibility adds massive value.
And AGAIN, all hardware is simply more expensive.
yea and this one is twice as expensive as those lol
Yep, if you lie about the specs and ignore everything else, ESPECIALLY VENDOR LOCK-IN.
The numbers are there if you care to look lol. Not my fault you don't want to. selling rx 6600 performance for a thousand bucks in 2026 lol
vendor lock-in.