The Steam Machine is certainly interesting, it has NeXTcube vibes hehe. And it's a lot smaller than I would've expected.

They're thinking of case modders for the machine, so incoming companion cubes, hl radio/myGodWhatAreYouDoingMicrowave, tf2 crate, purple checkerboard, etc.

Steam Machine will fail. There is no room inbetween xbox and playstation.

All the people want is Half Life 3 on a normal PC , no consoles , no VR , nothing of this new stuff.

bitzu101 wrote on 2025-11-13, 11:43:

Steam Machine will fail. There is no room inbetween xbox and playstation.

Xbox isn't doing so well in this console generation, so it's more of a fight between PlayStation and Switch.

As for Valve's machine, I wish they had gone with an RDNA 4 based GPU (and maybe 12GB VRAM) but it's fine otherwise. Some people in the PC space occasionally want a couch gaming experience, while still having detailed game customization options that are not available on consoles. I count myself among that crowd, so I'm kinda curious as to how this will turn out. And further popularizing gaming on Linux is always a good thing, since it means more optimizations will target that platform.

bitzu101 wrote on 2025-11-13, 11:43:

Steam Machine will fail. There is no room inbetween xbox and playstation.

All the people want is Half Life 3 on a normal PC , no consoles , no VR , nothing of this new stuff.

I want a console-style PC. And while I have one already, it's good to have more options when time comes for replacement.

Shponglefan wrote on 2025-11-13, 15:32:

bitzu101 wrote on 2025-11-13, 11:43:

Steam Machine will fail. There is no room inbetween xbox and playstation.

All the people want is Half Life 3 on a normal PC , no consoles , no VR , nothing of this new stuff.

I want a console-style PC. And while I have one already, it's good to have more options when time comes for replacement.

Same, though the price will definitely be a factor. I'm very curious to see whether it'd be cheaper and more convenient to get a Steam Machine vs. building something of a similar form factor from scratch (I imagine there's a good chance the Steam Machine will be cheaper).

Counting out us with PCs already, I don't think it'll fail simply because it seems like a super appealing option to console gamers wanting to easily get into the PC gaming space with something that's more familiar to them.

It's like the Mac mini of the PC world, with some muscle.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2025-11-13, 11:52:

bitzu101 wrote on 2025-11-13, 11:43:

Steam Machine will fail. There is no room inbetween xbox and playstation.

Xbox isn't doing so well in this console generation, so it's more of a fight between PlayStation and Switch.

As for Valve's machine, I wish they had gone with an RDNA 4 based GPU (and maybe 12GB VRAM) but it's fine otherwise. Some people in the PC space occasionally want a couch gaming experience, while still having detailed game customization options that are not available on consoles. I count myself among that crowd, so I'm kinda curious as to how this will turn out. And further popularizing gaming on Linux is always a good thing, since it means more optimizations will target that platform.

Pc based console does make sense , but only done right. There is no point to have one with 8gb vram and old gpu architechture.

If you make a PC console , do it right , that is the whole point of the PC , that you get superior graphics , modularity and a better experience because of the more powerful hardware. If you make something that is similar to other consols , then there is no point.

The challenge with more powerful hardware is space and cooling. For a console style PC, there are going to be trade offs.

sunkindly wrote on 2025-11-13, 15:42:

Same, though the price will definitely be a factor. I'm very curious to see whether it'd be cheaper and more convenient to get a Steam Machine vs. building something of a similar form factor from scratch (I imagine there's a good chance the Steam Machine will be cheaper).

Agreed, pricing can make a big difference. Hoping it will be in the sub-$1000 range.

Steam machine is basically a Ryzen 7600 (6 cores 12 threats, zen 4 cores) with a Radeon 7600M (RDNA 3), so not impressive by any means, price will be key.
It needs to be way less than ~$1K, since you can get a full laptop with way better specs for less than that.

The star of the show is the OS, if we can get steamOS installed on regular desktops there is not much reason to get their hardware.

VR headset is the first time we will see SteamOS on ARM cpus, the hardware is super nice, but again the star of the show is the OS, if we can get SteamOS on other ARM devices, like phones, it's going to be game changer.

before the steamdeck whatever portable PC for gaming that existed for that was way more expensive,
hopefully valve will have this priced aggressively,
given the specs, I assume they are trying to hit a low price point

Hardware-wise It does not look too interesting to me.

The controller looks fine.

Steam machine looks neat, though again not for me. I've seen hardware cost estimates of $400-450, so if they can take a profitability hit for a little while and price it at $500, I can see it being a good choice in the place of a console or a pre-built PC.

VR specs look like the Index (which is good - high FOV, high refresh rate and from what it's being told - low latency), but wireless. Not much reason for me to upgrade from an Index, considering how little good VR stuff there is out there. The big thing for me here is the FEX translation layer for x86 and ARM, which I hope gets more attention.

Shponglefan wrote on 2025-11-13, 16:41:

The challenge with more powerful hardware is space and cooling. For a console style PC, there are going to be trade offs.

But it does not need a trade off. Go on YouTube and you will find crazy builds in super miny cases, way, way more power than the steam machine.

Also, there is 0 point in a last gen hardware.

Want to make a splash in the market? You position yourself as a premium device and sell more expensive. You put a Zen 5 x3d chip with 8 cores, 32 gb ram, 16gb vram with new architecture and set the thing for 1200 1300 dollars. Yes, it s expensive, but also premium and it s a way better experience for the user.

And because valve would probably sell a few of the, the price would likely be around 1000 bucks I think.

Sorry, I m not sold on this. There is nothing interesting about it. Just old recicled hardware to compete against xbox and ps in a very difficult market with no advantage or clear selling point to differentiate from competition.

bitzu101 wrote on 2025-11-13, 21:13:

Also, there is 0 point in a last gen hardware.

the cpu/gpu gen advancements these days are all about accelerating AI bullshit, all of which are not relevant.

also what xbox? What's this, the gamefaqs board?

In the Gamers Nexus video there's footage of it without the shell and some more context not given in the Valve announcement:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWUxObt1efQ

There was an article recently about how most living rooms are setup to be so far away from the TV that the difference between 4k and 1080p is minimal.

For myself I couldn't imagine still playing at 1080p in 2025. I bought my 1920x1200 LCD monitor in 2007 and I'd game at that res until 2016 when I went to 2560x1440 and then to 3840x1600 in 2020.
If you are gaming so far away that the difference between 4k and 1080p is minimal, you likely won't be able to see the difference between max details vs medium and then you factor in possibly FSR3 being used and the fact that games haven't been pushing the hardware for quite some time and a bajillion Windows games (although you'd have to see how many of those work without hoop jumping for a "console") then old hardware is possibly fine especially if Valve wants to put their feelers out for a "first" release.

It's likely Valve wants to release it before the next MS XBOX/PC box which is a good idea to get their brand out there for those that don't know anything about them.

There is the issue of how/if they will handle letting the user know if the machine is capable of running a game and if it will automagically set the graphics settings.

For myself the only pre-built computer hardware I ever buy are phones and laptops and this year I finally switched from Dell to Framework and am quite happy. The last pre-built PC desktop I had was a 286 in 1991.

Last Valve attempt
Steam Machine (Valve's first console)

The Machine is sexy as hell, but my gosh, only 28 RDNA3 CUs? That sounds a little underpowered. RX 7400-like, even! That can't possibly be right, can it?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_AMD_gra … _RX_7000_series

EDIT: Someone just slotted the Steam Machine GPU right below RX 7400 in the Wikipedia article!

I also have to wonder if the CPU is a fully cached (32 MB) Zen4 CCD, or just a 16 MB APU with its iGPU disabled (the "semi-custom" bit semi-frightens me). At least when used in normal Windows PCs, APUs paired with high-power PCIe GPUs typically are a good bit slower than the full fat Raphael chips. Although, with a potentially dinky 28 CU GPU, the Steam machine may not be in any danger of hitting a processor bottleneck.

Negativity aside, I would love to park a Machine next to my Gamecube. Aww, what a power couple they'd be, all cute and happy and munching on games together!

it's an "APU" with the IGP disabled, it doesn't have the full cache configuration, it still fast, but not the full thing.

I've never seen an "RX 7400" and the specs on wikipedia look wrong and incomplete compared to the specs on TPU (which makes more sense)

the steam machine GPU will be no slower than an RX6600, you can go for there, something bellow the 7600 but not massively so, it still has the same type of memory, a decent enough TDP and so on