This is going to come off as shilling for Valve, but it isn’t my intention.
I could entirely see Valve pricing the Steam Machine relatively affordably and this statement is ultimately a dig at how overpriced pre-built PCs and consoles can be.
“The Steam Machine outperforms 70% of current user PCs…we neglected to say that the majority of user PCs are overpriced for what they deliver.”
Not a number. Not interesting.
Is PC
Shock and awe when told it MAY cost similar to a PC
Do I want to spend my money for a billionaire floating around in a massive yacht? We’ll see and yes, I’m a Steam user.
This is for general public. So add 1 million dollars for tech support
The worst thing about the hardware unveiling is the endless posts about pricing 😮💨
Facts people forget:
- Assembling your own Steam Machine with similar parts will cost around 800
- Even if you assembled it yourself you would be missing features, such as cec, wake by controller, sleep mid game, etc. LTT will try to build one, it will be interesting to see what they come up with, but I’m 90% it won’t have feature parity.
- There’s lots of engineering gone into this machine, they’re way more compact, less power hungry and more quiet than anything you can build yourself.
- Buying the same build as a prebuilt brings a premium and costs around 1000
- Valve purchases stuff in scale so they can diminish their margin and could potentially sell it cheaper than prebuilts, and possibly cheaper than building it yourself.
- Consoles are sold at a loss, and they recover it with games because the platform is closed.
- The Steam Machine is not closed, they can’t be sure they’re getting game purchases, because people might be buying this to be their work computer. So they have to price it as a PC, with margin on hardware, not promise of future returns.
- Price might fluctuate between now and announcement, RAM prices are going crazy nowadays.
With all of that being said, it seems to me it’s very likely it will be around 800 but less than 1000. For people saying you can build one for that price yourself, sure, go ahead, you’ll have a huge, power hungry loud box, without the same features and you would have saved only a small fraction of the value by having to assemble everything yourself.
Assembling your own Steam Machine with similar parts will cost around 800
No, it won’t. $800 will get you a machine that’s around 50% faster. Controller included.
Even if you assembled it yourself you would be missing features, such as cec, wake by controller, sleep mid game, etc. LTT will try to build one, it will be interesting to see what they come up with, but I’m 90% it won’t have feature parity.
Fair enough.
There’s lots of engineering gone into this machine, they’re way more compact, less power hungry and more quiet than anything you can build yourself.
It’s literally a laptop CPU with a laptop GPU.
Buying the same build as a prebuilt brings a premium and costs around 1000
Also not true. A 1k prebuilt is around 70% faster. Controller not included, though.
Valve purchases stuff in scale so they can diminish their margin and could potentially sell it cheaper than prebuilts, and possibly cheaper than building it yourself.
Sure, but that’s an argument in favour of it costing less.
Consoles are sold at a loss, and they recover it with games because the platform is closed.
Yeah, and the best selling console of the generation is $450 for the digital-only version.
The Steam Machine is not closed, they can’t be sure they’re getting game purchases, because people might be buying this to be their work computer. So they have to price it as a PC, with margin on hardware, not promise of future returns.
Stop this delusion. If this was an actual possibility, it would already be happening with the Steam Deck. Yes, I know you know someone who did it. I know someone who bought a Surface to put Linux on it. There’s dozens of us!
Price might fluctuate between now and announcement, RAM prices are going crazy nowadays.
That I see happening. RAM/storage might triple in price tomorrow which would push the price of the whole industry up.
…LTT will try to build one…
Jay already tried. It was bigger, didn’t have the custom OS, and cost $1700. He could have done better except he was part limited to what rhe Microcenter he was at had on hand. Doing a bunch or research and getting different parts would probably bring down the price.
They could totally make money selling it at a loss. The reason so many people care is that there’s an opening in the console market for an affordable option
Also people who like to DIY seem to forget that a lot of people want a turn-key solution, I even dare to say that most people prefer a ready made solution. Even a lot of people who work in tech when they get home want a just work solution.
Yup, I love DIY, had tons of fun building my wife’s mini-itx gaming rig, my NAS and even my desktop (although it was the boring one of the three since it’s just standard). I love poking on my system, trying out stuff, etc. But I bought a Deck and my only mod was getting EmuDeck in it, it just works for what I want it to, and that’s worth a lot to me, it allows me to pour my time on stuff I want to be building and just game on my gaming boxes.
And a lot of the prebuilts have a ton of cut corners. A well put-together machine that people can trust to play their games at a base performance could be great for those who don’t want or can’t DIY.
PCs suffer from massive hardware fragmentation. It’s about time someone made a standardized PC.
Eh, I dont want steam machine becoming a standardized PC.
having CPU and GPU baked into the board and unchangable will just increase e-waste cause it will age out much faster than a PC which you could, 3-4 years down the line, max out the CPU in, throw more ram into, or upgrade teh GPU, to keep it relevant for another 4+ years
It serves its niche purpose, but it should not become standard.
Nail On The Head.
I work in tech. I also have terrible dexterity. While I love my gaming PC, I dread upgrades or things going wrong. I hate applying thermal paste, replacing a motherboard, etc. I’d gladly pay “prebuilt” prices for something from a company I can “trust” (as far as corporations can be trusted).
A thousand dollars seems fantastically reasonable for a well-engineered home-gaming machine that can play current gen PC games at high quality. I spend that much every several years on upgrading or building a new PC.
My complaint is not the price, I think the price is fair. Let’s talk wages.
LTT will try to build one
Time for another video of Linus failing to follow basic instructions and going out of his way to break the OS because Linux gaming bad
Yeah, but to be fair that was a shitty thing the system did, anyone with experience would know not to do it, but honestly it should have never happened. On the other hand, Linus is a bit daft and lots of stuff blows over his head monumentally, in the same video where he said he would be building a Steam Machine he also couldn’t seem to grasp that this is just a computer and people would see it as a prevuilt. In short I don’t think he will acknowledge lots of the killer features in the Steam Machine just so he can claim his thing does the same. But at least it will be an interesting watch.
Yeah, I agree.
I detest Linus, but at least attack him for legitimate shit.
He was approaching linux as a basic idiot, like someone like me, and that is absolutely something a new average linux user would absolutely do.
iirc, that bug was known before hand, and no one bothered to fix it until famous man made video that got famous.
It was known beforehand and was fixed already by the time he released his video, he just happened to luck out and encounter it during the short spam it existed.
I disagree that he approached it as a complete idiot, he approached it as someone who knows what they’re doing, when he definitely doesn’t, and that was the issue. Anyone without technical know-how would have panicked at the system asking him to type “I know what I’m doing”, and anyone with enough technical know-how would have paused at that and read the message carefully and moped the fuck out. He had enough knowledge to think he knew what he was doing, but not enough to actually do, and the boldness to think he knew better.
That being said, I agree that there’s plenty of other stuff to bash him for, and that was not a great example, lots of people would have found themselves in that same situation, and I don’t think it’s unfair to say the fuck up there was not entirely on his part.
failing to follow basic instructions and going out of his way to break the OS
Otherwise known as a typical behaviour of majority of users
Good thing his team has a few linux nerds. So unlike that challenge where he was alone, here his team would work on it.
I hate LTT, but they did absolutely nothing wrong or anything a normal user wouldn’t do in that video.
I don’t think so, I think a normal user would pause when the system asks him to type “Yes, do as I say” as that is clearly a sign that you’re about to shoot yourself in the foot.
Buying the same build as a prebuilt brings a premium and costs around 1000
For 1k you can get a 9600 9060XT 16gb system, which is waaaaaay more powerful, so this is quite an exaggeration.
Consoles are sold at a loss, and they recover it with games because the platform is closed.
Sometimes, but evidently not currently. Sources seem to indicate that only Microsoft seems to say they are selling at a loss, though it seems odd since their bill of materials looks like it should be pretty comparable to PS5…
I’ll agree with the guess of around $800, but like you say, the supply pressure on RAM and storage as well as the tariff situation all over the place, hard to say.
Facts
With all of that being said, it seems to me it’s very likely it will be around 800 but less than 1000
maybe more with the way ram prices are skyrocketing… because even though it comes out next year, they are probably being manufactured and stockpiled right now.
* Even if you assembled it yourself you would be missing features, such as cec, wake by controller, sleep mid game, etc.
I’ve been actively mass downvoted on Reddit for being excited for these features. People are really fucking stupid sometimes.
I have a significantly more powerful PC (in a tower case) currently hooked up to my tv surviving the same purpose and I will likely be getting the Steam Machine entirely for these features.
“But just use a dongle” they say. And I do. It works about half the time and I have to do this weird dance involving pulling up Kodi
I find it amusing how much discussion there is around the price of this when it only ships to like 1/4th of the world. If it would be available in stores like nintendo, I doubt people there would be much issue regarding high price.
The discourse around this confuses the fuck out of me. Did people actually expect this to be <$500?
No, but the price points of the current consoles are hilariously optimistic.
Idk, $699 USD for the PS5 pro seems a bit closer to “PC pricing” than I would expect from Sony if they’re subsidizing the cost with future game sales.
I’d kind of expect them to be making consoles at break-even/no-profit, more than at a loss right now.
They can set the asking price to whatever they like but a lot of us cannot justify those amounts for what amounts to a toy. By this stage in a console generation I would expect a lot more games and a lot cheaper hardware. The reasons that haven’t happened aren’t of interest to me as a consumer (they’re of interest to me as a nerd!).
I think the problem is Valve lost control of the messaging, which led to bad expectations.
At least in the US, a computer hooked up to a TV to play games means it’s a “console” and not a computer. Maybe we can blame Nintendo back in the 80s for going out of their way to avoid calling the NES a computer (despite it’s name in Japan being Famicom, Family Computer), but the distinction exists today despite technologically no real difference. You know this, I know this, Valve knows this. So Valve wants to make a computer you hook up to your TV so they can get you to use
their money printing machineSteam in the living room too.If you read Valve’s marketing material on the Steam Machine, they don’t use the word “console” once. It’s always either by name or the terms PC, computer, or system. They likely don’t mention the word “console” because to date, video game consoles follow a different business model, one where the model subsidizes the shit out of the hardware and then make money on the back end with game sales/licensing.
Current “console” hardware starts in the <$500 price bracket, and with so much third party media marketing calling the Steam Machine a console, that got people’s mind set on pricing expectations of that market.
If you read Valve’s marketing material on the Steam Machine, they don’t use the word “console” once.
Doesn’t matter at all. Its clearly meant to operate in the position of one. They could have very well avoided that term to avoid implying the lock down that consoles come with.
This confuses me. You can hookup ANY computer to a living room TV to be a “console”. How is this different?
As someone who has hooked up computers to TVs all his life, I can tell you. Just turning on with a controller directly into game mode is a massive game changer as it is a pain to get it working today. Look for guides about it and see the batshit hacks people have come up with.
That and the overabundance of Bluetooth antennas. Oh, and it also comes with super fast WiFi 7 special connection for the frame inside the box. Also, heat and sound management. Gaming PCs are little space heaters, very efficient during cold weather and a pain in the ass in hot climates. Keeping them cool takes an assortment of turbines and makes the living room sound like an airport. If this thing is as power efficient, quiet and cool as advertised, it will be the gaming enthusiast’s dream.
My theory and point was that by thinking about that computer as a console, in the average consumer mindset it should be priced like a console. From a pure hardware product perspective there is no difference
Valve is thinking about it as a computer, and has stated they intend to price it like one and not like a traditional console
A console is typically locked down; they can sell them at cost or a loss and make up the money selling games. A computer is typically not locked down, you can install games from wherever on it, so they can’t assume you’ll buy your games from them (even though you will)
When you turn it on it boots to a controller friendly UI that shows you all your steam games. No setup, no hunting for drivers, no bloat.
A computer hooked up to a TV is considered a media center PC, or an HTPC, not a console
I think both of you are right but also wrong. It’s called “whatever you want” and there is no universal name for the practice. If you’re not using your PC for media, it certainly isn’t an HTPC.
You’re right, though games are also “media” 😋
Fair!
Sure, if it’s not as modular as actual PC.
Otherwise they’re just selling a “default spec” PC that developers can target for benchmarks.
That’s the confusing part for me because statements from the design team said they had the very optimistic goal of running most games at 4k 60fps, which is more like $1000 entry level imo.
“…with FSR.”
That there is a huge difference.
$1,000 is not entry level.
If you go on any website and look at entry level PCs they’re all around $600 to $800.
The lowest amount to run most modern titles AT 4K 60 FPS is around $1000, and thats only because graphics card prices have come down.
If 30FPS on 1080p is good enough I could build it for $400.
It’s not a 4K capable graphics card though it’s a 1080p capable graphics card that they’re saying is 4K because of the existence of AI upscaling which I think is a cheat. So you’re already overestimating the cards capability.
If they subsidized it, wouldn’t that risk businesses buying it as a cheap-for-its-specs option for their office computers? It’s not locked to being a gaming machine like consoles. You can just install windows on it.
That’s a tradition with gaming systems, see the Navy’s playstation supercomputer!
That’s a bit different IIRC, they purchased them directly from Sony and they didn’t have any of the OtherOS hardware lockouts like retail consoles did.
At launch and for a good while PS3 came with a boot to Linux enabled by default, some universities around the globe bought some “from the shelf” to make some server farm and such.
Yeah, but in relatively small volumes and mostly as a ‘gimmick’.
The Cell processors were ‘neat’ but enough of a PITA is to largely not be worth it, combined with a overall package that wasn’t really intended to be headless managed in a datacenter and a sub-par networking that sufficed for internet gaming, but not as a cluster interconnect.
IBM did have higher end cell processors, at predictable IBM level pricing in more appropriate packaging and management, but it was pretty much a commercial flop since again, the Cell processor just wasn’t worth the trouble to program for.
Retail units couldn’t access most of the RSX in OtherOS for Sony reasons, Geohot fixing that was why they killed OtherOS.
Apparently the DOD units never had any lockouts on the GPU.
I’m not entirely sure on the difference here, valve is selling them directly and by all the reporting we’ve seen, there aren’t going to be hardware restrictions on any of the models.
That’s the feel good warm marketing Sony spun for the thing. The PS3 sold around 88 million units. It flopped at first because it didn’t have any games for it. The Linux thing was a quirky fun but ultimately useless feature. You had to code custom software for the thing, it had no commercial software for Linux on a PS3. Its sales ballooned after it became the cheapest bluray on the market, and it was after the removal of otherOS support.
Less than 10 thousand were used for distributed computation clusters. The famous navy supercomputer only had 1.7 thousand units or so. Against the global sales numbers it was barely a rounding error.
I’m sorry, I’m not sure what your point is - yes it was a broadly impractical thing to do, that’s not in dispute.
I think it’s a response to the sentiment that Sony somehow got bit by selling PS3 at a loss because it triggered some huge supercomputing purchases of the systems that Sony wouldn’t have liked, and that if Valve got too close to that then suddenly a lot of businesses would tank it by buying too much and never buying any games.
Sony loved the exposure and used it as marketing fodder that their game consoles were “supercomputer” class. Just like they talked up folding@home on them…
Unlikely.
Businesses generally aren’t that stoked about anything other than laptops or servers.
To the extent they have desktop grade equipment, it’s either:
- Some kiosk grade stuff already cheaper than a game console
- Workstation grade stuff that they will demand nVidia or otherwise just don’t even bother
On servers, the steam machine isn’t that attractive since it’s not designed to either be slapped in a closet and ignored on slotted in a datacenter.
Putting all this aside, businesses love simplicity in their procurement. They aren’t big on adding a vendor for a specific niche when they can use an existing vendor, even if in theory they could shave a few dollars in cost. The logistical burden of adding Steam Machine would likely offset any imagined savings. Especially if they had to own re-imaging and licensing when they are accustomed to product keys embedded in the firmware when they do vendor preloads today.
Maybe you could worry a bit more about the consumer market, where you have people micro-managing costs and will be more willing to invest their own time, but even then the market for non-laptop home systems that don’t think they need nVidia but still need something better than integrated GPUs is so small that it shouldn’t be a worry either.
That’s the feel good warm marketing Sony spun for the thing. The PS3 sold around 88 million units. It flopped at first because it didn’t have any games for it. The Linux thing was a quirky fun but ultimately useless feature. You had to code custom software for the thing, it had no commercial software for Linux on a PS3. Its sales ballooned after it became the cheapest bluray on the market, and it was after the removal of otherOS support.
Less than 10 thousand were used for distributed computation clusters. The famous navy supercomputer only had 1.7 thousand units or so. Against the global sales numbers it was barely a rounding error.
Edit: replied to the wrong comment but I think it is still relevant. The risk of companies snatching steam machines in bulk is null, stop listening to LTT.
I hope they release the price soon, the discourse on this has become incredibly tiring.
I doubt they will. The market for NAND and ram is insane at the moment, RAM has gone up 100% in the last 3 months. Announcing a price too early could lead to having embarrassingly increase price shortly before or after launch, or take a loss on the products.
That’s not to say I don’t share your sentiments. I too hope they announce it sooner rather than later, but understand why they may be apprehensive.
Additionally with how the USD is tanking and the ever looming risk of new tariffs being added on a whim, there is a real risk that even without global price increases the price needs to be increased for the US specifically
Fair prices are fair, the existence of billionaires is not. Tax Gabe Newell and the rest of 'em too.
Didn’t he buy a massive yacht on the same day steam announced these products? It can’t be easy to sneak a superyacht under the publicity radar, but he seems to have pretty much managed it.
I think he’s earned it. I will accept. 😅.
He’s one rich guy I feel isn’t a piece of shit and has good ideas.
There is no such thing as an ethical billionaire, don’t kid yourself.
You only become a billionaire by being a greedy bastard, there’s no exceptions.
They’re letting us discuss this ad nauseam just to understand what prices people consider acceptable for these devices
100%
But that’s not a terrible thing, I suppose.
Absolutely. I think 80$ for the full package seems fair.
$60? why do they want $50 for something that’s clearly $10?
$70 if you hand deliver it to me. It’s my final offer.
Fair pricing means a reasonable profit on the base cost. Trying to gauge what people are willing to pay means that you want to maximise your profit at all costs, consumers be damned.
I understand that’s what Americans consider “fair”, but I don’t fully agree.
In most cases, yes. But you have to remember, this is Valve and not some ordinary company. They have extremely deep wallets and a lot of responsibility and expectations on their shoulders (importantly, not the stock market!). If they charged what it cost for hardware and what it cost them to do r&d, it would likely not be in consumers favor.
Like even just get off the American-bad thing for one second: pricing it as a standalone pc basically just means “the cost of the parts”. They’ve put a lot of time and effort into this across their core employees and likely outsourced stuff because they couldn’t, in-house. Actually listening to people and charging relative to that is actually a great way to be fair and make people happy, guaranteeing positive impact of your product. I guarantee they’re paying attention to what people say ALL over the place. Like… Why do you think “it’s done when it’s done” is their pace?
They’re buying the parts directly from the manufacturers though, so cutting out the retailer middle-man could offset the R&D costs.
Research and development is probably very high when you consider Proton, SteamOS, and the semi-custom CPU and GPU. Something between $50 to $100 million would be typical. Silicone is famously expensive in R&D, Proton has continuous costs (and has for quite a while now) that rack up, and SteamOS is literally an operating system. That’s a lot of salaries to pay.
I reckon they’re taking advantage of being private and playing the long game. Very, very long game. They’re not really in danger as long as Steam is successful, but I can’t blame them for wanting a decent gross margin so they can at least cover hardware costs. Especially with memory prices right now, I wouldn’t be surprised at 1000€ here in Germany, though I wouldn’t be happy about it. I would happily buy at 900€ (≈$1040), and be ecstatic at 800€ (≈$920).
Fair pricing means a reasonable profit on the base cost.
Under many circumstances, this is true. However, console makers have historically sold consoles either at or slightly below cost, expecting to make their real profits on game sales, online store sales, etc… In the business world, it’s called a loss leader. Meaning it’s something popular that the company takes a loss on, while expecting it to encourage more sales elsewhere.
The classic grocery store example is a rotisserie chicken. You can go get a whole rotisserie chicken from the grocery store deli for like $3. It’s so cheap because the store is selling it at a loss. It’s a loss leader. Very few people will simply buy the chicken by itself. Instead, they’ll buy a tub of potato salad, some roasted corn, a can of green beans, and a gallon jug of sweet tea to go along with it. By selling that chicken at a slight loss, they were able to get the customer to buy all of those other things at a profit.
That being said, Valve has already stated that they’re not planning on having the Machine be a loss leader. Which is why people expect it to cost as much as a prebuilt with similar specs.
I doubt it. I think they understand that the hardware market is volatile and what might cost $800 now might be $1000 in a few months.
I suspect it’s because of the uncertainty over tariffs. Ironically making manufacturing in the US less appetising for businesses.
Anything more than $500 and we riot!
Get ready to riot because there’s no way it’s that cheap. My money is on $800-1000.
This is absolutely where it’s going to be.
If it is priced higher than $600 they won’t sell enough to justify their existence. It will just be a repeat of last time.
This is perfect for people wanting a new console with a large games library, but Valve seems to be trying to force the square block in the round hole by placing it in the PC market space.
Why? Look at how many people here say they want Steam OS, and Lemmy skews heavy toward Linux users. This is that, but OOTB.
I don’t think it’ll sell anywhere near as well as the Steam Deck, but it’s also a less exciting form factor. I do think it’ll sell a fair number of units though.
The cheapest equivalent prebuilt I can find with similar specs (RX 7600 is slightly better than the Steam Machine) is $850, and a DIY build is more like $900 (lots of corners cut), so there’s probably not much margin on the prebuilt. Valve is probably saving some cash with their custom CPU, and they’re probably shipping it with a Steam Controller, hence the $800 target. If component prices rise significantly before launch, I could see $1k.
It depends on how many Valve I’ve already manufactured. If they were smart they’ll be quietly manufacturing these and only just now announced it. You don’t announce a product until you’ve got some units sitting in a warehouse somewhere, or else a competitor might see the opportunity to make things difficult for you.
That’s a bad take. Look at PC prices. What equivalent PC could you build for $1000? This is going to be 800+ and still the best value in the PC market. Until they get steam OS on arm and you can put it in a 600 Mac mini.
An equivalent PC would have a full fat non-mobile graphics card. They keep trying to claim it’ll do 60 FPS at 4K with AI upscaling. Which is the same as saying it’ll do 60 FPS at 1080p.
This would be a compelling product as a console, the PC capable parts are a nice bonus but no one’s going to be buying this to be their primary computer unless they are going to replace a potato.
Regardless of what the market is doing if it’s anything more than $700 it’ll flop. Which would be an incredible shame but it is what it is. No one is going to pay $1,000 for a PC that cannot be upgraded.
I don’t think this is accurate. The majority of IRL gamers I know are casual people with crappy Minecraft-level pre-builts (hugely overpriced usually; I know someone who spent 1.1k on a 3060 Ti pre-built) or 10 year-old computers built by their neighbors. A lot of casual gamers exist and the steam machine will be very appealing to them as an easy upgrade.
In a way, you’re right. A lot of people will be upgrading potatoes. Or replacing thin air next to their TV’s.
Even I, with a custom built with a 7900 XT running openSUSE TW, am considering this for doing stuff in the living room (or similar, I live in a tiny apartment lol) with friends or just casual-TV gaming and media. I don’t have that right now, and even 900€ sounds appealing for doing that with a Linux-based computer (and gamescope!!!, which I can’t get working on my device) I have full control over, but know will work.
I don’t know of something equivalently priced, but it there is something, please tell me. I think they have a market here. I personally, at least, have been waiting years for something like this to recommend to friends and to an extent to myself.
Equivalent doesn’t mean much when it’s not a standard, upgradable PC. This device competes with consoles, not desktop PCs, and needs to be in that price bracket, as the equivalence is not on the hardware or performance, but just “can it play current-gen games?”
You’ll have to deal with a cult that will defend their lord Gabe’s every move.
It’s a good idea, tout the market before doing anything controversial
Prediction:
$999.99
If you go to CyberPower (nothing special about them, it’s just the first system integrator that popped into my head). You can find a prebuilt with a RX6700 (which is anywhere from 50 to 70 percent faster than the “custom” GPU on the Steam Machine*) for $1049. It would be monumentally stupid to price the cube anywhere near $1000.
*I’m using an RX7600M to estimate the performance for the Steam Machine since it has exactly the same specs.
Plus those Cyberpower PC’s have to factor in a Windows license into the cost.
Honestly, the Steam Machine needs to be less than $800 to be viable.
I just threw together a PC with an 8500g and a 7600 (not the mobile version) and it came to about $780 while being about 30% faster. I think $750 is the most the market would bear but, honestly, it should just be $650.
Edit: Oh shit, I forgot the US doesn’t include tax on their prices. Those $780 are converted from local currency and after taxes. Sales tax in Mexico is 16% so the real price would be around $673. I changed my mind, Valve would be delusional if they price this a cent above $650.
While I agree it is cheaper to build your own it also wont be as small as the Steam Machine.
It’s just that Valve has made a point that it will be priced like a PC, if it is priced like a PC then $650 is far too close to current console pricing. I want to be wrong here, I want it to be cheap and really push Linux into the mainstream. I’m just far too cynical and I expect it to be the most pointless product until proven otherwise.
$650 is far too close to current console pricing
I don’t think it is, though. $650 is 44% over the $450 MSRP of the PS5. If we look at “PC prices” (whatever they meant by that) the desktop I specced outperforms it by 30% to 50%. That puts the size tax for the Steam Machine at up to 45%, which would be hard to justify when laptops with 4050s are regularly on sale. Pricing it above $650 means you can go to BestBuy right now and get an HP Victus for $550 and have a spare $100 for a controller. Then you’ll have a PC that is faster, smaller and cheaper than a Steam Machine. This has to be under $700 to succeed. Although… Valve has been fostering a sort of Nintendo effect where they could price it at $5k and send you a dildo along with the PC so you can go fuck yourself and people would still buy it.
Fun fact: I was looking for laptops with a 7600M to get a more direct price to performance comparison but I wasn’t able to find a single one. Guess now we know what they mean by “semi-custom GPU”.
The Xbox Series X is $650 and the PS5 is $500.
The digital PS5 is $450 and the Xbox Series X has about 15% of the marketshare, proving people won’t stand for ridiculous prices.
I can build a mini PC for a lot less. Even with the joke retail RAM prices. I expect $650-800.
Also they buy parts in huge quantities, it’s not the price you pay for single part, with packaging and all.
I don’t think it’d be that high, retail prices on similar hardware to the specs is ~USD$700, including a (crappy) case and a (decent) PSU.
I think Valve could get it to $649 without subsidy.
Just due to not having pay as much for the parts, they’d be getting the cpu+gpu directly from AMD as ‘semi-custom’ parts, so there is no Distributor, wholesaler or retailer profits to bundle in, the GPU is on the main board too, so no extra AIB profits to worry about on the GPU.
DRAM will be a ‘fun’ one due to price fluctuations though.
Really depends on how much profit they want to make.
I went to PCPartPicker and tried to assemble a similarly spec’d PC, not with the absolute cheapest components, but definitely from the lower end sorted by price, it came out close to $800.
I guess if Valve can price it at that and be smaller it might have a market, but if much more than that people are better off just buying a PC.
P.S. Since Valve is not buying retail I think there is room for lower than that, and it’d definitely be welcome, but I’m not sure Valve will make that decision.
“better off just buying a PC”.
It is a PC.
2x8 GB RAM for 130 dollars? What the fuck? I knew theyve gotten more expensive recently but that stings.
PCPartPicker has a general price tracker where you can see how much RAM has spiked in such a short time. It really emphasizes how crazy things have gotten
In the past decade, PC hobbyists have been the victims of the latest group of regards “getting the bag”. Crypto 1.0, 2.0 and now AI. It’s the biggest fool theory doing its thing. I fucking hate tech bros and crypto bros. They are the huma race’s macro analogy for cancer cells.
“more expensive” really is underselling it. It’s out of control. Some kits have tripled.
Yep. Everthing has at least doubled in the past ~ two months, because Nvidia’s AI bubble must not be allowed to pop.
The 2x48GB kit (CMK96GX5M2B6000Z30) I bought in August for $300 is currently going for $1175, and it’s likely not getting better any time soon.
Brother it’s so bad. I’ve been trying to help a friend do one recently, or at least plan it, and I’ve watched my previously $85 2x16 sticks of GSkill DDR5 (like the cheapest option I had) shoot up to like $260 in under a month has been insane. It’s not even good ram…
I recently (a few months ago) built a new high-end server for my homelab, and bought 512GB of DDR4 ECC RAM for around $510. I just looked it up, and those exact same modules are around $2.5k to $3.5k for the same amount. That’s more than I paid for the entire machine.
A friend of mine just dropped $700 on 2x64Gb for his upcoming editing rig. Most expensive part of the build.
That’s insanity lol
In the same boat actually. Helping a friend with a build and RAM is ridiculous right now. crappy slower 2x16 kits costing $350 and far beyond. Their desired upper end CPU is less than most RAM kits. I was trying to find a middle ground for them with 2x24 but I can’t even find those kits anymore. Doesn’t help that these days 32 is recommended for some games, let alone aminimum for productivity software. I got lucky when I built. Prices were bad (~150 for 2x24!!) but shot up not even days after I built last month and my kit hasn’t even been in stock since I got it.
This bubble can’t burst soon enough…
I just checked how much my 4x32gb costs. Guys, I’m focking rich
Yeah, the AI (manufactured) hype has caused RAM prices to skyrocket thanks to them buying out ALL the fucking RAM for those servers.
That’s almost the Apple fee
My guess is that maybe Valve was able to get a bunch of RAM before the price hikes.
Most gamers don’t want to get involved with PC building and just want something as convenient as a console to play their Steam games with good performance on a big screen. This can be priced quite above what a nerd would be able to build by himself with PCPartPicker.
I’ve seen estimates put the materials cost somewhere around the $425 - 500 USD range because of the specific, semi-custom hardware that they’re using. It’s also good to note that Valve will be able to get a better deal than any of us will because they can get bulk discounts and aren’t buying each part at a market rate profit from retail vendors.
Some people seem to be of the mind that it will be somewhere around the $500 - 800 USD range if tariffs and the RAM situation don’t screw with the price, and that it will probably price out the Xbox with Microsoft’s 30% profit demand and be slightly more expensive than the PS5 while having comparable but not quite as much power.
It would cost me about a grand to make a pc that still not up to par with a ps5 where I live.
YouTube channel Moore’s law is dead priced it out at $425 including controller. For cost not price.
Smaller makes it more expensive. I hope it’ll be under $1000, but I think I wouldn’t be surprised if it were $1200.
