This is Why You Won't Buy a Steam Machine in 2026

[Theinsanegamer]

I won't buy it because a PC is still the cheapest device to play on in 2026.

Recent price hike. Of course they will pay, or pay triple for ram and ssd for PC.
We are in a place where we can either refuse to continue our hobby or pay

OOOOOOOOOR you just wait for the prices to come back down. Y'all act like this doesnt happen all the time.

This is completely out of touch with the way the market is now, any decent PC capable of playing games starts around $900-1000.

The storage and RAM in the Steam Machine would be over $300-400 alone for 16GB RAM and a 1TB SSD, hardware would have to be sold at a complete loss. Sony and Microsoft can sell consoles at a loss to some extent from subscription services, Valve can't.

Markets change, the steam machine has been planned for awhile now. And its using hardware that was so boring and poor when new that nobody wanted it. The 7600m was a complete failure of a laptop GPU.

 

[orbital71]

Still rocking a pc 486 monkey island is unreal!

 

[pcnthuziast]

Been saying since the first announcement, this thing is dead in the water.

 

[Stoly]

Too little, too late, too expensive.

 

[Rapob]

Holy $#!+, a PS5 Pro is $900?!? And people actually pay that much for a console?

Yes, and many of us also pay 500 for a CPU, 1000-2000 for a GPU etc.

This is 2026 not 1996. PS3 launched in 2006 for 600 dollars that is about 1000 dollars in todays money. What is the difference?

Nintendo SNES games were like 100-150 dollars in todays money.

If I wanted a PS5 I would only look at the Pro version but this is a pretty mediocre generation so I don't need one. I don't really buy a console unless it has great exclusives.

 

[Achaios]

This is completely out of touch with the way the market is now, any decent PC capable of playing games starts around $900-1000.

You are the one who's completely out of touch with the market.

I can build a decent PC capable of "playing games" with maybe $300. It won't play "Indiana Jones and Ray Tracing" and the like but you will be able to play 3 decades of PC games on that system, more games than any employed (or married) guy should have time for.

4790K: $50
Z87 high end motherboard: $50
GTX 1080: $100
PSU: $60
Case: $30
============================
$290

16GB of DDR-3 2400 MHz costs $50, 32GB of DDR-3 2400 MHz costs $80.

Yeah, you were sayin'?

 

[Hecate91]

You are the one who's completely out of touch with the market.

I can build a decent PC capable of "playing games" with maybe $300. It won't play "Indiana Jones and Ray Tracing" and the like but you will be able to play 3 decades of PC games on that system, more games than any employed (or married) guy should have time for.

4790K: $50
Z87 high end motherboard: $50
GTX 1080: $100
PSU: $60
Case: $30
============================
$290

16GB of DDR-3 2400 MHz costs $50, 32GB of DDR-3 2400 MHz costs $80.

Yeah, you were sayin'?

I don't mind re-using old systems or piecing together an old office system into a gaming PC, but that's missing the point entirely. Sure it would technically be capable of playing games, so would any old PC running an emulator.
However I think the PC gaming market is in a very sad state when settling for a system with an 11 year old CPU that isn't supported in Windows 11, and a 10 year old graphics card that no longer receives driver updates would be over $300 with RAM and an OS installed.
A majority of people aren't going to mess around with an old PC and go through the effort of workarounds to get W11 installed, and an emulator with games installed.
The purpose of the Steam Machine is a system that can already run Steam games you own, sure it doesn't have a 9800X3D and an RTX 5090, but according to the Steam Hardware Survey, the hardware it has is as good or better than what most users have. Sadly the RAMpocalypse has ruined any chance of a first party Valve SteamOS powered desktop PC getting any traction in the market vs. Windows PC's.

 

[Mongo56]

I don't mind re-using old systems or piecing together an old office system into a gaming PC, but that's missing the point entirely. Sure it would technically be capable of playing games, so would any old PC running an emulator.
However I think the PC gaming market is in a very sad state when settling for a system with an 11 year old CPU that isn't supported in Windows 11, and a 10 year old graphics card that no longer receives driver updates would be over $300 with RAM and an OS installed.
A majority of people aren't going to mess around with an old PC and go through the effort of workarounds to get W11 installed, and an emulator with games installed.
The purpose of the Steam Machine is a system that can already run Steam games you own, sure it doesn't have a 9800X3D and an RTX 5090, but according to the Steam Hardware Survey, the hardware it has is as good or better than what most users have. Sadly the RAMpocalypse has ruined any chance of a first party Valve SteamOS powered desktop PC getting any traction in the market vs. Windows PC's.

And you can bet Valve based the Steam Machine specs on the Steam survey. They didn't just pick these components out of thin air.

 

[Vixiy]

This is completely out of touch with the way the market is now, any decent PC capable of playing games starts around $900-1000.

The storage and RAM in the Steam Machine would be over $300-400 alone for 16GB RAM and a 1TB SSD, hardware would have to be sold at a complete loss. Sony and Microsoft can sell consoles at a loss to some extent from subscription services, Valve can't.

Valve can recoup the loss from game sales.
Though I wonder how much people buying a budget build actually spend on games. If it's a budget build with 3yo parts it could become dated as newer games come out.

Maybe Valve should revise the specs a bit and sell something with RDNA4 at a loss.

 

[Gezzer]

Does Valve have to make a profit on the Steam Machine? It all depends on what their long term goal is I guess. They already make a ton of money off the Steam platform. It's why so many other companies/publishers keep copying them. So while selling at a loss would hurt their bottom line, the big question is by how much. And if their long term goal is to move people from other platforms to a Linux based OS running Steam, losing on initial hardware sales might be a valid strategy IMHO.

 

[tonylukac]

Tariffs, huh?