Valve's Steam Machine may be selling between 12,000 and 15,000 units per week despite its high price

[Aiodensghost]

Something I have seen from some people who have bought the steam machine inspite of it's price is that they want a Linux gaming machine but are afraid to have to touch the console and look up scripts. They essentially want Linux with official support and a seem less experience.

I've told people that this is fubar and you can just install Mint or Zorin on any machine, but I guess people are willing to pay a premium to escape windows. That, and afraid of touching computers. I had this 23 yr old kid at work pay me $80 to replace his 1050ti with a 9060. He bought the card but was just afraid to install it

Mint (and many if not all Debian based binaries) of Steam are currently broken. Never tried VR on Zorin, but due to the way I push my hardware Ive always needed something like CachyOS anyway. Most people now only keep a PC for gaming, anyway

 

[Squid Surprise]

Im not saying you can't build something cheaper, faster or both. What im saying is that you can't get a commercially viable product with a warranty and offical linux support for less. Everyone is showing plenty of great alternatives to the steam machine, but obviously people still want it and the reason they want it isn't just a performance thing.

You blasted another poster who stated you could by saying that they built it years ago (which he denied later) with different component pricing.

So now you’re changing your tune cause you’ve been proven wrong?

My argument is that you don’t need Linux support for gaming - nor should you want it!
You really want a system that can play all of your games - and the Steam Machine only plays your Steam games… and not as well as Windows… with some tinkering, you can get it to play a bunch more (but not as many as Windows) but with reduced frame rates…

Many purchasers were fooled by this as they saw it as a “console” comparable to the PS/Xbox where the games are exclusive.

I don’t recommend any console over a PC but - it’s undeniable that they are the only way to play certain games. The Steam Machine is not. And you’re overpaying for the privilege of owning it!

I dont understand the hate behind the steam machine. If you don't like it, dont buy it. It's perfectly okay if the steam machine doesn't make sense for you, but it does make sense for plenty of other people

Because this is a website that has a “comment” section… seeing a bunch of posts saying “this rocks” gets boring fast…

So it is not comparable... A 32GB DDR5 kit is also not $120 CAD.

Your build is cool but the issue is fitting a GPU in that form factor. If people do not mind a bigger box, sure go get it.

I am gaming on an similar system and do not have the urge to upgrade. If DDR prices come down, Steam Machine is top of my list to get.

Or if AMD gets Strix Halo 388 system down to SM prices, sure why not. (it is still slower)

Yeah - I pasted wrong thing… check my post under that… 5060 GPU can be had in a system cheaper than the steam machine…

 

[Evrsr]

Well it looks like camm2 might solve some of the LPDDR5 upgradability problems but I have a feeling that manufacturers like the non upgradablity of lpddr5. My biggest problem isn't so much upgradablity, its that memory issues are the most common hardware fault I encounter. It's impossible to diagnose and repair memory issues with lpddr5

You know how it goes today, if you think you'll have the device for 3y+, pay for the extra warranty or insurance.

I personally have had multiple laptops with soldered memory and zero issues after almost 10y. They also were passively cooled, so memory is always quite hot.

Only exception is a first gen ARM Chromebook that crashed if I let the CPU heat up to throttle temps. Downclocking some MHz from 75C it was always ok.

 

[yRaz]

You blasted another poster who stated you could by saying that they built it years ago (which he denied later) with different component pricing.

So now you’re changing your tune cause you’ve been proven wrong?

My argument is that you don’t need Linux support for gaming - nor should you want it!
You really want a system that can play all of your games - and the Steam Machine only plays your Steam games… and not as well as Windows… with some tinkering, you can get it to play a bunch more (but not as many as Windows) but with reduced frame rates…

Many purchasers were fooled by this as they saw it as a “console” comparable to the PS/Xbox where the games are exclusive.

I don’t recommend any console over a PC but - it’s undeniable that they are the only way to play certain games. The Steam Machine is not. And you’re overpaying for the privilege of owning it!

Because this is a website that has a “comment” section… seeing a bunch of posts saying “this rocks” gets boring fast…

When referring to price, a comparable product to the steam machine does not exist. Many people dont want to spend hours shopping, hours building and setting something up then maybe hours troubleshooting. Finally if something is wrong with it, there are 10 different parts with 10 different warranties and it's a hassle to go from the seller, get receipts and deal with manufacturer

I didn't say it was built years ago, I said it was built in a different market.

As far as the OS goes, people can decided what they want for what. Youre free to disagree with them, but its their hoice. People pay significantly more for similar specd apple devices.

I Just want to point out that almost 70% of gaming pcs sold today are pre-built. PC building is becoming a niche hobby.

Finally, people arent buying the steam machine for the performance, theyre paying for the ownership experience. Too much of this is just numbers on page, what long term ownership is like is different than just price and performance. There are people willing to risk that amount of money to have a different ownership experience. If there are 10s of thousands of these being sold. I find it quite odd that the only people with bad things to say about it dont own one

 

[Gezzer]

A trend I've noticed is that PCs are easier than ever to build and there are more people than ever afraid to touch them. Computer literacy seems to be dropping. They think swapping a GPU is hard? I can't imagine these guys in the age of adjusting jumpers on motherboards and drives. God forbid they have to read the manual!

The first system I had with a BIOS that used a text based interface and let me select a limited amount of configuration options was such a god send. It still had a large percentage of options using jumpers, but the few it did cover... yeah happy camper here.

 

[LordVile95]

Scalpers and fanboys.

Steamos in general is nearly unusable on the desktop and valve don’t move quick so a fix will take a while.

 

[cfenton]

What else is readily available of this size that has these GPU capabilities and is not just another low end APU?
I mean, Valve would happily have used a cut down Strix Halo if it was cheap.

I have yet to see an alternative other than "build your own with junk parts". People who think this is replaced by a big box are not getting the point.

I don't get the obsession with size. I have a mid-tower PC in my living room behind the TV. If I had a Steam Machine, it would also go behind the TV. Why does it need to be a small cube? I get why you wouldn't want a giant full size tower, but there are plenty of small cases that can still fit a full size GPU.

 

[yRaz]

I don't get the obsession with size. I have a mid-tower PC in my living room behind the TV. If I had a Steam Machine, it would also go behind the TV. Why does it need to be a small cube? I get why you wouldn't want a giant full size tower, but there are plenty of small cases that can still fit a full size GPU.

Not so much size, but design. I had to let my wife pick out a case before I was allowed to put an HTPC in the living room. I think the obsession is with interior design, not directly with size.

 

[yRaz]

Mint (and many if not all Debian based binaries) of Steam are currently broken. Never tried VR on Zorin, but due to the way I push my hardware Ive always needed something like CachyOS anyway. Most people now only keep a PC for gaming, anyway

Aside from what's in my server rack, I run Mint on every PC in my house and steam works on all of them. The 3070ti rig was tricky to setup but once it was setup I haven't had any issues with it.

 

[Interesting Ian]

A trend I've noticed is that PCs are easier than ever to build and there are more people than ever afraid to touch them. Computer literacy seems to be dropping. They think swapping a GPU is hard? I can't imagine these guys in the age of adjusting jumpers on motherboards and drives. God forbid they have to read the manual!

It is freaking hard. It's not like swapping RAM. I would never attempt it again myself. Vastly easier jus' paying someone who knows what they're doing.

 

[Squid Surprise]

When referring to price, a comparable product to the steam machine does not exist. Many people dont want to spend hours shopping, hours building and setting something up then maybe hours troubleshooting. Finally if something is wrong with it, there are 10 different parts with 10 different warranties and it's a hassle to go from the seller, get receipts and deal with manufacturer

You COULD get someone to build it for you - cost would probably be $100-200 premium - which would still be about the same price as the Steam Machine (and be better). You'd only have to deal with 1 person if anything went wrong that way

I didn't say it was built years ago, I said it was built in a different market.

You said "You built that at different time in different market." The assumption obviously being the past - when prices were lower...

As far as the OS goes, people can decided what they want for what. Youre free to disagree with them, but its their hoice. People pay significantly more for similar specd apple devices.

Yes - but your argument was people want something simple to deal with... SteamOS/Linux is clearly LESS simple to deal with than Windows... And Apple devices are always sold at a premium - and have no real relevance to this conversation.

I Just want to point out that almost 70% of gaming pcs sold today are pre-built. PC building is becoming a niche hobby.

Yes - so get someone to pre-build you something that performs on par/slightly better than a Steam Machine... you'll get a far more versatile machine for the same or less money...

Finally, people arent buying the steam machine for the performance, theyre paying for the ownership experience. Too much of this is just numbers on page, what long term ownership is like is different than just price and performance. There are people willing to risk that amount of money to have a different ownership experience. If there are 10s of thousands of these being sold. I find it quite odd that the only people with bad things to say about it dont own one

So why did you bother with all your previous arguments?!?!?
Again, my argument is that many of "those people" are being fooled into thinking the Steam Machine is some sort of exclusive console (like the PS/XBOX) and will be the only/best machine capable of playing their games...

This is clearly NOT TRUE, as even games that run natively in SteamOS run ALMOST as fast as they do in Windows...

 

[yRaz]

You COULD get someone to build it for you - cost would probably be $100-200 premium - which would still be about the same price as the Steam Machine (and be better). You'd only have to deal with 1 person if anything went wrong that way

You said "You built that at different time in different market." The assumption obviously being the past - when prices were lower...

Yes - but your argument was people want something simple to deal with... SteamOS/Linux is clearly LESS simple to deal with than Windows... And Apple devices are always sold at a premium - and have no real relevance to this conversation.

Yes - so get someone to pre-build you something that performs on par/slightly better than a Steam Machine... you'll get a far more versatile machine for the same or less money...

So why did you bother with all your previous arguments?!?!?
Again, my argument is that many of "those people" are being fooled into thinking the Steam Machine is some sort of exclusive console (like the PS/XBOX) and will be the only/best machine capable of playing their games...

This is clearly NOT TRUE, as even games that run natively in SteamOS run ALMOST as fast as they do in Windows...

My argument for the steam machine has and always will be that people aren't buying it for the performance, they're buying for the ownership experience. You said pay someone else to build it. Fine, but at that point you lose any savings which seems to be everyone elses argument and you still have to deal with several different warranties from several different companies. An officially supported Linux gaming machine doesn't exist.

For people like us, we are the warranty, we are the support. Many people are willing to pay a premium to not have to deal with that.

I like electronics so I don't mind browsing parts and doing builds and my wife likes gardening. I hate gardening and she doesn't care about electronics.

The going on about Linux. Windows is such a pain in the *** to deal with these days that you don't know how annoying it is until you're away from it for awhile and have to come back to it. I'm willing to play different games rather than have to deal with Microsoft's BS. You can only inconvenience people so much before they would rather choose to be inconvenienced in another way. That's what's going on with Linux adoption. People would rather be inconvenienced by the realistically minor issues that Linux has compared to MS. And as far as games that don't work, they almost uniformly use kernal level anticheat and I'm not giving some company that level of access to my computer ANYWAY. The games I don't want to use basically weed themselves out. That's not because they don't directly support Linux, it's that they want a level of access to my computer that I would not be willing to give them independent of what operating system I'm using.

Sure, there is windows 10 IOT, there is debloating W11 after every update, every update being a roll of the dice of something breaks, but at what point does that hassle become equal to or greater than what you'd have to deal with with Linux?

I also want to know where the shift that Valve is lying to customers about the steam machines compatibility. Maybe the 4k60 is a bit of a stretch, but it actually is perfectly capable of 4k60 if you aren't using Ray Tracing.

 

[OortCloud]

Somebody needs to make a similar mini itx case with a built in PSU and some hardware to allow starting from a controller and an LED bar. They'd clean up.

 

[Alpine7995]

Every prediction said this thing would flop because of the price, and yet it's outselling everything on Steam except CS2. Turns out people will pay a premium if it means never dealing with Windows update reboots mid-raid again.

 

[Squid Surprise]

Every prediction said this thing would flop because of the price, and yet it's outselling everything on Steam except CS2. Turns out people will pay a premium if it means never dealing with Windows update reboots mid-raid again.

We don't know if it's actually a success yet... and I highly doubt this has anything to do with Windows...

 

[BuckarooBonzaii]

Being this is their first one, there will be room for improvements once they get feed back from users. Like anything else the first gen models are the experimental ones. Will be interesting to see what comes out later.

 

[Vixiy]

Being this is their first one, there will be room for improvements once they get feed back from users. Like anything else the first gen models are the experimental ones. Will be interesting to see what comes out later.

It's the first one they've made themselves, but they've sold Steam Machines from third parties before.

 

[magisys]

A trend I've noticed is that PCs are easier than ever to build and there are more people than ever afraid to touch them. Computer literacy seems to be dropping. They think swapping a GPU is hard? I can't imagine these guys in the age of adjusting jumpers on motherboards and drives. God forbid they have to read the manual!

the general difficulty of build up a pc has not chaged much in the last 20 years. Jumpers on motherboard after the 2000s was a thing only for cmos purposes, on the drives they where optional in basic consumer builds everything was in standard configuration.

people nowadays tend to much more damage trying to build a pc than back in the days when the hardware was more resilient to simple errors, due to being less overspecced (less heat, less need to ridicoulous huge coolers and lots of fans) and prone to have critical design error like the 12pin pcie today.

 

[Vixiy]

the general difficulty of build up a pc has not chaged much in the last 20 years. Jumpers on motherboard after the 2000s was a thing only for cmos purposes, on the drives they where optional in basic consumer builds everything was in standard configuration.

people nowadays tend to much more damage trying to build a pc than back in the days when the hardware was more resilient to simple errors, due to being less overspecced (less heat, less need to ridicoulous huge coolers and lots of fans) and prone to have critical design error like the 12pin pcie today.

You generally don't have to worry about that for mid tier builds. Practically any low profile cooler handles a 65W CPU well. A 60-70 class card doesnt need to worry about the 12pin connector.

I had a 4060LP and 5700G in an itx case with poor airflow and had no problems.

 

[Evrsr]

I don't get the obsession with size. I have a mid-tower PC in my living room behind the TV. If I had a Steam Machine, it would also go behind the TV. Why does it need to be a small cube? I get why you wouldn't want a giant full size tower, but there are plenty of small cases that can still fit a full size GPU.

Because this one comes ready, you can put it beside the TV and need not to buy new furniture. No need to think about it to save $100 or $200.
Same reason people buy pre-builts.

You guys are getting crazy about prices for no reason. Just yesterday there was a new handheld Ryzen 388 released for $2500. The GPU is slower than SM.
The form factor, battery and screen do not add an extra $1500.

Unfortunately, it is like that now.

 

[Death420]

It is freaking hard. It's not like swapping RAM. I would never attempt it again myself. Vastly easier jus' paying someone who knows what they're doing.

It's really not. Everything is literally labeled and/or color coded. Back in the 90s/early 2000s, I might have agreed with you, but that simply isn't the case anymore.

 

[Death420]

Because this one comes ready, you can put it beside the TV and need not to buy new furniture. No need to think about it to save $100 or $200.
Same reason people buy pre-builts.

You guys are getting crazy about prices for no reason. Just yesterday there was a new handheld Ryzen 388 released for $2500. The GPU is slower than SM.
The form factor, battery and screen do not add an extra $1500.

Unfortunately, it is like that now.

Yeah, and anyone who spends that on that is a fool. Why would you ever overspend on such crap when you can build a better rig for far cheaper. And yes, it can even be done with the current market as long as you know where to shop. Otherwise, a fool and his money are soon parted.

 

[Death420]

My argument for the steam machine has and always will be that people aren't buying it for the performance, they're buying for the ownership experience. You said pay someone else to build it. Fine, but at that point you lose any savings which seems to be everyone elses argument and you still have to deal with several different warranties from several different companies. An officially supported Linux gaming machine doesn't exist.

For people like us, we are the warranty, we are the support. Many people are willing to pay a premium to not have to deal with that.

I like electronics so I don't mind browsing parts and doing builds and my wife likes gardening. I hate gardening and she doesn't care about electronics.

The going on about Linux. Windows is such a pain in the *** to deal with these days that you don't know how annoying it is until you're away from it for awhile and have to come back to it. I'm willing to play different games rather than have to deal with Microsoft's BS. You can only inconvenience people so much before they would rather choose to be inconvenienced in another way. That's what's going on with Linux adoption. People would rather be inconvenienced by the realistically minor issues that Linux has compared to MS. And as far as games that don't work, they almost uniformly use kernal level anticheat and I'm not giving some company that level of access to my computer ANYWAY. The games I don't want to use basically weed themselves out. That's not because they don't directly support Linux, it's that they want a level of access to my computer that I would not be willing to give them independent of what operating system I'm using.

Sure, there is windows 10 IOT, there is debloating W11 after every update, every update being a roll of the dice of something breaks, but at what point does that hassle become equal to or greater than what you'd have to deal with with Linux?

I also want to know where the shift that Valve is lying to customers about the steam machines compatibility. Maybe the 4k60 is a bit of a stretch, but it actually is perfectly capable of 4k60 if you aren't using Ray Tracing.

But when you can build a better rig for the same price, while having someone else build it for you, then you're just getting scammed by Gabe and asking for more.

 

[yRaz]

But when you can build a better rig for the same price, while having someone else build it for you, then you're just getting scammed by Gabe and asking for more.

The same argument could be made for literally every prebuilt PC. There are some that were built before the parts shortage that you can't get for a reasonable price, but the steam machine is no different than any other pre built in respect to price. It had garbage timing. What it is specifically about the SM that makes it different from other prebuilts?

 

[KennethL]

My argument is that you don’t need Linux support for gaming - nor should you want it!
You really want a system that can play all of your games - and the Steam Machine only plays your Steam games… and not as well as Windows… with some tinkering, you can get it to play a bunch more (but not as many as Windows) but with reduced frame rates…

If someone don't want a console and don't want to use Windows, why not use Linux?
It can play most of your games except for anti-cheat multiplayer games.
How many games do you need to play? If you are a competitive gamer I would not recommend switching to Linux but the Steam Machine isn't a PC for that. It's a couch gaming PC.

I use Linux, a 50% increase in frames on Windows wouldn't make me change to Windows.
I play games on Steam, GoG, Epic, Switch, Wii, WiiU, PS3 and repacks.