–Apologies for shitty thumbnail–
Looks like some kind of review embargo has been released, ETA Prime’s apparently been sitting on a review model Steam Machine for a month.
YT url once more:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=cF6eAM3jhCY
EDIT:
Oh holy shit, we also apparently have prices and a wait list sign up that… apparently closes on June 25th, 10am Pacific time.
https://store.steampowered.com/sale/steammachine
Variant / Price:
512 GB / $1049.00
512 GB + Controller / $1,128.00
2TB / $1349.00
2 TB + Controller / $1,428.00
EDIT 2:
This is all on the same day that we get news that… AMD figured out how to make FSR4 work on RDNA 3 / 7000 series GPUs, and, Steam is currently or just about to push a beta Proton update to Experimental, which will give this thing (as well as any PC w/ AMD 7000 series GPU) FSR4 support for basically any game that currently supports FSR3.
https://www.theverge.com/news/953664/amd-fsr-4-1-upscaling-rx-7000-series-gpus-rdna-3
https://www.eurogamer.net/steam-machine-fsr-4-upscaling-confirmed
So… that’s a lot of news.
I think I’m in. It’s expensive but I want an htpc/gaming machine in my Mancave. I don’t know how anyone could have expected $600 price tags in this crap ai fueled market.
Not in the market, but the prices could’ve been a lot worse. Lottery wait list is also good news after the clusterfuck of the controller launch.
Hope I can snag a Frame, because I’ve literally been waiting since the Oculus 1 for this kind of VR headset.
Yeah, I’m guessing they’re also uh, in addition to the lottery, going to be attempting some backend strategy to attempt to weed out likely ‘this is a fake account for resellers’.
I’ve been saying since the beginning of the RAM crisis that there was no way this was going to be under $999 since Valve wasn’t willing to make it a loss leader. Oh, the sweet validation. And more importantly: fuck AI. I’ll see you all when the Steam Frame is +$1,499 USD.
Wasn’t willing to be a lost leader
It’s literally a PC. IT departments all over the world would have absolutely no problem taking this hardware, and using it for their open office hell. Steam would get absolutely zero dollars. Steam needs the hardware to stand on its own
I’m not faulting them (look at what happened with the PS3), but it was still a point towards its price being higher than the folks that thought it’d be priced closer to a PS5 or Xbox Series.
US military bulking buying the PS3 🤣
Yep.
I was initially hopeful that this thing might be surprisingly affordable, due to… basicslly the theory/rumor is that the ‘semi custom’ apu was initially intended to be used in a planned but cancelled Windows tablet/Surface kind of thing…
But yeah, then, tariffs, rampocalypse, strait’s closed due to raids = shipping costs go up bigly.
I’m pretty sure the way Valve does their internal finances is that that 30% cut of all games?
Sure some of it goes toward Steam server costs, but I think most of it just goes into a giant war chest fund, from which they ‘experiment’, with things like this.
Makes sense to me that they at least want to break even… business wise, that works if it makes more people use Steam and/or increases their reputation as actually innovating in some way.
But being a loss leader would simply be too dangerous, too risky. They are small fries compared to the major console/pc hw manufacturers, and I am very sure the last thing they would ever want to do is owe some outside actor a lot of money.
Valve may reach 10b annually with their hardware expansion releasing good products.
The performance benchmarks will be the best determining factor of buying or not.
Gamers Nexus has a whole thurough benchmark video out.
TLDW; the Steam Machine is very expensive for what it can do. Unfortunately that’s just reality because the components cost about as much today…
Its actually not that expensive, for what it can do, and that’s from the Steve directly, in that video.
He does a price comparison to nearest equivalent parts you can actually currently buy for a DIY PC.
He ends up with $979 for the DIY vs $1050 for the 512gb Steam Machine, a 7% difference.
There are currently, right now, many, many prebuilt PCs that cost this amount or more, with worse hardware.
… and also, this video here, from ETA Prime,.that I linked, that is this post, that apparently no one is actually watching, is also full of game test benchmarks, though not as much crazy specific technical.shit as Steve gets into.
It outperforms a PS5 Pro on say, RDR2.
1440p, high/ultra settings, no fsr upscaling, gets ~75 fps in complex/open areas, significantly better inside of rooms/houses/buildings.
And, as stated in the main post body… the Steam Machine is going to support FSR4 upscaling either on launch or very soon afterward, so you could use that, not lose much graphical fidelity, and get more frames.
A PS5 Pro cannot run RDR2 at a stable 60 fps, at 1440p.
It has to be locked to 30 fps to run 4K, which it does via upscaling, and a checkerboard rendering technique, which makes it not actually the same 4K as a PC would render, but w/e.
To get 60fps, it has to be locked at basically 1080p, though I think technically it is doing dynamic resolution scaling, so maybe effectively a slightly higher average resolution than that, maybe 1/4 or 1/2 way to 1440p.
A PS5 Pro costs $900.
If you think a PS6 is going to cost less than a PS5 Pro, you are wrong.
So how do we feel about these prices?
I feel like it’s gonna sell out either way. Not interested, myself. I’m waiting to see the price of the frame, though, to decide whether I get that or the pimax crystal light.
We feel that they are happy they already have a gaming rig.
RIP to anyone who bought a home after 2019 and anyone who bought anything gaming after Rampocalypse
Gaming was unaffordable before the end of 2020 but it got real bad after the rampocalypse.
I am totally open to other people having different stances, but at least for myself, worth it.
I already have an OLED Deck with a 1 TB drive… lost my old pc in lets summarily call it a series of unforunate events, been daily driving the Deck with a dock thingy and M+KB as my main PC for a few years now.
So, I can get the 512 GB + controller bundle, and just swap the drives, reflash em with appropriate OS.
$1128 for a ‘pc’ that can run RDR2 and Cyberpunk 77 at pretty darn good graphical settings, at 1440p, at or over 60 fps average? And fancy pantsy controller?
Good enough, my eyes are starting to go a bit anyways lol, 4K is very likely wasted on me, and I’d love to have a Steam Deck that’s basically easier to hold and lighter, as a control option.
That’d be a steal, imo, looking at it in PC pricing terms… which is the way I’m looking at it, because that’s the way I’ll mostly be using it.
Also I can dress it up as a companion cube.
Ratman loves companion cube, cannot stop testing, needs to keep testing.
They are exactly what I originally thought, 1-1.5 and and I kind of don’t really know how you couldn’t see this coming. I think it’s fair given the external factors. It’s a pre built so add 20% to the “parts list” and you get cool features.
For reference I currently run bazzite on a 6700k/2080 ti and also have a steam deck.
I don’t think it’s bad for what they are specs wise, with the current distorted components market. I do think however that the price is higher than what the target audience will be willing/able to afford to pay which is a shame.
It won’t do as well as it should have; I hope that doesn’t put valve off the concept. The idea is right, it was just very bad timing for this particular launch.
Let’s wait to see the perfs? From my understanding of the specs I don’t regret building my new pc earlier this year.
… watch the video.
The majority of it literally is performance testing of various games.
