I dont think its a good value even at the originally desired price.
They hold back the hardware significantly for thermals and to stay within the paltry power supplies 300w limit, and uses FSR to pick up the slack. This is not a steam machine, its an FSR machine. Its basically a updated non-portable steamdeck.
And that was fine for a steamdeck. People accept limitations and concessions for a battery powered handheld, but if these concessions get accepted for a desktop PC, its just going to ultimately be another thing that damages PC gaming.
I said during the shortages that every idiot and their mother paying 2000 dollars for shitty scalped cards was going to show nvidia/amd how stupid consumers are and its gonna lead to skyrocketing prices… and thats exactly what happened. nvidia and AMD both doubled their prices as soon as stock stabilized… and as expected, idiots kept buying them in droves, driving prices higher. scalping them for even higher.
Letting the steam machine prove to developers that FSR is acceptable even for 1080p is just gonna lead to shittier games, that play worse, and even at 1080p wont be usable without resolution scaling. . . Which is bullshit. We’re at the point in time now where native 1080p gaming should be crushed by almost any modern card, but as FSR/DLSS becomes more popular, that crutch is going to become increasingly used to avoid optimization and efficiency.
I certainly think it was a good value for someone who has neither the time nor the expertise to price out individual components and build their own machine.
I don’t know about the calculus for all of that now, because I haven’t been looking around at components. But I imagine it still within the ballpark of value for people who don’t want to go through all of that or simply don’t have the know how.
Yeah, not everyone wants to build their own PC, and thats fine. But for a couple hundred extra, you could get a prebuilt system thats a better performing machine, is more servicable, and more easily repaired, and better upgradability.
And I don’t feel bad, in this case, saying that spending a couple hundred would get you an infinitely superior product here, because we’re not talking about limited budgets/best bang for buck builds here. We’re talking about a luxury good thats rather form over function.
Ultimately, Its up to you if you want to buy it or not, and I’m not going to give you shit if you do choose to buy it. Just do your research, and understand what you’re getting… because a lot of people think they are gonna be getting an amazing gaming machine, and they really arent, they are getting slightly more powerful steam deck, thats permanently attached to a TV, that wont run most 3d games well without using FSR even at 1080p, especially above 1080p where it probably becomes mandatory… cause the numbers I’ve seen, for native 1080p gaming on the steam machine, have been decidedly not impressive for a 700 dollar machine it was meant to be, much less the 1050 dollar machine it is.
it would be just as plug and play as any other computer.
Theres nothing magical about the steam machine, it will go through the same plugging in, the same first time startup setup, that any other computer will go through.
It has a way faster first startup setup than windows and you don’t need to make a bootable USB with linux if you want linux (cuz 99% of pre-build companies have no linux option) no sheningans to uninstall bloatware like in windoes (since it doesn’t exist) and setup steam to open on boot
And after the setup, you just turn on the steam machine (which you can do from the controller which will also wake up the TV using CEC) and it will have big picture steam and you can just press play on your game or instead get out of steam
On a normal computer you have to turn it on with the button on the case, turn on the TV, find the remote of the TV, change the input to HDMI, hope that the BT controller automatically pairs, pull out a keyboard and mouse because you will need it on a normal PC for doing somethings, open the game
I dont think its a good value even at the originally desired price.
They hold back the hardware significantly for thermals and to stay within the paltry power supplies 300w limit, and uses FSR to pick up the slack. This is not a steam machine, its an FSR machine. Its basically a updated non-portable steamdeck.
And that was fine for a steamdeck. People accept limitations and concessions for a battery powered handheld, but if these concessions get accepted for a desktop PC, its just going to ultimately be another thing that damages PC gaming.
I said during the shortages that every idiot and their mother paying 2000 dollars for shitty scalped cards was going to show nvidia/amd how stupid consumers are and its gonna lead to skyrocketing prices… and thats exactly what happened. nvidia and AMD both doubled their prices as soon as stock stabilized… and as expected, idiots kept buying them in droves, driving prices higher. scalping them for even higher.
Letting the steam machine prove to developers that FSR is acceptable even for 1080p is just gonna lead to shittier games, that play worse, and even at 1080p wont be usable without resolution scaling. . . Which is bullshit. We’re at the point in time now where native 1080p gaming should be crushed by almost any modern card, but as FSR/DLSS becomes more popular, that crutch is going to become increasingly used to avoid optimization and efficiency.
I certainly think it was a good value for someone who has neither the time nor the expertise to price out individual components and build their own machine.
I don’t know about the calculus for all of that now, because I haven’t been looking around at components. But I imagine it still within the ballpark of value for people who don’t want to go through all of that or simply don’t have the know how.
Yeah, not everyone wants to build their own PC, and thats fine. But for a couple hundred extra, you could get a prebuilt system thats a better performing machine, is more servicable, and more easily repaired, and better upgradability.
And I don’t feel bad, in this case, saying that spending a couple hundred would get you an infinitely superior product here, because we’re not talking about limited budgets/best bang for buck builds here. We’re talking about a luxury good thats rather form over function.
Ultimately, Its up to you if you want to buy it or not, and I’m not going to give you shit if you do choose to buy it. Just do your research, and understand what you’re getting… because a lot of people think they are gonna be getting an amazing gaming machine, and they really arent, they are getting slightly more powerful steam deck, thats permanently attached to a TV, that wont run most 3d games well without using FSR even at 1080p, especially above 1080p where it probably becomes mandatory… cause the numbers I’ve seen, for native 1080p gaming on the steam machine, have been decidedly not impressive for a 700 dollar machine it was meant to be, much less the 1050 dollar machine it is.
You wouldn’t get a plug and play effiecent build that isn’t ugly asf in your living room tho
You can make an ITX but their prices scale up way faster than ATX
it would be just as plug and play as any other computer.
Theres nothing magical about the steam machine, it will go through the same plugging in, the same first time startup setup, that any other computer will go through.
It has a way faster first startup setup than windows and you don’t need to make a bootable USB with linux if you want linux (cuz 99% of pre-build companies have no linux option) no sheningans to uninstall bloatware like in windoes (since it doesn’t exist) and setup steam to open on boot
And after the setup, you just turn on the steam machine (which you can do from the controller which will also wake up the TV using CEC) and it will have big picture steam and you can just press play on your game or instead get out of steam
On a normal computer you have to turn it on with the button on the case, turn on the TV, find the remote of the TV, change the input to HDMI, hope that the BT controller automatically pairs, pull out a keyboard and mouse because you will need it on a normal PC for doing somethings, open the game
k