- cross-posted to:
- pcmasterrace@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- pcmasterrace@lemmy.world
It is a bigger, don’t have the Steam Controller dongle integrated, and you need to manually install SteamOS on it.
But you get a machine that can be upgraded way more easily than the Steam Machine, and a better GPU from the start.
Valve explicitly said it is to be considered as a PC, focussed on playing game, not a console. Thus a PC price point, not sold at loss.
Their word, not mine.
what they said doesn’t change what the thing is
Them comparing it to a PC is an endorsement and a marketing tactic to promote the usual good aspects of a PC of their new hardware
You can’t tell me you actually believe that thing to be more a PC than a console when it comes to the use case…
lmao what
Of course it does. This is a PC being marketed as a PC. Just like with the Steam Deck, Valve was explicit about “it’s a PC too!”
It’s a PC with the convenience of a console. But it’s still a PC, and it has to be measured up to one.
I can definitely say that if a person lives within reasonable distance of a Microcenter, there is zero reason to get a Steam Machine - just get one of their in house powerspec prebuilts. You can take it to the microcenter if you need tech support you can’t handle on your own, you’ll get way more bang for your buck and you can still put SteamOS on it. Obviously most people don’t live near a microcenter and their options for a quality prebuilt are tougher.
But I still have trouble seeing this as being worth it unless you’ll be using it as a PC. You can get a refurbished Xbox Series S for like $325 and it’ll play all the low-demand games just fine and it has Netflix and all your entertainment apps available to use it as a TV machine too.
The Steam Machine’s value proposition exists solely if it’ll also be used as a PC and not just a “steam console,” but that then also brings it up against all PCs. And it’s way, way too expensive there. Not all prebuilts are a Dell.
The definition of what is or is not depends a lot on the person.
In my case it is pretty simple: Can I plug a keyboard and do spreadsheets on that fucker? Yes. Then that’s a PC. As soon as you can do more than play games and watch movies on it, it stop being a console.
Precisely what I described…except instead of my 2 examples, it’s the versatily of it that knocks it up a weight bracket where it can’t compete.