what they said doesn’t change what the thing is

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.