I got a place on the 512GB with Controller list, and got an email a few days after they started. I ordered it on Friday the 3rd and got it today on Thursday the 9th. The tracking codes were all over the place and gave different estimates depending which branch of each company I used. Steam claimed it was shipped when the courier said they hadn’t got it so I was worried for a few days. But this morning Royal Mail (UK customer) sent me an email saying it would arrive today, while GLS said it would arrive tomorrow.
Safe to say I’m happy to have it now and be playing games!
However, you can build a pc with what the steam machine costs, and the steam machine is not that much smaller than an itx pc. So yeah, I think they can be compared.
The PC won’t be the same size. Or have CEC.
Side note: Seriously how the fuck do normal ass PCs not support CEC?
Not having cec control is such a minor inconvenience that I honestly don’t even care. Regarding size, between tiny, unfixable and unupgradeable and small but fixable and upgradeable, the choice is pretty simple. Heck, the steam machine is not even better value than a similarly priced pc. It performs worse. Hopefully v2 will be better, if there is one.
“Not that much smaller” is doing some heavy lifting. Every SFF build or mini PC compromises something, price, size, thermal performance, whatever. Physics necessitates it. It’s perfectly fine for you to not value size so much that a 3.8L case isn’t compelling to you over let’s say a 6L ITX case (or the 8L you really need for a discrete GPU), but it’s also okay to feel the opposite.
Except that it’s not just that. You build something larger but still pretty small and you can upgrade whatever you want, whenever you want. You can also have the same software experience by just installing bazzite. What valve has done for linux gaming is wonderful, but the steam machine simply does not make sense.
I think you’re just not seeing outside the bubble of the use cases that make sense to you. I already have great daily driver PCs currently running a mix of Bazzite and CachyOS (and Windows, ew), and I have built a couple SFF PCs before, so I’m no stranger to all of that. I can’t speak for anyone else here, but part of why I find the Steam Machine compelling is it covering the opposite end of that spectrum to a degree other SFF options haven’t reached.
If you already have a gaming pc then this makes even less sense. Just stream the games to your tv using a laptop. Or even better, a steam deck. See that is a device that justifies its compromises by offering an actually unique form factor that lets you game on the go. The “form factor” of the steam machine is “itx but smaller, impossible to repair and just as expensive”. Yeah, no thanks.
Well, I never claimed it filled a necessary niche. It’s a luxury good by definition. I just don’t mind having multiple options, redundancy, and overlap in hardware roles even if that means some of it gets underutilized. That said, I’m not planning to keep the thing under the TV indefinitely. It’s going to justify its standalone performance at least occasionally.