this post was submitted on 05 Mar 2026
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With Steam Machine being announced and price about to be released, new xbox is dead even before arrival. I will be totally bemused if gamers will chose new xbox/pc over Steam Machines.
With the inability to obtain hardware for new PCs and other computing devices (for reference see how hard it is to get a hold of a steam deck these days). I'm not sure if the steam machine is ever going to come to fruition while the AI boom continues to fuck up the market.
Yep, and I wager the steam machine is probably going to be, at minimum, 50% more expensive than valve planned it to be, which more than likely will kill it on arrival as far as price/performance goes.
Will there be die hards who buy it no matter the price? yeah.. but i wager it'll see a fraction of sales that the deck did, due to ram and storage price bullshit thanks to AI fucking everything up.
I will concede that it will be more expensive, but so will all computing devices. There will be some people who just can't afford it, but I don't think people will specifically avoid it due to price. Since a new computer will also have that same increase in price.
I can agree on AI being bullshit though.
The contracts for the Steam Machine were already locked in before RAM and GPU shortage even started, which means they will (like other consoles) be able to provide a reserved amount of devices at a fixed and lower price. But likewise, this also means that for any console that did not have contracts locked in before shit went down, will suffer massively from this. Thus looking at current prices for hardware isn't indicative of how much prices will rise. Steam Machine could be the most affordable gaming device of the next decade.
But Valve also isn't stupid. PC has the unique position where it has one of the longest backlogs of backwards compatible games and applications. Which means you don't need top of the line hardware. People are still gaming on 10 year old PCs, so the hardware for those will be much more affordable and still be able to play most games. Especially indie games with their insane price to performance to quality ratios. If top line gaming on PC becomes economically unviable, it will simply move down a notch.
Oh we do have a lot of Microsuckers in this world who will choose this over the Steam Machine because “It is well integrated into the system” bullshit.
"XBOX game pass is heaps better than Steam" - said no one ever
Better integrated than Steam? I'd be curious to hear how.
You think the average person will buy a more expensive box that doesn't play COD, FIFA, etc?
No prices for both new xbox and Steam Machines has been announced. How do you know which would be more expensive?
Because MS will throw any amount of losses at this to keep themselves in the game.
Plus making games deliberately incompatible with the GabeCube will be trivial if it comes to that.
Valve can throw a lot of resources behind what they're doing, but it's a drop in the ocean compared to what MS can spend. At the end of the day Valve can only really match current consumer pricing, and even with 16GB RAM and 8GB GPU, that isn't cheap.
If it's allowed to run Linux, it'll be better than the Steam Machine.
Microslop, for their faults, actually does get custom hardware from AMD - Valve uses repurposed parts which is much cheaper for their smaller runs.
I think it'll be fully locked down though, but if it's not - i'd wager it'll make a better Steam Machine than Steam Machine.
Probably not so much as "better" as it would be "almost as good for cheaper".
The bespoke AMD part is an exercise in cost management. iGPU is more affordable but usually pretty low end. The bespoke AMD solution is an iGPU bumped up to a nearly on par with a mid tier discrete GPU.
If released with same generation of tech, I would expect the steam machine to have higher performance but at a disproportional higher price.
Have they said they are ready to commit to a price somewhere? The timing of the steam machine and the ballooning price of disk space and RAM is comically tragic.
Not that I know of. They supposed to announce prices in the first quarter of 2026 but due to memory shortage they have postponed it. As for shipping, they have claimed that they are still planning to launch shipping by the end of first half of 2026. Price is estimated at $800-$1000. Shortage might increase it.