Get the wood and nails boys. Time to nail up another one.
GabeN:
a bit of film trivia: in a draft of the film idiocracy, the character frito was originally named dizz, and was described as a “mid-30s fatass”, but that changed to just “mid-30s” when dax shepard played him
“I can build a better PC For less money.”
How would you know? They literally haven’t announced a price, yet.
Probably won’t be cheaper than a PC. Otherwise people are just going to buy it just for cheap compute.
As long as it’s not sold at a loss, that’s not a problem for Valve.
And if they want to they can sell it like they did initially with the Steam Deck, one purchase per Steam account.I’ve heard this so many times. I don’t think so. It’s still going to be more expensive than a cheap corporate desktop that can’t play games, and it’s not going to be that good for compute compared to powerful datacenter hardware. I’m assuming some YouTube said this and everyone is repeating it, but I don’t think it makes sense. The comparison is always made the the PS3, but it’s a very different time and hardware is dramatically different.
It’s a safety bet that this will be true. It’ll be priced like a prebuilt PC which are always a little more expensive than building yourself
Lol prebuilts were actually cheaper when GPU prices skyrocketed and it may happen again thanks to RAM prices
Prebuilts are often cheaper due to the manufacturers selling bloatet crap as “preinstalled OEM Windows” where they get paid to include a bunch of unnecessary software into their images. That way, they can sell their PCs for cheaper while still making a profit.
So things you can easily remove by resetting Windows, ok got it.
Yes, that has been the conventional wisdom for the last 20 or so years.
They also get better parts prices than consumers if they buy bulk.
One thing to note is that the GPU that Valve is using is apparently a custom one that was created for a cancelled Microsoft project or something, and so Valve is probably getting a better deal on it than we ever could because they’re the only ones buying it off the manufacturer.
But regardless, anybody who is willing to build their own PC is not the target market for Valve. The target market is the other 80% of Steam users and potentially console players. A coworker of mine was just talking the other day about a friend of theirs who is replacing their PS4 because Sony is shutting down the PS4 servers, and they were telling them to wait and get the Steam Machine and get out from under Sony’s thumb.
I kinda think the controllers and size justify a slight premium over building as well though. At least in this stage (mid 40s) of my life.
I’m riding into my fifties - and given recent pricing ridiculousness with video cards and now ram, my desire to build my own is significantly less. No cost savings and then adding the time investment starts to become less attractive as years go by. I was looking forward in the next year or two to upgrade my circa 2020 build. I’ve held off due to abhorrent video card pricing - Love me some games but I’ve been playing more single player non-demanding games (metroidvania types).
There have been multiple points in history where stripping a pre-built for parts was cheaper than buying those parts individually. Honestly, that is probably the case more often than not because they get the parts cheaper.
Step 1: already have a better PC
I think everybody should be happy then. Imagine you have a good PC, then you don’t have to buy the steam machine and yet you can still buy your games on steam and use the steam controller on it.
Why are people upset?
“I can build a better computer for cheaper” great then just do it and be happy you’re not wasting money.
No one is forcing y’all to buy the steam machine.
And it’s that small and capable?
“Better” would imply those things yes
Nice! Do you have any specs or pictures? I’d be really interested.
I don’t think you’re their target group…
For real. I know for a fact that Valve can buy hardware for less than any of us can. Its just a question of how much markup they want to slap on this, but it could easily be cheaper than any of us could build an equivalent.
They just saw one of those predict (absolutely horrific because they don’t even count companies partnerships, prices being different for companies vs common folks etc etc)
What you are paying for is a standardised experience.
There is a reason people visit Rome or Vietnam and still go to McDonalds: predictable, reliable experience.
But I can build a hamburger at home for less money.
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In 3.7L?
Make your homemade PC fit inside the Steam Box profile, then tell me the price of ingredients
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QED steambox is the PC version of McDonald’s in Rome or Vietnam
Given what’s happening to memory and nand pricing it may never come out.
VALVE TIME
You’re not seeing the big picture. It’s not a box. It’s much more than that.
It’s a cube.
That’s a whole new dimension!
A Weighted Storage Cube, if you will. ( ͡~ ͜ʖ ͡°)
But can it provide emotional support as well?!
Bold of you to assume you can build an equivalent PC in terms of price/performance without knowing Steam Machine’s price. Good luck with RAM
There’s a lot of assumptions going around the internet as fact with valves new devices.
Something worth mentioning with RAM is that it’s still cheaper than a GPU. Prices are going to be double, perhaps triple what they were last year, but that’s £200 at the upper end. An upper end GPU is still over £1000.
Proportionally it’s awful, but I don’t have money proportionally. I’ll have £200 before I have £1000.
That said, I’m running the gtx 900 series and 16GB DDR3 RAM happily because I don’t really play new games, so it’s not my fight.
Depends what you mean by “upper end”, but already 64GB is running for over $600. And it’s almost certainly going to get worse. I wouldn’t be stunned if 32GB tops out at close to $1000 next year.
I’m not sure what your point is here exactly, but for one, you’re underestimating the new prices for upper end DDR5 RAM severely; and secondly guess what GPUs come with a bunch of?
cocaine and sex workers?
They should for the prices they’re charging
Valve already announced it will be priced similarly to a PC you build yourself.
Good luck with RAM
RAM costs will likely affect both custom built machines and the steam machine equally.
specs wise yes but you will not build a PC in the same form factor for anywhere near that price.
Yeah, the form factor, HDMI-CEC support, and integration with other valve hardware are what really sell it. But it’s not going to be underpriced for the specs, like consoles tend to be.
Plus the economy of efficiencies, steam will fix issues that cause frustration on their known setup of hardware as it is known parts and a larger audience
Building your own pc is great, but the variation in performance makes for a mixed bag of experience playing the same game on different setups (different GPU, drivers etc etc)
Plus the economy of efficiencies, steam will fix issues that cause frustration on their known setup of hardware as it is known parts and a larger audience
This is the really compelling bit to me!
It’s like an invitation to enjoy all the perks of being a PC gamer, without all the hard work.
95% of the time when my best friend and I want to play together (and that’s 3-4 times a year these days with him having a family and my starting one), we end up trouble shooting for a decent portion of our gaming time.
I’m not going to fool myself into the steam box never having any issues, as I am truly cursed (so much so that we even have unique problems with our decks), but taking Microsoft issues out of the picture would probably reduce our tech fixing instances by half.
He has the money for a full gaming rig, I don’t have the means to get one going (believe me I used to, but I don’t any more), this has already been agreed on to be a day 1 purchase in my household, and the wife gets full custody of her monster train 2 machine (“my” deck)
The general point is that a closed proprietary system is seldom a better option than an open non-proprietary one.
Yeah, sure, “It’s Steam” and “Gary is a good guy” (so supposedly was “Elon” about a decade ago, by the way), but Gary might have a heart attack and die tomorrow (nothing personal, Gary, I can happen to any of us) and then those with the closed proprietary system are way more likely to end up shafted by Steam’s new “enshittification is the future” MBA management than those with the open non-proprietary one.
Ultimatelly it all depends on just how easy it is to wipeout the OS in a Steam Box and get a new one in.
The people who would wipe and install an OS really aren’t the target market.
If you ever want to see the concept of “survivor bias” in action, watch PC Master Race dudes try and explain why you don’t need a Steam Box.
I don’t get it. We don’t know how much it will cost so how could anyone claim they can build one cheaper? Have you seen the cost of memory lately?
it has some unique console features, such as size (you can build one that size but it’ll be pricier for the same specs, see linus’s monstrosity), CEC support, and a dedicated internal antenna for lower latency wireless controller support
the pre-built market is still huge actually and this will be a pretty reasonable prebuilt for the majority of households
“Its got what gamers need…”
is that not gamer supps?
I was so up for getting one until I heard the strategy on pricing, now I’m thoroughly disinterested.
