One STEAM to rule them all - Steam Machine and Frame thread

[Mat]

Calling it now:
2027: STEAM PHONE!

...nah, probably not, but would be interesting.

[KlaxonCow]

Regards pricing, apparently Valve are being vague because, with RAM prices doubling lately and Trump's tariffs, they say they honestly don't know.

But it might not be as nice as we'd like, at least for the Steam Machine, as they suggested "entry level PC" rather than console prices. I mean, what exactly that means remains vague, but if they're rejecting "console price" and suggesting "entry level PC" instead, that feels like "expectation management" that this is NOT going to be less than a PS5 or X-box. But also "entry level PC" doesn't sound like it's silly money either.

So maybe expectation management to expect "cheap, but not console cheap" - that they're not going to subsidise it at a loss like most consoles do?

But, indeed, maybe Valve are genuine that they really don't know this far out, as the economy's all over the bloody place right now.

[MattyP]

Re pricing hoping it comes in at around the £500 mark (preferably less!). However also willing to dig a bit deeper to support this. Its my perfect under the TV gaming solution TBH. Shame we had to wait so long for an official Valve SteamMachine. This announcement is the best gaming news this year for me! Exciting times!

[KlaxonCow]

You've gotta love DBrand. They've already designed a companion cube shell for the Steam Machine, ready to go for release.



And, in other news, PC Gamer got Valve to confirm-in-passing what we really want to know, whether the generic "SteamOS" release is coming:

https://www.pcgamer.com/hardware/gaming ... -desktops/

Valve believes its new Steam Machine could open up a whole new world of SteamOS desktops: 'Put it on, say, something that's running an RX 9070 XT, you would be good to go'
[...]
"We're always adding new stuff. And so if you would take that, that same OS, and put it on, say, something that's running a 9070 XT, you would be good to go."

Valve sees the current and future Steam Machine family as a broad church.

"There's a lot of people who build their own Steam Machines right now," Aldehayyat says. "They build their own PC rig, put SteamOS on it, or the Steam Deck recovery image, or they use their Steam deck docked primarily to their TV."

"That's the part that we're excited about," Griffais says. "I think folks will have all kinds of different machines, some hand builds, some OEMs will come. I mean there's, there's a lot of interesting machines out there. I know the Framework guys are doing something that's cool too that could be a good fit for it."

I mean, truth is, it does already exist in Bazzite that has already married the SteamOS recovery image with a generic Linux kernel that has the full hardware support, and they've even got "Waydroid" for running Android apps.

But it'd be good to have Valve's official generic SteamOS release - and from the sounds of what Valve are saying, the delay is just that they're not happy with the Intel and nVidia drivers. That is, they do work - I'm playing my "Steam on Linux" games with an RTX 4070 laptop GPU and I can render in Blender just fine, and Bazzite also has nVidia and Intel drivers - but, from the sounds of things, Valve want there to be full support and parity before they release officially. But, unofficially, they're happy as Larry that folks are tinkering and using Bazzite to stick "SteamOS" on their chosen hardware.

But this is the crucial point. I hope these hardware products are good and priced nicely, but they are ephemeral in the grand scheme of a "SteamOS"-based ecosystem, with PC builders and third parties making "Steam Machines" based on a generic SteamOS release. Like, that's the thing that's going to change the game and be the legacy of the future, when we've all long forgotten about "Steam Machine 1" and "Steam Frame 1".

[KlaxonCow]

Its my perfect under the TV gaming solution TBH.

Worth also remembering that, under it all, this is basically a Linux PC box. So you can do things that, like, consoles and such would never allow.

So, as well as everything the Steam Machine itself will bring, there's also the possibility of installing packages on the Linux side to make it a media streaming PC, add it as a "non-Steam game" for access in SteamOS and then it can also be a media centre PC, as well as a gaming box.

Or set up some retro gaming emulators and then play MAME and old classics on your big screen, with a Steam controller, from the sofa.

It's not just what Valve brings to the table, but also what's available in the wider Linux community as well.

[venusian]

The Steam Machine specs aren't a million miles away from this Geekom mini PC based around a Strix Halo 370. It's on sale now for £999 (down from £1299). Valve have some volume, but they not going to be able to churn them out for anything like half the price Geekom do. IMO, obvs.

https://www.geekom.co.uk/geekom-a9-max-mini-pc

[Mat]

I hope this finally forces GOG to seriously look at providing a Linux version of Galaxy.

Because what gets lost for a lot of people is that unlike consoles, you don't have to pay again for the privilege of playing your old games on Valve's new hardware (Nintendo, I'm looking at YOU in particular).

To me, the fact that it might not be best for cutting edge gaming is missing the point.
I've got literally thousands of PC games, across different storefronts and mediums, and this little box will be able to play the majority of them. If GOG and Epic still resist making native Linux clients for their storefronts, they're missing a beat.

And yes, I'm fully aware their are various ways of getting games from GOG and Epic to install to SteamOS, but they're all rather more complicated than finding your game in a library and simply hitting "Install".
That barrier alone is enough to put the average person off.

But aside from all that, I think ARM and FEX have the potential to be the biggest shake-up of the industry from all of these announcements. I predict a LOT of enthusiastic Chinese manufacturing of ARM-based systems purely to take advantage of this.

[Deckard]

Yeah price is everything - coming from the console end anything over say 500 for the base unit would be a problem ? I think the current economic conditions / tariffs etc WONT be helpful especially for a premium niche market.

I suspect it will be around 649 pounds in the Uk which WOULD be a problem for anyone looking at the current market where a limited edition PS5 is just over 500 quid but then there might be a big enough market at a "reasonable" price point for the PC Gamer who wants to move their high-end library to the living room without the hassle, noise, and bulk of a full PC tower.

[KlaxonCow]

Just reading an article that points out that the Steam Machine has performance between the X-Box series S and PlayStation 5 (judged to be just slightly weaker than the PS5 in capabilities) and that, unto itself, could be telling us something, as Valve is positioning this as a rival to these. When, you know, it's a PC - they could position it absolutely anywhere on the price / power spectrum, if they wanted. So the fact it's coming out as "comparable to the current gen consoles" cannot be a coincidence.

But they've spec'd it to be comparable to these consoles - and not gone balls-to-the-wall with the most powerful PC components available - that they're being price-conscious here that they want people considering an X-Box or a PS5 to think "hmm, no, maybe I'll grab a Steam Machine instead".

Thing is, when reviewers have asked them if it'll be "console price", Valve's response has been "entry level PC" in response. Like they are expectation managing. And, with the cost of things right now, it might be that Valve want to be a console rival... but they just can't guarantee they can match the console prices.

There's signals in both directions, really. But the promising signal is that Valve do seem to want this to be a console rival - the PC specs are clearly positioning it there, as having about the power of a PS5, albeit slightly weaker - yet when quizzed on prices, they get cagey with "entry level PC" (whatever that actually means) responses.

Which makes me think that Valve want to position this as a new console, with comparable-ish performance to the current gen, and really want to price it comparable as well. But the economic situation means they can't guarantee that - and if tariffs and RAM prices keep being shit into 2026, it'll end up slightly more price-y. But the impression is that Valve don't want that - they're not making these things as massive profit-generators, for sure, because no console maker does that (and the profits are in the games sold) - but when the economy is shit, what else can you do?

[zip accident]

Entry Level PC?

That's £200 or less.

Entry Level gaming PC would be a very different thing.

[KlaxonCow]

Entry Level PC?

That's £200 or less.

Entry Level gaming PC would be a very different thing.

Yeah, in complete agreement - and I did include "(whatever that actually means)" when mentioning it - but this is apparently what Valve said when asked about pricing.

So, you know... *shrug* I don't know. That's just what's been reported.

[VNVObit]

I have set up an old mini pc with Bazzite for under the telly gaming, so probably won't look at the machine for now at least
Do have a large steam library so more places to play it are good as far as I am concerned
The Frame does pique my interest but would like to understand more as have looked at some "smart glasses" for travelling (big screen experience without the need to carry one) as the short first impressions videos I've seen have been largely positive





just wondering what Deck v2.0 will look like

[Whiteball]

Spec and price wise I'm sure Valve have used their very extensive hardware survey information to pitch this stuff at the mass PC games player on Steam today as opposed to console or high-end gamers. Any console people that come across is just a bonus I would imagine.

I am definitely interested in the Frame (if the price is acceptable to me) as I think it could be something that really does move the VR space forward in general.

[KlaxonCow]

I have set up an old mini pc with Bazzite for under the telly gaming, so probably won't look at the machine for now at least

Yes, and this has me thinking that Valve is - and needs to - target the "console" angle here for their Steam Machine (including price, if they can pull that off).

As if you're into high-end gaming then you can already do that by sticking Bazzite on custom PC hardware - and, you know, stick an RTX 5090 or whatever into the box.

And if you're building a custom PC then installing Bazzite (or SteamOS, once they officially release the "generic kernel" version) instead of Windows is nothing. If you're building your own custom PC, then you've got to install the operating system yourself anyway - and there really is zero difference between installing Windows and installing Linux these days, as both of them require you to download an ISO, burn it onto a USB stick and then boot from the stick.

Indeed, the Linux installer will be the faster and easier of the two, in fact, as Windows takes far longer to install (bloatware) and insists on taking you through its "spyware survey". You know the one. Where you're asked if you want personalised ads? Do you want OneDrive? Do you want this tracking software? Do you want that tracking software? And, as Microsoft has been recently bragging that Windows is becoming an "agentic AI operating system" then you'll be asked if you want an AI assistant to spy on you every 3 seconds soon enough, I'm sure.

Whereas a Linux installer will ask you what language, what keyboard layout, what time zone, what username / password you want to use and where do you want to install the OS. Basically, just the stuff it needs to know to set itself up - and, note, it could go to the Internet to guess language / keyboard / time zone but doesn't, as it's not trying to invade your privacy.

But, anyway, yes, the point is that there's no point in Valve chasing the high-end with some "Steam Machine Pro", because if you're worried about that sort of thing, you're making your own custom PC, most probably, and can install Bazzite / SteamOS yourself.

What the Steam Machine needs to target is "console" - folks who just want to buy a box, connect it to their telly and start playing games.

And folks have noted that what the Steam Machine's specs look like is, in fact, roughly the average hardware that people have reported on the Steam hardware survey. Like, Valve does know what most people are running because they do the hardware survey, so they've balanced it somewhere near the average and about the same-ish power as the PS5 (not the Pro, but the plain PS5).

I think it really does boil down to the price. If they can bring it in at close to the PS5 price then they've nailed it. If it's significantly more than that then, ah, I'm sure it'll still sell - there is more to SteamOS than just being "another console" - but I can't see being the runaway success of the Steam Deck or giving Sony or Microsoft issues.

[Whiteball]

Similar PC spec market is all they have to match price wise. This has nothing to do with console/console type people. They have a mass market of people playing on PC with mediocre hardware and they probably see that those people would be the ones to buy a readymade box rather than try to install SteamOS on their own hardware. It may not even be a upgrade necessarily for some but it's the ease-of-use and low barrier to entry that this is all about.

Their aim has always been from the very begining to get people off Windows. Many years ago Gabe said they can't have their entire business (games and store) reliant on Windows not knowing what Microsoft were going to do in the future. They didn't like the direction Windows was going even then and I can only presume recent Microsoft moves have hastened their attempts to resurect the SteamOS dream and that's why we now have this.

They do not need to compete with console pricing, just similar spec PC pricing will do (but obviously the lower the better)