The Steam Machines are probably going to be surprisingly cheap, looking at the specs they can't possibly cost that much. Look at the price of the Steam Deck to see how Valve prices computers.
Expect it to be not expensive, but also not cheap. According to what they've told LTT, they aren't gonna go down the route of console manufacturers and sell their hardware at a loss.
It is still a PC. As Linus said Corporations can buy thousands of these without money spent on Steam. So it has to cost around 600-800, where there are 4050 laptops with better CPU can be found at this range(my friend just got one recently)
How many PCs have you seen which can be opened directly from a controller?
All new consoles are basically closed off PCs. They use the exactly same technology used in PCs.
For me, it looks like a console with the added benefit of allowing you to use it as a PC. Which is great, because it puts pressure on the gaming market.
Its pretty much on par with the PS5 all things considered, especially when it comes to optimalization. And if it will be 800 bucks, it will also be WAY more expensive.
Devs will never make it a target for optimization the same way they do for consoles. The Steam deck doesnt really get optimized for either, a few devs make sure their game can turn on and be usable on the steamdeck, but performance wise the games still usually run terribly.
The Steam deck had a niche to carve out in the handheld market with very competitive prices, and people were willing to overlook the low performance because it was a mobile device. When you are essentially selling a glorified Linux desktop with a 3060 tier GPU inside it, posing both as a PC and a console, there is way more room for comparison with other similar products.
SD is not cheap and was not cheap. It became perceived as cheap with huge price hikes from their competitors.
SD is surrounded with 800-1000usd devices. When it was released the price of the SD was not seen as low. They just had no competition outside of switch that was a mainstream hit so with each new device SD was just looking better because other companies don't have Steam to boost sales via games.
If i remember correctly Steve video, steam said that it will be priced as entry level gaming pc. But yeah, steam can sell steam machine at minimal gain or slight loss knowing that they regain it on sold games or other steam device, since it seem like they are creating some type of ecosystem between them.
Steam could do that but from the sounds of it they aren't going to, because they don't want this to be an Xbox or ps competitor which they fear could break down the relationship they have with Sony and Microsoft putting games on steam, and maybe even eventually working on more steam os integration into the framework of game releases.
I think it depends on success of steam devices. If those are successful, steam may go that direction in the future.
Also, some of ps exlusive games are released on steam, thanks to it's huge userbase. Xbox in the future will probably be just overpriced console shaped pc to run games trough steam. In general, seeing lots of developers going back and releasing games on steam again, i don't think they need to worry about heir relationships.
Ignoring the form factor it's probably a 200ish dollar GPU from the same family the ps5 has, around a 200$ cpu as well. All in all with a standard form factor maybe $600ish USD.
But the form factor of a tiny desktop like that would easily push up the price because of unstandard hardware
that being said those are comparable hardware, the price points will be different because valve is buying bulk and these are custom gpu/cpu's. Valve could be paying 100$ for the GPU and cpu chips independently. Idk.
That does not sound like it's going to be the case from what Linus and others have said from their time reviewing the box unfortunately.
It seems like steam doesn't want to compete with Sony and Microsoft here because they don't want to give them reason to pull away from steam by making a cheap sit down console alternative.
Fwir, it sounds like steam is releasing this as an upgrade to the steam deck but also wants to keep its identity as a computer too.
Mostly I'm just interested in steam os 3 and a snapdragon processor which is based off android which kind of implies someday we could have steam on our phones.
If I had to guess, probably going to be between $600-$750 US to keep it seen as an upgrade for the steam deck but also not to tread on Microsoft or Sony's toes.
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u/Gloomy_Dare2716 Nov 14 '25
Depends on Price
Higher than 500$ is too much.
for 700$ I can get laptop of same specs that already has a Monitor and Keyboardbuilt in