Valve unveiled the new Steam Machine earlier this week, and it’s cute (if you’re into cubes, anyway). But it’s not exactly a powerhouse machine: PC Gamer hardware editor Jacob Ridley, who understands this stuff far better than I ever will, called it “fairly underpowered,” noting that it rocks just a 200 watt power supply—a fraction of the PSUs in most gaming rigs. A good friend of mine, a longtime PC gamer, asked me, “Why the hell would I ever want something like this?” My answer, simply, was, “You wouldn’t.”
But that, according to Larian director of publishing Michael Douse (and I agree wholeheartedly on this) is entirely the point. Valve isn’t coming for committed PC gamers who know what they’re doing and want the lights to dim when they fire up their tabletop fusion reactors. It’s gunning for people who want Steam games on the TV without any dicking around.
“Valve are probably betting on the fact that anyone who wants more demanding PC hardware on their TV is part of the audience who know how to turn any PC into a Steam Machine,” Douse, always quick with a well-considered opinion, wrote on X. "Genuinely no point making a high-spec Steam Machine
So is this just ignoring the existence of high spec prebuilts already on the market and thriving? This obviously isn’t true. PC building is a hobby that heavily overlaps with PC gaming, but that venn diagram isn’t a complete circle. Some people just want to buy a rig that performs well without having to select and build every component.
Isn’t that what they’re saying?
If you want high power, build yourself or turn a pre-built into a steam machine.
If you just want to pick up something that works a-la stream deck, grab this and go. It’s not competing with the high end market.
Yes prebuilts and DIY are the “elsewhere” they were talking about. The steam machine will effectively have the same ease of use as a typical console. A prebuilt with a normal OS is very far from that level of comfort.
Then we run into a pricing issue. If the price tag for this is lower or at MSRP compared to the console competition, that would be a big win for entry level (or casual) gamers who want to take advantage of the PC ecosystem, sales, and versatility.
Granted, if this thing is priced like a high-spec prebuilt, all bets are off. If this is $600 or lower, this will sell very well and have an invested community.
True. I do feel like valve has at least a little bit of consumer goodwill that is working in their favor, also. I’d be much more likely to buy a steam machine over a similarly spec’d iBuyPower or something.
Analysts are saying it’s probably going to cost $1,000 or more given the hardware specs. That’s not confirmed, but you can build a pretty decent computer for $1,000.
For 6C Zen 4, RDAN3 and that memory config? No way, $1K max. I bet it’s much cheaper.
Maybe they’re thinking of the huge margin boutique builders charge. But that’s is not applicable to Valve. They have volume, and their margin comes from Steam sales.
If it’s a grand, it’ll end up in the back room with those alienware steam machines.
I doubt it. That would make it pretty DOA.
I thought that’s the steam frame (index pricing for the full set was also $1k)
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2025/11/are-you-ready-for-a-1000-steam-machine-some-analysts-think-you-should-be/
This is the article I read yesterday that I got that figure from, and it does say there is a wide range of speculation. But a lot is going to depend on the price
They did sell the Steam Deck initially at a loss (Gaben was even quoted as saying the price point was “painful”), so I’d suspect it’d be a similar story here with production at scale lowering the cost to Valve over the sales lifetime.
I wonder if that loss is just over the production cost, or the total cost? They put a lot of time and effort into prototyping.
I’m not sure what price point they could have sold it at that would have actually covered the years of development.
I think Valve never had intentions of making profit with its hardware division (Probably why they have a 2-year warranty and don’t mind hardware returns that much). They just don’t want total loss leaders ala Costco Hot Dog, so are trying to find a good balance.
“We don’t want people to think we’re getting into hardware because we want to make a ton of money, because hardware is traditionally a low-margin, crappy business. We believe that in order to push the company’s platforms forward we need to design hardware that brings better experiences for people.”
(paraphrased) Gabe Newell, from Bringus Studios’ video “Valve’s Secret Computer that I’m not supposed to have” , with interview footage provided by Tyler McVicker.