Steam Machine

https://store.steampowered.com/sale/steammachine

by davikr • 8 months ago

2928 1493 8 months ago

store.steampowered.com

mojoe• 8 months ago

Steam is the only reason I have a Windows desktop, I'll probably just get one of these next time I want a hardware refresh (which admittedly will probably be many years).

Interesting that it uses KDE Plasma for the desktop

lordleft• 8 months ago

I like SteamOS a great deal, though it's not my daily driver (yet). I'm curious if people will begin to use it as a daily driver and thus expect Valve to be an OS developer on top of creating software for their gaming hardware. That's a different set of expectations and I wonder how they'll navigate it.

embedding-shape12• 8 months ago

thus expect Valve to be an OS developer on top of creating software for their gaming hardware. That's a different set of expectations and I wonder how they'll navigate it.

They've been doing it since Steam Deck launched, or even since they started to contribute to Proton/Wine (depending on exactly what you see "OS" to be). They seem to have grips on it more or less already, Deck upgrades are a breeze and the machine and software itself is open enough for a Linux hacker like me to be very comfortable on it, and also closed down enough for my nieces to not be able to brick theirs by just tapping around.

jvanderbot• 8 months ago

Linux is my daily driver, and I run steam to play games (though, not on a work linux partition for reasons).

It can run just about everything I want to play, but yes, there are plenty of things that don't work yet. Doom Dark Ages, for example.

TiredOfLife2• 8 months ago

I have been using Steam Deck oled as my main computing device for 2 years. It has been amazing. It's fast and silent.

mhitza• 8 months ago

I've used SteamOS as a daily driver for half a year. Immutable distros have limitations and my distrobox images failed to work after a SteamOS update.

If you're ok with running work stuff in a separate VM within SteamOS, that works great. Using Geekbench I saw only a 5% cpu performance penalty. Io takes a bigger hit, but that wasn't a blocker for me as I was intending to run VMs with encrypted storage anyway (which adds even more latency) but still a good experience for my work.

koolala7• 8 months ago

I've used it as a daily driver for years and its good. Updates do break things though so it's not the total linux bug-free dream.

przmk• 8 months ago

It doesn't boot into the desktop by default — it uses its own session with the Gamescope compositor. The desktop is easily accessible through the power menu though.

nicce3• 8 months ago

Gamescope is really nice. I am running Steam headlessly with that on my home server.

PhilippGille• 8 months ago

Interesting that it uses KDE Plasma for the desktop

SteamOS on the Steam Deck already used KDE Plasma for the desktop.

teroshan3• 8 months ago

https://store.steampowered.com/sale/steamframe [1]

Steam Frame is a PC, and runs SteamOS powered by a Snapdragon® 8 Series Processor. With 16GB of RAM, Steam Frame supports stand-alone play on a growing number of both VR and non-VR games without needing to stream from your PC.

So Steam + Proton works on aarch64? Is this something already available/supported, or is this an announcement?

[1] Steam Frame, which is the VR Headset releasing alongside the Steam Machine. Dedicated discussion here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45903325

sylens• 8 months ago

I think this is a form of an announcement but without many details. I'm curious to see how well it works

jsheard9• 8 months ago

Valve has been quietly working on integrating the FEX x86 emulator into Proton for a while, and it's official now.

https://www.tomshardware.com/peripherals/gaming-headsets/han...

teroshan3• 8 months ago

Valve deciding to support Arm-based gaming is HUGE news

Yokolos8• 8 months ago

https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/issues/1493

This is fun, just found this issue from 2018 which was closed with this comment:

Hello @setsunati, this is not a realistic objective for Proton. As @rkfg, mentions wine for ARM does not magically make x86 based games work on ARM cpus.
Even if Steam were brought to ARM, and an x86 emulation layer was run underneath wine, the amount of games that could run fast and without hitting video driver quirks is small enough not to entertain this idea any time in the near future.

It's mentioned in this issue https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/issues/8136 which was closed Oct 2024 with this comment by kisak-valve:

Hello @Theleafir1, similar to #1493, this is not a realistic objective for Proton any time in the near future.

radialstub• 8 months ago

I believe this work is a continuation of the work the asahi linux people did to get games working on M-series macs. It seems Alyssa Rosenzweig works at valve as a contractor. Super cool work. Some seriously talented folks.

pdpi5• 8 months ago

Have to wonder if there is a world where Proton comes to macOS.

derefr3• 8 months ago

There was also a parallel effort to this end, targeting Android rather than plain Linux, resulting in an app called https://winlator.org/ — which also works quite well at this point. (See e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aP0yUqcyY18)

Bombthecat• 8 months ago

Damn valve is cooking.

jasonjmcghee4• 8 months ago

Wow this looks great. Foveated streaming, great resolution, wireless, 144hz, looks much more comfortable... As much as I want this, I feel like it'll end up being a really cool thing that just sits on the shelf.

Edit: foveated streaming, not rendering

erxam3• 8 months ago

Maybe they've cracked the code with the dongle? Usually, you either have to invest both time and money into setting up the perfect streaming network, deal with annoying cables or resign yourself to inferior on-device game versions. The ergonomics matter more than you'd think.

But if it's a very easy plug-n-play type deal to run SteamVR games (and on Linux!), that's a huge ergonomic improvement. Don't have to think too much about whether everything is running correctly or what-have-you.

hnuser1234567• 8 months ago

I recommend preparing a drink or two and loading up VRchat and joining one of the rave club groups. Check out the metaverse zuck wishes he ran.

jauntywundrkind• 8 months ago

I don't think there is foveated rendering. There is foveated encoding, when game streaming.

Looks like a very competent headset indeed though! Nice combo of fast streaming that can prioritize well with foveated encoding, and hopefully a pretty nice malleable capable standalone headset too.

pimeys2• 8 months ago

My NVIDIA Shield is getting old and slow. I can see this as a good replacement, because it supports HDMI CEC, so you can control it with your remote control.

Install Plex, JellyFin, FreeTube et.al. to it and you have a nice open source TV box.

You also get 4k gaming from Steam, GOG, Epic etc. and you get emulators. I've been wanting to build a computer like this, but CEC is hard to find and the adapters that exist don't support full 4k resolution.

baq2• 8 months ago

I lowkey hope it's good enough for coding. Really wanted to try out the xreal glasses, but multiple people said they aren't crisp enough for text.

Sohcahtoa825• 8 months ago

It looks good until I reached one bit:

Passthrough - Monochrome passthrough via outward facing cameras

This is an outright bone-headed move that I can't believe Valve is making. Only having monochrome cameras means augmented reality is basically a non-starter.

AR has a lot of potential. I literally bought a Meta Quest 3 just for PianoVision [0] when I already had a Valve Index. I would love to see some sort of AR-based game you could play outdoors. But with only monochrome vision, that's gonna be awful.

[0] https://youtu.be/apwZTV-Rg0s

delusional2• 8 months ago

I'm more confused that it's running SteamOS which is supposedly Arch based, but arch doesn't officially support ARM. You have to use the ArchLinuxARM distro for that, which is less maintained. They got to be doing something off label for that.

uncletaco• 8 months ago

Even if they are, Valve has a long track record of contributing back to open source projects.

0x4578• 8 months ago

arch doesn't officially support ARM

Doesn't really mean much to Valve as SteamOS vendor:

- linux kernel supports aarch64 just fine

- user space supports aarach64 just as fine

- Valve provides runtime for games (be it via proton or native linux), so providing aarch64 builds is up to them anyway

The main point of ArchLinuxARM is providing compatible binaries, which isn't something hard to do in-house.

whatevaa• 8 months ago

Arch doesn't support ARM at all. Arm is somebody else hobby project.

stetrain4• 8 months ago

Just to clarify that's for the Steam Frame VR Headset. The Steam Machine PC uses an AMD Zen 4 x86 CPU.

SpaceNoodled• 8 months ago

The headset isn't natively running games, right?

jadbox2• 8 months ago

When's the preorders happening?

nialv7• 8 months ago

So Steam + Proton works on aarch64?

CodeWeavers just announced[0] CrossOver on ARM a couple of days ago, so yes.

[0] https://www.codeweavers.com/blog/mjohnson/2025/11/6/twist-ou...

sho_hn2• 8 months ago

Mainly check out the Valve-sponsored FEX project.

ljm2• 8 months ago

It also looks like they've launched a new version of the Steam Controller.

Ekaros3• 8 months ago

RAM 16GB DDR5 + 8GB GDDR6 VRAM

Hmm. Not that it is big deal, but I would be somewhat worried about true longevity with the VRAM. Not sure if SteamOS helps there, but on PC some new titles are going over the 8GB VRAM.

keyringlight7• 8 months ago

One of the things I've noted for a while is that PC gaming as a platform seems to be polarizing between high and low spec, especially if you look outside of North America/Western Europe to places like South America or SE Asia. The steam deck and now this seem to be a reference/target platform for the low spec group. It might not be able to play the prestigious high spec titles well if at all, but so long as "your mileage may vary" is messaged well I can't see it being a problem, it hasn't so far.

SchemaLoad19• 8 months ago

There's a certain category of person who spends thousands of dollars seemingly just to see bigger numbers in benchmarks and to flex their consumerism on people. I've seen quite a lot of commenting about how certain games are "unplayable" on the steam deck, games which I have been playing just fine. I just turn the settings down to low and enjoy the game.

rollcat10• 8 months ago

The main appeal of a console (for both consumers and developers) is that's it's a "stupid" and "fixed" device. Your game either runs well on it or it doesn't, but you can always count on this remaining consistent prior to shipping it.

If Steam Machine gains enough foothold, it will be treated like a console. It won't run the latest title in 4K@120, but the title will still run great on default settings.

Doxin• 8 months ago

Honestly I'm hoping the steam machine is gonna put some pressure on game devs to knock it off with the absurdly high spec requirements. There's plenty of modern titles that require a top of the line card that don't look any better than 10yr old games.

Mr_Bees69• 8 months ago

it meets or exceeds the ps5 and xbox series x, so it might not be top tier, but it'll be fine. I have a plenty good time on my series x, cant think of any stutters.

lights0123• 8 months ago

Both consoles allow more than 8GB to be used for the integrated GPU.

esskay7• 8 months ago

Actually looks like its just _slightly_ less powerful than them.

AnotherGoodName2• 8 months ago

It's a very low end Radeon 7000 series. It's absolutely incapable of the highest texture quality and rendering resolutions that need more than 8GB of VRAM. You'll likely never go above 1080p on this card (1440p is going to be rough based on benchmarks of the existing low end 7000 series).

There's absolutely no reasonable way to use more than 8GB of VRAM on this card.

hs862• 8 months ago

Even modern low-end GPUs should have more than enough fill rate for high-res textures. The texture quality setting in games is usually not affecting performance at all until VRAM runs out.

ThatPlayer6• 8 months ago

No DisplayPort 2.0 is interesting because RDNA3 should support that.

More importantly, FSR4 (currently) doesn't support RDNA3, so you'll be limited on upscaling too.

hs862• 8 months ago

Not sure how heavy SteamOS is, but wouldn't modern games actually prefer a flipped memory configuration? So, 8 GB RAM and 16 GB VRAM would make this a more 'balanced' gaming appliance. But it is advertised as a general purpose PC, so 8 GB RAM wouldn't be enough.

Yokolos8• 8 months ago

8GB just isn't enough for modern AAA games. Battlefield 6, probably the most highly optimized AAA game to have come out in the past few years, still has a 16GB RAM minimum and Arc Raiders, which is also incredibly optimized, still has a 12GB minimum. Games are only going to become more resource hungry from here, so 8GB in early 2026 would be a terrible idea.

esskay7• 8 months ago

The RAM's upgradable, it's standard DDR5 on a SODIMM module

aboringusername• 8 months ago

Games publishers/developers are going to have to wind in their necks a little. Whilst memory is abundant it's also still quite expensive. We should still be aiming for efficiency and the chances are 16gb+ are in the minority here. Fact is, the more VRAM and compute you demand the smaller your customer-base becomes.

I've played many games with 8GB VRAM* and will do so for the forseeable. If that's not enough, I am not a customer. Simple as.

The truth is, there is going to be a massive motivation with the likes of Steam Deck/Machine to actually make titles that are optimised and perform well within their hardware parameters. It's money you won't want to ignore.

*One example was Silent Hill remake on PC, which used the unreal engine. It was optimised beautifully and ran without visual glitches and stutters even with the highest graphic demands on a 8GB RTX

esskay7• 8 months ago

I think it does also help that a big chunk of Steams userbase are playing smaller indie titles that don't need obscene amounts of vram. The steam deck audience for example has a lot of people playing both a mix of AAA and smaller games. Given this is advertised as 6x as powerful as the deck I'm sure they'll be fine. It's not meant to be a top of the line console thats for sure, and if it was people would be moaning that its too expensive.

SchemaLoad19• 8 months ago

Memory is also not that abundant anymore. Over the last month PC memory costs have more than doubled due to AI datacenter builds buying out all the manufacturing capacity.

wiseowise11• 8 months ago

This. Absolutely this. It is complete bonkers to suggest that game devs dictate consumer hardware, insane to run the asylum.

All game development should follow Nintendo model: there’s a fixed hardware and game devs should go out of their way to optimize to the spec, not consumer shelling out thousands every years because someone can’t be bothered to optimize their cashgrab.

msabalau• 8 months ago

You always have the option of streaming a game, though.

8 GB is good enough for most everything, and can you stream on an exception basis, if something truly demanding catches your eye.

energy1234• 8 months ago

It should be good enough for any game with a toggle on textures quality, which is pretty much every big title for the foreseeable future?

reactordev2• 8 months ago

These links open the Steam app on my phone and crash. :(

teroshan3• 8 months ago

Opening them in a private tab circumvents that behavior (at least for me)

phreack• 8 months ago

I had to install the app to try and work around a problem with Steam, and then had the same problems just browsing. You can probably disable that behavior, but I ended up just uninstalling the app entirely.

The support experience was so bad that I got really soured on Valve, and can't even get excited for these announcements now.

reactordev2• 8 months ago

If I uninstall the app, I’m unable to login to Steam due to 2FA.

hollow-moe2• 8 months ago

Forcing the use of the steam app for 2FA is such an ass move. Keeping this as a reminder of Valve still being a corporation with interests that can shift to the worst in a single day.

aniviacat2• 8 months ago

KeePassXC supports Steam's TOTP.

hyperpl• 8 months ago

Wonder if there is a good remote with voice input to use for YouTube and Kodi so I can replace my shield TV.

Loughla• 8 months ago

I haven't had any problems with my shield since the update that killed it about 3 years ago.

Or maybe I've just gotten used to it?

Are you having issues with yours?

buu709• 8 months ago

My Shield is 7 or 8 years old at this point and still going strong. Was very much hoping for something like this from Steam just in case something were to happen to it.

fph2• 8 months ago

How much?

babblingfish2• 8 months ago

In 2026 we should be getting Windows on a Xbox console with the Xbox skinned version of windows. This would be a direct competitor to that since most PC gamers have the majority of their game library on steam.

ksynwa2• 8 months ago

the Xbox skinned version of windows

Isn't that what the ROG Xbox Ally devices have? At least that's what it looked like to me. Something like a SteamOS's gaming mode counterpart for Windows.

babblingfish2• 8 months ago

Yes, the xbox skinned version of windows is in the ROG Xbox Ally

SchemaLoad19• 8 months ago

From what I could tell, the ROG Xbox device was just Windows desktop mode with a full screen "Xbox" application open, which you can minimise and see the normal desktop behind it.

creaturemachine• 8 months ago

If MS even bothers to make another xbox this is what it will be.

frakkingcylons4• 8 months ago

One (maybe the only) advantage that the hypothetical new Windows-based Xbox console is that it'll be able to play all online games that require anti-cheat like COD, Battlefield, and Fortnite. All games that are mega-popular but are unfortunately unwilling to support anti-cheat on Linux.

hasperdi2• 8 months ago

Does anyone know the price?

daedrdev3• 8 months ago

they have yet to announce the price

haunter7• 8 months ago

"Steam Machine’s pricing is comparable to a PC with similar specs" [0]

I's say max ~800€ at this point

0, https://www.theverge.com/tech/818111/valve-steam-machine-han...

smoovb• 8 months ago

Maybe we are meant to vote on it. I vote $299.

max-leo3• 8 months ago

HDMI 2.0

The HDMI Forum yet again rearing it's ugly head by continuing to block GPU manufacturers from implementing HDMI 2.1 in the Open Source drivers

klipklop• 8 months ago

Yup. This really needs to be fixed. There have been on-going bug reports on it for years. AMD just needs to move the hdmi 2.1 stuff behind a firmware binary blob already like NVIDIA does. It's so annoying not having full quality HDMI. It's the only think keeping me from using Linux on my current gaming PC that is hooked exclusively up to my TV... Either that or TV's need to start having Display Port.

TheTon4• 8 months ago

This is a big miss for me. I can’t use my TVs 120Hz VRR mode without HDMI 2.1.

I realize the Xbox Series X is beleaguered at this point, but apart from playing games that are on Steam but not Xbox, I can’t see why I would prefer the Steam Machine.

max-leo3• 8 months ago

After commenting i looked up the actual capabilities of the port and it turns out while the port is officially only HDMI 2.0 it actually still supports 120Hz, HDR and VRR anyway. So basically it only doesn't support Display Stream Compression for 144Hz and beyond.

I quickly tested this by connecting my PC running Linux with a RX 6800 to my TV (LG C4). 120Hz, VRR and HDR were all available.

moelf4• 8 months ago

"Luckily," the hardware won't allow for 4k@120Hz on visually cutting edge games anyway.

paulatreides• 8 months ago

"Yes, Steam Machine is optimized for gaming, but it's still your PC. Install your own apps, or even another operating system. Who are we to tell you how to use your computer?"

lukan• 8 months ago

It might be PR speak ... but for me it is working.

knome• 8 months ago

you can already do whatever you want to the steam deck. it's just linux with a readonly base that gets atomically updated. but you can rip it out and do whatever. it's your hardware.

perihelions• 8 months ago

"SteamOS 3 (Arch-based)"

Holy shit, it's the Year of The Linux Desktop, for real this time. It's happening. It's actually happening.

A standard Arch Linux/KDE[0] PC for every home, in a polished, vendor-supported package. Like Apple, it's a single standard hardware/OS pair, so, FOSS' fatal hardware-support hell might well be made obsolete. The vendor is a household name corporation. There's an incredibly fortuitous (for Linux) market dynamic at this point in time, of "commoditize your complement"—the dynamic that Valve has incentives to invest massively in giving away a nice thing for free, because that does bad things to its competitors. And Steam is... the killer super-app to end all killer apps.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SteamOS

This is real life!

atonse3• 8 months ago

If hype is to be believed, Omarchy is also pushing a lot of devs to Linux.

erxam3• 8 months ago

The only thing that crock of shit is attracting is grifter bucks.

seabrookmx3• 8 months ago

Any devs that find the visuals, keyboard driven workflow, or cult of DHH appealing enough to try Omarchy are likely already Linux users.

Linux has been a great platform for devs for a long time. This is exactly why WSL exists, and why MacOS has a native Linux container[1] tool.. because Linux was eating their lunch in this user segment.

[1] https://github.com/apple/container

wiseowise11• 8 months ago

Jesus Christ, do you seriously not see a difference between established game development company that IS the de facto and de jure PC gaming, and a hypeman who developed some web framework?

embedding-shape12• 8 months ago

The only thing I'd like to know, if the CPU/GPU will be replaceable? The specs say "Semi-custom AMD Zen 4" and "Semi-Custom AMD RDNA3", but I don't see "soldered" anywhere, so I guess maybe they'll be switchable? If not with off-the-shelves components, maybe Valve will offer their own upgrade kits in the future?

zorked• 8 months ago

I don't see "soldered" anywhere, so I guess maybe they'll be switchable

Unfortunately that's quite a logical jump...

embedding-shape12• 8 months ago

Yeah, I mean my comment is all speculation, guesses and opinions. Given the limited information, some jumping is required, if at least in order to ask questions :)

opencl• 8 months ago

Given the memory configuration it seems extremely unlikely that it's socketed. It's certainly not AM5.

embedding-shape12• 8 months ago

You mean "16GB DDR5 + 8GB GDDR6 VRAM" or something else? I took it just as they didn't want to put VRAM next to the GPU for some reason, rather than them actually being linked somehow. Maybe I misunderstand.

cflewis• 8 months ago

RDNA 3 is going to hold this machine back. DLSS is far and away better, but Nvidia's apathy towards Linux has made playing on something like Bazzite a worse experience. Nvidia has little reason to keep investing in Windows gaming drivers given the AI race, so seeing DLSS 4 or something on Linux is a pipe dream.

I think this machine will be decent for most people, but it's no-one with a 3080 is going to be looking at this and thinking "this is worth it", as it's probably coming in at about $750. The question is whether it'll have power parity with whatever the next Xbox is.

keyringlight7• 8 months ago

Unless AMD/Valve pull a rabbit out of a hat it'll also be missing FSR4 which needs RDNA4, and is AMD's pretty-damn-close catch up to DLSS.

ZekeSulastin• 8 months ago

I thought DLSS4 did work on Linux, and a quick glance at r/linux_gaming seems to say the same.

I agree about RDNA3 holding it back; given its specs I’m hoping its significantly cheaper than $750.

hnuser1234567• 8 months ago

Pretty much all (non-Apple) computers in this form factor have a soldered CPU and GPU (and of course soldered VRAM), and slots for DIMMs and M.2.

bangaladore3• 8 months ago

Unless you made a typo here-- Apple's equivalent to this is Mac Mini, which has soldered CPU, GPU and RAM (and also the SSD as its not soldered, but it's not standard).

haunter7• 8 months ago

Soldered, not upgradable https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWUxObt1efQ&t=591s

embedding-shape12• 8 months ago

Shame, but makes sense. Thanks for finding it out for us!

You happen to know if the same is true for the RAM? Video seems to mention soldered CPU and GPU only, I skimmed the video but didn't see it mentioned.

butlike8• 8 months ago

I mean, honestly, do you ask the same question about a PS5/Xbox? At a certain point, just build an upgradable PC. I'd equate this product more to a home console than a PC at this point

embedding-shape12• 8 months ago

I do not, my expectations are also way lower for Sony and especially Windows (still, happy PS5 owner here). I already have a PC, thanks for asking!

Steam specifically pitches this as a console+PC so I thought asking clarifying questions about the PC part of the product made sense.

nalekberov2• 8 months ago

Video games were the only reason for me to use Windows, now that Steam solved this problem no reason to look back anymore. I am also not big fan of multi-player games, so not being able to play games with anti-cheat system buried deep into their binaries isn't an issue.

thadt2• 8 months ago

Pretty much the only reason I boot to Windows anymore is to play games with my kids and family. The direction of this thing is dangerously close to being all I'd care about from a desktop computer.

If Valve pivoted into making a well-supported laptop with good hardware that ran Linux and played games...

quasigod7• 8 months ago

Just wondering, what games are you playing that dont run on Linux yet? I can't think of games I'd play much with family that dont work well

neura2• 8 months ago

I do not believe that _you_ are trolling with this question, but answering this is just asking to be trolled.

That said. Fortnite. Yes, I still play it with friends and cannot play it on Mac or Linux. :(

I'm sure others have similar examples. Also there are just simple things like playing with friends and streaming on Discord. Anybody streaming from Windows always comes across smooth and HD to the other participants while anybody on Linux seems to consistently be received (I don't know where exactly in the chain the problem exists, so just "received", as it may not be a broadcasting or encoding problem, I'm not an expert in this) with a lot of artifacts and lower framerates.

thadt2• 8 months ago

Fortnite & Call of Duty

If I could travel back in time and prevent my kids and nephews from ever learning about Fortnite, I might do it. Instead I'm out here trying to keep from getting sniped by a Simpson character.

Fortunately, it seems like the rest of the family is getting tired of COD's ceaseless churn, and might be willing to pick up something else.

andoando• 8 months ago

BF6 and any multiplayer EA games with anticheat

2OEH8eoCRo03• 8 months ago

Battlefield 6, GTA V online, Escape From Tarkov, likely GTA VI

Imagine not supporting the latest releases that all your friends are playing.

barbazoo2• 8 months ago

Trying to get RDR2 to work on Linux, so far no luck.

OGWhales2• 8 months ago

For me it's only games the specifically don't support Linux, which are mostly competitive multiplayer games with anti-cheat software. Apex Legends used to work great on Linux, but they removed support as an attempt to combat cheaters (there are still tons of cheaters).

AndroidKitKat• 8 months ago

In addition to what others have said, a group of friends still plays enough League of Legends that I don't both dual booting. Also if you play RuneScape (RS3, not OSRS) the best 3rd party add-on, Alt1 Toolkit, only works on Windows.

dmoy• 8 months ago

For me the thing that pushed me to reinstall windows after I got a cheap $10 copy was Kerbal Space Program. Though, in my specific case I strongly suspect it was older hardware & driver issues than anything else, since I've not had any major problems on steam deck.

I do have more random crashes on certain games even on steam deck, but not as bad as Kerbal Space Program on my old (12 yr) desktop.

Factorio seems to work better on Linux. Which is both good and bad (since it's so addictive).

SirMaster• 8 months ago

Battlefield, Call of Duty, Apex Legends, PUBG, Rainbow 6 Siege, Fortnite

Basically all the games I play regularly with my friends.

InvertedRhodium• 8 months ago

Microsoft Flight Simulator

ugurcant• 8 months ago

I was in the same shoes, then one day I decided to give a shot to Bazzite. To my surprise the installation was extremely smooth, and everything worked right away. Now I’m playing almost everything on it (Arc Raiders, EU V, HLL and Horizon FW recently). If you want to _try_ all you need is 15 minutes, some HDD space and an empty USB. You don’t have to give up Windows at all, dual booting is also pretty smooth.

gpderetta4• 8 months ago

I have a bazzite box connected behind my TV. Even with a non optimal choice of graphic card (an old Nvidia) it works better than I was expecting.

barbazoo2• 8 months ago

Loved the concept, tried it out, didn't work, at least not for RDR2 which I was trying to play. But how would it work, there is Linux, Bazzite, then there is Steam, RDR2 needs the Rockstar launcher, it's such an intricate web of dependencies, I'm not surprised something isn't working.

SparkBomb7• 8 months ago

Gaming on Linux is hit and miss, depending on the distro you use and your desktop environment. Some games should be launched with gamescope if you are using Gnome/GDM

To have HellDivers run in borderless window on Debian 14. It required me to manually compile gamescope (wasn't that difficult but Valve's instructions are out of date), and use the backports on Trixie to upgrade the kernel to 6.16, and update wireplumber and pipewire (sound was flakey on some games). Kernel 6.16 performs much better than 6.12 just generally.

All the Arkham games work perfectly. Doom Eternal has some weird latency in the mouse and aiming doesn't feel right.

I could never get my Xbox One bluetooth controller behaving with Linux. I ended buying a 8bitdo Xbox style controller which works perfectly. It is much better made than the Xbox controller and roughly the same price.

dbspin2• 8 months ago

How's the Nvidia driver support in Bazzite?

nicolaslem• 8 months ago

I used to also have a dedicated Windows machine just for gaming, but two years ago I formatted the Windows drive and put SteamOS (via ChimeraOS) instead. I can legitimately say that it has been more stable than running the same games on Windows. Just flawless.

akshitgaur20052• 8 months ago

now with gabecube, maybe steamos would be directly available for desktop too

com2kid4• 8 months ago

I've been using Pop_OS, buggy as hell but steam games work great!

Everything is kinda a dumpster fire, but they nailed steam games.

quasigod7• 8 months ago

Pop_OS is pretty rough. Theyre running on a super outdated base while working on COSMIC

bprew• 8 months ago

The 24.04 beta is really stable and the new cosmic DE is great! I've got it on my desktop and laptop, no problems.

System76.com/pop/pop-beta

MrBra• 8 months ago

For me it's been super stable. I've hardly seen any bugs. And in those remote cases, it would be more correct to call them quirks than bugs, which have later been fixed anyway. I've been using for intensive gaming, AI projects, and audio production. And when I say audio production I don't say Audacity. I say recent versions of Ableton Live running on ASIO drivers with windows VSTs and Max 4 Live instruments at 5 ms latency, all of this running through Wine with an amazing Wine managing software called Bottle (hehe). As for gaming,, it's not hard to see people claming they get even more fps than they get with windows. It's not a PopOS thing, it's the Linux ecosystem that is finally getting mature enough to pull this out (this time for real). On top of this, System74, the company behind PopOS who is selling laptops with that OS, are also optimizing the kernel to make sure everything runs super smoothly... I really don't see where your "buggy as hell" is coming from.

catears• 8 months ago

Like other commenters, I also recently made the switch. Figured I would dual-boot windows but have never needed to boot it back up again.

ProtonDB is a goldmine when a game doesn't work. Oh, and switching from Nvidia GPU to AMD GPU seems to have worked great to get games to "just work".

agentifysh• 8 months ago

one limitation for Bazzite for instance would be some titles that require anti-cheating won't work but just like OP, only use case I have for windows is gaming and running some banking app which won't work on non-Windows device

love to see more and more users realize they can game just fine on linux

theshrike794• 8 months ago

This promises 4k 60fps gaming and Valve is good with hardware, so this is an immediate buy from me if it's under 1000€

No need to mess around building a gaming PC anymore.

brailsafe2• 8 months ago

This promises 4k 60fps gaming and Valve is good with hardware, so this is an immediate buy from me if it's under 1000€

Does it promise that? It seems like the hardware might do it, didn't see that anywhere

phdelightful• 8 months ago

It’s <= a Radeon 7600 GPU (28 CUs RDNA3 vs 32), so I’m not sure I’d have advertised it as a 4k60 machine. Then again I’m not a marketer so what do I know. 4k60 is a flexible target with FSR I suppose.

seanalltogether• 8 months ago

Same, if they also released something like a Steam Machine Pro with more ram+vram and bit higher specs I would instantly purchase it. Nvidia and AMD have been rightly criticized for releasing 8GB video cards in the past year and valve shouldn't be immune to that criticism.

rft2• 8 months ago

Would be great of Valve to just drop a Steam Machine Max++ with an AMD Ryzen AI 395 and 128GB unified memory. I know this is not going to happen, but SteamOS should boot fine on that SoC, so you can DIY a Steam Machine that also runs LLMs (albeit a bit slow) :).

neogodless• 8 months ago

Last year I read a lot of reviews making a fuss about the RTX 4070 (mobile) having "only" 8GB VRAM but it's what I ended up buying and it just hasn't been an issue where I'm like, shoot my games aren't fast enough or pretty enough to have fun. Sometimes I think number-based reviews miss the point, and I miss HardOCP!

kulahan• 8 months ago

Extremely hard pass on a laptop. They already have the steam deck, and now they have this. Whether you want it portable or not, there are options. Laptops always end up being just... so disappointing.

baby2• 8 months ago

the limit last time was anything competitive or multiplayer that required a weird launcher or some low-level permissions or something. I just want to play CS2 and hunt showdown.

nxpnsv• 8 months ago

I recently got a tiny and mighty GPD win mini. I booted windows once to shrink the data partition and installed Bazzite Linux. Painless install, never even considered booting in win again, and so far all games I tried worked flawlessly. I know there are issues with anti-cheat, but I usually don't even like those games..

utopiah2• 8 months ago

If Valve pivoted into making a well-supported laptop with good hardware that ran Linux and played games...

SteamDeck is out since February 2022 and does all that. You can use a BT mouse&keyboard, plug a USB-C screen or dongle for HDMI. I did live presentations with that quite a few time. It's just a computer with another form factor.

It's not "dangerously close", it's been there for years now.

Basically only competitive gaming with kernel level anti-cheat are problematic.

spydum• 8 months ago

seconding this. I bought a SteamDeck OLED -- and it blows my mind more people havent heard about these. it's essentially a bad ass handheld laptop. yes it plays games great, but the OS side when you boot into desktop mode is quite capable - I spend more time on it than my home pc these days

kartoffelsaft• 8 months ago

The thing that makes that different though is the packing/unpacking experience. With a laptop it's just... opening and closing the lid. With a steam deck (or really any mini PC with a screen and battery), if you go wireless as you suggest, there's now at least 3 devices (deck, KB, mouse) that need to be handled and charged separately. Given my previous negative experiences with BT I'd go wired but that makes every move take even more effort.

I could see a setup with a case for the deck gives it a laptop form factor, but that doesn't seem like what you're suggesting. I might also ask how often you move your setup? My schedule requires I do so at least 8 times/week.

MrDrMcCoy2• 8 months ago

A Uperfect lapdock with a USB-C PD injector from one of the AR glasses sets (can be bought separately) is even more convenient for Deck as a laptop replacement.

xxs3• 8 months ago

with my kids and family.

if you have an AMD GPU, Linux Mint does everything - including installation, bluetooth and printing(!) better than Windows

jabwd• 8 months ago

AMD GPU here, but I had issues connecting my Xbox controller to it and using it with Steam. On Bazzite this all works out of the box. Would love to know what the issue was but could've been my bluetooth chipset or something of the sort -- Don't know what Bazzite does differently from Linux Mint sadly.

Overall barely ever in Windows anymore and a happy Linux gamer.

xxs3• 8 months ago

with my kids and family.

if you have an AMD GPU, Linux Mint does everything 'gaming' - on top of installation, bluetooth and printing(!) better than Windows

mzhaase• 8 months ago

I made the switch to Linux for gaming maybe six months ago. I play A LOT of games and have only encountered a single game that didn't just work.

HexPhantom5• 8 months ago

They already proved with the Deck that you don't need Windows for a great gaming experience anymore

jokoon• 8 months ago

Laptops are difficult to cool down, they're bad for gaming.

Unless they remove fans, or have limited hardware, but that's already a steam deck: just add a keyboard and a larger screen.

graynk2• 8 months ago

I believe you're looking for https://system76.com/

fullstop6• 8 months ago

I have a System76 laptop, and I bought it because they supported Linux and because I could buy replacement parts if I needed them.

The battery swelled, so I contacted them and they don't sell the battery anymore. I tried ordering one from, literally, half a dozen places online and was refunded each time because it simply does not exist.

spaceman_2020• 8 months ago

Only reason I even had a windows machine too. I got rid of it because I realized after a long tiring day sitting upright, I really did not find sitting even more upright and playing games relaxing. I wanted to plop down on the couch and do it. And it was a gigantic tower that was taking up too much space in my office

If I could have a machine like this instead, I'd happily buy it instead. Windows has zero use for me other than playing games

yencabulator6• 8 months ago

Playing PC games with a controller, lounging back in a good recliner, is much more relaxing. Many games work great like that, and Steam tells you how well any particular game works with a controller.

rockostrich• 8 months ago

If Valve pivoted into making a well-supported laptop with good hardware that ran Linux and played games...

The Steam Deck is kind of close to this although the screen isn't the best. I think the closest you can get to this right now is adding a graphics card module on a Framework laptop.

lenerdenator• 8 months ago

To the HL3 faithful, this is your reminder that

NOTHING

EVER

HAPPENS

rawling• 8 months ago

This is the speculated-about gap in the Steam store events, then?

12_throw_away2• 8 months ago

In this big hardware refresh, honestly most excited about finally getting a new steam controller [1], which feels like it might finally give us a better, more extensible standard than the extremely outdated XInput protocol (which still doesn't even support motion controls)

[1] https://store.steampowered.com/sale/steamcontroller

LelouBil2• 8 months ago

I'm just hoping it has a standalone "pretend it is an xbox/generic controller" mode that doesn't rely on steam, so I can bring it to friends easily.

p_l7• 8 months ago

All you need is good HID driver in OS... unless the application hardcodes expectations about XBox controller

hnuser1234567• 8 months ago

No mention of dual stage trigger though, which was my cheat code in rocket league to have one button for accelerate and boost

nisegami• 8 months ago

Hoping it's there just not mentioned.

WXLCKNO2• 8 months ago

Wow lol. I just posted the exact same comment, there are dozens of us! I literally cannot play rocket league without the steam controller for this reason.

Also set rotate left and right to the grip triggers (roll in aviation terms I guess).

pythonaut_16• 8 months ago

Steamdeck has the dual stage triggers right? (Though maybe just in software?) I'd be shocked if the new controller is less capable than that.

jorvi5• 8 months ago

You can set a dual-stage trigger in Steam Input binding with any controller its trigger range, its not something unique to the Steam Controller.

12_throw_away2• 8 months ago

In my dream world, hardware enthusiasts would be constantly creating absolutely crazy game controllers with bizarre combinations of inputs that look nothing like an xbox 360 controller. There'd be a universal input protocol that would allow for self-describing gamepads with arbitrary numbers of digital buttons, analog sticks and triggers, touchpads, mouse inputs, haptics, gyro sensors, levers, sliders, wheels, etc. etc.

I realize this may not be practical, but it's kind of weird that PCs have been more or less stuck with a protocol designed for XBox 360 controllers for 2 decades now, while the locked-down console space is seeing much more experimentation and innovation around input. The original steam controller at least hinted at being sort of an open platform for this sort of thing, although it didn't really take off. Fingers crossed for the new version.

rtkwe11• 8 months ago

It's because the two-thumbstick, 8 face buttons, 2 shoulder and 2 trigger form factor covers so many games there's not been a real reason for super wacky controllers. They kind of hit it out of the park on the 360 design and the only real sticking point left is the exact ergonomics which mostly fall into the PS thumbstick position (both lower) vs XBox position (left high and right low).

dezgeg• 8 months ago

USB HID actually works pretty much how you describe, for instance a Physical Descriptor can contain metadata about which body part a button/control is supposed to be used with.

It's extremely complicated however (like many things USB), which is probably why everything just emulates an XBox 360 controller like you said.

thefz2• 8 months ago

Maybe with 10 fingers' budget, considering that at least three per side must hold the device, it's the most rational setup to allow for reaching two directional pucks and some buttons?

hbn5• 8 months ago

I'm happy we stumbled into in a state where you can buy a controller and plug it into your computer and it'll likely work hassle-free with basically all of your games. And I think that's what most people care about, more than being able to use wacky controllers with extra buttons.

Hell, configuring my own controls for a game is one of my least favorite things to do. I haven't even played the game yet, I don't know what button should do what!

The way it is, the devs know what kind of controller everyone will likely be using, they can figure out their ideal mapping for how the buttons should be used, and we all have an easy time using our controllers.

ThatPlayer6• 8 months ago

SInput recently released and got supported by SDL, which plenty of games, but also Steam Input uses. So you can already use SInput in Steam Input. Better than XInput for sure.

https://docs.handheldlegend.com/s/sinput/doc/sinput-hid-prot...

I don't think Steam has ever published specs for their protocol. And without Steam, their old controller would fallback to a mouse/keyboard mode. The Linux kernel drivers (that didn't require Steam) were reverse engineered. Hori released a Steam Controller recently. Even that still had an XInput fallback switch.

torginus3• 8 months ago

Isn't the lack of extensibility kind of the point?

It forces everyone to make the same controller, so the developer knows what the user will have.

WXLCKNO2• 8 months ago

I love my OG steam controller still. I can't tell if this new one has the dual stage triggers like the og (like if there's an additional click on full trigger pull).

I used that to set things like boost in rocket League and it felt super intuitive.

esskay7• 8 months ago

According to digital foundry it does have dual stage triggers

bargainbin2• 8 months ago

First thing I checked for! I feel like it's such a niche feature but also distinctive. It's actually a "necessity" for a proper Gamecube emulation experience, which has the two stage shoulder buttons.

Like you, I also used this for boost on Rocket League and it was surprisingly intuitive. You can map it to the triggers lowest threshold to emulate it but without the tactile bump to rest against it just won't work.

WhereIsTheTruth• 8 months ago

The trackpads are a deal breaker for me

They should have put them just above the joysticks, like the PS5 controller

Better, they should have made them detachable with a magnet, similar to the Switch JoyCon's system, what a missed opportunity

Yokolos8• 8 months ago

They should have put them just above the joysticks, like the PS5 controller

I don't understand how that would be in any way ergonomic. The new Steam Controller's layout has a proven track record with the Steam Deck, which is essentially identical. It allows you to play KB&M games like Alpha Centauri on the Steam Deck without any external peripherals. It would be utterly unplayable if the trackpads were in the same place as the PS5's pad, which is basically just used to open a menu or map or for gimmicky in-game gestures.

fwip3• 8 months ago

I found the original Steam Controller's trackpad placement to be just about perfect.

jorvi5• 8 months ago

It looks way too chunky, just like the original Steam Controller, Steam Deck or original duke Xbox controller. Not everybody has Jack Reacher hands.

Microsoft really did it right with the XSX controller. They took the old X360 / Xone design (perfect for large and medium hands) shrunk it slightly and then added cut-outs and and angled button surfaces (perfect for medium and small hands). The Elite is similarly good, with the back buttons being elongated and thin, meaning everyone can reach them comfortably without them getting in the way.

lawn3• 8 months ago

My kids have been using the steam deck since they were 3 years old. Granted, their hands were a bit too small but the Deck is way more manageable than it appears.

hurricanepootis• 8 months ago

I own a steam controller and have been using it for multiple years. It's actually really comfortable with the way it sits in my hand. Far more comfortable than whatever sony had going on with the PS4 dualsense stuff

archon8103• 8 months ago

Maybe in size, but at least by weight, it's not bad at all.

Steam Controller weight: 292g.

Nintendo Switch 2 controller: 235g.

Sony Playstation 5 DualSense controller: 280g. DualSense Edge: 322g.

Xbox Wireless controller: 280g. Wireless Elite series 2: 345g.

terribleperson10• 8 months ago

You do not need big hands to use a classic steam controller, you just need to shift your grip. It's actually hard to use a steam controller with big hands. With long thumbs, the proper grip doesn't land your thumbs in the middle of the track pads.

Failing to better communicate the proper grip for the steam controller was a real fuck up on valve's part though. They should have tried to communicate it through design, making it harder to hold wrong.

I am kind of concerned about the size of the new controller, but valve seems to have decided there's no place in the market for a controller without sticks.

rkangel2• 8 months ago

As someone who has big hands (not chunky, just long fingers), I find the Steam Deck sooo comfortable and satisfying to hold. I still use my Nintendo Switch from time to time, but holding it now feels like it was designed for a child (which it was!).

pixelready• 8 months ago

Same here. The trackpads on the steam deck work great. Might get this for docked mode. Kinda wish a splittable controller was more common for ergonomics ( not great to be clenching your chest on a centered object like that for hours on end, similar to non-split keyboards ). Seems like split controllers are still reserved for VR and nintendo switch style systems for now…

gps02• 8 months ago

Can't you just use joycons without a Switch or VR controllers without a headset on PC?

archon8103• 8 months ago

I've been using a Stadia controller with my Steam Deck OLED but finally it'll have a worthy upgrade.

the__alchemist• 8 months ago

I wonder how this will compare to the Dual Sense; the haptics on that would be tough to give up!

mcnnowak• 8 months ago

I'm really disappointed that the new controller takes AA batteries though.

alliao• 8 months ago

i love it... I have a whole set of fujitsu/eneloop NiMH batteries

ndsipa_pomu• 8 months ago

Maybe more electronics should do this to avoid so much electronic waste as when the built in battery dies, it becomes junk.

pipe01• 8 months ago

The steam controller has a rechargable battery, maybe you're thinking of the steam frame controllers?

HexPhantom5• 8 months ago

If Valve can push a new standard that actually takes modern input seriously and gives devs better tooling, I'd be all for it

weberer• 8 months ago

I just hope they give us an option to buy a controller with the face buttons in the "Nintendo" order rather than the "Xbox" order. Like how the 8bitdo pro comes in two versions. The only console I actually still care about these days is the Switch/Switch 2, so it would be nice to not have the button placement suddenly reversed when switching between controllers.

https://www.8bitdo.com/pro2/

dabluecaboose2• 8 months ago

This doesn't help with the actual button printing, but you can set any controller to use Nintendo layout in Steam input

clvx• 8 months ago

Valve, please partner with Framework. I think this could be a great partnership in the future and the whole ecosystem as a whole.

bogwog2• 8 months ago

What would a Framework partnership accomplish? Ship SteamOS as a preinstalled option for their laptops?

robotnikman8• 8 months ago

That actually would be a cool idea and doable.

justinsaccount• 8 months ago

You seem to be forgetting the framework desktop which is very similar in form factor to the new steam machine: https://frame.work/desktop

SunshineTheCat• 8 months ago

Being able to play PC-ish games without Windows (all on its own) makes this pretty interesting. Looking forward to seeing its real world performance. The fact that it doesn't take up the space of a household appliance is a plus too.

dmix5• 8 months ago

You can do that today with a Steam Deck + a dock. The performance is surprisingly good and most higher end games you buy on Steam will come with pre-configured steam deck settings to downgrade video settings if needed.

I'm going to be buying the box though for the faster AMD chip, as I wasn't able to play some like Resident Evil 2 remake. While the Silent Hill 2 Remake played decent enough.

dfxm12• 8 months ago

What exactly do you mean by "pc-ish"? Setting aside steam deck, are you aware that you can already install steam on linux and play many games [0]? Are you aware of Bazzite [1]?

0 - https://www.protondb.com/

1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bazzite_(operating_system)

bongodongobob• 8 months ago

Long time veteran Linux user. I was not able to get anything to run on Steam. It's some sort of display driver issue/conflict, but if it takes me longer than an hour, I'm over it.

daedrdev3• 8 months ago

A mainstream desktop PC that supports most games without windows is actually a massive deal in the long term as I know plenty of people who don't like windows but didn't have an alternative

thot_experiment2• 8 months ago

Who are we to tell you how to use your computer?

i'm having a hard time describing the feelings this makes me feel. like i've been stressed, bedraggled and worn down, and suddenly there's a moment where i can just rest

it's nice to be excited about something for once instead of the baseline expectation of a horrible adversarial experience, which is the case for most tech in 2025

it is somewhat depressing that it's this novel to expect a piece of hardware to actually exist to make my life nicer vs the default of being an abomination that tries constantly to extract money and information from me like a fucking vampire

(and i guess, not having used this yet, this also speaks to valve being one of the last companies that i have any trust in to be capable of making a business decision that makes them less money in the short run in order to deliver a better product)

keyringlight7• 8 months ago

An ongoing 'background noise' concern I've had for a while is how PC gaming seems to be centralizing around steam. There's reasons why that happened, but it'd be real nice if 'infrastructure' was able to decouple from their store. It feels like practically requiring steam for PC gaming on windows and certainly on linux isn't a mile away from requiring MS windows, is it much freedom to pick which Seattle based company you run software from?

daedrdev3• 8 months ago

There are plenty of competing stores, they just aren't good. I require a game to be on steam because I like the store and features, but many games are also sold elsewhere.

thot_experiment2• 8 months ago

I don't think there's NO reason to be concerned, but I think it's pretty different considering the decades of history of how Valve acts vs how M$FT acts. Also, many games available on Steam are DRM free or available from other sources and Proton itself is open source.

Valve is also not publicly traded and they have a succession plan of some sort in the event that gaben kicks it, I can only assume whatever he's come up with is sound, he's done a great job of running the place so far.

Sohcahtoa825• 8 months ago

There's reasons why that happened

Steam's near-monopoly was earned by simply being the best store. Other stores like Epic don't even include basic features like a shopping cart to buy multiple games at once.

I could go on and on about why Steam is so much better than any other store, but this isn't the place.

That said, I can understand being nervous. Steam is great because it's privately owned and GabeN is happy with the money he makes from it and doesn't feel the need to enshittify it in order to get more money. But eventually he will die or retire, and someone else will be given control. Supposedly, he's already vetted some people to take the job, but what's to say they weren't merely playing the part and will take it public as soon as they can?

fngjdflmdflg• 8 months ago

The built in Steam DRM is very weak. Of course that can change at any time, but at least the current catalog of Steam DRM-only games are not really tied down to steam except via law/licensing.

badsectoracula2• 8 months ago

FWIW 95% of the games i play on my Linux are from other stores than Steam: GOG, Zoom Platform (not related to the Zoom telething) and itch.io, all of which are DRM-free stores. The Steam games i buy are mainly from small indie devs that do not have nor plan to have releases outside of Steam.

To play games i use UMU Launcher which is basically Proton minus Steam (or Wine plus DXVK, etc, depending on how you look it at). I use the "raw" UMU Launcher with its own command-line utility, though it can be used as part of Lutris for a GUI-based experience.

wiseowise11• 8 months ago

When alternatives are Epic, EA and Microsoft, you choose lesser evil.

engeljohnb• 8 months ago

Valve earned a lot of goodwill from me when I set up my docked steam deck as my main media player & gaming device. It required me to do a lot of little hacks. I was doing stuff the device wasn't meant to do, but it never put up road blocks just because I wasn't allowed to do it. Not like when I want to do simple things on my wife's macbook.

Lapra• 8 months ago

Steam is a service that's been running for >20 years and somehow hasn't been enshittified (although, I suppose when it first appeared it was seen as enshittification). It's worth celebrating, to be honest.

herewulf7• 8 months ago

I can personally vouch for a great deal of consternation among players of Valve's games at the time of Steam's launch and I have the IRC logs to prove it!

I was also personally resistant to the new thing and to this day have "only" a five digit Steam ID rather than maybe a four or even three digit one.. Haha!

Since then I can say that PC gamers have only benefited greatly from Valve's benevolent dictatorship compared to the alternatives.

ranger207• 8 months ago

A couple weeks ago Amazon said something about "we were trying to compete with Steam and even with all our resources nobody noticed" and that made me realize something: ideally, companies with similar products and services compete on features and cost, but nowadays the big tech providers compete more on lock in than anything else. But in the market of video game retail stores the competition _is_ on features and price, because Steam competes on those terms (ref gaben's famous quote "piracy is a service problem"; they're even competing and succeeding against free products)

PeaceTed7• 8 months ago

I definitely didn't notice, I had no idea they were trying anything like that.

butlike8• 8 months ago

Plot twist, Valve AI will syphon all your user metrics into Valve's new model. J/k and all joking aside, I feel the same way. Feels like a love letter to gamers

happosai2• 8 months ago

Valve being the only company in 2025 launching something that isn't a AI glowing AI button.

Coincidentally also the only launch in 2025 people appear genuinely excited about.

SchemaLoad19• 8 months ago

The Steam Deck has been my dream computer for this reason. It just works, literally all of the hardware is 100% supported on linux. And it's also not locked down in any way. You are completely free to install anything you want. I'm just so glad at least one tech company has the resources and will to create something that is a fully polished consumer ready product which also isn't completely restricted.

kreco• 8 months ago

I just need more RAM. 16GB is unfortunately not enough for me.

With some luck it would be easy to upgrade ourselves.

ark4n• 8 months ago

One more nail in the coffin of the xbox hardware business. Ouch.

franczesko• 8 months ago

Unless MS opens up Xboxes for actual gamers (which won't happen). Pity, as Series X is very capable

TheCoreh2• 8 months ago

Very weird USB-C port placement choices...

- 2 USB3-A on the front

- 2 USB2-A on the back

- 1 USB-C on the back

If you want to plug an external USB hard drive or SSD at full speed, you'll need to plug it at the front? Or use up the only USB-C port...

I suspect most joysticks sold today come with a USB-C to USB-C cable, so if you want to charge your controller you either need to plug on the back, use an adapter, or get a USB-A to USB-C cable?

Also the single USB-C port isn't Thunderbolt/USB4, and they're only including gigabit ethernet, which is disappointing but perhaps understandable if they're trying to keep it at a low price.

stetrain4• 8 months ago

Most gaming peripherals still seem to use USB-A on the computer end for cables and dongles.

Current Xbox and PS5 controllers charge with a USB-C port on the controller end but a USB-A port where the plug into the console.

SchemaLoad19• 8 months ago

For controllers you can use any cable you want. The Xbox controller will charge just fine on a C-C cable. I don't think they should have gone all in on USB-C like laptops have, but there should have been more than one USB-C and one should have been on the front. Pretty much the only thing you need USB-A for these days is mice/keyboard with non removable cables. Which are becoming increasingly rare.

coopierez• 8 months ago

The slim PS5 uses USB-C on both ends.

mxfh• 8 months ago

Because think they need to be backward compatible with decade old peripheral controllers. People tend to get grumpy about this. Yet nobody flinched when XBox ditched KinectV2 with Series S/X.

For PC's people are used to adapters. And USB-C is superior in every way.

A self declared general compute device should have a least two USB-C outs that can drive displays.

For 2026 (12 years into USB-C spec) I would expect a minimum of 2 3.2 capable fully wired USB-C ports.

Even better something newer that could do near 40GBpS or better. Like USB Gen 3×2

(Written on usb keyboard connected to 4k monitor that also charges the MBP it's plugged in)

ortusdux2• 8 months ago

Could it be a synergy with the Steam Frame's dual band wireless dongle? I'm guessing they would really want users to plug that into the front of the device.

MomsAVoxell• 8 months ago

I suspect it'll be like the Mac mini situation, and the after-market USB hubs that fit the form factor will expand rapidly ..

0x4578• 8 months ago

It would be a case if it had I/O like Mac mini. Like if it had TB3/TB4/USB4 somewhere, it doesn't.

dmix5• 8 months ago

most of the usecase is going to be keyboard, mouse, and bluetooth headset dongles. All three of mine attached to my Steam Deck dock are USB-A.

although I own a bunch of those usb-a->c attachments you plug on the end, so it wouldnt make much difference

vel0city4• 8 months ago

bluetooth headset dongles

I imagine this has decent Bluetooth support out of the box even if not mentioned? Its hard to find a WiFi chipset these days that doesn't have some kind of Bluetooth support.

Maybe proprietary headset dongles, but if its just bluetooth its probably not needed.

rtkwe11• 8 months ago

You'd be wrong C to A is still pretty standard for controllers in my experience.

As for gigabit fewer and fewer people have ethernet routed to their office/TV area much less >1gig networking to take advantage of anything better than a 1 gig.

tagyro4• 8 months ago

mmm ...let's agree to disagree

I wired my whole place with 10Gb - couldn't do it in the wall (as in, hidden) so I have flat cables around the door frame and wall corners. I was willing to accept the cables, just to get 10Gb.

And, IMHO, it's worth it.

mrguyorama• 8 months ago

The steam controller also revealed has a USB-C, as does Hori's official steam controller.

However, you can charge it from things that aren't USB ports. Charging bricks are cheap and most people have one for their phone now, except some unfortunate old iPhone users

SchemaLoad19• 8 months ago

I agree that gigabit Ethernet is adequate for the type of product this is. But I do find it funny that the Wifi chip on this is very likely capable of 2Gbit. We somehow entered a world where WiFi is typically faster than Ethernet.

terribleperson10• 8 months ago

I feel like part of the problem with going beyond gigabit Ethernet is that copper beyond 1 gigabit is expensive with limited adoption. SFP+ fiber is superior and not even expensive any more, but there's no consumer adoption.

preston4tw• 8 months ago

Valve / Steam presumably has good data on what controllers and peripherals people are using, so I'd imagine their port choices are based around that. Here's a June 2024 post talking about Steam Input and controller market share: https://steamcommunity.com/games/593110/announcements/detail... . At the time of the post they say "59% of sessions are using Xbox controllers, 26% are using PlayStation controllers, 10% are on Steam Decks"

ivanjermakov2• 8 months ago

Steam input controller says nothing about the interface being used (USB A vs USB C). A single USB C (with DP support, I hope) port in 2026 sounds like a bad design.

TiredOfLife2• 8 months ago

It's an old semi-custom semi-discontinued laptop soc.

viraptor3• 8 months ago

What do you expect to do with the steam machine that will take more than a gigabit? I mean, it's cool when things are faster, but if you can saturate the link, downloads are still bottlenecked by the drives. And even 4k streaming is under 100Mbit normally.

embedding-shape12• 8 months ago

And even 4k streaming is under 100Mbit normally

Are you talking "4k streaming" as the current streaming providers do it, with trash bitrate, or "4k streaming" as you would do it if you had ripped your own blu-ray disks and you want to stream it from a NAS somewhere else in your house to your living room?

daveoc64• 8 months ago

I can download at approximately 2.5 Gbps from Steam on my PC.

I think not having a 2.5 gigabit port at least is a poor choice.

TheCoreh2• 8 months ago

Games are super large nowadays. IIRC Steam uses P2P for the update downloads, so you should be able to saturate whatever link you have, and the SSD should be substantially faster than 1Gbps. So anyone that has a > 1Gbps internet connection should benefit from something higher than Gigabit.

ericd• 8 months ago

How are downloads bottlenecked by drives? A normal nvme drive does >20 gbit.

monocasa• 8 months ago

A lot of devices that you commonly plug and unplug like flash drives and passkeys still make sense as USB-A for a lot of people because of the specifics of the USB spec.

C to A converters for devices are technically verboten since they would allow an enduser to make a A to A cable, which can fry hosts if you plug them into eachother if they don't support USB OTG. You can lose certification if you try to ship a device with a C to A converter.

Because of that, USB-A devices with an optional A to C converter (or neater devices that have both plugs on them natively) are what makes a lot of sense for a lot of people for the kinds of devices that live on a key chain. So it makes sense for that to be the default on the front of a desktop, IMO.

0x4578• 8 months ago

Most controller/headphone dongles come with USB-A, so 2.0 in the back makes sense. Radio for new steam controller is integrated.

I have a Y-splitter for my PS5 controllers and if I didn't, I would have had some sort of controller dock. I assume I would do the same for this. Either way, TV is too far from my couch for a cable, so I wanted to keep playing and charging I'd use a powerbank from my coffee table.

Gigabit Ethernet...that's sad, I'd take 2.5G, so I can better stream my legally ripped Blu-rays. I assume most people don't care because they would use Wi-Fi or their switch only goes to 1G. Better than JBL making android TV sound bar with 100mpbs.

I think it purposely designed, so you don't try to build a NAS on it.

rtpg• 8 months ago

I suspect most joysticks sold today come with a USB-C to USB-C cable

while things can be charged with USB-C cables, the only thing I've ever received A C-to-C cable is... a USB-C wall charger. Granted I haven't gotten a USB-C iPhhone yet and I gotta imagine that one is C-to-C.

Generally lots of pack-in cables I've seen in the wild for charging devices continue to be USB-A-to-C. Switch 2 ports are USB-A, PS5 front port is USB-A... we're still getting there.

JMiao• 8 months ago

I think the decision of usb2-a at the rear is for wireless keyboard and mouse adapters. Those ones can behave abnormally on usb3-a, plus it’s nice to have those ugly adapters out of sight.

Ekaros3• 8 months ago

Also just old wired mice and keyboards. The desktop use scenarios. If you use both ports for those at back. Any temporary faster devices make more sense at front.

extraduder_ire• 8 months ago

Adapting A ports to C is much more convenient than going the other way. I have a whole sack of passive A to C dongles that stick out less than 1cm from the port.

lynnharry• 8 months ago

The console is on the TV side and I usually just charge my controllers on the sofa side. That way I can charge and play at the same time if I want to.

terribleperson10• 8 months ago

You can replace the internal ssd with an off-the-shelf ssd and it also has SD card support, so there should be less need for external SSDs.

Gigabit Ethernet is definitely a bummer when I'm close to having fiber all the way to my PC.

pseudosavant3• 8 months ago

Real question, what would >1 gigabit Ethernet or Thunderbolt do for you in a low/mid-range gaming PC?

KeplerBoy5• 8 months ago

With thunderbolt you could connect an egpu. This machine won't age terribly well with it's limited GPU capabilities.

HexPhantom5• 8 months ago

The lack of USB-C on the front is especially odd in 2025

jerojero4• 8 months ago

The steam machine has a bespoke wireless connector for the (new steam) controller so it doesn't pollute the Bluetooth network and cause lag.

Yes, the controller is charged through usb-c, but you can just use any charger around to charge that. I mean, the battery should last for 30+ hours so you only need to charge it on a weekly or biweekly basis with heavy usage.

redfloatplane• 8 months ago

Very interesting! The one killer issue that jumps to mind is anti-cheat. I switched away from gaming on Linux via Proton to gaming on Windows because Battlefield 6's anti-cheat won't work under Proton. Many games are like this, particularly some of the most popular (Rainbow 6 Siege for instance). And BF6 made this decision only recently despite the growing number of Steam Deck players (and other players on linux - in fairness I don't think there would have been that many BF6 players on a handheld).

Edit: I specifically use a gaming-only PC. The hardware is used for nothing else. Hence, discussions of rootkits don't really bother me personally much and on balance I'd really rather see fewer cheaters in my games. I think it would be the same with any of these machines - anything Steam-branded is likely to be a 99% gaming machine and their users will only care that their games work, not about the mechanisms of the anti-cheat software.

hananova• 8 months ago

All Valve has to do is say “Your software cannot deliberately exclude linux support including kernel anti-cheat to be listed on Steam.” And that would be that, the few devs big enough to make it on their own would leave, and everyone else would adapt.

pityJuke2• 8 months ago

Worth noting: Valve’s own first party tournaments for their own game require kernel level anti-cheat (from a third party vendor). Valve themselves have given up on allowing players in their own title play competitively in a Valve sponsored event with a kernel level anti-cheat. I can’t imagine they’d ever be this brash.

There is no adapting without a proper solution for securing game integrity.

Goronmon• 8 months ago

Is there an feasible alternative to "kernel anti-cheat" available on Linux?

brian-armstrong• 8 months ago

The games would just leave Steam. The big publishers want their own platforms and launchers anyway.

Yokolos8• 8 months ago

Yeah, I would hope not. Trying to impose your will on suppliers and b2b customers like this is how you get hit with an antitrust lawsuit.

superxpro122• 8 months ago

Ironically, this might create a perverse incentive to shift gamers to linux as all the hackers jump from windows to linux to take advantage of the lack of KMAC.

aDyslecticCrow2• 8 months ago

This is a issue of critical mass. With the continued growth of steamos, steamdeck, and linux as a game platform, eventually it will pull over support.

sodality2• 8 months ago

I have to wonder if it's possible to ever even guarantee something that can't be trivially bypassed on Linux - Windows, sure, it's possible with DMA, but it's damn hard. On Linux you could just compile a spoofed kernel or a DKMS module or something.

graynk2• 8 months ago

I sincerely hope it doesn't happen then. I'd rather have game developers come up with a different solution that is not a rootkit

kyoji• 8 months ago

It's worse than that, BF6's anticheat is kernel level and requires the Windows-only version secure boot to be enabled, at least on my motherboard. There is no way I'm going to faff about with my BIOS when rebooting just to play this game.

Jnr7• 8 months ago

I don't know how EFI boot works but I am running a gaming PC in dual boot and I have both Microsoft and my own personal secure boot keys loaded (for linux and grub)

I boot my own signed bootloader (grub) from which I can also boot Windows. Windows shows it is in secure boot mode and it works fine with BF6 for me.

But I have a feeling this allows users to run some bootkit/rootkit and bypass any of those kernel level anti-cheats. Maybe I'm wrong and EFI handover to Windows clears all the memory, but I somehow doubt it.

conor-3• 8 months ago

I view it as Valve is doing me a favor by adding friction towards me installing a rootkit to play video games.

There's also been numerous userspace ACs that work well and also run in userspace (EAC, Battleye, etc.) that have been enabled for Linux/Proton users (including by EA with Apex Legends at one point). A lot of the support for Linux mostly comes down to the developer/publishers not wanting to and not because of technical reasons.

baby2• 8 months ago

on the other hand you can't play any of the older battlefields due to cheating (not like "is he cheating?" more like blatant "this guy is speedhacking and heashotting everyone" cheating that the server could easily detect if they cared about it)

superxpro122• 8 months ago

There are hacks these days that sniff the pcie bus with an FPGA to mitm the ram, render out the game state, and render an overlay on top of the monitor.

It's a crazy arms race that IDK even kernel mode can compete with at the end of the day.

I think this shift away from community-led multiplayer is approaching a dead-end with respect to this hacking arms race.

Player bans and votekicks used to be so easy to do. And while there were some badmins, I argue it still resulted in an overall healthier multiplayer ecosystem.

OF course we know this shift is so the developer can control the game more tightly for monetization purposes. But i think the end result of this is more harm than good.

bob1029• 8 months ago

Looking at the specs and marketing copy, it sounds to me like you could secure boot windows 11 on this machine.

... a discrete semi-custom AMD desktop class CPU and GPU.
Yes, Steam Machine is optimized for gaming, but it's still your PC. Install your own apps, or even another operating system. Who are we to tell you how to use your computer?

butlike8• 8 months ago

Do we know what kernel SteamOS uses? Is it built on linux, or could it be some sort of kiosk'd mode Windows where this will be a non-issue? One could hope but I truly don't know.

pja• 8 months ago

SteamOS on the Deck is just a standard (tuned) Linux distribution under the hood. It would be very surprising to me if Valve shifted to an entirely different OS for the Cube.

Jnr7• 8 months ago

It is running Valve's immutable fork of Archlinux, you can find their source package mirror online.

Klaus23• 8 months ago

Perhaps a trusted execution environment based anti-cheat system could be possible.

I think Valve said something about working with anti-cheat developers to find a solution for the Steam Deck, but nothing happened. Perhaps they will do something this time.

With a TEE, you could scan the system or even completely isolate your game, preventing even the OS from manipulating it. As a last resort, you could simply blacklist the machine if cheats are detected.

There would probably still be some cheaters, but the numbers would be so low as to not be a problem.

SchemaLoad19• 8 months ago

Maybe the user friction would be too much, but I'd be happy for the system to just straight up reboot for games which require anti cheat. So while that game is running, the system is in a verified state. But once you close the game all of your mods and custom drivers can be loaded just fine.

AceJohnny2• 8 months ago

Same. I mainline Destiny2 (well, a bit less these days), and Bungie won't support Linux/Steam Deck because they depend on BattlEye kernel anti-cheat.

(and yet still have a problem with cheaters, see all the bans following the Desert Perpetual raid race)

Jnr7• 8 months ago

BattleEye is supported on Linux and Steam Deck, Bungie simply decided not to enable support for it. https://areweanticheatyet.com/?search=battleye&sortOrder=&so...

davikr• 8 months ago

I'd have Secure Boot, and then one root for an user-modifiable regular Linux installation, and another root that is read-only, signed, custom kernel etc.

morshu90012• 8 months ago

Even without anticheat, ProtonDB has a lot of "gold" ratings it really shouldn't; the comments explain the real experience. See BeamNG and AOE2:DE.

JBiserkov• 8 months ago

A bit of topic, but I was wondering how much bigger is the steam machine compared to the mac mini m4, since that's what I have and is my frame of reference. Obviously comparing apples to oranges and only talking about physical volume, not features, compatibility, price, personal preferences, etc.

Mac Mini m4: 127 x 127 x 50 mm = 0.8 L

Steam Machine: 156 x 162 x 152 = 3.8 L

That's 4.76 times more volume.

hnuser1234567• 8 months ago

It's also about twice the total TDP and more likely to spend time running at full bore. Bigger heatsinks and fans means quieter operation under load.

Aurornis4• 8 months ago

The Steam device has a 110W GPU and 30W CPU. The M4 Mac Mini's peak power consumption is less than half of that. Even with the Apple Silicon efficiency, it can't keep up with high power GPUs in graphical loads like gaming.

Mac Mini will throttle itself after sustained full load, especially with the GPU engaged.

A Mac Mini will start throttling well before the end of a 30 minute online gaming match.

A larger volume for better cooling was a good choice for a machine designed to run the CPU and GPU at full load for hours.

PeaceTed7• 8 months ago

In that sense the Mini M4 is targeted more at Desktop than gaming. Can do short bursts when needed but cannot run the marathon in terms of graphics. Nothing wrong with this, it is just a trade off.

Synaesthesia2• 8 months ago

The Mac Mini M4 is crazy small though. This steam box is still really small, even if it is 5x the volume of the Mac Mini M4.

kgbier• 8 months ago

For anyone wondering how the Mac Studio compares:

95 x 197 x 197 mm = 3.7 L

yencabulator6• 8 months ago

127 x 127 x 50 mm is likely the size of the cooling fan in the Steam Machine. Apples to oranges.

2OEH8eoCRo03• 8 months ago

Will it be able to play AAA games with shitty DRM such as Battlefield 6?

Not being able to play these huge titles on Linux really sucks!

constantcrying2• 8 months ago

It is not a DRM problem, you can run many EA games on Linux with no problems, it is an anti cheat problem, which can not be solved by Valve, it has to be done by EA.

2OEH8eoCRo03• 8 months ago

Correct but the customer doesn't care whose fault it is, they just want to play the latest games.

Razengan• 8 months ago

Look at it this way: Not having to play those money suckers leaves you more time for all the awesome indies out there!

rvz4• 8 months ago

Well that’s one of the big reasons why PC gaming on Windows will remain dominant for a very very long time and Linux-based PCs for gaming will always remain behind.

Majority of gamers really don’t care about indie games. (unless they are exceptional)

nake13• 8 months ago

"Over six times the horsepower of Steam Deck" ≈ RTX 3060 Laptop?

nine_k• 8 months ago

Arch-based? KDE Plasma? There might happen a real "year of desktop Linux", in a way. That is, a Linux desktop that sneaks in as a side dish, but maybe gains some non-zero traction, and bringing FOSS to more people who are not engineers.

CuriouslyC2• 8 months ago

AI + Games is the killer app for Linux on the <everything>. You can make a beast of a gaming PC that also happens to be a beast of a local inference system, and that local inference system can manage the system for you, so grandma won't have to worry about the shell ever again.

whalesalad• 8 months ago

"I’m on the record saying, that maybe Valve will actually save the Linux desktop. And it’s actually not because I think games are important! I don't care, I don't play games. I think some people do, so games maybe important. But the really important issue is I guarantee you Valve will not make 15 different binaries. And I also guarantee you that every single desktop distribution will care about Valve binaries." – Linus Torvalds in 2014

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pzl1B7nB9Kc&t=310s

fracus• 8 months ago

I've been using Linux instead of Windows for over a decade now. If Linux exploded in popularity I would be afraid enshitification and monetization would kick in super quickly. FOSS can't dominate the market. The market won't allow it. They will find a way to exploit it. This is just a fear based on generalizations. Perhaps it is misguided.

Jnr7• 8 months ago

SteamOS on Steam Deck has been running Arch-based immutable distro since 2022. KDE can be started but by default it runs a Big Picture mode of Steam in gamescope.

haunter7• 8 months ago

"Steam Machine’s pricing is comparable to a PC with similar specs" [0]

It has to be no more than 800€ then if it also wants to compete against the console market.

Even 800€ is too much imo because looking at the specs it's already not a "future proof" build, more like a previous gen gaming laptop

0, https://www.theverge.com/tech/818111/valve-steam-machine-han...

cheschire• 8 months ago

thanks for that. The internals photos were what I was really wanting to see!

robotnikman8• 8 months ago

Wow, the heat sink takes up most of the internal space!

porphyra3• 8 months ago

Having a single big fan cool a massive heatsink (that is hopefully very quiet) can legitimately a good reason to get this over building a typical SFF PC, which often runs hot and loud. It sorta reminds me of the trashcan Mac Pro. I myself have a sandwich style case with an RTX 5070 in it which is quite loud under load.

encom2• 8 months ago

Paywalled, and also The Verge.

https://archive.vn/ndOmA

ivanjermakov2• 8 months ago

What is the controversy?

tempest_4• 8 months ago

Unfortunately given the fact that RAM and SSD prices are going through the roof coupled with the fact that a CPU like that alone will be near 150-200 at retail this thing is going to likely cost more.

The console makers have avoided these price increases by mass producing the same sku for a while now. If stocks last into 2027 they will likely remain the same price. If they don't I imagine the console prices might jump a bit too.

agloe_dreams2• 8 months ago

It is basically a amd 7640u with a 7600m glued on. All together and subsidized by the store, there is no reason to think this will be more than $600, likely closer to $500.

rafaelmn• 8 months ago

600€ is top I would pay for this, and even then the HDMI 2.0 sucks. I get that it's a linux/amd issue with HDMI licensing but it still sucks for a media center when most TVs these days support 4k/120 VRR.

I really like the controller, I think I'll pass on the device and just stream from my PC to TV.

dbspin2• 8 months ago

Digital foundry have confirmed it supports 4K/120 VRR. It's actually beyond the HDMI 2.0 spec, but not listed as 2.1 as it misses out on some obscure features of the spec. Doubtful you'd get 4K 120p on too many contemporary titles with this hardware configuration though.

black_knight2• 8 months ago

I might be the minority, but I frankly would buy it at 1000€ easily if it meant that the hardware was really good.

taude4• 8 months ago

Nope, I don't think you're the minority, once people think of this as a micro itx build. Power supply integrated. That's cool. Will be curious what the actual performance is because hard to compare the custom chipsets with what's out there now.

taude4• 8 months ago

what kind of specs can we build a mini itx these days? I haven't looked into it, but the small form factor is a pretty big premium. I'm not sure I could build a ~ Raydon 7600xt micro itx build for less than $1K usd? (I haven't really looked, though).

For me, I'm looking at this like a nice micro itx build, and I'd probably pay up to a grand for it. (pending final specs and performance reviews, because it's kind of hard to compare it's custom chips on paper.)

romanovcode• 8 months ago

Intel i7, 1tb ssd, 32gb ram and 3070 can fit in ITX which would be MUCH better performance than the steam box for games.

Only downside is you have to install Windows of course.

puzzlingcaptcha2• 8 months ago

For 800 eur I'd rather get the cheaper Framework desktop motherboard (Ryzen AI 385) and build around that.

conorh• 8 months ago

It is truly amazing how far Proton/Steam OS has come along. I recently installed it on some old AMD hardware I had lying around, hooked it up to my TV and everything just works - zero problems. I look forward to checking out this Steam Machine!

torginus3• 8 months ago

Cool but I wish it had a single big APU chip like the consoles and Strix Halo - and unified memory. PCs are long overdue for adopting this change, and the only reason it makes sense to keep the separate is to make graphics cards swappable.

Considering how big GPU silicon is, when you have both integrated and custom, it'd have made sense to integrate them.

bigyabai9• 8 months ago

and unified memory. PCs are long overdue for adopting this change

Why? Desktop PCs, especially gaming PCs, have nothing to gain and everything to lose by oversubscribing system memory with GPU workloads. The memory bus typically isn't fast enough anyways, and a modern PCIe x16 can easily handle the bandwidth of a gigantic GPU. The only advantage to unifying everything is latency, which isn't relevant at any framerate under 1000hz.

when you have both integrated and custom, it'd have made sense to integrate them.

Sometimes, sometimes not. AMD's mobile packaging technology is not world-class like Apple and Nvidia's is. Valve had the experience with the Steam Deck to make the call if a mobile architecture was the right choice, and they decided against it.

Valve doesn't have to make a Mac. This is a gaming device, it's designed accordingly.

torginus3• 8 months ago

All consoles have been using a single integrated chip since the last generation. The memory bandwidth a CPU uses is much less than GPU. Let's say a CPU does 50 GB/s peak while the GPU does 200+

eigenspace2• 8 months ago

What they're using here is still mostly off the shelf silicon with some tweaks. If they got enough volume, they probably could go for an all integrated APU with unified memory that could keep the GPU fed, but that'd be a very expensive and new thing to develop.

I hope that if this is a success, they'll have the numbers to justify a Strix-Halo like APU with a smaller CPU but keeping the big GPU for the next generation of the device.

Plasmoid2000ad• 8 months ago

I'm thinking they considered this strongly, since that's what they did with the steam deck.

We don't know price yet, but if it's like the deck they'll be trying to keep it as cheap as possible. The deck supposedly was so off-the-shelf that it re-used a design for another AMD customer, leftover elements and all - https://boilingsteam.com/an-in-depth-look-at-the-steam-deck-...

Unless Valve took a big risky bet, the Steam deck is going to be again re-using existing hardware and excess hardware. I'm presuming there are leftover unsold Zen 4 and RDNA 3 dies - and nothing competitive that AMD could offer from Valves perspective, at least when they locked the design some months ago.

dvtkrlbs• 8 months ago

The problem with those Halo chips are they are really expensive. Steam is aiming for the masses so above 1k for this device is a no-go.

mostly_harmless• 8 months ago

you can wake your Steam Machine without leaving your couch. [using the built in steam controller wireless adapter].

This one simple thing is the only thing that makes my SteamDeck+Dock feel like a second class console. So far they only claim it's for the Steam Controller, but I'd be great if it worked with the handful of 8bitdo or Switch controllers I've been using.

neura2• 8 months ago

Same issue with Switch 2. You can only wake it with a Switch 2 controller. Nintendo's own Pro Controller for switch, which used to wake the Switch just fine, cannot wake the Switch 2. Seems like a forced upgrade issue, to me. :(

sunaookami• 8 months ago

IIRC it's because the Switch 2 uses Bluetooth LE protocol for waking up the console which the Switch 1 does not support (it uses a different protocol).

azdle• 8 months ago

Waking up the deck works for me with my xbox controller connected via bluetooth. Are you using those controllers via BT or USB?

Edit: Now that I think about it, this might have been a feature added to the OLED model.

robotnikman8• 8 months ago

Yes, the OLED model has a different Bluetooth controller and iirc that's the main reason. Though Valve has been working on trying to backport it to the original models as well.

bogwog2• 8 months ago

I have a 1st gen Steam Deck (256gb), and it has supported wake from bluetooth peripherals for a while. I've only tested it with a PS5 controller, but it works. [EDIT: btw I use the official dock. Idk if it'll work with others]

I use my SteamDeck as a streaming device too, and since my TV is connected via HDMI, waking the console also wakes the TV. So I can start playing/watching anything by just turning on my PS5 controller (which is not ideal because the PS5 controller has terrible battery life and is often dead when I need it, but that's a different issue)

darkteflon• 8 months ago

On the other hand, PS5 controller - unlike an Xbox controller - gets you gyro control, which makes for a very nice mouse experience. I play tons of mouse-only games (e.g. Mechabellum) from the couch thanks to the DualSense.

chocalot• 8 months ago

I agree. It looks like it's in progress.

Earlier this month SteamOS had a release: "Temporarily re-disabled experimental wake-on-bluetooth support for Steam Deck LCD while issues with spurious wake-ups are investigated"

https://www.steamdeck.com/en/news

ZeWaka4• 8 months ago

You can also wake up your steam deck with the steam controller 1 :)

This makes me wonder if they're still using the same protocol.

ymsodev• 8 months ago

Who are we to tell you how to use your computer?

What a refreshing thing to hear in 2025... :D

didibus• 8 months ago

Hell ya! A new gaming OS, linux based, getting console and portable hardware that is well built, it's what I've been waiting for, something that gives you a good console UX but lets you play PC games.

dmix5• 8 months ago

I've had my Steam deck plugged into my tv for the last year and I sometimes use the Linux desktop (just a menu option and it reloads into desktop mode) which has a really nice design is already preconfigured for casual linux use.

I'd look up game review youtube videos and search stuff in between games from my couch. No complaints.

The only downside to SteamOS being linux is the lack of easy mod support. It's either a PIA or not supported.

buffet_overflow• 8 months ago

You have to set it up with the Steam client in Desktop Mode, but you can add arbitrary programs and executables as non-steam games.

As a result, I can open Spotify in the background and have it play music while I game, from the primary SteamOS interface.

energy1234• 8 months ago

How's the added latency when connecting a controller to the steam deck through Bluetooth?

I tried to do something similar to you without a cable (controller --bluetooth--> deck --wifi & steam play--> TV) but it had ghastly latency, yet I didn't isolate which leg of the trip was responsible.

LarsDu883• 8 months ago

GabeN send me a devkit! I make Rogue Stargun VR (roguestargun.com) which should be able to run on standalone

DavideNL• 8 months ago

https://mastodon.social/@stroughtonsmith/115538125708522123

LarsDu883• 8 months ago

How do I get a devkit? Both Meta and Pico have sent me free dev headsets.

I e-mailed GabeN directly this morning...

LarsDu883• 8 months ago

I emailed him directly, and holy shit GabeN actually forwarded the e-mail and I'm now on a waitlist

herewulf7• 8 months ago

Looks like a neat game! Best of luck getting your dev kit.

butz• 8 months ago

No external power brick. Instant buy.

shmerl• 8 months ago

Is that actually a benefit? I'd say for better cooling, it's better to put the brick outside.

koolala7• 8 months ago

Makes it super portable. Throw this in a bag and use the Steam Frame as a monitor.

microsoftedging• 8 months ago

It's glorious. The year has finally come. It's nice to feel excited about tech sometimes, especially when the company isn't completely horrible, and more competition! Great! Microsoft's move really, Sony and Nintendo are doing pretty okay!

W shadow drop.

simlevesque• 8 months ago

I bet they decided to crash their skin market in part because too many people were exploiting the Steam Deck loophole to take the skin money out of the system.

Now people will need to give Steam real money to buy their new devices.

Ekaros3• 8 months ago

Really I think it was otherwise. Dropping prices mean that more transactions happen on their market place. And them selling games or hardware allows them to realise their liabilities as my understanding is that money in wallet on Steam is not yet revenue.

SchemaLoad19• 8 months ago

Maybe, but I also think it was just a dangerous situation for them to be in for no benefit. Teenangers dumping all their money in to skins because tiktok "investors" told them to, and then trading them on sketchy 3rd party marketplaces both exposes them to risk of regulators cracking down, and doesn't make them much profit.

invaliduser• 8 months ago

Just found about this skin market/casino thing, and also that my teenage son purchased a skin for 100€, but is still pretty excited and happy about it because «its real value is around 700€». I am still processing this information.

flakiness2• 8 months ago

I'm still waiting for Steam Deck 2! Come on!

Narishma2• 8 months ago

They already said there won't be a successor until a significantly more powerful and power-efficient SoC than what they are currently using is available.

flakiness2• 8 months ago

Ugh I was about to downvote you but thanks for the tip.

A Snapdragon would be perfect for a handheld. Hope the "machine" goes well and they change their mind.

jadbox2• 8 months ago

When's the preorder?

drcongo• 8 months ago

I wonder if AMD have bothered finishing the gfx drivers for this before release.

mystifyingpoi• 8 months ago

Linus Torvalds was right. Valve will save the Linux desktop.

metalliqaz• 8 months ago

...by emulating WinAPI

flohofwoe• 8 months ago

And nothing wrong with that, the classic Win32 API is actually quite decent, especially the small subset needed for games. And it has the incredible advantage that it doesn't change since Microsoft doesn't care about Windows anymore ;)

sph2• 8 months ago

Heh, who cares. I can play games and my OS doesn’t spy on me.

npteljes13• 8 months ago

The funny thing would be for Wine to then extend the WinAPI, and software beginning to use that extension.

osn93637392• 8 months ago

I thought it was a translation layer? Not emulation right?

SchemaLoad19• 8 months ago

The original comment by Linus was that Valve would not accept the current state of things where to distribute a program on Linux you need to create a different package for every single distro. Which is true, Steam with Proton has pushed a single stable platform where you can publish a single build and it works everywhere. In desktop mode of SteamOS everything is installed through Flatpak.

PeaceTed7• 8 months ago

Sometimes you have to walk with the devil to do good deeds.

happosai2• 8 months ago

There is always Android ABI but kernel developers still think android is a calamity rather than biggest Linux success story ever...

petepete• 8 months ago

By _embracing_ the WinAPI!

koinedad• 8 months ago

Been waiting for this

robotnikman8• 8 months ago

The one with the front panel replaced by an Eink screen really looks cool https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/202...

Valve won’t necessarily sell any of those extra panels, but says it’ll release the CAD files so you can design and 3D print your own.

paxys7• 8 months ago

They haven't mentioned it anywhere, but non-upgradable CPU/GPU/RAM/SSD would be a massive deal breaker.

Also why announce it without a price?

giobox• 8 months ago

While it's a dealbraker for me too, locking the spec is how Valve can make a stable hardware target for devs with the "Steam Deck Verified" program, which they've also announced is coming to this box. This is one of the main reasons the specs for the Deck have remained almost identical since launch as well, Valve have said as much in interviews.

I expect to see this and the Deck try to follow locked hardware revisions every few years, just like a console, to allow the verified program to work effectively.

This product is so not aimed at those of us already building our own gaming boxes, but I'm guessing more a way to tempt those who have only ever owned gaming consoles into the Steam ecosystem.

https://www.steamdeck.com/en/verified

FWIW some early access previews note the box does have a socketed M2 SSD and what looks like upgradable RAM.

koolala7• 8 months ago

The SSD is upgradable.

keoneflick• 8 months ago

I wonder if Steam will finally implement multi-user sign on for local multiplayer games (like all true consoles).

It's something that doesn't get headlines, but a real barrier for enjoyment for a console-like PC. Hate being stuck with 'guest 1' and 'guest 2' or whatever. Many games want each player to progress and without true multi sign on, it just doesn't work. Hence games dropping local multiplayer on PC.

awakeasleep2• 8 months ago

Steam would need to reliably pass multiple controller inputs to the game before your qualm gets addressed

sophrosyne42• 8 months ago

Valve reports that the Steam Machine will support inputs from up to 4 Steam Controllers [1], so presumably they are updating SteamInput to handle that.

[1] https://store.steampowered.com/sale/steammachine

BlueTemplar6• 8 months ago

I'm not sure what you mean ?

We have been using 3-4 controllers on the Steam Deck lately : Steam Controller, Xbox One gamepad, Switch 1 Joy Pads (together or separate).

There are some quirks with the first time game setup sometimes, but we've never noticed any issues after that ?

InterlooperX• 8 months ago

I still wonder how Steam generally handles Linux' multi user setup.

When I last looked into it, it seemed like Steam gets installed into the user's space of the linux user that did the installation.

As in, you have two Linux accounts and each would not only have to install their own Steam client. They would also have to download their own copy of the games they play into their own steam library.

And if the game is like 100GB in size that would mean you would have to se aside 200GB if both linux accounts would buy this game.

I feel like having to muck about with symlinks and stuff just to get both steam installations to believe this path is their library seems like a bit cumbersome.

Especially since I dont know how steam generally reacts when "someone else" aka not them makes changes to that library. I'd hate having to "repair" the library everytime I play just because my steam detected the changes from my brothers steam to that library as suspicious.

Windows does a lot of things wrong. So much that I would love to switch but the way it handles two windows accounts with their own steam account and one steam installation/library is at least working the way i would expect it to.

timpera• 8 months ago

I really hope that we'll be able to put Windows on this.

miguelxpn• 8 months ago

The landing page says "Who are we to tell you how to use your computer?" so I'm assuming you'll be able to do whatever you want with it. Similar to the Steam Deck.

barnabee• 8 months ago

I hope we can, too. I really hope we don't.

mcdow• 8 months ago

Why does Steam/Valve care so much about Linux? I know as devs we all would prefer to use Linux/Unix. But developer experience isn’t a good business justification.

Manfred• 8 months ago

Probably because Steam doesn't want to sell an Xbox and Microsoft won't license Windows to be rebranded.

0x4578• 8 months ago

Probably to keep MS from locking down gaming on Windows and cutting out Valve as distributor.

Add to that, Windows isn't usable on 10ftUI or really anything that is not fully-controlled (think ATMs) or desktop with kb/m.

jcelerier• 8 months ago

why wouldn't you use linux when you are shipping your own, custom, purpose-built device?

andrewclunn• 8 months ago

They don't want Microsoft to be able to use its control of the OS to push them out. It's not the Valve needs to control the OS, it's that they don't want a company that views them as a competitor to have said control. Linux ensures that they have protection from that.

kube-system• 8 months ago

For starters, they can't really customize Windows for the devices they release.

eigenspace2• 8 months ago

It's because Valve's entire business model is currently reliant on Microsoft not being emboldened to try and lock down software downloads to only occur through the Microsoft Store.

15 or so years ago, Microsoft started making moves in that direction and Valve immediately started trying to build and sell Linux based gaming machines in order to try and protect themselves somewhat from Microsoft. Those Linux gaming machines (Steam Machines 1.0) were a massive failure because they were expensive, and had very very limited game support.

Valve then spent around a decade improving Wine, building Proton, and designing the SteamDeck, which was a great success for them and is now making lots of people take Linux seriously for gaming. Now they're moving up the value chain and trying to make Linux the go-to place for PC gaming.

They've still got a big battle ahead of them, but already Linux users are around 4% of active Steam users, and the Linux experience is rapidly improving. Meanwhile, Microsoft seems to be bleeding goodwill, and is actively pissing off a huge amount of their Windows audience while simultaneously giving up on Xbox, so this is really perfect timing for Valve now.

ThatPlayer6• 8 months ago

The business justification is called commoditizing your complement. https://gwern.net/complement is a good article about it.

robotnikman8• 8 months ago

You can basically tailor the OS specifically for the device and remove unneeded bloat. Also the threat of Microsoft and Windows as mentioned by other users. The introduction of the Microsoft Store with Windows 8 basically kicked off this whole move for Valve. While it took over a decade of work, its paying great dividends now.

npteljes13• 8 months ago

I know as devs we all would prefer to use Linux/Unix.

That's not true. In the 2025 SO survey, both Windows is the most used OS for developers, for both professional and for personal use.

https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2024/technology#1-operating-...

UK-Al052• 8 months ago

Used != Prefer

distances2• 8 months ago

Lots of devs prefer Linux but are forced to used Windows by their employers. So both can be true at the same time.

paxys7• 8 months ago

A bit too sparse on details.

- No price

- No indication for whether the CPU/GPU/RAM/SSD are upgradable or all soldered together on the board.

- "4K gaming at 60 FPS with FSR" but doesn't mention what kind of games it can run at that quality.

- No performance benchmarks, or mention of what the equivalent retail CPU/GPU to their custom one is.

At face value this seems like a $500-600 PC, and that's also the price it would be able to compete with consoles at.

haunter7• 8 months ago

8GB VRAM + 4K + FSR3 is very tough situation. Basically bit better than an Xbox Series S but quickly outpaced by midrange PCs.

It will all come down to the price.

paxys7• 8 months ago

Yeah non-upgradable 8GB VRAM would make it a no-go for all but the most casual gamers. But then the casual gamers would rather buy a PS5 for the same price, so let's see where this one fits in.

energy1234• 8 months ago

The performance has little to do with the amount of VRAM. The VRAM is just a cap on texture resolution.

mmis10002• 8 months ago

They said they route vram/rams though the io die in the gamer nexus's video. Wondering if that means GPU will also have direct access to ram. So it will not actually be a very big problem? Probably slower, but not terribly swapping like those 8gb gpu.

nalekberov2• 8 months ago

It's soldered on the board, Gamers Nexus has already reviewed it: https://youtu.be/bWUxObt1efQ?t=591

mayli2• 8 months ago

Yeah, gemini gives $649 - $699 for BOM, $749+ if they want some margin from the hardware. Which is cheaper than most "Gaming PC", but still more expensive than Switch/PS5, and lack the expandability of PC.

I wish they could sell at $300-$500, that's really going to make this a must have for this year.

keyringlight7• 8 months ago

Using the deck prices seems like a good place to start unless they're using the opportunity to change strategy. It's an updated SoC, but minus a screen, battery, separate dock, built-in controller, and less pressure to pack it in a handheld chassis. They mention a built in wireless adapter for the controller, so I assume there will be bundles with and without a controller.

KeplerBoy5• 8 months ago

Gemini is vastly overestimating the cost of the BoM.

JeremyNT• 8 months ago

There are some early previews where people ran some actual games at it[0].

Here are some of their results:

In Cyberpunk 2077, running at 4K, it’s a surprisingly stable 60fps, albeit with the caveat of that using FSR 3 upscaling on Performance mode with Medium quality settings. But, also: basic ray tracing, something the Deck can’t even think about enabling outside of very specific games.
The next game I tested, Black Myth: Wukong, is best run with its own RT effects switched off. Still, it also averaged around 60fps on otherwise similar settings: Performance-level FSR 3 upscaling to 4K, plus the Medium quality preset. And, in an almost unnerving repeat performance, Silent Hill f ran close enough to a solid 60fps (with most drops owed to Unreal Engine 5’s signature stuttering) on the Performance-level graphics settings and, once again, FSR 3 running on Performance mode.

[0] https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/hands-on-with-the-new-steam...

andrepd2• 8 months ago

In Cyberpunk 2077, running at 4K, it’s a surprisingly stable 60fps, albeit with the caveat of that using FSR 3 upscaling on Performance mode with Medium quality settings

So it's not running at 4K nor 60fps. I wish people would stop calling 1080p upscale through some dogshit filter as "4K"...

legitster• 8 months ago

No indication for whether the CPU/GPU/RAM/SSD are upgradable or all soldered together on the board.

Almost certainly. This is the direction the industry is heading, and the perverse unavailability of high-end discrete graphics cards is the nail in the coffin.

See also the Framework PC.

esskay7• 8 months ago

We do have an indication. The RAM and SSD are both upgradable. The RAM is SODIMM, and storage is NVME

a96• 8 months ago

The Framework Desktop has unified memory, which is the usual excuse.

jm4• 8 months ago

It's basically a more powerful Steam Deck that's connected to a TV. The games will be "verified" and the settings pre-tuned for ideal performance just like the Steam Deck. They did a good job making the most of mediocre hardware in the Deck.

My initial thoughts were that this thing would cost considerably more, but I'm looking at the specs and it might not be too bad. Maybe it'll start at $499 or $599 and go up $749 or $849. I'm guessing SoC and not easily upgraded. It says Zen4 so it won't be Strix Point/Halo, but maybe some bastard variation with a Zen4 core and newer GPU than the Deck.

torben-friis• 8 months ago

Consoles frequently get better performance than an equivalent pc because companies optimize for that specific hardware.

Frame becoming a mainstream device (compared to any random combination of components) might make a difference that way.

mindcrash5• 8 months ago

"No indication for whether the CPU/GPU/RAM/SSD are upgradable or all soldered together on the board"

With 99.9% certainty this box is carrying on the legacy of the Deck and the Deck OLED, which means that it has a 100% custom crafted SoC with soldered components. Which also means they also could perform some trickery not found in "normal" PCs, like UDMA and custom interface.

"but doesn't mention what kind of games it can run at that quality."

According to the specs it has a custom RDNA 3 chip w/ 28 CUs and boost clock at 2.45Ghz. The Playstation 5 has a custom RDNA 2 chip w/ 36 CUs @ 2.23 GHz and the Xbox Series X has a custom RDNA2 2 chip w/ 52 CUs @ 1.83Ghz.

Given the optimizations AMD made in RDNA 3 (the "budget" 9070XT can easily keep up with the prev gen "enthousiast" 9700XTX) I could make a safe bet it's on the same level of performance as a Playstation 5

"No performance benchmarks, or mention of what the equivalent retail CPU/GPU to their custom one is."

~7600X, ~RX7700, but like I noted earlier that's meaningless because the overall architecture of the hardware in this box is likely completely incomparable with a generic PC (just like with XBX and PS5, by the way)

wmf• 8 months ago

They said it's semi-custom discrete not a custom SoC. So basically it's a Ryzen 7400 + Radeon 7400.

lawlessone3• 8 months ago

Would this be capable of utilizing the ray/path tracing many games have now?

porphyra3• 8 months ago

According to [1], the RAM and SSD are upgradable.

* 16GB DDR5 SODIMM (upgradeable)

* M.2 2230/2280 NVMe SSDs

[1] https://www.eurogamer.net/steam-machine-everything-we-know-a...

noir_lord• 8 months ago

7900XTX not 9700XTX which didn’t exist.

9070XT is RDNA4 not RDNA3 and steam machine has 28CU’s on RDNA3 which is same as RX7400 the bottom of the range RDNA3.

The 7900XTX has 84 and 24GB of VRAM.

This is a strictly entry level last gen GPU, don’t expect miracles.

The hardware is not good unless the price is very cheap.

As for the 7900XTX been enthusiast only in the sense it it was the top of the line from AMD it’s about 4080 in some areas and loses badly in others (ray tracing), price wise it wasn’t far of the 9070XT price wise at launch.

I have a 7900XTX I like it a great deal but the 4090/5080 and 5090 crush it and the 90’s are enthusiast both on price and perf.

I ended up with a 7900XTX because nvidia pissed me off on Linux one time too many otherwise I’d have gotten the 4090 but between kernel installs causing pain (nothing insurmountable) and them straight breaking power management for nearly a year on mature hardware, nah, AMD deserved the sale, they really do support Linux better.

fulafel3• 8 months ago

The Steam Deck AMD chip is rumored to be a design for the Magic Leap 2, not for Valve.

butlike8• 8 months ago

All my friends have moved on to PC, and I don't really want to build a $1000 minimum computer with crazy LEDs that takes up a ton of space with a monitor at this point in my life. And SteamDeck doesn't support KB+M well.

I have no qualms about couch gaming with a KB+M if I can do it with my friends and my already extensive Steam library. Unless they completely drop the ball on this, I'm in.

paxys7• 8 months ago

and I don't really want to build a $1000 minimum computer with crazy LEDs that takes up a ton of space with a monitor at this point in my life.

The beauty of a PC is you can build whatever you want. It doesn't need to be large, and doesn't need to have LEDs. There are plenty of small form factor cases on the market with the same footprint as this one.

Kreutzer• 8 months ago

I would reach out to those friend for freebie parts.

koolala7• 8 months ago

KB+M on steam deck is fine. I'm typing this on one right now. But I am excited for Steam Machine to use for VR streaming.

WithinReason2• 8 months ago

SSD and RAM replaceable, CPU and GPU soldered according to Linus. GPU equivalent to AMD Radeon RX 7600M

littlestymaar2• 8 months ago

- No indication for whether the CPU/GPU/RAM/SSD are upgradable or all soldered together on the board.

SSD and RAM are upgradable, source:

https://www.theverge.com/tech/818111/valve-steam-machine-han...

cubefox• 8 months ago

- No indication for whether the CPU/GPU/RAM/SSD are upgradable or all soldered together on the board.

According to a video by Digital Foundry, the main limitation will be the 8 GB of VRAM (some new games may require more), which definitely can't be upgraded.

stoobs• 8 months ago

"- No indication for whether the CPU/GPU/RAM/SSD are upgradable or all soldered together on the board."

SSD and RAM are user replaceable, CPU and GPU are soldered

hasperdi2• 8 months ago

Dave2D has additional info. User upgradable RAM and SSD, but not CPU.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=356rZ8IBCps

derefr3• 8 months ago

Huh, I had just been trying to look into whether there existed a "mini PC but with a GPU in it that's at least as good as the ones in game consoles."

(Or, to put that another way: fundamentally, I want a game console — a piece of well-integrated consumer electronics that lives unobtrusively in my entertainment center, hooked up to my TV, requiring no maintenance, controlled entirely with a Bluetooth gamepad. But I want it to enable me to run both 1. current-gen games at at-least-equivalent fidelity to the console ports of those games; and also 2. "all the games a Windows PC can run." So, anything on Steam, yes; but also, all the weird little indie games on itch.io that never make it to Steam; and old DOS/Win31/Win95 games (either as polished ports from GOG, or through various forms of virtualization/emulation I'd set up myself); and even the little freeware games floating about on the "old internet", that someone made in Game Maker or RPG Maker 2000 or even as a standalone Flash projector executable, way back when.)

The closest thing I had found to that description so far, that even might work for the use-case, was the ROG NUC.

I wonder how this compares to that?

bakies4• 8 months ago

probably exactly what you need! :)

thoughtpalette• 8 months ago

We have the ROG NUC and absolutely love it for our living room. Not playing any crazy AAA ultra graphics games, but it's been great.

If I had known this was finally releasing, I would have waited though.

zeec123• 8 months ago

I am hyped for the improved gyro controller. Gyro aiming is so good that after some time it became way better than my mouse aiming.

CuriouslyC2• 8 months ago

Valve is cooking. Their work is paving the way for an open computing ecosystem that is gonna be lit.

ortusdux2• 8 months ago

I've been looking at getting a Bee-link box to run as a TV computer and plex server. I'm definitely holding of buying until I see the pricing on this!

xd1936• 8 months ago

HDMI 2.0 is a bit of a bummer. No Dynamic HDR, VRR, or eARC.

wnevets2• 8 months ago

Can I use it as a jellyfin server?

moelf4• 8 months ago

yeah it's just a Linux x86 desktop (Arch Linux) -- although, you'd likely want to make sure Jellyfin's hardware acceleration works well with AMD APU (last time I checked the AMD was under experimental)

pigcat• 8 months ago

Can I use it as a jellyfin client? Does that... make sense?

I bought a new tv (samsung s90d) and I haven't found have a great way to watch my jellyfin media. This tv doesn't have a jellyfin client in the samsung app store.

I feel like I'm being stupid here, would love some suggestions :P I've got a local jellyfin server running on a home server in the basement.

Foivos• 8 months ago

I thought it is very easy to burn and SD card. Since when can you use it as storage expansion?

Narishma2• 8 months ago

Steam Deck uses them the same way and it seems to work fine.

h1fra• 8 months ago

not everybody has to be Apple, but the ugliness of this page (and the others) is astounding

haunter7• 8 months ago

What's ugly on the page? I think it's perfectly fine, you can find all the informations etc.

artyom2• 8 months ago

Oh, c'mon. I've been waiting for that machine for years. So much that I bought the Steam Deck out of frustration b/c it was so close.

Two weeks ago I got tired and built a mini-ATX gaming PC with a RTX 5080.

Way to go Steam nonetheless. I can get 100% behind a Windows-less gaming future. I may even buy this for a 2nd screen or for the kids.

MurkyLabs• 8 months ago

I mean the specs seem okay but at least your computer will out-perform it. Just install steamOS: https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/65B4-2AA3-5F37-42...

artyom2• 8 months ago

Yeah, I understand but it but I wasn't referring to performance only, mostly to "living room PC gaming" in a convenient package, almost like a home appliance. I really hope Steam can pull this off.

jorvi5• 8 months ago

For this to truly become a console replacement, Steam needs to mint agreements with Netflix, Spotify and Discord.

Netflix and Spotify could live as a 'game' application in the store. Spotify also is fairly easy to plug into Steam's overlay music control (currently via Decky plugins).

Discord just needs integration with the Steam Friend List. I know Valve wants Steam Friends to compete with Discord, but that ship has sailed every since 2020 (and frankly, the entire decade before that when they let it languish).

parineum2• 8 months ago

I'll never understand why anyone would want to use Discord.

gapan2• 8 months ago

What on earth is this abomination of a website? My locale is Greek and I'm presented with an auto-translated page in which most sentences don't make any sense. And I don't think it's AI slop, it's too bad to be even that. It feels more like google translate from a decade ago, translating everything word by word. FFS, go to fiverr and hire an actual human that knows how to translate stuff.

Oh, and of course you're presenting greek text, as awful as it is, but didn't think to check if the font you're using supports greek at all.

I'm sure it's the same for lots of other languages. sigh

butlike8• 8 months ago

i18n is hard.

gapan2• 8 months ago

It really isn't. Hire someone that actually speaks the language and can review the page before deployment. Otherwise, don't do it.

pyuser583• 8 months ago

What's the cost? Doesn't seem we can buy yet.

alligatorplum• 8 months ago

This is likely the push i need to fully ditch windows and go install linux on my PC. Can't wait to preorder!

butlike8• 8 months ago

But will it be able to run GTA VI?

Truly the only litmus test for any gaming system released from now until 2027.

defraudbah• 8 months ago

i am ditching my ps5 for this, go valve!

somanyphotons3• 8 months ago

I'm surprised they went for ARM in the desktop, but for x86 on the handheld. Does this mean the handheld will move to ARM aswell?

moelf4• 8 months ago

Semi-custom AMD Zen 4 6C / 12T

the desktop is also x86, the VR headset (Frame) is ARM

somanyphotons3• 8 months ago

Does this suddenly become the best supported ARM desktop?

tintor• 8 months ago

Is this the end of Windows for gaming?

moelf4• 8 months ago

I guess right now the GPU is too weak. And ofc even if the hardware steps up, there are always root-kit games gatekeeping :(

DustinEchoes• 8 months ago

The beginning of the end.

npteljes13• 8 months ago

I don't think there is an end to Windows gaming. It's the de-facto standard PC gaming platform. If there is a real end to its reign, it will be in decades, as in, at least 20 years.

somanyphotons3• 8 months ago

If they can make it play Microsoft Flight Simulator then that'd be pretty enticing

calmbonsai• 8 months ago

Meh, I'm hopeful, but I'll wait for specs.

zeld4• 8 months ago

8GB vram in 2026?!

MitPitt• 8 months ago

what game needs more?

Banditoz• 8 months ago

Many do, especially at higher resolutions.

guywithahat• 8 months ago

This is the real answer. Vram is largely dependent on the resolution you're running, and at 1080p 8gb vram is fine. People who want 20GB vram are probably going to build their own machines anyways, the steam machine is meant to be a console replacement to my understanding.

close046• 8 months ago

It's close to an RX7500/7600 paired with a Ryzen 5 7500/7600. Depending on the price it can be fine for gaming. Nobody expects enthusiast performance. It has to be priced to be competitive against consoles and lower end DIY PCs.

foresto3• 8 months ago

I think this is fine for a mass market device.

It might be easy to forget, but most gamers are not using the higher-end hardware that enthusiast discussions tend to focus on.

https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey

Perhaps an 8GB limit will encourage game studios to allow more time for optimization, which seems to have fallen out of fashion in recent years.

I imagine this will also help keep the price down, which is always nice.

p1necone7• 8 months ago

It's funny - if you look at the most recent steam hardware survey results this new steam machine almost exactly matches the median system - 16gb ram, 8gb vram, 6 physical cores, and the GPU looks like be roughly similar in perf to a 3060 too.

p1necone7• 8 months ago

If this gets enough adoption for gamedevs to prioritize support when testing games that's likely not going to be a huge problem. 16gb ram + 8gb vram is also similar to what all the current gen consoles have, although all three have the advantage of it being unified between the CPU and GPU so they can use more than 8gb vram if needed (16gb, 16gb, 12gb total system ram for PS5, XSX, Switch 2 respectively)

dwood_dev• 8 months ago

This is my concern as well. I suspect this will struggle versus a PS5 because even though the PS5 only has 16GB total, its unified, so it can be allocated more towards VRAM if needed.

If they are selling this for $300-400, it will be a hot item and I cant fault them at all. If it sells for $500+, its hard to recommend over a PS5 for most users.

1080p is already a struggle for some games with 8GB of VRAM in 2025, and this will probably be expected to have a service life of 5+ years.

embedding-shape12• 8 months ago

I'm thinking maybe it's unified memory? They posted "16GB DDR5 + 8GB GDDR6 VRAM" as the specs as RAM. Typically you'd put the GPU-only VRAM together with the GPU, but the GPU has it's own separate row in the specs. Kind of suspicious how they placed those together like that, isn't it?

Rohansi9• 8 months ago

It's not unified here. The Steam Deck is and does not list them separately.

lelandbatey• 8 months ago

I rock a 2070 super with 8GB vram and I'm still waiting for a big reason to upgrade. Games run good, and I play them at 1080p on my couch.

The steam machine will be a very good upgrade!

59nadir3• 8 months ago

The Steam Machine looks to me like it'll become a great optimization target to hit (if it becomes popular enough, which it probably will). Solid, predictable targets are always great, and now we have yet another one that doesn't have the downside of being in some insular, exclusive dev space like PlayStation, Xbox or Nintendo. It's just a PC, in an open eco system, with predictable and decent hardware.

edm0nd• 8 months ago

Looks like the og Nintendo Gamecube but modernized.

foresto3• 8 months ago

Or the NeXTcube.

https://www.inexhibit.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/NeXTcub...

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/27/NeXTcube...

foresto3• 8 months ago

While we're at it, the Steam Controller kind of resembles a space invader. :)

schmorptron2• 8 months ago

the GabeCube pun pratically makes itself

nvarsj• 8 months ago

I’m just not seeing the market for this. Why not build a better steam deck dock instead?

dangoodmanUT• 8 months ago

Sorry… expandable via microsd? They’re terribly slow and unreliable, just cattle-chute us to using ssds over usb like consoles

ThatPlayer6• 8 months ago

It's just Linux, so you should be able to use a USB drive fine. I believe the idea is to use the same microSD card as a Steam Deck and Steam Frame (which also has microSD). Easily move games between systems.

koolala7• 8 months ago

You can swap out the NVMe SSD too.

merpkz• 8 months ago

And yet somehow steam deck has absolutely zero issues with microsd cards

koakuma-chan2• 8 months ago

It looks pretty bad on the photos.

m4634• 8 months ago

is that good bad or bad bad?

iLoveOncall• 8 months ago

Irrelevant bad. It's a gaming product, you're not expected to wear it in public so the look doesn't matter.

mort962• 8 months ago

I thought it looked pretty attractive? Small, understated, something that would fit in pretty much anywhere without clashing. It doesn't have anything resembling a "gaming" aesthetic, which is a huge plus in my book.

koakuma-chan2• 8 months ago

It doesn't have to be all gamer RGB, but, for me, it has to look well-designed, e.g., like Apple products. The Steam Machine looks fine, but the controller looks cheap and all the buttons seem too far away from each other, as if it's meant to be held by someone with large hands.

SparkBomb7• 8 months ago

I have a Steam Link and the Original Steam controller. The manufacturing while perfectly functional isn't that high quality.

This looks similar. Kinda like a mid-ranged PC case quality.

p1necone7• 8 months ago

It does kinda look like a regular SFF PC case rather than a bespoke piece of hardware, but maybe they were going for that.

danudey4• 8 months ago

The biggest complaint about the PS5 is that it stood out too much. That's the one compelling point about the Xbox Series series designs - they don't look out of place in your entertainment centre.

This is the same - you can put it somewhere people can see it and it's not an eyesore.

CobrastanJorji• 8 months ago

Install your own apps, or even another operating system. Who are we to tell you how to use your computer?

From your mouth to Tim Cook's ear, friend.

archon8103• 8 months ago

And Sundar's too with the latest BS about Android sideloading.

preisschild2• 8 months ago

Tbf at least Android is open source and AOSP itself doesnt have this limitation

Larrikin• 8 months ago

It may be too late, but its probably a good idea to to shift the language and start saying installing software on your own device. Google likes the term sideloading because it implies its a weird hack to not get all your software from their store.

GeekyBear7• 8 months ago

Macs do allow both of those things.

Valve is even borrowing some of the work done for the Mac version of Linux to add support for Proton on ARM hardware.

Gaming on Linux on M1 is here! We’re thrilled to release our Asahi game playing toolkit, which integrates our Vulkan 1.3 drivers with x86 emulation and Windows compatibility.

https://rosenzweig.io/blog/aaa-gaming-on-m1.html

drnick14• 8 months ago

Gaming on Linux on M1 is here! We’re thrilled to release our Asahi game playing toolkit

That certainly isn't thanks to Apple

groguzt• 8 months ago

Apple allow this kind of thing only on Mac and while also ensuring it does not happen by providing 0 documentation and by not contributing to any outside project. FEX was not made as part of the Asahi Linux project btw. Please inform yourself before making statements

planetafro• 8 months ago

Bro. I played what I consider a basic game, Inscryption, on my MacBook Pro M4 Pro with 24Gb and that thing sounded like an aircraft taking off. ...meanwhile the weak sauce Steamdeck plays it flawlessly. Fan hardly even spins up. There is a lot of work to do IMO on the Mac front. I doubt Apple cares.

yndoendo• 8 months ago

That is not 100% correct. Apple is slowing closing in the walls on a general purpose computer and preventing the bypassing of Gatekeeper with the execution of unsigned applications to _protect the children._ [0] [1] [2] [3]

[0] https://support.apple.com/guide/security/rosetta-2-on-a-mac-...

[1] https://discussions.apple.com/thread/256079635?sortBy=rank

[2] https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/issues/20755

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45907259

63stack• 8 months ago

There is no "Mac version of Linux"

windexh8er• 8 months ago

If this is your take on it, enjoy the surveillance state and walled garden Apple has surrounded you with. There is no comparison with Steam and Valve compared to "gaming" on Apple. Literally apples and oranges. And in this case the Apple is soft and tasteless.

foxandmouse2• 8 months ago

That said, when are we going to get a public release for SteamOS? …There’s a joke somewhere about them reaching SteamOS 3

otikik• 8 months ago

Half-Life 3 confirmed

shayway2• 8 months ago

It's always been public:

https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/65B4-2AA3-5F37-42...

https://gitlab.com/evlaV/holo-PKGBUILD

p1necone7• 8 months ago

I have a SFF pc with an AMD GPU and AMD CPU both with better specs that the new Steam Machine just waiting for them to release a standalone installer for SteamOS :(

pegasus892• 8 months ago

The installer is here: https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/65B4-2AA3-5F37-42...

The sources of the packages are here: https://steamdeck-packages.steamos.cloud/archlinux-mirror/so...

And for the record most packages come directly from Arch Linux, unmodified.

danudey4• 8 months ago

Yeah, imagine if you could install a different operating system on your Mac! What a world that would be!

Worth noting that this is a dig against the other consoles which do not allow this, not Apple who (in part) does.

bigyabai9• 8 months ago

Apple can revoke it at any time. If a future update disabled or changed iBoot, there is no guarantee Linux would ever run again (unlike UEFI Macs).

Valve is not like Apple, they treat UEFI as a default.

jsheard9• 8 months ago

Apple giving you more than consoles do is damning with faint praise, the Mac bootloader is technically open but without any public hardware documentation it's borderline impossible to do anything useful with that. Asahi have done incredible work but even they are still catching up with the M3, nevermind the current M5.

patrickdavey• 8 months ago

Will it be possible to play retroarch games too? (i.e. the old SNES/NES games) etc. ?

egypturnash• 8 months ago

I sure have installed a bunch of emulators on my Deck. It’s not too hard to get individual games to show up in the main Steam menu, iirc. Haven’t really fiddled with them since initial setup though.

SparkBomb7• 8 months ago

Retroarch is already on Steam as well as other emulators.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1118310/RetroArch/

Even if you didn't want to use the Steam versions. Steam OS is essentially a customised Arch Linux and you can install stuff as you would on other Linux distros e.g. via packages and flathub. Basically it is a regular computer underneath. That is why I am very excited about this Steam box.

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/guides/view/how-to-install-ext...

miffy900• 8 months ago

They can afford to make a big song and dance about this because chances are they are not selling the hardware at a loss and they have the regular steam store to offset the short term costs. If they were selling the hardware at a loss, I think their marketing trying to sell this device would be very different.

stogot• 8 months ago

Is Apple selling their hardware at a loss?

dathinab3• 8 months ago

they probably will handle it like with the Steam Deck

- no loss

- but small profit margin anyway, to max reduce the price, to max increase adoption/reach

for Valve people using Steam on non Windows platforms is more important then making a big buck from Steam Machines (because this makes them less dependent on Windows, MS has tried(and failed) to move into the direction of killing 3rd party app stores before, and Windows has gotten ... crappy/bloated/ad-infested which is in the end a existential risk for Valve because if everyone moves away from PC gaming they will lose out hugely)

musicale3• 8 months ago

Switch was always sold for more than component and manufacturing cost. PS4 crossed the threshold quickly (per Sony iirc?)

However, that ignores R&D costs which presumably have to be amortized, largely through game sales and platform fees. The same is true for other platforms like iOS.

culi7• 8 months ago

I haven't gamed in almost a decade but what an exciting time to be alive as a PC gamer:

- almost every classic console is easy to emulate

- most modern consoles are, less-legally, emulatable

- we have thorough archives of Flash games and ofc almost all non-flash web games are still functioning

- cross compatibility across OS's has never been better

And, best of all, almost all of this is achievable on Linux! You can also plug in almost any controller, VR headset, or monitor/projector. Remote gaming has also made incredible progress allowing gamers to access their expansive libraries while not even at home.

In fact, I can't think of a single thing a console can do that a PC can't

agoodusername634• 8 months ago

- most modern consoles are, less-legally, emulatable

wheres the PS4 or like, any xbox emulator?

It's just Nintendo that has modern, usable emulators for most of the games you'd want to play. xbox never got lucky for basically any of their consoles and Sony never got anything usable after PS3.

fwipsy2• 8 months ago

Consoles are just loss leaders for software now. Hot take: this is true of the Steam Deck and Machine as well. Yes you can play games from other vendors, but PC gamers are very loyal to Steam and many will never bother. I imagine at least half of steam deck users just use it like a console, not like a PC.

tmtvl• 8 months ago

almost every classic console is easy to emulate

Yes, but unless you have a library from back in the day classic console games are hard to find and/or expensive. Try finding a copy of Biker Mice From Mars, for example.

musicale3• 8 months ago

In fact, I can't think of a single thing a console can do that a PC can't

Play current Nintendo game cards (and run the eShop etc.) without headaches or workarounds of dubious legality?

Run your whole PSN library reliably, without headaches or workarounds?

Full game system (with decent 4K in the case of PS5) for the price of a GPU?

Work out of the box without messing with it?

jeppester• 8 months ago

That single thing is great UX.

While I personally very much enjoy all of the things I can do on PC and Steam Deck, I can definitely understand why my wife - who's not as technically inclined - prefers the PS5.

mottey• 8 months ago

When Steam Pass?

Mr_Eri_Atlov• 8 months ago

This project is a gaming console dream.

Compact and looks nice, no qualms about displaying it in the living room, with customizable front panels.

Optimized to just barely hit 4K 60 fps as cheaply as possible.

Controllers designed to avoid stick drift, easy to charge, and featuring low-latency wireless connections.

Stream from a Steam Machine to a Steam Deck or a Steam Frame if you have one; the Steam Machine enhances your other purchases further.

Instantly supports everyone's libraries of dozens, if not hundreds, of games acquired over the years.

And you can just use it as a desktop computer if you like?

Give me the Gabecube!

thrownawaysz2• 8 months ago

The elephant in the room: "will this game run on my Steam Machine?"

This is really the part a lot of people don't understand and not a qestion you even have to ask when you buy/download a game for a console.

Some of the biggest games right now like BF6, COD, or Fortnite, League of Legends, chinese gacha games won't run on this. That excludes a massive part of the market, many of whom would be the exact audience for a simpler, more console-like PC experience. There's also no guarantee that future AAA games will be compatible with this day one (8GB VRAM is very limiting already).

Yeah yeah indies but if people want to play X then offering them Z is not an option.

This will be DOA anything over $500

Otek• 8 months ago

This is true also for steam deck but it’s a success anyway. COD, Fortnite, LoL players can stay on windows. I’m happy to play newest indie game on my Linux machine

thrownawaysz2• 8 months ago

but it’s a success anyway

That's also debatable. Switch 2 sold 10m units in 6 months compared to the Steam Deck's 4 million in 3 years ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The Steam Deck is niche even among the gaming crowd.

COD, Fortnite, LoL players can stay on windows. I’m happy to play newest indie game on my Linux machine

This is the mindset that makes the Steam Machine DOA if not priced correctly. No one will pay $800 just to play Hollow Knight in 4k

porphyra3• 8 months ago

You can likely install Windows on Steam Machine if you so wish, and then it would actually be a fairly competent mini PC while having great and silent cooling. However, I suppose most casual gamers aren't savvy enough to tinker and install their own OS.

fwip3• 8 months ago

Perhaps. I hope that they help kill these predatory mega-franchises.

pjmlp8• 8 months ago

Maybe this will have better luck this time, and who knows, studios might finally care to do at Steam OS native builds.

bigyabai9• 8 months ago

Maybe they'll pull a Cyberpunk, and just add a "Steam Machine" setting to their Windows version when you run it in translation.

I'd prefer that. It's easier for developers, easier for me, and only harms the already-negligible market of curmudgeonly native pundits that probably don't use Steam in the first place.

pjmlp8• 8 months ago

Then eventually they will suffer the same fate as OS/2 "runs Windows better".

Don't build castles on kingdoms ruled by other overlords.

nelsonfigueroa• 8 months ago

This is exciting. I can't wait to get rid of Windows altogether. I only put up with it for gaming purposes.

martini333• 8 months ago

HDMI 2.0

So no 4K 120 Hz ?

jbaber• 8 months ago

Many comments here and on similar posts bring up only keeping Windows for games, and only then for games that require heavy anti-cheat.

Is there a reason there couldn't be non-regulation copies of games that don't do anti-cheat but are otherwise fine. Like metal baseball bats, oversized golfballs, etc. Official, but not allowed in competitions?

pndy2• 8 months ago

The body is really simple and appealing but as these are rare nowadays I wish they'd consider squeezing an optional optical drive inside or perhaps maybe some external one that would stack on top.

sph2• 8 months ago

Aren’t external optical drives quite cheap and only require a USB connection? You could consider that instead and stack it on top.

pndy2• 8 months ago

Yeah that's an option of course

Somehow it was much easier for me to move from floppy drive than from optical one

vondur• 8 months ago

The PC looks pretty cool in a small form factor case. And since it runs ArchBTW, you can run a bunch of other games too outside of Steam. Wondering how the pricing will be...

KronisLV• 8 months ago

CPU Semi-custom AMD Zen 4 6C / 12T up to 4.8 GHz, 30W TDP
GPU Semi-Custom AMD RDNA3 28CUs 2.45GHz max sustained clock, 110W TDP
RAM 16GB DDR5 + 8GB GDDR6 VRAM

All of those seem a little low (at least judging by power usage) when compared to your average tower gaming PC build, but modern parts are pretty power efficient and given the form factor (and hopefully reasonable price) it seems like it's gonna be a pretty good device - definitely enough for most indie titles, all e-sports titles, even AA/AAA games with some upscaling/framegen, although I predict that your average UE5 slop game will wipe the floor with it. That doesn't reflect badly on the hardware, just how the devs use the engine in some cases, but at the same time being able to use it as a regular SFF PC is nice as well, actually a good reason to buy it compared to most consoles.

tagyro4• 8 months ago

[off-topic rant]

Two companies, both (quasi) monopolies in their field.

Company A built its fortune by exploiting people.

Company B built its fortune by building (somewhat) decent products.

Company A developed a very advanced approach to hiring: specific questions to assess a candidate’s psychometric profile, screens to weed out bad choices, and a laser focus on the "top 0.1%".

Company B made it very public that hiring well is vital and encouraged every employee to think about it and participate. They even published an Employee Handbook years ago [0]

Today, many startups copy Company A’s playbook: crafting advanced questionnaires, trick questions, and trying to detect behavioural traits in their candidates.

No startup (that I know of [1]) has adopted Company B’s strategy.

Take your pick on who Company A is. Company B is Valve.

[0] http://media.steampowered.com/apps/valve/Valve_Handbook_LowR...

[1]: I kjnow of one that <<pretends>> to

paperpunk• 8 months ago

I love Valve games and I love that they are spending their resources in areas I care about and that feel underserved by other companies, but I don't think the moral comparison is so clear cut. They were also pioneers in micro-transactions, loot crates, software distribution tax, and turning Counter-Strike skins into a speculative frenzy.

tagyro4• 8 months ago

I have to admit, I never got into micro-transactions and loot craetes. I did play CS, but never cared about skins and focused on head shots - I am ignorant in this aspect.

parineum2• 8 months ago

Company A built its fortune by exploiting people.
Company B built its fortune by building (somewhat) decent products.

It's the same thing.

energy1234• 8 months ago

A reason to get this instead of Playstation/Xbox is that games on Steam are significantly cheaper through keys sites like g2a.com or just waiting for discounts.

Playstation/Xbox know you're locked in because you've already sunk money into the console, and they use this pricing power against you.

maccard5• 8 months ago

I work in games.

Please don't buy games from g2a and the likes. In the best case, g2a make money and the developer doesn’t . in the worst case you're buying bogus keys or stolen accounts.

Please, just pirate games instead.

bhelkey• 8 months ago

in the worst case you're buying bogus keys or stolen accounts

Maybe this is just a hole in my knowledge but I don't see how this could be the case.

Regarding stolen accounts: Once I activate a Steam key, I can't deactivate my copy to get my key back (I don't think anyways). How would a stolen account generate steam keys?

Regarding bogus keys: If the keys primarily didn't work I suspect that we would see deplatforming of the site by payment processors. They generally don't like when all their customers issue chargebacks.

I think there is some risk that keys sold in a grey market are purchased by stolen credit cards but I can't imagine that this is too prevalent. I would think that the credit card owner would dispute the charge and Steam would deactivate the key.

shmeeed• 8 months ago

Ouch! I got one or two games from a key seller some years ago. I never knew these sites were such a shady act. I really, actually thought they just bought the keys in bulk during a sale to resell them later. TIL :(

PeaceTed7• 8 months ago

A big thing here is that you can always buy another or build another PC that can run this stuff if you don't like the Steam Machine. You cannot build a PS5/Xbox to do the same.

jeroenhd• 8 months ago

Just pirate the games instead of using key sites, they're full of chargeback scams that often end up costing developers more money than piracy. Those ten bucks you save really aren't worth the trouble of losing your account over.

With how often Steam games are on sale, you may ass well wait a little longer and buy directly through Valve.

The beauty of PC is that you can also buy games through GOG and Epic if they offer a better price.

guyforml• 8 months ago

Don't forget the subscription-free multiplayer

squigz3• 8 months ago

https://isthereanydeal.com/ is a great resource

echelon• 8 months ago

There's an LED strip, y'all!

I've never seen marketing embrace southern culture like this.

I love it, y'all!

ElijahLynn• 8 months ago

"One USB-C and four USB-A ports."

I'm confused...

justin662• 8 months ago

In case you have four old usb-powered lamps or appliances you'd like to connect to the thing.

p1necone7• 8 months ago

Excited for Steam/PC games on ARM to get better as a side effect of the Frame running using a Snapdragon CPU.

Running x86 PC games on higher end Android devices already works better than you might expect via gamehub/gamehub lite/winlator, but it requires much random trying of different driver and runtime versions for every game and even then a lot don't work or have issues.

PeaceTed7• 8 months ago

I do like this about Valve. They understand the 'Chicken and egg' scenario and thus try to push hardware or software ideas forward in the hopes that it encourages others to work to that.

Like Steamdeck with Proton, developers have a tangible target and can ensure their stuff works on it.

sedatk2• 8 months ago

Steam/PC games on ARM to get better

Exactly! It legitimizes ARM as a PC platform for both games and apps, and this helps the adoption of the architecture even on Windows.

ginko• 8 months ago

I find it weird that a new device in 2025 still comes with only one USB-C port and otherwise only USB-A. Is USB-C that much more expensive? Is it about power delivery?

ZeWaka4• 8 months ago

I would imagine because most peripherals you'd connect to this are still mostly USB-A. Controllers, mice, keyboards, USB sticks, ...

SchemaLoad19• 8 months ago

Most peripherals these days have a detachable cable, so they can be used with USB-C or A. The main issue would be those wireless dongles.

makeitdouble• 8 months ago

USB-C is still not widely adopted for many specific uses, in particular peripherals (keyboard/mouse dongles)

Logitech finally got their USB-C dongle out last year I think ? Keychron only offers USB-A as far as I know. And many other keyboard and mouse brands are in the same boat. Depending on your setup that's already 2 USB-A ports needed. You can put an adapter, but you're then dongling a dongle.

PS: just realized Valve's own VR to PC adapter is also USB-A.

hinkley2• 8 months ago

I was about to bitch about Logitech and their USB-A dongle yesterday and looked to see that they did finally produce a USB-C dongle. Miracles do happen.

cesarb• 8 months ago

[...] only offers USB-A as far as I know. And many other keyboard and mouse brands are in the same boat.

Many new computers (including this Steam Machine) have exactly two USB-2-only USB-A ports (the rest of the USB ports being more capable). It's not hard to guess what they're for: the keyboard and the mouse.

translucent02• 8 months ago

it's meant for gaming and doesn't come with a LAN connection. sad lol.

distances2• 8 months ago

It has gigabit LAN.

translucent02• 8 months ago

it's meant for 'high-end' gaming but doesn't come with a lan connection(?)

adham-omran• 8 months ago

What do you mean? There's 1 gigabit ethernet.

IlikeKitties• 8 months ago

Yes, Steam Machine is optimized for gaming, but it's still your PC. Install your own apps, or even another operating system. Who are we to tell you how to use your computer?

In a world of locked bootloaders and ever more locked down device, valve is pushing the envolope with a linux based gaming console.

abracadaniel• 8 months ago

Reporting indicates one of the use cases they designed for is swapping an SD card between steam deck, steam machine and steam frame to bring your installed games along with you, which is technologically unimpressive, but so far against the grain that it's shocking a company would include that kind of functionality.

seba_dos1• 8 months ago

This is especially interesting in context of Steam Frame. It's easy to get an unlocked mini-PC, but an unlocked "mainstream" standalone VR device with first-class Linux support would bring something new to the table.

rvz4• 8 months ago

16 GB of RAM, 4K@60 FPS, with USB3.

I’m afraid that this steam machine is so underpowered that it is no better if not much significantly slower than a MacBook Pro with a M4 Max.

The specs appear to be from late 2019. Might as well get a PS5 instead.

No thanks and No deal.

phkahler• 8 months ago

> I’m afraid that this steam machine is so underpowered that it is no better if not much significantly slower than a MacBook Pro with a M4 Max.

Isn't that one of the fastest laptops money can buy?

danudey4• 8 months ago

"If the Steam Machine can't compete with a $3500 laptop I don't even want it!"

danudey4• 8 months ago

The XBox Series X and PS5 both have 16 GB of RAM; in the case of the XSX that's 10 GB for the GPU and 6 GB for the OS and apps.

So 16 GB in this case, for running the same games and outputting to the same displays, seems entirely reasonable.

The specs appear to be from late 2019. Pass

Probably more accurate to say the specs are from 2020, which is when the PS5 and XSX launched.

it is no better if not much significantly slower than a MacBook Pro with an M4 Max

Does the M4 Max run SteamOS and your Windows steam games very well? I guess this Steam Machine is going to be embarassingly underpowered if it also costs $3500.

On the other hand, if it is a mass-market 'console' PC priced at ~$500-750 then I think it's okay if it's 'no better...than a Macbook Pro with M4 Max'.

rvz4• 8 months ago

Probably more accurate to say the specs are from 2020, which is when the PS5 and XSX launched.

In 2026, those specs are significantly underpowered and close to outdated.

Does the M4 Max run SteamOS and your Windows steam games very well?

Even if it does with Asahi Linux [0] it would still run over the Steam Machine in performance alone, especially with 2024 specifications.

We both know that neither of them can run DRM'ed games on Linux on Day 1 on Steam.

I guess this Steam Machine is going to be embarassingly underpowered if it also costs $3500.

Not even the original Steam Machine sold well even though the lowest priced model was at ~$450 with the highest priced one was at $1,110 and was still also behind the state of the art console specs at the time.

On the other hand, if it is a mass-market 'console' PC priced at ~$500-750 then I think it's okay if it's 'no better...than a Macbook Pro with M4 Max'.

Then there would be no point for Windows PC gamers or console players at all to switch. It only appeals to hardcore Linux users and at least competes against a Framework laptop running steam which is a very low bar to beat.

[0] https://asahilinux.org/2024/10/aaa-gaming-on-asahi-linux/

NeutralCrane• 8 months ago

If it competes with a PS5, but runs my Steam Library, it’s automatically won IMO.

kevincox• 8 months ago

I wonder what video codecs will have hardware decoding support. Because having this able to support HTPC options with AV1 and h265 decoding would pair amazing to sticking this on the main TV for family gaming as well. I'd be shocked if it didn't have h265 support but AV1 is not quite guaranteed at this point.

PeaceTed7• 8 months ago

This is the one area that Intel ARC absolutely excels at. If ARC doesn't survive long term, that might be its legacy in the same way Matrox pivoted to multi screen cards after the failure of Parhelia-512 GPU.

risho3• 8 months ago

the 8gb vram is very concerning to me. it claims to be 4k ready and 8gb of vram is nowhere near enough for 4k gaming natively. they say that this is offset by using fsr upscaling, which is fine, but then you need whatever amount of vram that is necessary for running the game at 1440p or 1080p and then additional vram for the fsr. this will be fine for casual games or even AA games, but I can't imagine AAA gaming on this thing being anything less than a disaster. hopefully i'm proven wrong.

nicce3• 8 months ago

the 8gb vram is very concerning to me. it claims to be 4k ready and 8gb of vram is nowhere near enough for 4k gaming natively

Depends on the game. I get 70fps with many games on 4k with old RX 5700 XT (e.g Path of Exile).

Black Desert runs 70fps with FSR on 4k.

koolala7• 8 months ago

Does FSR use less ram since it is upscaled? Same ram requirements as 1440p?

risho3• 8 months ago

4k fsr uses less vram than native 4k but more vram than native 1440p

schmorptron2• 8 months ago

They mention FSR specifically in the trailer, but this comes with RDNA3, meaning no FSR4 currently. Does this mean that the int8 path for fsr4 is gonna become official to support this and the ps5 pro?

outlore• 8 months ago

How does this compare to the Framework Desktop as a gaming Linux box? I notice only the RAM and storage is upgradable for the Steam Machine, but is there significant performance difference?

sedatk2• 8 months ago

I've been using my Steam Deck + Steam Dock to play Hades II on my TV using my Xbox controller. It's been a fantastic experience. I can't imagine how much better a device like Steam Machine and Steam's own controller would make it.

andrepd2• 8 months ago

Yes, Steam Machine is optimized for gaming, but it's still your PC. Install your own apps, or even another operating system. Who are we to tell you how to use your computer?

Isn't it just a relief to see a product announcement where this is a proudly announced selling point.

markus_zhang• 8 months ago

Has anyone managed to scroll to the bottom? The page crashed on me if I scroll down too much. Is there a price point at the bottom?

adroitboss• 8 months ago

The Ouya finally realized.

Aeroi• 8 months ago

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nullbyte808• 8 months ago

it looks like an ugly mini fridge. Valve's UI aesthetics carried over to their hardware too.

komali2• 8 months ago

We may be new but it's like we've known each other our whole lives: All Steam Hardware works great together, whether you’re streaming or playing games across devices, including Steam Deck. And because Valve remains committed to an open PC ecosystem, we also play well with others (as in, your other devices).

I am skeptical about this, especially streaming. I assume the steam box will be running steam os aka Linux with iirc kde and leveraging game scope.

I have my steam deck docked to the living room tv and regularly try to stream from my gaming rig running manjaro and hyprland, to mixed results. Moonlight/sunshine has only ever crashed, and steam's native solution will often crash on the deck side immediately, leaving the game running on my PC. Or the game will play but no video will be sent. Or the controller input won't be sent.

They still as of last week have a bug where native steam streaming simply doesn't work if you have the deck docked with Ethernet but also have wifi on. You gotta switch off wifi for it to work or unplug Ethernet.

I've tried to keep a thread going listing options for streaming and the problems with each but valve locked it https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/11/382078096812...

tjpnz• 8 months ago

The best part was that there was no mention of generative AI anywhere.

theusus• 8 months ago

I doubt those specs are enough for running games at good graphics settings.

dathinab3• 8 months ago

I'm really wondering about the CPU+GPU.

Like in some contexts it sounds like a single APU with both.

But then it has normal and graphics RAM?

So is it 2 SoC? Or one connected to two kinds of RAM? Does the GPU have direct access to the non graphic memory?

The dedicated RAM makes it looks like 2 chips, but number of CU and similar make it look like an APU/integrated graphics???

I mean even with FSR 8GiB of graphics RAM is a bit tight for 4k60fps. But on the other hand recent consoles (e.g. PS5 Pro) do promise similar things and have 16GiB for _both_ the CPU and GPU which in effect also means only roughly around 8GiB dedicated to the GPU. So it still is viable. And if the GPU could directly access the non graphic RAM then it could easily outperform a classical 8GiB RAM GPU????? But I guess it's probably nothing fancy like that.

One good thing about it not having a AMD Max SoC or similar is that it probably will have console pricing. I mean for Valve Steam devices are about making sure Windows can't kill Steam and Steam staying relevant even if Windows decides to suicide themself with ads. So I would guess the price concept is similar to the Steam Deck, no loss, but also not a huge profit margin.

BluSyn• 8 months ago

Steam machine so close to perfect, but 1x USBC and 1GB Ethernet are huge misses for a 2026 device. Also needs more VRAM. May be better to just do custom SFF build.

WorldPeas• 8 months ago

Perhaps as a non-gamer I can tie my wagon to the hope that Valve will make a phone that doesn't call installing "side-loading"? Gabe seems to remember why computers exist.

martin82• 8 months ago

Seems like this is very under-spec'd in terms of RAM. I have my doubts that this will run modern games at acceptable performance.

Ey7NFZ3P0nzAe• 8 months ago

Install your own apps, or even another operating system. Who are we to tell you how to use your computer?

I'm so happy to read this

rTX5CMRXIfFG• 8 months ago

That stood out to me too but my reaction was “whatever, just another promise that won’t age well”.

Synthetic7346• 8 months ago

This holds true for the Steam Deck, so I can't imagine why they would promise it and not follow through.

gambiting3• 8 months ago

I mean I'm sure it will be true for as long as Gabe is in charge, the moment he steps away I think all bets are off, depending on who takes over after him.

serf• 8 months ago

I'm so happy to read this

it rings hollow from a company whose entire bedrock for existence is DRM procedures.

does Steam still disallow accounts from playing more than one independently owned game at a time without special procedures?

colordrops2• 8 months ago

This is my number one beef with steam. It's such a big thorn on a rose.

Prickle• 8 months ago

No. That restriction has been gone for a few years now.

I can run rimworld and quasimorph via steam at the same time, as an example.

akimbostrawman4• 8 months ago

Steam DRM is weak, non intrusive and optional so complain to the devs for enabling it. I rather take steam DRM than securerom or denuvo.

WithinReason2• 8 months ago

Is going offline a special procedure?

clayhacks• 8 months ago

You can now have steam families and have two members play different games from the same library. Assuming you were using two machines you could just have a second account as a family member and play both. Or do you have a crazy beefy computer and are trying to run two different games on one machine?

tete3• 8 months ago

I agree. DRM sucks badly. I'd argue that it's a bit of a compliance thing though. Eg publisher lawyers saying DRM is needed, given that there doesn't seem to be much push from Steam for anything "draconian". At least it is for public broadcasters having online archives that also sometimes have DRM even where it isn't actually required (self-produced stuff).

However, there is still a huge difference between buying hardware that literally "jails" you and force feeds you DRM and a system where even in the marketing says you can completely tear away all of that without jailbreaks, etc. and without stuff being super fiddly.

babuskov4• 8 months ago

does Steam still disallow accounts from playing more than one independently owned game at a time without special procedures?

Yes. I just tried launching one game on Steam Deck and another one on my desktop and it showed a message:

Error - Steam: You are logged in on another computer already playing Railbound. Launching Clutchtime™: Basketball Deckbuilder here will disconnect the other session from Steam.

hoppp• 8 months ago

Yup. Sounds like its just a PC and not a locked down platform. Its easy for them and convenient for everyone.

Cthulhu_• 8 months ago

Except that (I believe) "just a PC" was a bit offputting for a lot of people - when you buy a PC you can't just turn it on and play video games, especially not after Microsoft's shenanigans.

I'm honestly surprised nobody else tried a "boot to game library" PC, but then, you also need the name and reputation for it. Microsoft could've done it, but they chose to make a console. Which is mostly a PC, but you need xbox games, a separate ecosystem.

syx• 8 months ago

I'm sure someone will install OpenStep and recreate a NeXT computer 2.0

xattt• 8 months ago

It just won’t torch the same (1).

(1) https://simson.net/ref/1993/cubefire.html

masfoobar5• 8 months ago

GNUStep is still going.

p_l7• 8 months ago

Install Previous and boot into it, voila ;)

igravious2• 8 months ago

I mean the Steam Machine's got a replaceable front cover so why not? :)

https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co80944...

https://store.steampowered.com/sale/steammachine

speed_spread• 8 months ago

Or stack eight of them and build a Connection Machine

HexPhantom5• 8 months ago

Props to Valve for not treating freedom like a "pro" feature

tete3• 8 months ago

Fingers crossed for a smartphone next. So sick of that force fed walled garden crap from Apple and Google.

Might also help to slow down enshittification by a bit if there was a popular alternative. Maybe something like Waydroid could even ease with transition.

davedx2• 8 months ago

SteamPhone sounds…… metal as fuck. I’d buy it for the name alone

carlos_rpn• 8 months ago

Damn, a smartphone made by Valve would make me splurge for more than middle-low end, for the respect they give us alone.

It just needs my banking apps, and and I'll be happy to pay for it.

jerojero4• 8 months ago

Given that the frame runs steamOS on ARM hardware, I could see something like a phone in the future.

But also, phones don't seem to be the best hardware to play PC games which is kinda the whole deal.

I maybe would see first a smaller ARM based device (like those retro consoles).

redbell• 8 months ago

Was going to post, exactly, this statement but found it is already spotted!

I just hope Google & Apple read, understand and follow this.

lentil_soup• 8 months ago

it's so refreshing to read something like that from a big company, it's weird, but felt like there's still hope? that there's people in power that still care? strange feeling, still curious about it

the last few in years in tech have been depressing, like no one cares to make something that's actually better for the consumer, it's made me into a cynic and I hate it

Quothling• 8 months ago

Valve is a private company. I'm not going to say that every public company lacks a product focus, but I think there is a danger in public companies where it becomes natural to promote MBA's over product and even sales roles. I know MBA is treated with hatred here, but I don't think they are necessarily bad or evil, but I do think they have an advantage in obtaining power naturally because it's basically their profession and espesially product people are often bad at corporate politics.

In many public companies there is the added level of investor interest, and it can often be a challenge for the C levels to remain in power during periods of slow or even negative growth. Challenges that companies like Valve simply don't have as long as the CEO is fine with it. On the flip side, I'm happy with my own stock portfolio so there is that.

automatic6131• 8 months ago

that there's people in power that still care? strange feeling, still curious about it

One day, Gabe Newell will die. Maybe his racer son will inherit the job, or maybe he'll delegate the job. Maybe this new CEO will take Valve public to ensure they get a centi-million dollar payout.

Then all the good times end. This is the halcyon for Steam customers.

qiine• 8 months ago

And just like that, valve will keep winning spectacularly.

lazyfanatic422• 8 months ago

Valve respects its customers. It is so insane that this isn't a norm; what a world we would be in if all companies did so.

godzillabrennus• 8 months ago

Don't sugarcoat it. Valve has to make sure this is advertised as a PC to keep the licensing good on the games you've bought and that they are allowed to sell. Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony have closed ecosystems with their consoles. Well, Microsoft seems to be throwing in the towel on consoles.

marricks2• 8 months ago

Because they're not owned by private equity/publicly traded. If that ever happens the "let's squeeze this for every dime it's worth" will happen.

That's really the saddest thing about capitalism, if everything around us wasn't getting enshittified in the exact same way at least the future would be more alluring.

neya• 8 months ago

Gamers are a passionate bunch. Screwing around with them is a losing game that no one has historically ever won. And also because a lot of their competitors fucked up to pave the road for them (Think Sony's PS fiasco, Microsoft's X-Box clusterfuck from which they're yet to recover from, a decade later). Valve has gotten alot of billion dollar lessons in here that Valve got for free.

Powdering7082• 8 months ago

Except that you don't own the things you buy on steam

3acctforcom• 8 months ago

Gabe is literally practising Noblesse Oblige, which is really funny but really shows that our billionare society is really just a reduction to old aristocracy. He's just the good Duke, whereas most Dukes are horrible, horrible people.

YeGoblynQueenne2• 8 months ago

> Valve respects its customers.

That's the same Valve that doesn't let me play the games I paid it for unless they are running on its platform? That's how it "respects" me?

AdmiralAsshat• 8 months ago

Me, too. I've been meaning to upgrade my HTPC for years, but I kept holding off because I had hoped that NVIDIA would release a new ShieldTV (the last one used the same chip as the Switch, so the community had quietly hoped that the Switch 2's release would coincide with a new Shield--no such luck). Assuming the Steam Machine is reasonably priced, I could easily see it also becoming my new Kodi box when not gaming on it.

tracker14• 8 months ago

If the Steam Machine sufficiently supports the DRM required for apps from Netflix, AppleTV, etc, it would definitely be a good option for that. As it is, my SO still likes the apps, though the actual subscriptions have been rotating a bit.

Rohansi9• 8 months ago

Have you considered dear

ShakataGaNai• 8 months ago

Their "launch trailer" shows the Steam Machine running Windows.

arvinsim5• 8 months ago

Wasn't that the desktop mode of SteamOS?

Cyphase• 8 months ago

Do you mean this (~3m04s)? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmKrKTwtukE&t=184s

That was the desktop mode, showing KDE Plasma (a linux desktop environment).

Also, Blender on the left screen and Godot on the right screen!

mmis10002• 8 months ago

Meanwhile Microsoft be like: we are going to ship AI to your computer, eat all the resource, lag your game despite you don't use it and neither you don't want it at all.

BlindEyeHalo• 8 months ago

Turns out that a company that is not publicly traded and run by people that only care about stock prices, can actually care about their customers.

rkangel2• 8 months ago

There's all sorts of things you can do if you don't care about money.

The more interesting point is that if you aren't driven by investors to care about short term financial stuff (stock prices) then you can make long term decisions. Caring about your customers is a classic one for this - costs you money in the short term, but in the long term gets you a great customer base.

JKCalhoun• 8 months ago

Or if you're the underdog and are looking for a competitive advantage in this market. (Just being cynical.)

1-6• 8 months ago

Steam is starting to become the 'Apple Computer Inc.' everyone wants.

psyclobe• 8 months ago

They're gonna sell millions

trm217• 8 months ago

After years of Cloud gaming with GeForce Now, this might just be what I‘ve been waiting for!

kreddor• 8 months ago

I pretty much already use my Steam Deck as my main Desktop computer at home (I have a laptop for work). If I wanted to upgrade, this would be a no-brainer.

utopiah2• 8 months ago

Can't wait for benchmarks. I have a Corsair One running exclusively Linux but it is getting old. I wouldn't mind replacing it with something even more compact and quiet.

GaryBluto2• 8 months ago

There goes the XBOX. Microsoft have been letting their consumer products rot for a while now and they're finally going to start feeling the consequences.

guidopallemans• 8 months ago

The original steam deck was already exactly the product Microsoft should have made. There is now a whole class of similar (but generally more expensive) windows-powered devices. If Microsoft would have made the "XBOX Deck" they could have sold 10 times the numbers Steam Deck did.

But indeed, I'd think Phil Spencer's days are numbered now.

naikrovek2• 8 months ago

Well, hopefully, future XBoxes are fixed-spec PCs which run Steam AND some xbox frontend, and can switch between them as the user wishes.

There's no reason anymore for the xbox to be a different platform or hardware than PCs. An Xbox that is just a PC with fixed specs (or varying specs with some way to measure what spec you're compliant with) and which can use the Xbox store is probably all that people really want anyway.

GaryBluto2• 8 months ago

It's a shame really. I miss the era of original XBOX homebrew. It felt fun making it do things it wasn't supposed to.

tiotempestade• 8 months ago

Good bye M$

haritha-j2• 8 months ago

I know everyone says such good things about the steam deck, but my personal experience hasn't been great. Steam games are the best case scenario, but even those often require hunting down the best version of proton and doesnt work out of the box. why cant steam auto default to the version that works with the game? Getting discord running properly often involves switching to desktop mode, and then its hard to play handheld. if i connect a display in handheld mode i cant increase the resolution to match my monitor. and then we get to 3rd party stores, requiring all kinds of hoops, and once you get it working and you come back to a game after a couple of months, its broken again. Installing ISOs requires even more painful work (tbf thats not an intended use case i guess). Disclaimer: my use of the steam deck has been as a fairly non technical user. For me the whole point of getting it was a slightly console like experience, so I wasn't willing to hack into it too much.

calcifer• 8 months ago

For me the whole point of getting it was a slightly console like experience

You say this, but talk about the difficulty of 3rd party stores and installing ISOs. A console like experience means using Steam alone, and not even considering desktop mode.

vkazanov2• 8 months ago

Well, you have quite an advanced use case.

Remember that the majority of users doesn't use anything other than the default steam store ui. This case works like charm. I use with my tv, or standalone, my 10 year old uses, and we love it. I just make sure to play games announced as supported.

With custom things, desktop mode, non-steam software installation it's a typical customization story. It is amazing that you can do it at all but nobody will be supporting you on this journey.

haritha-j2• 8 months ago

That's fair. Perhaps I was a bit too spoilt by windows.

tropicalfruit• 8 months ago

i hope they can put some price pressure on other small form factor gaming pc

the asus rog nuc is extortionate pricing, and beelink are constantly raising their prices too now

sylware8• 8 months ago

Huge streamers/youtubers were already listing games to test on the steam machine... which I already know they do not work on valve proton... (and the lack of official and legally required technical support will show on the medium/long run since proton/wine is not reliable in time).

This may backfire if valve does not come clean with this technical support.

aniviacat2• 8 months ago

We are expanding our Verified program to include ratings for Steam Machine, so customers can understand how their games will run.

They are very upfront about it.

sylware8• 8 months ago

"Verified" does not mean they will technically (and legally) support the game until its "EOS", unfortunately.

One unfortunate patch (past the "refund" time limit), valve proton side or game side, and compat is gone. And those patches do happen.

BTW, that's why I play only F2P games (without paying for any micro-transaction) via proton. Yep, PROTON = 0 BUCKS.

Valve won't provide that support: there is no way valve is going to hire tens to hundreds of advanced system devs in order to QA 100% of the "verified games" and fix their proton and/or contact the game devs to work on game patch fixes, that until those games go EOS. The other side is the game devs doing QA of their game on a linux box with proton anyway (which is 101 retarded if their game engine has already everything linux since they could build their game native linux distribution just there)... and I tell you as a system dev: fixing bugs on linux + proton is hell since there is the additional ultra-complex layer which is proton on top of the video game core software of elf/linux. This diarrhea of software engineering is what we can experience with enshitified corporate software.

masfoobar5• 8 months ago

I've installed Debian Linux recently, and it was EASY installing Steam and Heroic Games Launcher. Testing Rocket League and Thief:TDM and worked really well.

I also purchased a Steam Link and Controller a few years ago. Still works like a charm.

I was planning to build my own PC in 2026 to be the new Family gaming system. I don't plan to purchase game consoles, now. However, after seeing the new steam machine, I will wait to see the costs before I make a decision.

Seems like the Steam Machine.. if powerful enough and decent price.. can still be used as a PC. Otherwise, I will just build my own and stick Debian on it.

Be interesting to see how the Steam Machine does against XBox and PS. Seems like Microsoft may lose this battle unless they do something different with their next-gen. By different I mean that gets people excited.

Honestly, I think this is a good thing for Games Consoles. Lets me honest.. Games Consoles have not been proper "Games Consoles" since the GameCube, PS2 and first XBox. Since then, they are been more PCs than anything.

masfoobar5• 8 months ago

I hope someone out there creates a "GabeCube" boot up screen, based on the Game Cube animation.

YellowTech• 8 months ago

Do you mean like this? https://steamdeckrepo.com/post/6YWNE/valve_gabecube

masfoobar5• 8 months ago

Ha!

unpopularopp• 8 months ago

If they want to capture the console audience its better be priced like one too and not prevent me from playing multiplayer games due to Linux and anti cheat software not playing nice

Anything above $600 is DOA and that's with accepting the fact that the most popular games will be not available on the platform

lawn3• 8 months ago

not prevent me from playing multiplayer games due to Linux and anti cheat software not playing nice

All other consoles are much more limited in terms of games available you know?

vulk• 8 months ago

This will be a great reality check for consoles. If they don't drop their atrocious fees for online play I can't see what is the incentive to purchase PS/XBox in 2026.

HexPhantom5• 8 months ago

A little time capsule from when Valve was still trying to drag desktop Linux into mainstream gaming

tete3• 8 months ago

Wow the whole line-up being "just linux computers" that is compatible with everything else really makes me wish they come out with a Steam smartphone instead of the walled garden crap we are being force fed from Apple and Google.

tonyhart7• 8 months ago

valve shouldering entire linux desktop growth for 10+ years

bytesandbits• 8 months ago

Damn. Windows might lose!

alentred• 8 months ago

I really hope for Steam that the timing is right. Given the rising GPU, RAM and now storage prices, I hope they secured their supply chain with a fixed price for components, and at least first batches are going to be affordable enough for the public.

nathias• 8 months ago

great news both for linux and gaming

savolai• 8 months ago

Apparently js on both this and Frame page causes the webpage to die (entire page grey area) when scrolling on iphone with link opened from steam app.

davedx2• 8 months ago

Wait. Will I be able to play Subnautica 2 on this?

rafterydj2• 8 months ago

Good question

rkomorn• 8 months ago

Will we be able to play Subnautica 2 at all, at this rate? :/

i-chuks2• 8 months ago

Two very important questions are: How long before the steam machine gets obsolete? Would it be hardware upgradeable?

i-chuks2• 8 months ago

So, I watched an IGN video on youTube and the answer is no. You can only upgrade the SSD the rest of the components are soldered. The steam machine is intended to be kept simple and for the living room, so while you can tinker with software, DIY hardware tinkering is very limited.

https://youtu.be/xb3a3EKwhGQ?si=qeqBJ5Giwo7IqzxV

lawn3• 8 months ago

I swear I saw a video claiming that you could also upgrade the RAM, but now I'm not sure.

nottorp• 8 months ago

No giant brick! Steam Machine's power supply is built right in.

Great! Extremely great!

gigatexal• 8 months ago

Any idea on cost? Wish the GPU had 12 or 16GB of ram but this is serviceable.

I think I’ll wait for the gen2.

lifty2• 8 months ago

2034

aforty• 8 months ago

Half-Life 3 when?

mannanj• 8 months ago

I couldn’t see a purchase link anywhere. Too lazy to check, they potentially lost a customer due to this UI.

reciprocity• 8 months ago

There is no purchase link. It's an announcement for an early 2026 release date.

https://store.steampowered.com/sale/hardware

chezelenkoooo• 8 months ago

I knew I was building a library if unplayed games for a reason.

omega32• 8 months ago

The non upgrade-ability of the components is a deal breaker for me considering the estimated cost (800eur?). I'm not sure who the target market for this is, the pc games already have pcs they can upgrade.

What would make the console players consider paying effectively twice (compared to the current ps5 prices) to play the same games? I think such a device would have to be priced competitively with ps5 for me to even consider having a separate gaming device/replace the console in the living room.

drexlspivey• 8 months ago

Who estimated the cost at 800eur?

agloe_dreams2• 8 months ago

Who quoted 800eur? This should be way closer to $500usd or PS5 pricing. Plus the ram and storage is upgradable.

omega32• 8 months ago

It's of course estimated, based on this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45903771 Checked the component prices and it's in this ballpark, certainly not at base ps5 prices.

nektro• 8 months ago

another slam dunk from Valve

DiskoHexyl• 8 months ago

SteamOS has way more appeal to gamers in 2025 than it could have had in, say, 2004.

On the surface the lack of popular multiplayer titles that require a kernel-level anti-cheat is a heavy downside, but gaming is extremely fragmented these days. In 2004 everyone, save for the casual players, at least tried DOOM3 and Half-Life 2. In 2025 Fortnight has an all-time peak of 12M players, but at the same time there are many millions of Minecraft players who never even launched Fortnight. And DOTA2/LOL players who've never launched either of those 2. And then you see a bunch of indie titles selling tens of millions of copies, and their player base is completely unrelated to those above.

The days of the gaming mono-culture are long gone, and inability to play a limited number of Game As A Service titles is not as severe of a handicap anymore, especially since people who play those kinds of games aren't typically as interested in any other titles. For better or worse, peer pressure doesn't work as heavy these days, as it used to

lazyfanatic422• 8 months ago

What made you go with comparing things to 2004? Seems random, there is so much that is different in the Linux ecosystem generally, Valve just put the situation on a rocket and shot it into space.

Point taken, it really is marvelous! When I was running Gentoo Linux, and Windows 2000 back then I never thought things would be so portable and simple!

NooneAtAll3• 8 months ago

What made you go with comparing things to 2004?

I guess HL2 release?

Steam launch was late 2003 and first non-valve Steam games appeared in 2005, so "thereabouts" can be a reason as well for "Valve era"

surajrmal3• 8 months ago

I was a heavy gamer in 2004 and never played HL2 or DOOM3. I know many such people. I think games like Mario party, smash, and Mario kart were far more ubiquitous.

shawn-butler• 8 months ago

Your definition of heavy gamer I think differs from the norm if your main plays were Mario kart, et al.

SmallDeadGuy• 8 months ago

That just sounds like all you had access to was a Nintendo console, not necessarily due to your own choice. I missed out on all the early zelda, metroid, and mario home console games because we were a playstation family until the wii.

BlueTemplar6• 8 months ago

Your comparisons are a mess.

"Casual player" is very poorly defined.

You are comparing concurrent players with unique players (IIRC half a billion for Fortnite ?)

"Many millions" hardly means anything when you use it to cover 3 orders of magnitude.

And so on and so forth...

MetaWhirledPeas3• 8 months ago

the lack of popular multiplayer titles that require a kernel-level anti-cheat is a heavy downside

It's a downside if all you want to do is play those games. But it's an upside if you're hoping they someday ditch all that nonsense. This puts more pressure on those publishers.

rtkwe11• 8 months ago

More likely is that some linux distro like SteamOS gets a large enough install base that it actually makes sense as a target and these big platforms make their anti-cheat work on at least that distro. As unfortunate as it is not having a very strong anti-cheat or a system like Valve's VAC ban to detect and lock cheaters out leads to really shitty online experiences in public lobbies for PVP games.

morshu90012• 8 months ago

True. Things were better the old way with so many kids at least having a video game like Melee or CoD or Halo in common. I would've liked those to run on Linux, but that doesn't matter so much.

spookie2• 8 months ago

Eh multiplayer games are doomed.

Computer vision based cheats using an external machine that records the game's final rendered frames, process them with specialized YOLO models, and control "mices" and "controllers" to aim for you already exist.

If the aim for kernel level anti-cheats was to combat cheating, they have failed and are completely worthless.

jack1243star• 8 months ago

That's like saying online banking is doomed because rubber-hose cryptanalysis exists. The defense does not have to stop 100% of the exploits to be effective.

I hate kernel level anti-cheats but they do provide friction and reduce cheating.

fulafel3• 8 months ago

You don't need an external machine. Since games are set up to allow twitch etc streaming, it's easy for apps on the same machine to get access to the video.

haolez2• 8 months ago

Does anyone know if the resolution is good enough to use it for work? I.e., e-mails, programming, etc

EDIT: I mean the VR googles.

jerojero4• 8 months ago

Its a linux computer, if you connect it to a 4k monitor you could use that.

The one issue I see is that it only has one HDMI port, so you couldn't connect two screens without a dongle.

But for all intents and purposes, its a prebuilt pc in a tiny form factor.

haolez2• 8 months ago

I mean the VR googles. Will edit my comment.

dabluecaboose2• 8 months ago

The one issue I see is that it only has one HDMI port, so you couldn't connect two screens without a dongle.

Stretching the definition of a "dongle", but the page does specifically say "Ready for all the peripherals and monitors you can throw at it" so I'm assuming some amount of USB-C daisychaining is supported

sentrysapper• 8 months ago

oh boy here comes the GabeCube

QuiEgo• 8 months ago

This kind of inspires me. I have an i5-1340p NUC I’m not using for anything at the moment, I wonder if I could press it into service as a sort of “dry run” for this type of experience

noisy_boy• 8 months ago

Seems to me that there is a fourth platform emerging: Windows, Mac, Linux and now, Steam.

PS: I know its custom Arch Linux under the hood, I'm talking about mass market nomenclature.

rollcat10• 8 months ago

The main problem with Linux as a platform, is that it isn't. Linux is a kernel, with a platform built on top of it. And that's the real issue: Gnome and KDE are separate platforms; but so are Ubuntu and Fedora; but so are Flatpak and Snap; etc. Depending on your application, you will have to support several combinations.

For gaming, Steam OS fixes that. You can't target "Linux", but you can target Steam on Linux.

doshaa• 8 months ago

Which is fine, its a much better situation than the current status quo, If all devs build around steam OS's 'platform' its not that big of a deal for any Linux enthusiast to run in their custom made setup, the main concern is the layman, the enthusiast love these types of problems.

dustbunny2• 8 months ago

I priced out an upgrade for my machine: Radeon 9070XT, motherboard and PSU, coming in at roughly $1000. Part of me knows I should probably just buy this instead.

dustbunny2• 8 months ago

For everyone talking about anti cheat, you can just install windows then, right?

tdhz77• 8 months ago

Just waiting on a steam pass and I’ll never buy a console again.

saghm2• 8 months ago

My theory for a bit now has been that Valve is playing the long game in trying to make SteamOS a mainstay gaming platform as an alternative to Windows, and that the hardware products are essentially a way of breaking into that market. Even a few years ago, the idea of a custom Linux distro based on Arch Linux with both a built-in full desktop mode and a lower-powered gaming mode that you could switch between on a handheld device would have sounded kind of crazy, but now we're at the point where it's fully supported on more than one vendor's hardware. This seems like it could be a similar play in the traditional desktop space; if they can prove that the concept is viable, maybe other vendors will come out with similar products that come with SteamOS by default. All of this insulates them from having to worry about the long-term sustainability of making money from game sales on Windows, and if it works out, they wouldn't even necessarily have to continue making hardware indefinitely.

I don't pretend to have any insight into whether this theory is correct beyond that it seems to track with what they've been doing lately, or any expertise to make claims about whether it will work or not. In a lot of ways, this might just be a projection of my desires as a gamer who enjoys not having had to boot into Windows to play something for quite a few years at this point. I do hope that maybe they're just crazy enough to not only try this, but pull it off though!

BlueTemplar6• 8 months ago

Didn't Gabe Newell basically confirm 13 years ago already that they were aiming for that ?

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-18996377

saghm2• 8 months ago

I'd love to be confident that the company's strategy is sound enough to keep the same long-term goals from that far back, but I don't think I'm sure enough to make strong assumptions about what the overall motivations of products launched in 2025 are from his comments in 2012. I do think that it's a plausible explanation, but there's plenty of room for humility in attempting to interpret whether intent has changed in the light of over a decade of new circumstances that may or may not have been expected.

ajam1507• 8 months ago

Not much of a theory when everything you described has already happened.

CupricTea• 8 months ago

I still remember when Valve first showed an early alpha unreleased version of Steam running natively in Ubuntu for the first time in the early 2010s. It blew my mind that a major company, especially an entertainment company, was targeting Linux at this scale.

Of course, Wine was very lackluster in those days, and for a while I was worried they'd eventually give up with the monumental effort that would be involved in getting it up to snuff.

It's now over a decade later and they're still at it and have made monumental leaps. Valve truly was and still is playing the long game here.

Imagine if Microsoft had never threatened their business with the Windows 8 store and the anxiety of Microsoft locking down their platform.

gorgoiler• 8 months ago

Halflife2 ran perfectly under WINE. At the time I assumed that it was a win for WINE but with hindsight — and typing this out makes me feel so naive! — was HL2 optimized for WINE in order to make WINE more successful? Of course it must have been!

It’s a shame the connotations are negative because this ironic comment otherwise works quite well: This large wooden horse is such an extravagant gift, it has to have some subversive purpose, right?!

MetaWhirledPeas3• 8 months ago

maybe other vendors will come out with similar products that come with SteamOS by default

It's already happening. Lenovo released a SteamOS variant of the The Lenovo Legion Go S.

xeonmc2• 8 months ago

I for one eagerly awaits Lenovo to release SteamOS versions of their ThinkPads

hotstickyballs• 8 months ago

Turns out the problem with mobile was windows all along!

ekianjo4• 8 months ago

And the legion go 2 is windows 11 only so they did not learn anything

cjbgkagh2• 8 months ago

Gabe is a former MSFTy, left in 1996 to found Valve, he saw games as more popular than Windows. It wouldn’t surprise me if he got into games in order to compete against his former employer which would suggest to me that this plan has been in motion since before 1996, almost 30 years. At least from my point of view, if I wanted to take on Microsoft, doing what he did for the past 30 years is how I would go about doing that.

frakkingcylons4• 8 months ago

Gabe gave a talk at my college like 12 or 13 years ago. He explicitly called out the unbelievable number of downloads for Doom as a sign that games were going to be huge.

Fun non-sequitur: the other speaker at that talk went on to become the finance minister of Greece.

ppseafield• 8 months ago

I don't think it was explicitly to compete with Microsoft. Gabe explicitly said when the Windows 8 App Store was announced that Valve was going to ensure Microsoft couldn't lock them out of the desktop market. He said Valve benefitted for PC's openness (up until it was threatened).

Microsoft also had Games for Windows Live at the time, which provided similar functionality to parts of Steam (friends, multiplayer, voice chat, achievements), so with that plus the App Store, one could easily see it as Microsoft coming for their market.

Mr Newell, who worked for Microsoft for 13 years on Windows, said his company had embraced the open-source software Linux as a "hedging strategy" designed to offset some of the damage Windows 8 was likely to do.
He said the success of Valve, known for its Half Life, Left4Dead and Portal titles, had been down to the open nature of the PC.
"We've been a free rider, and we've been able to benefit from everything that went into PCs and the internet," he told the conference. "And we have to continue to figure out how there will be open platforms."
"There's a strong temptation to close the platform," he said, "because they look at what they can accomplish when they limit the competitors' access to the platform, and they say, 'That's really exciting.'"
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-18996377

ThrowawayB7• 8 months ago

"All of this insulates them from having to worry about the long-term sustainability of making money from game sales on Windows..."

The weak link in your theory is that Microsoft is in control of the future of the DirectX API, not Valve, and it is Microsoft who is working with nVidia and AMD and game studios to evolve DirectX to take advantage of the latest GPU features. SteamOS can at best follow closely behind but can never take the lead without Valve developing their own games API that games developers an GPU makers are willing to target.

rossy2• 8 months ago

Did you forget about Vulkan? Valve and AMD are Khronos members and active contributors to the Vulkan spec. Games like Baldur's Gate 3 and Civ VII use Vulkan on Deck. There's a complete graphics ecosystem with full participation from the games industry that doesn't have Microsoft as the gatekeeper.

twelvedogs• 8 months ago

it would be a really bold move on microsoft's part, as it would be direct monopoly abuse

it would be interesting to see how or if they were punished for it in the current political environment or even the next one, but i hope we don't find out

i suspect long term it would just be a foot gun that drives vulkan's popularity anyway though

wiseowise11• 8 months ago

Vulkan?

beAbU• 8 months ago

I don't think this needs to be a theory. Valve regards Microsoft's flirtations with walled gardens (MS Store) as an existential threat. They see their investment into linux gaming as a hedge against future locked down windows OS, which is at this point probably inevitable.

happy-dude2• 8 months ago

Absolutely. This is a long term strategy stemming from the moment Microsoft spawned their app store.

A lot of people are missing the fact that the Steam Frame is Valve's attempt at staking a position in the wide-open and malleable VR space.

With Google, they identified that Microsoft developing their own search engine as an existential threat. Additionally, Internet Explorer being the only bottleneck for the web as a platform was a problem. And thus they broke it wide open, developing web technologies, investing in Firefox initially, releasing Chrome, and ultimately delivering Android.

In mobile, Microsoft came too late to respond to Apple and Google.

Meta and Apple have identified that VR is one of the next gold-mines in terms of a similar app-store and experience rich ecosystem potential comparable to PCs, web, and mobile, and have poured billions into development of hardware and software. It's documented that Meta attempted to create a proprietary OS for their VR headsets (and has debatable success).

Valve, while having fewer resources than any of the behemoths above, decided to hedge their bets with Linux and entering the market first through their well established brand built with video games. It would not surprise me if the Steam Frame begins their entry into other entertainment experiences and app opportunities. Microsoft has reasonable success weaving their ecosystem together (PC + Xbox), but they're foolish to think that their dominance would continue into VR because they have the PC space... They made that mistake with Windows Phone.

dismalaf• 8 months ago

This is 100% it. In addition to MS Store, MS is trying to converge Xbox and Windows, which definitely had the potential to lock out Steam. SteamOS and hardware is 100% a hedge against that. And thankfully for us, Valve is moving quicker than MS.

yapyap• 8 months ago

Nice theory and it would make sense with how unstable Microsoft has been in their all encompassing quest to make AI a thing people use by cramming it into everything (along with their other shitty practices)

Though not necessarily the case since selling steam devices also will make steam the default even more which could also be a primary reason it could also be both, who knows.

righthand• 8 months ago

If that is their goal they need to contribute _a lot_ more than a custom Arch distro with a custom Wayland session changer and Proton.

Because while Proton is nice there are many things in KDE that fall down because of how contribution works.

naikrovek2• 8 months ago

there is a lot of evidence for this. this isn't a hypothesis, this is what's going on.

why else would Valve spend so much time and money on Proton? To eliminate the dependency on Windows. Windows is still the OS for gaming. Valve doesn't like that and they are successfully slowly changing that.

Now, if they would just build their 1st party titles for arm64 macOS. I would love to play Portal 1, Portal 2, and Half-Life 2 et al on my decked out MacBook Pro, but I can't. Why can't I? Well, MacBooks are such a slim slice of the market. Yeah well it would be slightly more of the market if I could play Team Fortress 2 on this thing.

pjmlp8• 8 months ago

Until they get rid of their dependency on Windows, they can come with whatever alternatives they feel like, Microsoft has the last word.

m4634• 8 months ago

When his business depends on Microsoft, which has shown untrustworthy behavior time and again, this is a great hedge.

ecef9-8c0f-4374• 8 months ago

I really like my steam deck. After buying it I wanted to Download Musik and checkout some Films just to realize they removed all non game media years ago

59nadir3• 8 months ago

Go into desktop mode and solve it like you would on any other PC.

mistyvales• 8 months ago

Will wait until dosdude1 upgrades it to 32GB :D

gorfian_robot• 8 months ago

echoing others here in that I want Steam Lap(top).

I am old and never into controller/couch gaming after the Atari era. I prefer either keyboard/mouse or gameboy for those nintendo exclusives.

I also travel a lot and a console or desktop PC just doesn't make sense in my life.

Maybe soon!

vkazanov2• 8 months ago

Nothing keeps you from buying an amd-based thinkpad with ubuntu and steam on it. I run god of war on mine, no problem.

Rohansi9• 8 months ago

You could always just install the Steam client on a regular laptop. All of Valve's hardware is basically just booting into that anyway.

0xWTF• 8 months ago

USB2-A ... what? Why? It's <checks watch> almost 2026. Apple hasn't shipped USB-A since 2017. But ok, apparently there's a bunch of PC folks still rocking USB-A. Cool, love that for them. But why not make them all USB3-A?

bakies4• 8 months ago

yes agree on the 3, but many gamers sporting old (e.g. xbox 360 controller) or cheap hardware (e.g. "gaming" keyboard on amazon). Pretty sure USB-C is expensive because of licensing. checking my PC i have more A ports utilized than C

terribleperson10• 8 months ago

The answer to why not all USB3 A is probably PCIe lanes. AM4 and AM5 are absolutely starved for PCIe lanes.

It could also just be a cost issue.

jolmg• 8 months ago

Wonder if they'll ship worldwide.

estimator7292• 8 months ago

I really, really hope people start calling this device the GabeCube

okayjustonemore3• 8 months ago

This seems to have been targeted especially at someone like me: I don’t like to play on PC, have no interest in building a gaming PC and I only reluctantly buy consoles because of their (kind of) plug-n-play experience.

If this thing can get me a console-like experience and allow me to play my extensive library of games (most of them classic/vintage games you can’t get on modern consoles) hassle-free, then I’m (probably) sold!

And on top of that it runs Linux. Awesome, just absolutely fantastic!

squigz3• 8 months ago

This was shared the other day and sounds exactly like what you want. Throw in Steam cloud syncing (although I'm not certain RetroArch supports that) and I imagine it's about as hassle-free as can be. Possibly even more hassle-free than the original consoles - no blowing into cartridges here!

https://www.retroarch.com/

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1118310/RetroArch/

bartvk2• 8 months ago

I have a Steam Deck and it’s definitely more janky than for example an Xbox. It’s not bad! But do not expect the same level of polish. Small example, there’s often a need to dial back the graphics quality. Or the text is too small. Or the screen recording is a hassle.

squigz3• 8 months ago

I don't know if it's fair to compare a Deck to a proper full-sized console - especially things like font size being too small, which of course is likely to happen more on a handheld.

okayjustonemore3• 8 months ago

I’d be hard pressed to call the Xbox UX “polished” in any way, but I do get what you mean. Though as long as it allows me to play my games with as much ease as the games themselves will allow, then I’m good—I just do not want to be bothered with the “PC” part of this equation.

Solstafir• 8 months ago

What can I do with steamos besides Gaming?

LeoPanthera• 8 months ago

SteamOS is Arch Linux. So, anything you can do on Arch Linux.

herewulf7• 8 months ago

You can organize your collection of Sólstafir FLACs and album art in the terminal with beets and then serve them up with mpd, etc, etc..

ropable• 8 months ago

Welp, I probably just found the final reason for not bothering to maintain a Windows PC at home any more in addition to my personal laptop.

hyfgfh• 8 months ago

Storage seems small to how crazy big some games have bee EDIT: Maybe it needs a combo ssd for system + hdd for storage

FloatArtifact2• 8 months ago

One disappointment is that's not geared towards media playback or apps like netflix. In the interviews, they mention relying on the web-based versions of apps. Unfortunately, they often come with artificial limitations (limited streaming quality) by companies such as Netflix.

adorton• 8 months ago

It's a computer that runs Linux.

FloatArtifact2• 8 months ago

It's a computer that runs Linux.

I'm fully aware of that. Imagine sideloading mobile applications on the steam machine. It's very hard to get a platform that reasonably respects your privacy. Smart TVs and boxes like Roku go out of their way to invade privacy. I'm not sure about Apple TV. It would be nice to be able to use the steam box as a replacement _officially_. I have no doubt there will be some sort of community effort.

lencastre• 8 months ago

release date?

rpigab• 8 months ago

We can now start to dream of a future without Windows Kernel level Anti Cheat software in every competitive multiplayer game.

emigre• 8 months ago

The year of the Linux coffee table.

ngcc_hk• 8 months ago

Switch and Pi both pointed this direction. May we even have netbook back for simple gaming cum internet devices.

jongibbins• 8 months ago

It sounds like a similar idea to what Atari launched. https://atari.com/pages/atari-vcs Let's hope Steam put a bit more effort into it than Atari have.

Steam Machine

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