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Gonna get skewered for this take but… that’s slightly better than I thought it would be. I thought it would be 1500 USD at the minimum.
EDIT:
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OH NO brother they’re RAFFLING IT!? hahahaha that’s fucked
They will sell out instantly and this blocks the scalpers.
Oh yeah sorry, I don’t mean to say they’re wrong for doing it. I just mean that scalpers are now so prolific that this is the only way to ensure fair purchases, that’s the fucked part.
OH NO brother they’re RAFFLING IT!? hahahaha that’s fucked
I’m actually glad to see it. A raffle is one of the only realistic ways to deter scalpers while still leaving the console eventually accessible to people who actually want to play on it. Fuck scalpers; anything that hurts them is a win in my book.
I mean, yeah, fuck scalpers. But valve’s global market is atrocious. I could buy a PS5 in a brick and mortar store, I could order any Xbox version I want, I could’ve bought and play a Switch2 on launch day. But somehow 4 years later I would have to find a sketchy online reseller if I wanted a Steam Deck. The Steam controller won’t get to me unless I’m willing to pay 4 times the original cost, and it would probably be years before I see a Steam Machine in person. Valve is right, piracy is a service problem, and I’m starting to suspect that scalping is too.
OH NO brother they’re RAFFLING IT!? hahahaha that’s fucked
I disagree. The Deck and Controller each had their queues announced at least a week ahead of time. The queue for the Steam Machine kinda just shadowdropped in comparison. Plus a raffle doesn’t penalize anyone for having work or living in a timezone where they’d normally be asleep.
Given the circumstances it’s pretty fair.
Even with an announcement ahead of time it’s so much better imo. Doesn’t penalize people for having to work or just living in a timezone where it’s the middle of the night.
Sure it feels like you have less agency over when you get it but it’s so much fairer.
Yeah 10:00 a.m. is perfectly reasonable but it converts to 6:00 p.m. UK time 7:00 p.m. for a lot of Europe, that’s kind of late in the day to be trying to order something and I think it’s the middle of the night in Australia. This does seem better.
It’s a one-per-household, vetted for bots and scalpers raffle, yup. Well, more of a first-wave-shuffling and then waitlist, really.
Each global region has separate quantities and lists, and each version of the box has their raffled/shuffled lists.
What’s nice about that is, not only are they going to actively try to limit to one household, but as long as you get in before the 25th, even if you get shuffled to the very end, you’re still going to be before anybody that comes in almost 4 days later, and have a chance to be literally first. Chaotic, but I think that’s kinda fun.
Each global region that’s supported that is. I wish they’d have some way for regions outside of those list to still try. There was essentially 0 chance I was able to get a Steam Controller being outside of those lists.
For all the talk about fighting scalpers, valve’s lack of global shipping and market means that scalpers are literally the only way I can get any hardware product. The billion dollar corporation won’t ship to my country, but Randy from Jacksonville will literally ship the product right into my doorstep. I don’t defend scalpers but this is ridiculous.
Yea, the annoying thing is that this used to be fine. I was able to order the Steam Deck with my non-US account and pick it up when I happened to be in the US. Now, I can’t even do that. I have a 15 year old account and spent probably more than a couple thousand bucks by now. Surely I’ve earned it?
Yeah Valve only really believes in about three of the earth’s continents. Personally I think it’s payback for Asia keeping all the cool phones to themselves.
randomization is to determine the order of receipt
… that’s high demand, sheesh
It’s not a raffle anyone who joins the list will get a device it’s just when you get it. It’s a countermeasure to stop bots from being used to scalp the machines. I’m sure if you’re not that bothered about getting it in the first week or so you can just hold off and then it’ll go to normal purchasing after that.
Valve seem to have been pretty good so far about keeping scalpers from becoming part of their distribution network. Compared to the shit we saw with the PS5, for example.
I remember being very difficult to get hold of the original steam deck. I don’t think they initially had any kind of limiting place, I feel like it was the second run where that was implemented.
i mean, i just entered a raffle. but it’s for free music tix at stern grove in san francisco. that’s the kind of raffle i’ll enter.
I actually wish they did concert tickets like this. I might actually occasionally be able to go to one.
My dude I am not bullshitting you. It’s free too
Entered the lottery a couple days ago to see the violent femmes, and the lottery for patti labelle opens Sunday.
I have a friend who listens to the radio at work. When there’s a contest, she calls in. Gets tickets to everything, because who calls in to the radio nowadays?
I’m a live music junkie though. Open mic nights are one of my favorite things.
So thats pretty much as expected - 7 months ago it would have been ~$700 as predicted
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Baseline numbers compared to top end numbers don’t make sense. 700 vs 1050.
those numbers are likely aimed to be profitable not just now but for a while. if they raise the price with every manufacturing run people will lose trust.
The sad part is that Valve really did price all the parts for pretty much as low as they could go:
AI pushed gaming 10 years back
AI did a number to gaming, but truthfully, gaming technology was probably about to stand still anyway. Barely any studios can afford to make a game that’s so technologically advanced that it pushes our current hardware to its limits.
Oh please, plenty of games push my top tier hardware to its limits!
It’s just that they do it by not bothering to optimize their software.
The handful of companies that can afford to spend $100M+? Sure. There are only so many of those, and plenty of them go bankrupt after spending that much.
Yet AI will actually be good at optimizing software, and might help push devs to do so. Both stifling and assisting.
And the GPU makers were already approaching a plateau around the first RTX cards.
Node shrinks have dried up. Gamers got use to those handing them major leaps.
Gaming isn‘t standing still though, it‘s reverting. You can‘t get the same hardware you got 5 years ago for the same price anymore. Hardware ALWAYS got cheaper until recently. This is truly unprecedented.
You’re probably right…
As an optimist, I really hope this hardware crunch leads to a greater focus on polish and optimization. I feel like a lot of development studios have let specs inflate to cover being unwilling to focus on building their games efficiently. It can feel crazy when you start comparing specs on games from different studios.
As a realist, I imagine we’re just going to have a lot more cloud gaming services and that may just end up being the norm. I’m still waiting for a AAA publisher to start releasing their games exclusively to cloud platforms, probably first as a pre-release or early access bonus of some sort. I have my money on Ubisoft as the first big one if they manage to keep it together as a company.
As an anarchist, I’ve been looking into selling all my electronics and investing in some farmland.
Fellow anarchist here, I’ve been accumulating used hardware that’s on the older side to Frankenstein together a homelab/cluster, brush up on self-hosting foss, and increase my personal tech sovereignty.
Man, I feel ya there, I think I have Lenovo’s entire 2015 enterprise portfolio. There’s a channel called Hardware Haven on youtube and I realize I may have gone too far as whenever there’s a new video on old tech released it’s for something I already have in my basement.
As a realist, I don’t see any way cloud gaming services are an option that customers en masse will be willing to pay what the providers have to charge to make a profit. Stadia was not that long ago, and Google couldn’t make it work under what had to be a softball toss for that business model.
Don’t forget the latency. I can barely tolerate streaming between my PC and Deck witg Sunlight/Moonlight.
There’s a lot of companies thinking about it that are big enough that they don’t have to profit immediately. I think they’re mostly waiting to see Geforce Now raise prices and enshittify more. My prediction is we’ll have the various datacenter providers giving more deals on compute to make use of wasted cycles, maybe leading to various services renting that compute and dynamically tuning quality based on current cost. I.e., high performance gaming during off-peak hours and degraded performance during AI peak hours. Time limits will definitely become more frustrating.
Google might jump back in then if they didn’t have to run the service. For them, I think they exited because they established that they’d have to actually support the product if they wanted it to grow and there is nothing they hate more. Part of me feels like the dystopian future we’re heading to may be publisher based subscription passes similar to xbox game pass but more focused and providing drastically less value.
I think I’m out though, I don’t have to buy a battlepass for the chickens and if support ends I get to make curry.
The wife and I keep tossing around the idea of buying some land and simplifying/becoming semi-sustainable. Unfortunately, even bareland is a premium in the areas we are looking
From experience, if you do, take a very long look at your neighbors. I almost ended up with what I now realize was suspiciously cheap land down the street from a cockfighting operation.
I’m not going to post what I almost did, but I’ll just say that I’m mad.
Wait til you hear about all the fucked up shit that isn’t related to video games and is actually consequential
It’s all consequential to me. Nothing is without rhyme or reason and it is all interconnected.
As did Covid.
Would be nice if it pushed back 20 years before steam become so popular
I’ll throw steam os on my mini PC and just pretend it’s a steam machine. I knew they were going to break $1k but yeesh, breaking it AND only 512gb is tough
I’d recommend Bazzite over SteamOS. Even if I was buying a Steam Machine, I would still just use Bazzite.
Edit: just to clarify because I made this post hastily that I would only suggest Bazzite for power users. SteamOS is just fine for a lot of folks.
Why’s that
I daily drive Bazzite and I’m not fully in agreement. If you’re doing non-Steam games or emulation, or desktop stuff, on AMD hardware Bazzite is the winner IMO because it ‘ships’ with that stuff preconfigured in a way steam os doesn’t and Bazzite has something very similar to big picture mode for AMD. Hardware compatibility is probably still better out of the box with Bazzite too.
If you’re only playing Steam games on the TV Steam OS is arguably better.
I’d after with this.
Even if I was buying a Steam Machine, I would still just use Bazzite.
They both run Arch, both are capable of running KDE & Gnome DE, both are immutable but only one will get dedicated support from the manufacturer and developer.The use of HDMI CEC is not typical for desktop environments, I doubt you’ll get the same “sleep” functionality on Bazzite.
They both run Arch
No, Bazzite is based on Fedora. SteamOS is based on Arch. Maybe you had Bazzite confused with CachyOS?
Yup my bad, I have striked it out of my previous comment.
I should specify that Bazzite is really just for power users or tinkerers. It has a lot better capabilities.
Like others have said that of all you’re doing is playing games SteamOS is fine.
I doubt you’ll get the same “sleep” functionality on Bazzite.
The Bazzite community is fantastic. I’m sure they can figure that out.
I’d be shocked if they haven’t already, people have been using Bazzite on Steam Deck and other handheld PCs for years now.
Rough timing. My entire gaming PC cost less than this and is much more powerful, judging by the specs. But I built it out with 32 GB RAM and a few terrabytes of SSDs and NVMe before the current silicon panic, and just upgraded the GPU last year before the prices increased.
I don’t see how there was any way of winning for Valve on this with the current market. It’s not worth the cost, but there’s also likely no way they could make it cheaper.
It will most likely sell out constantly for the next year, they will be fine.
Yep, easily. Valve hardware isn’t subsidized by the manufacturer like traditional consoles, so they make money even if not a whole lot of them are sold.
There is a way to make it cheaper, but it involves multiple homicide so I don’t think it’s going to happen.
Apparently they were originally intending for it to be around the $750-800 range for the base model.
You do also have to factor in that it’s about a 6 inch cube, though, so it’s no surprise that the specs are underpowered.
yeah I’m fine with my DDR 4 32 gig laptop. I bought it before I became homeless and the thing is good for what I need.
I’m still on 32 GB DDR4 as well, running a Ryzen 5600x and RX 9070 GPU. I was planning to potentially upgrade to a new mobo/CPU/RAM this year or next year, but I just have no reason to upgrade now, between the prices and the fact that I’ve had no issues even with recent UE5 games like Expedition 33 at 1440p/UW and in some cases up to 4k resolutions for slightly older stuff. It runs everything just fine for my purposes, and the whole system is really power efficient for the performance, I don’t think I’ve ever seen it hit above 350w total power.
Gamersnexus shows a comparison with the Steam Machine getting 93 fps on Resident Evil 4 remake at 1080p with “priorize graphics” setting, while my GPU (Sapphire Pulse 9070) hits 275 fps on the same settings. Can’t complain.
My GPU cost that much 3-4 years ago, it’s overkill now but I got it for VR and sold my VR stuff after 2 years. That for an entire system could work depending on performance. I’m betting new consoles would be around the same price if they were released this year.
I got lucky I think. Bought two Sapphire Pulse RX 9070s last year for myself and my wife’s rig, close to or below MSRP. Mine was $600, wife’s was $540. We had 6700XTs previously, only reason we upgraded was because I was having issues with performance on E33. We plan to pick up Solasta II when it drops which is also UE5, and had some existing games with a bit of performance drop (like 40k: Rogue Trader) so decided the upgrade was warranted.
We’re both gaming on Linux, so the performance and stability with AMD was preferred, no question.
How long ago did you buy that? Because things have changed.
Yeah, I’m fully aware. Did I not say I built it out before the current silicon panic?
The build was rolling as I caught sales and I didn’t get all the parts at once. It was up and running from parts bought late 2022 and 2023, but I upgraded my RAM from 16 GB (2x8) to 32 GB (4x8) in 2024, and upgraded my GPU in 2025 (RX 6700XT to RX 9070). The additional SSDs and NVMe were bought between 2023 and 2024 as well (system currently has 4x 1 TB SSD, and a 1 TB NVMe).
It’s not worth the cost.
For those of us with already existing hardware, but Gamer’sNexus showed that a system built today with comparable specs costs about the same.
If you’re building a system today you’re staring down the exact same Sam Altman shaped wall that Valve is.
I literally spec’d out a much more powerful system in another comment here for around $950.
It’s only equivalent if you absolutely need a micro/mini PC.
Yea your spec was about the same as Gamers Nexus, theirs (and yours) DIY spec wasn’t much more powerful than the steam machine:
Here’s the video talking about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66QzlDewigE
but there’s also likely no way they could make it cheaper.
Valve ceo owns an entire fleet of mega yachts, i’m sure there’s a lot of room to cut profits there and make their products cheaper
It could or should have been around 700-800. We must be thankful AI companies that it is how it is now.
I’m still getting one but this is clearly a luxury item now rather than a competitive console. Sucks to be Valve here, the timing really worked against them.
I just really hope the VR headset is not much worse than this as I just want to play No Man’s Sky on linux VR.
Funny, cause whilst its very pricey, i spent more than this on my phone. And most flagship phones cost about the lower end of this. But because i get my phone essentially interest free over a 4 year contract i somehow justify the cost without thinking too much about the fact that i spent 1500 quid on a small slab of glass and metal.
Maybe i need to rethink my grasp on the concept of money.
8 GB VRAM :(
16 GB RAM :(
But it’s not a problem in Linux: https://www.techpowerup.com/348178/valve-engineer-improves-linux-memory-management-for-gpus-with-8-gb-vram-or-less
I mean, it’s still a problem, just less of one. Still gonna be an issue with high texture games that cache to VRAM. But this looks to be a 1080p machine, so I suppose that wouldn’t be too big a deal here, unless the textures aren’t scaled for the resolution (some games do that these days, but I don’t know if it’s common).
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I run Arch Linux with a RTX 3080 Mobile with 16GB*. Games regularly use 10-14 of those (some even higher) even at 1080p, so yes, it’s a problem in Linux.
* Apparently, 16GB on the 3080 is not normal for Desktop or for Mobile. I have learned recently it appears to be an MSI laptop exclusive. Weird, but I got lucky :)
8 GB VRAM in the big 26 is a yikes from me.
Steam Deck works well and has 16GB of unified RAM with only 1GB automatically assigned to VRAM.
Having 8GB dedicated should be a huge improvement.
This machine is designed to be played on a 4k TV. Upscaling may help, but it will hard limit the machine in the future.
Why? 4k is already just past the human vision resolution. Anything denser is just masturbation.
Yea, a lot of people don’t realise, how stupid 8K TVs are.
4K does make a lot of sense in many cases, especially if you set up your TV for an optimal „cinematic“ viewing distance (roughly 2-2.5m for a 65“ TV, for example) allowing it to fill roughly 30-40° of your field of view, as recommended by the SMPTE.
At 30-40° our eyes have about the resolution of 3-4K (or, technically, a bit less than 100 pixels per degree in greyscale, even less in colour).Meaning, you would need a screen that fills more than 40° of your FOV for there to be a meaningful difference between 4K and 8K. That would translate to a distance of less than 2m to the 65“ TV in the previous example. More like 1m if you want to get the most out of the 8K. That’s about the FOV you get in an IMAX theatre. I don’t think very many people would set up their home TV like that, and unless you are, 8K is just throwing money out of the window.
Well, not everyone posting here is human.
Just because you connect to a 4K TV doesn’t mean is has to play in 4K.
I’ve connected my Steam Deck to my 8K TV.
Well, at least we now know you have more dollars than sense.
That’s been true for years now! 😉
Isn’t Steam Deck pretty much 720p? That’s a whole different kind of ask than a machine you plug into a TV - many of which will want 4k resolution. VRAM requirements really tend to balloon with resolution.
Native on the Deck is 1280 x 800. Slightly more than 720p, but not by much!
For anyone who wants the numbers: 720p has only 90% of the pixels as the steam deck, assuming equivalent area.
It’s also 6 inches across. I don’t think my graphics card alone could fit in a 6 inch cube, let alone my full PC.
6 inches is objectively a decent size, they should be proud.
It’s definitely a shower, not a grower.
Aw, those are cute and fun, too.
I’m glad they are doing a random selection of people who sign up who can order one, way better than the first come first served model that gives all the product to bots/scalpers (like the say in their reasoning).
Price seems reasonable for what you get in this current market ;(
This makes me wonder about the next time we have to buy new phones …
Damn. I can’t imagine this is what they wanted to price it at, I’m very sad to say it is a competitive price in this insane market…
Could’ve been worse I guess. I know they did their best considering ridiculous market conditions, but it’s a hard sell if this was meant to compete with consoles, you can still buy a normal console for roughly half the price.
In terms of being a prebuilt gaming PC, it’s not bad. Some people have said a similar spec PC is roughly $100 cheaper if you get everything yourself. Now the question is how much stock Valve actually has to sell, because I assume they won’t have that many made because of the component shortages…
$100 cheaper, but can it be done in this form factor? 🤔
"Size
152 mm tall (148 mm without feet), 162.4 mm deep, 156 mm wide"
5.98" tall (5.83" without feet), 6.39" deep, 6.14" wide.
To put it in perspective, PC FANS are 120mm…
Not all PC fans
I tried to make a build with pc part picker and it was around 70€ less which is pretty fair considering that valve had to engineer the tiny form factor, paid more for the custom CPU and GPU etc etc
Note yours is only 70€ less because it is missing the storage and power supply prices.
Mentioning this as it actually makes your point stronger.
Oh i didn’t notice! XD thx
But you are limited to that consoles game library and a steam machine can play any game ever purchased on steam or added to steam via keys. Plus adding games on sale saves money in the long run.
There is a significant cost savings on the games sideways for those with a large steam library. Not enough at these prices, but it would have been if it was around $800.
It’s a brutal time to be releasing hardware like this.
GPU prices, RAM, SSDs, all inflated through the roof.
This should have been the price of a PS5 Pro, with the performance of a PS5 and it’s not even that.
I still want the Frame, but only because my OG Rift died a couple of months back. I really don’t want to have to go crawling back to Meta for a Quest 3 when I see the price of the Frame, but I’m not optimistic. They really need a reduced spec Frame that just does the streaming portion. With RAM and GPU prices as they are, that would at least make some sense.
Have you seen PS5 Pro prices lately? $900?
Mental innit? First gen I’ve ever seen where price of hardware went up…
The price does spook me about the Frame, but I may get it out of desperation no matter the cost because like you said, there’s no way in hell I’d buy a Meta product. I absolutely loved my Quest 2, before Meta pushed all that metaverse shit and made the thing unbootable.
I’ll be buying the Frame no matter what.
I also had the OG Rift but since I moved to Linux it’s been nothing more than a paperweight.
I could go to Meta, but I honestly don’t want to do that to myself. The way I see it, the Frame is the only way I get to keep a small amount of privacy and dignity in this world which increasingly has neither.
So I’m saving up my pennies.
If valve made the frame as it’s going to be and an index 2 that was the index but lighter with all around improvements but was still wired only with no battery pack, which would you buy? Standalone inside-out, or next gen pcvr with lighthouses?
I don’t think I can even answer that question. Inside-our tech has really evolved since the old days and I couldn’t say hardware was intrinsically better or worse based on that like I could at the time.
I’m REALLY hyped for the frame. Local processing PLUS streaming from a main rig that isn’t tied down to meta and doesn’t spy on you AND has native Steam integration!? Ouaauahhhhhyessssssfuuuccckkaahhhh
