At that price, the Steam Machine will be DOA

To quote Slartibartfast: “I’d much rather be happy than right any day.” It was finally revealed yesterday that the Steam Machine will be released soon and for a rather hefty price, by the way. Starting at $1,049 for the 512GB model, and only if you sign up for a lottery before the 25th of June, as these early models will be a limited supply for the time being. It begs the question, will the Steam Machine 2.0 be DOA again?

For those who don’t know, the name originally comes from Valve’s 2015 experiment with hardware that went about as well as a political opinion shouted very loudly under a red hat in a Planned Parenthood, which is to say that it didn’t. Now, that original model was i7, i5, or i3 with at most a GTX Titan, 16 GB of DDR3 RAM, and a 1TB hard drive sold for around $450-$750 upon release. Obviously, it didn’t sell too well.

This new model, which is released on the 29th of June, starts at $1,049 with an AMD Zen 4 6C/12T CPU, AMD RDNA3 28CUs GPU, 16 GB of DDR5 RAM and 8 GB of VRAM, with only a 512 GB hard drive. If you want the new and hideous Steam Controller too, that’s $1,128. For the 2TB model, it is $1,349, but with the controller, that’s $1,428. Here is the kicker though, why would you buy a Steam Machine?

Personally, I’m looking at something like that as the PC-console hybrid that sits under the TV in the living room to play bigger releases on PC on a 60-inch TV. I think that’s the majority of the opinions on this one. I don’t think anyone is looking at a Steam Machine and saying that’s their main PC going forward, especially as their main gaming PC for larger game releases over the past few years. Nearly $1.5K for a PC-console hybrid to sit under the TV is certainly a choice.

Not that I am blaming Valve for that price, or that I think Valve is entirely responsible for this price to gouge those who want a Steam Machine. My point rather is that for this price and the most likely customer base, it is an odd choice when there are alternatives. Of course, the main reason this whole situation is as expensive is due to the supply and demand of chipsets for GPU and RAM, which is inflated due to the increased demand from AI data centers, which can burn in hell.

Because of that inflated price of hardware from an assembly perspective, the price for the consumer is always going to be a bit higher. That’s the obvious part. The problem there is that for this price, there needs to be an established market that is screaming for the product, and technically, there is. As I say, I’d love a little black box under the TV to go alongside the multiple PlayStations and Xbox (yes, singular) to play whatever is on Steam too. Though, as the title states: At that price, the Steam Machine will be Dead On Arrival.

However, it is not just the price that’s killing the Steam Machine; it is Steam/Valve itself. If you have that money lying around and are willing to pay $1K to $1.5K, then you could buy a mini PC for around $350, hook that up to the 4K flat screen, and use remote play from your main PC in the house. Keep in mind that the Steam Machine is aimed at people who have already invested in the Steam/PC gaming sphere, so presumably have a decent enough PC to play these games. Best of all, you can use the rest of that money on the Steam sales.

Surely that’s the better option, right? As I opened this article with, I’d rather be happy than right. However, with the current state of hardware and the general cost of living, the release of the Steam Machine (the second one) feels not only mistimed but also grossly misunderstands who the audience of this thing is. We’re nerds who already have a decent enough gaming PC. By all means, prove me wrong, Valve, but I think at this stage the Steam Machine 2.0 is going to be DOA before the first one has actually shipped.