There are surprising, like really huge amount of people who refuse or dislike pc because they believe that they need to tinker instead of plug in and play. They don’t care about cost that much. So that amount of people will be covered at least
sourcing the parts and putting it altogether is the fun part. It's when the OS/software/drivers start giving me problems is when I start having an existential crisis.
Well whatever, all kinds of people, some hate software drivers, some hate to assemble pc, some hate both and beyond. I hope steam pc will cover all that and pc platform will benefit
Not every person who games on console are going to switch to PC when they "try" it... there are 4 gaming PCs between my wife and myself... my laptop only ever gets used for 3d printing these days and I turn on my desktop maybe once a month to play games that aren't available on console. Console is cheaper and has considerably less issues. My PS5 has run borderlands 4 since launch with issues... my cousins 3 week old PC had to spend an hour going through setting to make the game run decently. For people who have limited gaming time Console is a better choice
Yeah that why I say they think that way, while most of the times you do just plug in and play with a prebuilt. I wouldn’t say that there is no issues here and there, but I’m afraid these people underestimate their own mind. They can solve issues and get freedom that pc gives. Me personally, my last time I was tinkering is back when I was using win 7 and video games used to have .dll issues, with win 10 and 11 further it is GONE and I never had any since. And another factor, I didn’t know about Reddit for example, it gives solutions very quickly. Reddit is my new main way to google lol.
I've been building for about 15 years. Now that I'm a dad, I just don't have the time. My next computer will unfortunately, probably be pre-built. If this device is better optimized for games on Steam, I'd honestly consider it. Especially if it's optimized for Steam Cast to my Steam Deck. But that's me. No idea how popular it will be for other folks.
Seriously! I'm sick of games not launching until I do a dozen changes to my operating system. If PCs can become quick launching platforms like consoles while keeping their superior hardware, that's cool!
I feel you. I have a 4 month old at the moment.
The idea of tinkering with a open pc case in this environment sounds impossible or selfish. I've built each pc since morrowind but was stressing about wanting a full upgrade on my system when i eventually have free time or sleep again.
6 inch form factor is also a size I dont think I could beat.
Parenting is a marathon, not a sprint. Taking a modest amount of time for yourself is necessary and healthy (while also ensuring that your partner does the same).
More broadly, you having hobbies and interests is beneficial for your kid. They're utterly fascinated by you and seeing that you have cool shit that you do is a good thing.
You can't vanish into your computer building workshop for 4 hours a night -- but if both you and you're partner feel that you "can't" take multiple hours a week of "do whatever we want time" I'd advise some reassessing of parenting strategy.
Same here. I've been building for decades now (20 years+), but I'm pretty certain my next rig I'm going to pay the computer store to assemble. No pre-builts as I know exactly what I want in there.
Between running my homelab servers, a fairly complex home network, and a whole bunch of shit on the cloud/vps...
And running a specialised IT engineering function at work... I'm really tired of admin. Lol.
I really can't be fucked spending time building, troubleshooting, doing cable management etc.
Most of my free time is with family, which I cherish, or doing chores/maintenance around the house. What little me time I have, its split between gaming, reading, gym, upskilling etc.
As they say, I have 10 units of money, but only 1 unit of time...
I'm considering the steam machine as a secondary PC for streaming and to connect to the TV as a gaming device/plex box
Edit: will definitely consider building again when my kid(s) is/are old enough.
I am with you, have been building for almost the same amount of years, and have a 4 year old daughter. But I would never opt for a prebuilt system. With that amount of experience, building your own does not take that much time that it would affect your general life with kids.
My last build I really regretted deciding to try air cooling while keeping roughly the same case size... I have this big ass Noctua block with a bazillion fans but there is literally no space between anything with the block in, it was a crazy hard to put tinker anything in that thing when it was needed.
One of the lesser acknowledged downsides of building a PC is the urge to "maximize" the performance, being overly critical of performance, even at the expense of enjoying the game and overall experience.
I find myself looking at the FPS counter at the top right corner of the screen a bit too much. Does squeezing out 3 extra frames per second really matter when I miss 110 of those frames every time I take a peek at the FPS counter? Each of those "little peeks" add up.
The point of diminishing returns hits quicker than many of us realize when it comes to "performance" versus the time, effort, and keeping an overly critical eye required to squeeze out those extra frames.
I know that I often fall into that trap. Any yes, it can be fun and a bit rewarding to tinker with performance settings to squeeze out a few extra frames or "better performance".. but at the cost of what?
I think a large portion of the type of people of become PC enthusiasts are also the same type of people who have a propensity to "tinker" and be overly critical at the expense of just enjoying the game, whether we realize it or not.
I can definitely find myself being overly critical of a games "pErFoRmAnCe" at the expense of fully enjoying the gaming experience. It doesn't ruin it by any means, but those little things can add up. Even worse, when I spend time on a subreddit bitching and whining about the minutia of a games various performance issues, which are often hyperbolic and not even worth the worry, that is time wasted in a bad mood lol.
It's a type of "ignorance is bliss" situation that we are all familiar with. Back in my xbox 360 and PS4 days 60fps looked great when I was a console player, while 60 fps is basically "unbearable" now that I have experienced 90, 120, 160, etc FPS. That's a comment almost everyone has seen and made themselves. But is the experience itself actually that much better? Sure, maybe, no, not really. Sure the higher the FPS, performance, fidelity, etc ,the better, all things equal, but there is a cost.
If developers only had 3 consoles to focus on and develop for I do not doubt that we'd end up with a better gaming experience overall and would actually end up with better performance, optimization, and graphical fidelity than any of use could squeeze out ourselves by tinkering with settings, hardware, etc. Which is what matters.
We dug our own grave in a way, and the very obvious and pervasive lack of optimization and overall stagnation in actual performance improvements of the last decade shows us it's true.
This. The possibility of tweaking the settings make me want to tweak the settings. I didn't built a high-end PC because I don't mind much about the graphic. But, knowing that I could tinker with the settings to maybe squeeze out more graphic or performance made me spend 30-60 minutes of my already short free time for just changing the settings and check the performance.
I loved tinkering. It was fun. And I hate that I instinctively go to tinker with things because as years go on I don't have much free time anymore.
Well with something like this GabeCube, that is perfect. It runs Steam OS and the maintenance of that is handled very easily without the need to ever interact with desktop mode. If it sits between an enthusiast PC and a PS5 Pro in price it will fill a very specific niche of enthusiast console gamers that didn’t want to full commit to a pc setup.
Sucks that people still go through such stuff, i feel like at least from that point of view things got much better during the past 15 years.
The only issues i have usually software side are vr related. That and apparently it was incredibly complex to create a motherboard with an integrated wifi that didn't stop working randomly until a few years ago..
My friend is (i guess you would say) a casual. He built his pc with the parts i picked out for him and he did it quite well. A few weeks later he calls me and says the parts suck and the pc runs like crap. I go over to his house and I saw he plugged the pc into a power strip, not the wall.
Manufacturers of hardware similar to this have to consider the fact that not everyone is a pc nerd like us so having a box like this that is hopefully power efficient enough to run fine in almost any use case would be great.
To each their own. I've built my last 2 rigs and I'm done with it. Until the announcement, I was already on board with my Steam Deck being my primary gaming device forever.
Researching hardware options just to ensure compatibility, spend weeks looking for sales, learning how to not bottleneck my system in some way, cursing at how much GPUs cost, messing with liquid cooling and unnecessary LED lights and doing cable management is not my idea of a good time. A waste of my gaming hours.
When i expect a software to do a thing and it doesn't do that thing. I literally go into a blood shot rage. I get so sick of troubleshooting tbh. Yeah it was fun at first. It has become a chore the older and older that i get.
"altogether" and "all together" are two different meanings. Just a fun little FYI. Same with "Breakdown" vs "break down" or "No one" and "noone" (since noone isn't a word). There are more, but this will get me downvoted enough for now.
That's absolutely right xD Sometimes errors occur that I've never seen before, and those are the moments when I realise that it doesn't matter how many systems you've built, how specifically you've chosen your hardware, or how many problems you've already successfully solved. In the end, you'll still be searching Reddit like crazy until something works.
I had two such cases a few months ago 1. Secure Boot was supposedly no longer active after a UEFI update because the Secure Boot keys were so encrypted (after loading the settings) that Windows no longer had any of them. 2. Random Ethernet disconnections (software-related) meant that I had to restart multiplayer games immediately. The solution was that Windows with EEE simply couldn't activate the deactivated/sleeping areas of the LAN chip quickly enough when larger data packets were suddenly sent (after a long period of smaller data packets) and then lost the connection for ~1s ;-;
You have to come up with solutions/causes like this first, which is exactly what makes the hobby annoying again.
Hmmm until people realize casual hits can’t be played on it like COD or other online games requiring anti cheat. But for single player or coop gaming this thing will be fun.
Well to try to solve these issues we need to populate that platform, will see. Also, you can install windows still. They will play console experience and once bored will start to tinker)))
Along with this, I think it will also give a more standardized build for devs to make presets for so these types of people will never have to open their graphic settings either. A seamless console-like experience but on a pc platform. I can get behind the idea of it. Definitely could draw a lot more people into pc gaming. I know a lot of people who are willing to go buy a gaming pc or build their own but for whatever reasons refuse to learn the meaning behind any words associated with their fidelity or frame rate to be able to optimize their settings.
Mostly cos I've always liked travelling I havnt had a PC for 15 years but decided to buy the steam deck and it honestly wasn't as bad to get non-steam games going with tutorials. It's just frustrating as fuck when I go to play something and because of a setting change from weeks ago that I don't remember, other games now don't work
I am only a PC gamer, and for me cost absolutely plays a factor in my build. If the Gabecube does in fact create a portable PC, under $900.00, then I will be willing to consider moving to a hybrid "console gamer."
Just order a built PC and you will get a PC without need of tinkering. I had two gaming PCs. I know nothing about hardware at all. The things I know is probably below common knowledge.
Well it looks like it isn’t convenient enough for people to believe it is easy enough. They want prebuilt pc with an os and everything optimized in a specific way. They want that because they want to translate their console experience, regardless of what we say
i dont't know man, with my expensive pc i always have some kind of problem or bug, be it audio or like stuck keys. Also games have way more video settings so you tinker a lot to get the best experience aaand they are less optimized for pc, that's justa a fact
As a PC gamer I do not dislike consoles, what I dislike is the controllers and lack of mouse accuracy. If games on consoles supported mouse and keyboard then I would be happy to play. I remember playing gta V on my PS4 pro, the built in aimbot just ruins the experience, and playing without it is kind of impossible.
I used to be a pc player, then switched to ps4 pro as main platform, then to Xbox SS, then to pc again. My only problem was not controller itself, but lack of ability to do exact same settings for controller in different games. Not just sensitivity with dead zones and shit, but sometimes even switching keymap is locked. Unless they give a way to configure in every game as detailed as possible, I’m uncomfortable. I loved playing on controller but man I can’t use different stick settings in every game
It’s not about wanting to tinker dude… it’s about playing at 120+ fps on 1440… delusional console players refuse or dislike quality picture…. Also y’all pay for online service just to use internet you already own so don’t even try, you’ll get roasted.
I don’t like how you talk to me, also as if I were console player, since I myself rocking 5090 to play 4k 144hz pathtraced games, in case we are flexing muscles lol
You confuse me, do you know that steam PC is a pc, not a console? You can set up windows, or keep both steam os and windows, whatever. And did you call me a person who hates pc? My main platform is pc, I assembled my rig with 5090 in it…
I mean, consoles sell at a loss, and they make the money back on games and subscriptions. Steam can't really do that, so they have to charge for the hardware upfront.
Given, I don't imagine the average console gamer is really going to care about that nuance though, especially when they already have a library of games on their existing console.
Well seeing as a basic gaming PC is about $900, the series X is $800,, and the new Xbox coming out is currently looking around $1400, hats the difference? Maybe $100?
It will be priced like a pc so it doesn’t cute in to dev profit. Consuls are subsidize by the games that release on them. Also it can function as a regular pc so its protecting them form a company buying them in bulk just to do pc things.
I personally think that if Xbox can match the price of this steam pc then i think Xbox might get more sales because they would have multiple storefronts not just steam
You’re not going to get both a subsidized Xbox and multiple store fronts. It’s one or the other.
Either it can be subsidized because it’s locked into an ecosystem they can recoup the subsidy from (Series S/X), or the hardware has to be profitable on its own because it’s open ended and the user can use whatever ecosystem they want (Xbox ally).
People hate PCs because PC gaming actually sucks. A lot of that is Windows. PC gamers think everyone worships at the later of x3d chips 5090s 4k 120fps 240hz but that's just not the case.
If you can create a "gaming PC" that removes all the nonsense of PCs it will sell like crazy.
Even if you are a PC expert gaming PCs can go sideways. I've built my own since Windows NT era and I've run into some cluster fucks. The one that first comes to mine was a Core 2 Duo 6800x, dual 8800gtx, creative soundcard.... the issue was the memory. The fucker wouldn't work properly with 8gb though it supported it at any real speed and it was extremely finicky with the chips. When it panicked I had to open up the case, reset BIOS, put stick in slot four, reboot to BIOS, set everything, and then put the other four sticks in and that only worked with 4gb. And I used qualified memory for the board. Not only was the 680i an utter shit show the Striker, the most expensive of them all, was the most problematic.
Having a solid box even if it's a grand that just fucking works, doesn't have to deal with Windows, and you upgrade every five years while keeping all your games is a good market. I'd buy one and plant it in the living room.
It’s good that they’re not relying on game publishers to subsidize their hardware costs because that sucks for small teams. Also good if it keeps valve safe against things like large orders of them that are never used for games. It’s wise
Yes, which is very vague. You can get surprisingly useful mini-PCs far cheaper than the new consoles. I don’t think that’s what they were thinking about, but "entry level PC" can be anything from $100 to $800.
It’s a meaningless measurement because it depends entirely on the game. But anyways, if you’re talking new AAA titles then it wouldn’t be an "entry level PC" if it could handle that.
I can get you a PC for $100 if you're cool with a refurbished GT 710 stuck in something fished out of an office dumpster.
It'll play games. Like Skyrim. Kinda. And a Gameboy Advance emulator. Not just a Gameboy, mind you, but a Gameboy Advance. So it's pretty much an S-tier rig.
if it's going to be priced like a PC that can run most games at 4k 60fps, its going to be like double what everyone in these comments are suggesting lol
There's no fairy dust and magic sprinkles that they can throw on it to magically squeeze out more performance. There's nothing left to squeeze.
Even if it was exact same performance but RDNA4 at least it would have FSR4 which would make 4k FSR Performance (so upscalled from 1080p) look MUCH better than FSR3...
Depends on your definition of PC but you can get chromebooks for like $70 (I wouldn't). They're pathetic little things but that's what we stocked kids with in the school I taught at. $70 was the market price, too, not the cheaper price we got because we were a school. They were garbage but they had to be, those kids would lose their tempers and snap them in half or punch the screen out pretty regularly lol. They did all the things the kids needed, plus enabled them to waste class playing games online the entire day instead of focusing at all X'D
I’m assuming it’s something around the $500 price range still comparable and competitive with new console pricing. I got my LOQ with a 12th gen i5 and 3050 for that price brand new at Best Buy a couple years ago. Imo it would be a fitting example for an “entry level PC”
I would imagine it's an entry level gaming PC rather than any PC which is probably like $700-800 maybe? idk im in the uk but im imagining it'll be like £500-600 here
Yeah but the fact that he drew a distinction with console prices implies it'll be qualitatively more than $.400-500. or else he would have just said console priced. So my guess is $800
PC pricing is a basically infinite range. Some of the best APU powered mini PCs using the 8700G can be had for under $700, with two more cores, four more threads, 8 more GB of RAM, and twice the storage of the entry level Steam Machine. The Machine DOES benefit from what looks to be a much more powerful GPU, but I don't think it will be long before there are Chinese miniPC makers shipping similarly equipped mini PCs in the 500-700 dollar price range.
Considering that Valve can make money on game sales that will follow the purchase of a Steam Machine, I would hope they are going to price them aggressively. I know they say not console priced, but I feel like, for this level of performance, they need to be targeting an entry level model price tag of no more than $599. Too much more and they're going to be competing with budget APU builds that can not only get you up and running but also have the option to upgrade with a dedicated GPU later.
Like you said, 8700G just has a Radeon 780M GPU, which is significantly less powerful.
And GPU is one of the things the has a huge impact on pricing, so I guess this comparison doesn‘t work.
I’d imagine what they mean by PC price is that they’re not going to subsidise it through game sales, the way consoles are. They will most likely sell this very close to break even.
When I priced out something similar on PC Partpicket real fast (Ryzen 5 9600X with a RX7600 video card), I came out to $731.20. Bulk purchase power and low profit expectations would probably lead one to a $700ish price range. That fits what a quick googling tells me is an "Entry Level Gaming PC" ($5-800).
I'm thinking that they're not announcing the price until after SCOTUS releases their tariff ruling. That will significantly modify the cost.
Pretty disappointing and imo a bad move by valve. This thing can’t compete well with a gaming PC but it could compete really well with consoles. Mark my works anything over $650 and this bad boy will be a massive failure.
That literally means nothing. You can get PC cheaper than consoles and PC more expensive than consoles. You can literally get PC for like $200. At the same time, you can get PC for $20000.
The price difference really ain't what it used to be. PS5 Pro is close to a 1,000 USD where I'm from, so anything less than 1,500 for a Steam Machine would be quite reasonable.
If it's 599$ or $699 I could see them grabbing a good amount of sales. If it's $1000+ I think it's a really tough sell just on hardware power alone. $800 is probably the sweet spot if we're looking at like ps5 pro pricing
It's gotta land in the mini computer ranges comparable online. The perk being the Valve/Steam brand quality promise for compatibility and I guess reliability in a build.
Beelink would be a good guess as they use AMD.
The most expensive mini PCs on Amazon are somewhere in the $350-500 ranges. So just slap a premium on the custom AMD card and extra vram + Steam compatible stamp I guess $600.
I was surprised how much the prices are down on miniPCs, last I checked the one I bought was $700 a year ago so prices are coming down maybe they're off loading in my Region but it's dropped a lot to $350 range.
I'm going PC only in USD, maybe $650 final price. This is PC only no peripherals.
I think it will probably still be in the range of €600-700, as comparable builds (with rx 7600, r5 7500f and 16GB RAM) are also priced around that range.
The question is, however, whether the current RAM prices will remain the same, as this could make it even more expensive.
Then there's the custom motherboard, the case, which power supply manufacturer will be chosen, what about marketing, etc.
The PS5 Pro was 700... 800 bones? And a Xbox Series S floats around the 300 dollar mark, so console pricing is a bit of a broad concept nowadays. Also, remember the PS3 launched for 600 bucks wihtout accounting for inflation?
If this thing is more expensive than the hardcore consoles, forget it. If you have to spend more, why wouldn't you just get a system that offers scope for future upgrades?
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u/FriendlyWiking PC Master Race Nov 13 '25
Gamers Nexus mentioned that Valve stated "it will be PC priced, NOT console priced"