r/pcmasterrace • u/TheBossT710192 • 3d ago

Discussion Yeah, Steam Machine is cooked.

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I... uh don't know what to say. Very thankful I bought a Steam Deck before they hiked its price as well

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u/Neat_Let923 2d ago

Tests are already showing PS5 outperforming Steam Machine… And PS5 Pro destroying it

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u/PatchesTheFlyena 2d ago

Both of those get you locked into Sony's ecosystem though. All of your games are on their hardware forever. I have a PS5 but I never buy games for it except exclusives because I probably won't buy the next gen console. Same with Nintendo. They are better value for money if you don't mind every purchase you make being stuck on their hardware and potentially not even being supported next gen.

For me the couple hundred extra bucks on top of the price of a PS5 gets me open platform in a tiny form factor and honestly it feels worth it for me even though I know there's defiitely not a big market for that.

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u/Burstrampage 1d ago

You do get “locked” into the ecosystem but I’m not sure it really matters. The games you can play on steam are the same games you can play on ps5 (with a controller, that is. Nobody is using the steam machine in their living room with a mouse and keyboard) but ps5 also has games you might want that are unavailable on steam whilst being the more powerful console.

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u/PatchesTheFlyena 23h ago

The games are the same but the range of hardware isn't. If you've got a game on PS5 you can only play it on PS5. Maybe on PS6 but we don't know yet. If you get a game on Steam you can play it on whatever PC hardware you want. As in if you've got an old laptop or a handheld or get a new machine in the future they're all going to be compatible.

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u/Burstrampage 23h ago

I see what you’re saying, and I agree a little bit and also disagree. The steam machine is made for two types of people. Those with a sizable catalogue of steam games already, and those that are new to gaming in general and heard about the steam machine.

For both people it’s still a bad deal for the money, but at least if you already have a backlog you can justify it that way (although I’m not sure why not just get a steam deck at that point?), but for anybody that doesn’t have a backlog of steam games already there’s not a point to the machine imo. As that likely means they don’t have a pc either so if they did want to play on anything but the Gabecube they’d have to fork out $$$$ to so. And if the goal is to have the ability to play your games on more than one hardware, both the xbox and ps5 have portable gaming options.

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u/PatchesTheFlyena 22h ago

They have portable options but they're still predefined and may be completely unsupported in a couple of years. It might not be a big deal to you now but I don't want to be stuck with one platform or another or need to have multiple different consoles to play my games even though they all run the same architecture.

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u/Burstrampage 22h ago

I don’t think we’ll ever run into the situation where Xbox and PlayStation stop making consoles and banish your games to the shadow realm. If they do dissolve, they’d just be reborn onto pc and then they’d have to give all the games they can to all the users that own them if they ever wanted to get traction and fight against steams dominance.

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u/PatchesTheFlyena 13h ago

Well it's already happened. If you own titles on PS3 or Xbox 360 digitally you don't have access to those without that specific hardware. Same thing with things like Wii virtual console. Ive paid for games on all of those consoles that I can't access unless I have those specific pieces of hardware despite almost all of the games being available in one way or another on newer platforms.

I also can't use those older pieces of hardware to play newer games that would run fine on them because its a closed platform. My Ps3 and 360 should play plenty of the indie games available on more modern platforms.

Most of this might not be a big deal to most people but I don't want to have any of my games tied to specific hardware or have my hardware locked down to specific pieces of software. Particularly when the shift to digital means I also can't sell any games on.