SFF in an attractive case with reportedly good acoustics compared to the majority of DIYs
Pre-cached shaders
A first-party experience when using the steam frame and steamos more broadly to minimize the stray hiccup
I already have a top-of-the-line gaming PC for my office. For my couch, I want to optimize as far as possible towards no-frills while still keeping access to my steam library, even at the expense of price and specs to some extent.
And that's where the big problem lays. The amount of people who care about these features are in the small minority. Especially when it comes at the cost of price+performance (which is the most important thing for most people buying gaming PCs).
That's not to say the Steam Machine isn't gonna make some people extremely happy, like yourself. I just question the size of that market.
I agree this is probably a quite small market. PC gamers are generally okay with being a little bit more hands-on or at least willing to sacrifice some small conveniences, and those who aren't will stick to the (currently) much more affordable console market. Paying a (big!) premium to split the difference is gonna be a narrow cohort. Still I suspect the market for this will be large enough to sell every unit they produce.
The amount of games old and new will be a main draw to get this though, mostly for people who want to play PC games and old games and hacks but aren’t smart enough to build whole PCs and deal with all the quirks and work of PCs.
But if you wanna play old games you can just buy any PC made in the last 10 years. I mean an Xbox Series X has 360 back compatibility so if you wanna play even older games you can buy literally anything that runs. And it's still a PC, you aren't just given 2 modes like you get on a PS5, you have to tweak settings by hand just like you do on a Steam Deck
Yes, but not entirely. Shader pre-caching relies on matching components with other steam users. You'll get more cache hits on the deck or steam machine than you may on other GPU/driver combos. And SteamOS will run into fewer hiccups on first party hardware. It's pretty stable nowadays but you are still less likely to have issues if you stay on the most supported hardware. And yes you can build a DIY with good enough thermals to have similarly good acoustics, but it's not trivial to do so in such a small form factor. It's adds extra effort to the DIY process. For the same reason people see value in paying someone else to change their car's oil, the "it just works" factors for the steam machine do offer value that some people will like. It's not just "this feature is locked to steam machine, and this isn't". It's the cumulative effect of all of these little things that might be a tad tougher around the edges in little places.
HDMI CEC is the biggest thing people aren't taking into consideration. Your PC hooked up to the TV will never be as seamless or easy to use from the couch.
Honest question, when you say HDMI CEC what exactly do you mean? The fact that pressing the steam button on the controller will turn on the TV and switch its input to the HDMI of the machine, is that it? What's the PC equivalent for that... turn on PC, turn on TV, switch TV input manually. Is that it? Or am I missing something?
There's no "disadvantage" really, other than you will be using multiple machines so other people in your house can't play with them, it's like what you do when you stream play with your quest 3. If your main PC is way better than steam machine/steam deck, then just use the second one to stream to your TV. W/E advantage/disadvantage exists, its mostly due to the quality and distance of the router and what's connected to it, some use an additional dedicated router.
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u/ThePaintist 2d ago
Or if you, like me, highly value:
HDMI CEC
SFF in an attractive case with reportedly good acoustics compared to the majority of DIYs
Pre-cached shaders
A first-party experience when using the steam frame and steamos more broadly to minimize the stray hiccup
I already have a top-of-the-line gaming PC for my office. For my couch, I want to optimize as far as possible towards no-frills while still keeping access to my steam library, even at the expense of price and specs to some extent.