5 ms·

I am a person who will look at the Steam Machine and cry

70 points by speckx 4mo ago

PaulHoule 4mo ago
I hope it is a while before I have to buy a new computer!
- crumpled 4mo ago
  I wish I could look forward and say, "prices will go down again" I don't see when or how. I hope I'm wrong.
  - PaulHoule 4mo ago
    Well the bubble could pop, but... as much as we are blaming the pandemic, and the crypto and AI bubbles I think Moore's law was really about transistors getting exponentially cheaper not just exponentially smaller. If you can't afford them it doesn't matter how big or small they are! I think the EUV transition broke the long-term cost decreases and we might be seeing the end of progress in electronics and computing unless there is some fundamental change.
    - oliculipolicula 4mo ago
      On a wide enough horizon, litho (& MRI) machines are nothing more than a source of entertainment? Narrower horizon: https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/enepol/v38y2010i9p5174-5188.html https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/enepol/v38y2010i9p5174-5188.ht...
      - PaulHoule 4mo ago
        I think China came to the conclusion that the French got it right when they standardized on the Hualong One [1] rather than AP-1000. I did break out the champagne the other day when I heard they actually installed a BWRX 300 module at Darlington the other day! As for electronics manufacturing it's believable we see something entirely different in 20 years (SQUID? true 3-d integration?) but I expect a rough patch for most of the rest of my life. Not like I won't have enough retro games to play for my entertainment. Just got back giving from Casey Handmer some tough love over (1) it is not commercially interesting to make methane on Earth and (2) it is not feasible to make make methane on Mars unless you can make everything else. Handmer is a tragic figure like Klein, except Klein's tragedy is a tragedy for us all whereas Handmer and I are the only ones crying over his tragedy because I could use a buddy to talk to about the interests we share who is worth talking to. If Musk was the hard man he pretended to be he'd be interested in my notes on how to attain manufacturing autarky after the future event the Club of Rome warned you about. But he's not so he's not. He gets to date the models from Looker [3] but which witch can resist a pet therianthrope? [2] [1] ... of which, oddly, there are two different designs! [2] ... sorry gsf_emergency_\d but a good parody deserves a parody; is @cindy your sister? [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Looker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Looker (I was so dazzled by that LOOKER Gun, my second favorite sci-fi gun of all time, that I had to watch the movie a few times to realize it really is just as bad as everybody else says it is)
        crumpled 4mo ago
        Man did I google a lot of things in this comment. Paul, you're an interesting person.
        PaulHoule 4mo ago
        And you didn't even ask me what my favorite sci-fun gun is?
        crumpled 4mo ago
        I didn't... Is it the one from Existenz? The one from Portal is pretty cool.
        PaulHoule 4mo ago
        Nah, it's the gun the psyclos have in Battlefield Earth; it looks like a piece of junk like some power tools mated with a pistol, it seems really painful to get hit with but like the L.O.O.K.E.R. gun it doesn't do tissue damage when set to stun. https://www.imfdb.org/wiki/Battlefield_Earth https://www.imfdb.org/wiki/Battlefield_Earth https://3dprintedprops.com/shop/looker-light-gun/ https://3dprintedprops.com/shop/looker-light-gun/
        oliculipolicula 4mo ago
        Can't say I have an emo attachment to any gun--- but I'll admit a couple make me pause the way avantgardey prime my third eye to underserved sources of attraction. Eg The Doodad (after Gibson, neither 0% nor 100% lethal, cf Venezuela, "Middle America"). PP gave me retro-pause marvelling at the Chinese supplying precursors to the WestHem factions (existenz). kinda vibe-prophetic. My best take on what you meant by the tragedy Handmer is that he has the mike (and loves to drop it whenever he can)--- but the tragedy of the rest of us here is that we don't quite. ?. And Martian ice caps? Just realized I'd never connected face to name, so I'd bounced off his Dwarkesh clips BC 1st impression was "fake genZ". Oops. Now admiring the ambiguities in "rough patch" and "Cindy". My takeaway from the French essay was that there was nothing stopping others from learning from one's mistakes (ie "without doing") Edit: https://youtu.be/1aQrPK9ulD0 https://youtu.be/1aQrPK9ulD0 https://lethalindisguise.org/crowd-control-weapons/acoustic-weapons/ https://lethalindisguise.org/crowd-control-weapons/acoustic-... https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a32892398/what-is-lrad-sonic-weapon-protests/ https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a32892398/... Very ICE, also vibe-prophetic Edit 2 (reel vs real) The RI <-> SV Met <-> Dems (sorry if too heroic but no one else wants to be official with stubbers) Klepts <-> "Trumpians" Stubbers <-> DSA Edit 3: ah so it's an IMI Micro Uzi
  - sva_ 4mo ago
    RAM prices are crazy now, but they always tended to go up and down in waves over the years.
  - mcmoor 4mo ago
    My hope is that whatever makes hardware prices go down over last decades would eventually work again now. I guess CPU is a dead end, but why not RAM and storage?
- all2 4mo ago
  Don't buy new. Get a 10 year old dual processor server tower on eBay with 128GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD. It's cheaper than new and it'll do everything you need it to without even breaking a sweat.
bigyabai 4mo ago
Okay? You can wipe off your tears and go buy a cheap gaming PC off Craigslist. Toss Bazzite on it, and you're good to go. I'm not sure what type of sympathy people want to court with the "woe is me" narrative around how they need a third gaming device. The selling point of the Steam Machine is the software. Nothing about the bespoke hardware is worth crying over, it feels like object fetishism for the sake of it.
- phoronixrly 4mo ago
  Are the cheap gaming PCs off of Craigslist here in the room with us right now? Snark aside, the second hand market is off the rails, too... The Steam Machine is cheaper than any DIY gaming PC I can build right now, even from parts off of OLX... And unlike the one I'd make, the Steam Machine will get the Steam Deck treatment as far as optimisation and certification (as in Runs on the Deck) goes.
  - ZiiS 4mo ago
    Be interested to know which country. In USA and UK for the price it is fairly easily match the specs with new parts. And if you leave them on their default power profile in a larger case you get better performance.
    - nekooooo 4mo ago
      you're paying for form factor, 'it just works', and convenience. how have we been having this same apple debate for 30 years, i feel like i'm on slashdot.
      - bigyabai 4mo ago
        People say this about all unjustifiable products. "Why do I want a Juicero? Why do I need a Surface Laptop?" The same form factor, just works, convenience argument. Nobody wants to acknowledge that it's all marketing halo. It takes less time to install SteamOS on the PC that you already own than it takes to buy and unbox a Steam Machine. But that's not "oooh new thing" retail therapy, so everyone waits with bated breath to see if they can afford the media center equivalent of jewellry. Nobody actually cares about functionality, convenience, or form factor if they're ignoring the most functional, convenient and proximate solution.
homebrewer 4mo ago
I've long wished for rich western societies to run extensive student exchange programs with low income countries. Living even one year in most of the world will change your outlook for the rest of your life.
- netsharc 4mo ago
  There's a video somewhere in this Library of Babel of some Palestinian kids who got a chance to visit New York (when Palestinian kids were still allowed to enter the USA, leave their occupied nation, and not be genocided to death). Obviously they looked at all the skyscrapers with bewilderement.
- sva_ 4mo ago
  My university offers locations such as India for the semester abroad, but most people rather go somewhere else.
- elzbardico 4mo ago
  Usually the people in low income/developing countries that engage in student exchange programs are upper middle class and beyond and have lives no much different from their peers in developed western societies. People in western societies tend to ignore that developing countries are not merelly poorer but also generally marked by extreme wealth and income inequality. The rich and the upper middle class for all practical effects live like the citizens of developed countries, it is just that there are less of them compared to the general population.
  - narrator 4mo ago
    Dhaka, Bangladesh, it's not a nice place to live no matter how much money you have compared to developed countries.
    - elzbardico 4mo ago
      Even Bangladesh have huge gated communities (almost closed city districts, with office buildings and commerce besides residences) that are orders of magnitude that do a really good job of isolating someone from the general dystopian chaos of the city.
vel0city 4mo ago
I'd say if you feel this way and you're not really using the Steam Deck as a handheld you might as well sell it and take the money to buy the Steam Machine. Used 512GB Steam Decks go for >$500, you'll probably get a bit for selling the docking setup you have as well.
- topgrain2 4mo ago
  ... holy shit, why are they so high used, I'd never have guessed?! Thank you for pointing this out, as someone with a Steam Deck I almost never use and a desktop gaming PC running bazzite that I do use, a lot, but wanted to replace with a Steam Machine, I'll probably do exactly his.
  - vel0city 4mo ago
    > why are they so high used New ones are $800-950. Other new handhelds that have much less brand caché out there are $1,000 or even more.
everdrive 4mo ago
"Nothing is safe, nothing is reliable, and I am looking at the extremely real possibility that I am already unemployable if I have to go back on the market." Anyone I know who has needed to look for work has had a hell of a time with it. It's a scary world out there.
- deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
- slibhb 4mo ago
  In the US, unemployment is at 4.3%.
  - satvikpendem 4mo ago
    This doesn't count those who've given up on looking.
    - georgemcbay 4mo ago
      Also doesn't count the underemployed. Very common for people suddenly laid-off from salaried work to turn to part-time gig work and that immediately removes them from the 4.3% unemployed statistic.
      - NavinF 4mo ago
        That's U-6 (U-5 plus people involuntarily working part-time). It's 8.1%. Pretty low by historical standards, but not as low as it was 3 years ago (6.9%)
    - slibhb 4mo ago
      If you want more detailed numbers, go look them up. BLS publishes them. Unemployment is nearly at historical lows. But don't let data distract you from the same tired "everything is terrible" line that's every other post here.
      - 4mo ago
post_break 4mo ago
You have a steam deck you don't use, so sell it and buy the Steam Machine, and then don't use that either.
- voxl 4mo ago
  Fun projection, there are three steam decks amongst my roommates, all three of them use is basically daily.
  - deleted 4mo ago
    [deleted]
  - moelf 4mo ago
    the original post says: So what now? The short answer is that I have (a) a nice couch; (b) a big TV; (c) a Steam Deck that I never use. I even have a dock for the Deck.
- topgrain2 4mo ago
  I'm in the "steam deck that I never use" camp but it's because I've been too lazy to take a Saturday to repurpose it into a dedicated console piracy device, it turns out I hate playing basically any PC game "on the go" (their touchpad-thingies seem to please some people as a mouse replacement but I find them entirely unusable), and it's just weak enough that I've found it worth keeping my old gaming PC around for now for 1080p+ gaming at OK quality & frame rate (and if I've got that plugged in, why plug in the steam deck?) For me the Steam Deck proved to me that Linux gaming was viable (finally! I've been trying since the days of Unreal Tournament being a current game and having an official Linux binary, LOL) and that I like the idea of an official Valve device, but that I needed a little more power and a desktop-alike form factor to reach a point of "good enough" for me (well, portable would still be fine, I just wouldn't use it that way so it'd be better if I didn't have to pay for the extra parts or have the added complexity and jank-risk of a dock) Like if my gaming PC broke I would't replace it (at least not for quite a while) but I would plug my Steam Deck into my monitor and start using it again, it's not that the device is wholly useless to me. It just wasn't quite a fit for what I do & want, it turns out. I do use my gaming PC, and that's what a Steam Machine would have replaced. I even have Bazzite on there so I for-sure would have used the Steam Machine, as I basically have a somewhat rougher-edged (and way bigger, with obnoxious "gamer light" horse-shit all over because that's hard to avoid for some reason) version of it already.
tekla 4mo ago
Oh man, you don't want to buy a generic computer because it won't make you look good in front of others and its only sorta expensive
jrm4 4mo ago
Person has a Steam Deck that they don't use? The only thing that keeps me from being genuinely baffled by this person taking the time to write this is the fact that I'm seeing similar takes elsewhere, which also baffle me to no end. Are people really this enamored by "the thought of buying new thing," as opposed to, like, thinking about whether they'll use it? Anyway, the Steam Machine seems like an extremely solid deal. It's a reasonably powered PC, and for an extra $200 or so, you'll get the guarantee that everything will just work, at least game-wise.
- rjh29 4mo ago
  > Are people really this enamored by "the thought of buying new thing," as opposed to, like, thinking about whether they'll use it? Yes. I know rationally it's overpriced and underpowered but a tiny part of me still wants to own it, just because. It's a shiny black box.
foo12bar 4mo ago
At this price point they should have never released it, they should have waited. Everywhere I see reviews of it on the internet, come along with forced smiles and talk about how they agree with the philosophy behind it and they should be commended for fighting against Windows. But ultimately no one recommends this to the general public. The writing is on the wall. This thing is going to flop. Only thing they can do now is keep it on the market, and in a few years upgrade *and* discount this thing in hopes of reigniting the hype. If they withdraw it, the very small but existing set of current buyers will scream bloody murder about being abandoned, and if they then try and re-release, trust will already have been broken.
- minimaxir 4mo ago
  Waited until when? 2028?
- blitzar 4mo ago
  > The writing is on the wall. This thing is going to sell out. If prices go back to normal, v2 of this product will be great. This version, at these specs, at this point in time would only be a buy if it was good value (like $500). People will buy them all anyway.
  - foo12bar 4mo ago
    Selling out doesn't equate to success. They've already said the initial launch will be heavily limited. What matters is if they make a profit throughout the product's lifecycle. Not whether they sell out on initial release.
    - esseph 4mo ago
      > What matters is if they make a profit throughout the product's lifecycle. That may not matter either. In fact, the most likely outcome is that they sell out of inventory, and the next iteration of the device gets GTA6 level hype. The scarcity of the premium product.
      - 4mo ago
mnls 4mo ago
First world problems
smcg 4mo ago
The Steam Machine was $250 less before all of the price increases from hardware buyouts. Go complain to Big Tech. You can install Steam on almost any Linux device. The Steam Machine is great for those who want a portable console-like device. Have you ever tried to build and maintain a shuttle PC yourself? It's obnoxious. This makes the goal of high quality portable gaming much easier.
- retired 4mo ago
  > Have you ever tried to build and maintain a shuttle PC yourself? It's obnoxious. The benefit of a SFF PC you made yourself it that it doesn’t use proprietary hardware like the Steam Machine, is easily repaired and easily upgraded.
  - drdexebtjl 4mo ago
    This is very true. I had a Ryzen Mini PC up until a couple of months ago, when it broke. Low quality VRMs, needed board repair. Support says I need custom molds to reapply the liquid metal thermal compound, or it would 100% leak. Regular thermal compound just isn’t good enough. It was true. I could send it to China and they would fix it for free, but it would take 60 days and I would have to pay tariffs. I just cut my losses and harvested the RAM and SSD for something more dependable.
- apple4ever 4mo ago
  Exactly. This is going to be perfect for my kid as he enters his teenage years. I dont want to mess with building one for him.
  - St_Alfonzo 4mo ago
    Let's hope his friends don't try to drag him into any competitive mainstream games. Valorant, Call of Duty, Battlefield, EA Sports FC, … Kernel-level anti-cheat usually doesn't work on Linux.
    - TonyStr 4mo ago
yathern 4mo ago
I have a desktop with a relatively powerful 5070 (I think) GPU for playing VR games. But my priorities for couch & controller games is not really around super high graphics performance. Lately I find myself playing classic games on emulator, or generally games without huge graphics demands (been playing that climbing game PEAK a lot lately). For me, getting a random no-name-brand Mini PC is such a fantastic deal these days. Throw bazzite or now real Steam OS on it, have access to your whole library - it's a linux machine you can configure to your hearts content. I love it. Probably the best deal on amazon right now is this machine, though there's others if you know how to search. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DK34WJ84 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DK34WJ84 Example of real-life gaming performance here - nothing mindblowing, but more than you'd expect from a tiny box that costs like $400. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlup85AxRd0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlup85AxRd0 Just wipe windows immediately and put SteamOS on it and you're good to go
- eboy 4mo ago
  [dead]
- rjh29 4mo ago
  You can also stream games from your powerful PC to the mini PC using Steam, so specs are not as important.
  - yathern 4mo ago
    I've always worried about latency for that - but it's ironic since I regularly stream over dedicated WiFi to my Quest VR headset. I'll have to give it a try some time. If they have some asynchronous reprojection tech for streaming that would be ideal
    - rjh29 4mo ago
      I've co-op games with my friend who lives 2 hours away. Same household should be fine.. It helps if your desktop is plugged into ethernet.
animanoir 4mo ago
[dead]
bebemama9393oe 4mo ago
[dead]
Aurornis 4mo ago
> So what now? The short answer is that I have (a) a nice couch; (b) a big TV; (c) a Steam Deck that I never use. I even have a dock for the Deck. So I should hook them all together and try out some games. This is the real answer. Why lust over new hardware and fret about finances when you have everything you need to play some games right now? There's not even any mention of what games they want to play on the Steam Machine that they can't play on their Steam Deck. They already bought a new TV to use with the Steam Deck and then didn't use it, so why even consider spending more money on more gaming hardware?
butz 4mo ago
It is possible to build an equivalent PC with Steam Machine specs, with same case size (internal PSU) and similar or lower price? I'll probably still a wait a bit to see reviews from actual users, but I really dig the form factor and was unable to find anything similarly sized with built-in PSU.
ChrisArchitect 4mo ago
Related: Steam Machine launches today https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48632884 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48632884
gos9 4mo ago
“homebrew steam machine” it’s called a computer computers have gotten more expensive, deal with it lmao
tossmysalad 4mo ago
[dead]
Fire-Dragon-DoL 4mo ago
I am flabbergasted by the negativity. It is more expensive of what we hoped for. Is it overpriced? I tried to calculate what a PC would cost NOW and it's exactly the same cost. I have a big Steam Library, a Steam Deck (actually 2), a desktop PC, a very old desktop pc. We are also a family of 4 and both my kids enjoy gaming (they are my kids after all), recently they started showing a lot of interest for games I play rather than Nintendo games, so I am getting one, here is what I see as positive that others don't: - I'm buying a console for which I have to buy zero games for. That's probably saving me more than 3k right out of the gate. - if I buy a game for such console I can play it on a flight, on the go, at my tv, at my desk - if I want to mod it, I can - I can finally give a computer to my kid that's not severely outdated, and it has linux, so they learn freedom and power before anything - I can finally play Nightreign with my wife without using Nucleus Coop (2 instances on the same pc), which makes my PC a furnace - Buying it puts me in the camp of "I have more linux gaming devices than windows gaming devices" Yeah there are some of us in the market for it!
- libertine 4mo ago
  I don't think the problem is that there aren't people in the market for it, but more that increasingly products that used to be meant for the average middle class are now perks for wealthier individuals - to the point where I think if there's a collapse of the AAA gaming industry is because there's not enough wealthy people time to accommodate for all the titles. Like GTA VI is speculated to release at around 90$, and any AAA game that will drop around that time will probably have a bad release. But regarding the steam machine, it's just yet another example that this product isn't at the reach of "the people", it's yet another luxury item. Not because Valve wanted to, but because this new standard of scalping, hoarding and squeezing the most out of the market is having repercussions across industries. The sad thing is that Valve used to be on the other side of the fence, at least for some products, it seemed like it was aimed to be accessible for gamers in a pro-consumer way (not all of course, that would be impossible). In the end even Valve had to fall in line with the rest, and it's just sad to witness it. So let people grief, they're not just grieving Valve, but also the last hope of a group that still thought there was a counter culture company in the current state of a greedy world, where shared holders value is more important than customers.
boesboes 4mo ago
Blame Altman et al.

70 points by speckx 4mo ago

PaulHoule 4mo ago

I hope it is a while before I have to buy a new computer!

crumpled 4mo ago
I wish I could look forward and say, "prices will go down again" I don't see when or how. I hope I'm wrong.
- PaulHoule 4mo ago
  Well the bubble could pop, but... as much as we are blaming the pandemic, and the crypto and AI bubbles I think Moore's law was really about transistors getting exponentially cheaper not just exponentially smaller. If you can't afford them it doesn't matter how big or small they are! I think the EUV transition broke the long-term cost decreases and we might be seeing the end of progress in electronics and computing unless there is some fundamental change.
  - oliculipolicula 4mo ago
    On a wide enough horizon, litho (& MRI) machines are nothing more than a source of entertainment? Narrower horizon: https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/enepol/v38y2010i9p5174-5188.html https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/enepol/v38y2010i9p5174-5188.ht...
    - PaulHoule 4mo ago
      I think China came to the conclusion that the French got it right when they standardized on the Hualong One [1] rather than AP-1000. I did break out the champagne the other day when I heard they actually installed a BWRX 300 module at Darlington the other day! As for electronics manufacturing it's believable we see something entirely different in 20 years (SQUID? true 3-d integration?) but I expect a rough patch for most of the rest of my life. Not like I won't have enough retro games to play for my entertainment. Just got back giving from Casey Handmer some tough love over (1) it is not commercially interesting to make methane on Earth and (2) it is not feasible to make make methane on Mars unless you can make everything else. Handmer is a tragic figure like Klein, except Klein's tragedy is a tragedy for us all whereas Handmer and I are the only ones crying over his tragedy because I could use a buddy to talk to about the interests we share who is worth talking to. If Musk was the hard man he pretended to be he'd be interested in my notes on how to attain manufacturing autarky after the future event the Club of Rome warned you about. But he's not so he's not. He gets to date the models from Looker [3] but which witch can resist a pet therianthrope? [2] [1] ... of which, oddly, there are two different designs! [2] ... sorry gsf_emergency_\d but a good parody deserves a parody; is @cindy your sister? [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Looker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Looker (I was so dazzled by that LOOKER Gun, my second favorite sci-fi gun of all time, that I had to watch the movie a few times to realize it really is just as bad as everybody else says it is)
      - crumpled 4mo ago
        Man did I google a lot of things in this comment. Paul, you're an interesting person.
        PaulHoule 4mo ago
        And you didn't even ask me what my favorite sci-fun gun is?
        crumpled 4mo ago
        I didn't... Is it the one from Existenz? The one from Portal is pretty cool.
        PaulHoule 4mo ago
        Nah, it's the gun the psyclos have in Battlefield Earth; it looks like a piece of junk like some power tools mated with a pistol, it seems really painful to get hit with but like the L.O.O.K.E.R. gun it doesn't do tissue damage when set to stun. https://www.imfdb.org/wiki/Battlefield_Earth https://www.imfdb.org/wiki/Battlefield_Earth https://3dprintedprops.com/shop/looker-light-gun/ https://3dprintedprops.com/shop/looker-light-gun/
        oliculipolicula 4mo ago
        Can't say I have an emo attachment to any gun--- but I'll admit a couple make me pause the way avantgardey prime my third eye to underserved sources of attraction. Eg The Doodad (after Gibson, neither 0% nor 100% lethal, cf Venezuela, "Middle America"). PP gave me retro-pause marvelling at the Chinese supplying precursors to the WestHem factions (existenz). kinda vibe-prophetic. My best take on what you meant by the tragedy Handmer is that he has the mike (and loves to drop it whenever he can)--- but the tragedy of the rest of us here is that we don't quite. ?. And Martian ice caps? Just realized I'd never connected face to name, so I'd bounced off his Dwarkesh clips BC 1st impression was "fake genZ". Oops. Now admiring the ambiguities in "rough patch" and "Cindy". My takeaway from the French essay was that there was nothing stopping others from learning from one's mistakes (ie "without doing") Edit: https://youtu.be/1aQrPK9ulD0 https://youtu.be/1aQrPK9ulD0 https://lethalindisguise.org/crowd-control-weapons/acoustic-weapons/ https://lethalindisguise.org/crowd-control-weapons/acoustic-... https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a32892398/what-is-lrad-sonic-weapon-protests/ https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a32892398/... Very ICE, also vibe-prophetic Edit 2 (reel vs real) The RI <-> SV Met <-> Dems (sorry if too heroic but no one else wants to be official with stubbers) Klepts <-> "Trumpians" Stubbers <-> DSA Edit 3: ah so it's an IMI Micro Uzi
- sva_ 4mo ago
  RAM prices are crazy now, but they always tended to go up and down in waves over the years.
- mcmoor 4mo ago
  My hope is that whatever makes hardware prices go down over last decades would eventually work again now. I guess CPU is a dead end, but why not RAM and storage?
all2 4mo ago
Don't buy new. Get a 10 year old dual processor server tower on eBay with 128GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD. It's cheaper than new and it'll do everything you need it to without even breaking a sweat.

bigyabai 4mo ago

Okay? You can wipe off your tears and go buy a cheap gaming PC off Craigslist. Toss Bazzite on it, and you're good to go. I'm not sure what type of sympathy people want to court with the "woe is me" narrative around how they need a third gaming device. The selling point of the Steam Machine is the software. Nothing about the bespoke hardware is worth crying over, it feels like object fetishism for the sake of it.

phoronixrly 4mo ago
Are the cheap gaming PCs off of Craigslist here in the room with us right now? Snark aside, the second hand market is off the rails, too... The Steam Machine is cheaper than any DIY gaming PC I can build right now, even from parts off of OLX... And unlike the one I'd make, the Steam Machine will get the Steam Deck treatment as far as optimisation and certification (as in Runs on the Deck) goes.
- ZiiS 4mo ago
  Be interested to know which country. In USA and UK for the price it is fairly easily match the specs with new parts. And if you leave them on their default power profile in a larger case you get better performance.
  - nekooooo 4mo ago
    you're paying for form factor, 'it just works', and convenience. how have we been having this same apple debate for 30 years, i feel like i'm on slashdot.
    - bigyabai 4mo ago
      People say this about all unjustifiable products. "Why do I want a Juicero? Why do I need a Surface Laptop?" The same form factor, just works, convenience argument. Nobody wants to acknowledge that it's all marketing halo. It takes less time to install SteamOS on the PC that you already own than it takes to buy and unbox a Steam Machine. But that's not "oooh new thing" retail therapy, so everyone waits with bated breath to see if they can afford the media center equivalent of jewellry. Nobody actually cares about functionality, convenience, or form factor if they're ignoring the most functional, convenient and proximate solution.

homebrewer 4mo ago

I've long wished for rich western societies to run extensive student exchange programs with low income countries. Living even one year in most of the world will change your outlook for the rest of your life.

netsharc 4mo ago
There's a video somewhere in this Library of Babel of some Palestinian kids who got a chance to visit New York (when Palestinian kids were still allowed to enter the USA, leave their occupied nation, and not be genocided to death). Obviously they looked at all the skyscrapers with bewilderement.
sva_ 4mo ago
My university offers locations such as India for the semester abroad, but most people rather go somewhere else.
elzbardico 4mo ago
Usually the people in low income/developing countries that engage in student exchange programs are upper middle class and beyond and have lives no much different from their peers in developed western societies. People in western societies tend to ignore that developing countries are not merelly poorer but also generally marked by extreme wealth and income inequality. The rich and the upper middle class for all practical effects live like the citizens of developed countries, it is just that there are less of them compared to the general population.
- narrator 4mo ago
  Dhaka, Bangladesh, it's not a nice place to live no matter how much money you have compared to developed countries.
  - elzbardico 4mo ago
    Even Bangladesh have huge gated communities (almost closed city districts, with office buildings and commerce besides residences) that are orders of magnitude that do a really good job of isolating someone from the general dystopian chaos of the city.

vel0city 4mo ago

I'd say if you feel this way and you're not really using the Steam Deck as a handheld you might as well sell it and take the money to buy the Steam Machine. Used 512GB Steam Decks go for >$500, you'll probably get a bit for selling the docking setup you have as well.

topgrain2 4mo ago
... holy shit, why are they so high used, I'd never have guessed?! Thank you for pointing this out, as someone with a Steam Deck I almost never use and a desktop gaming PC running bazzite that I do use, a lot, but wanted to replace with a Steam Machine, I'll probably do exactly his.
- vel0city 4mo ago
  > why are they so high used New ones are $800-950. Other new handhelds that have much less brand caché out there are $1,000 or even more.

everdrive 4mo ago

"Nothing is safe, nothing is reliable, and I am looking at the extremely real possibility that I am already unemployable if I have to go back on the market." Anyone I know who has needed to look for work has had a hell of a time with it. It's a scary world out there.

deleted 4mo ago
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slibhb 4mo ago
In the US, unemployment is at 4.3%.
- satvikpendem 4mo ago
  This doesn't count those who've given up on looking.
  - georgemcbay 4mo ago
    Also doesn't count the underemployed. Very common for people suddenly laid-off from salaried work to turn to part-time gig work and that immediately removes them from the 4.3% unemployed statistic.
    - NavinF 4mo ago
      That's U-6 (U-5 plus people involuntarily working part-time). It's 8.1%. Pretty low by historical standards, but not as low as it was 3 years ago (6.9%)
  - slibhb 4mo ago
    If you want more detailed numbers, go look them up. BLS publishes them. Unemployment is nearly at historical lows. But don't let data distract you from the same tired "everything is terrible" line that's every other post here.
    - 4mo ago

post_break 4mo ago

You have a steam deck you don't use, so sell it and buy the Steam Machine, and then don't use that either.

voxl 4mo ago
Fun projection, there are three steam decks amongst my roommates, all three of them use is basically daily.
- deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
- moelf 4mo ago
  the original post says: So what now? The short answer is that I have (a) a nice couch; (b) a big TV; (c) a Steam Deck that I never use. I even have a dock for the Deck.
topgrain2 4mo ago
I'm in the "steam deck that I never use" camp but it's because I've been too lazy to take a Saturday to repurpose it into a dedicated console piracy device, it turns out I hate playing basically any PC game "on the go" (their touchpad-thingies seem to please some people as a mouse replacement but I find them entirely unusable), and it's just weak enough that I've found it worth keeping my old gaming PC around for now for 1080p+ gaming at OK quality & frame rate (and if I've got that plugged in, why plug in the steam deck?) For me the Steam Deck proved to me that Linux gaming was viable (finally! I've been trying since the days of Unreal Tournament being a current game and having an official Linux binary, LOL) and that I like the idea of an official Valve device, but that I needed a little more power and a desktop-alike form factor to reach a point of "good enough" for me (well, portable would still be fine, I just wouldn't use it that way so it'd be better if I didn't have to pay for the extra parts or have the added complexity and jank-risk of a dock) Like if my gaming PC broke I would't replace it (at least not for quite a while) but I would plug my Steam Deck into my monitor and start using it again, it's not that the device is wholly useless to me. It just wasn't quite a fit for what I do & want, it turns out. I do use my gaming PC, and that's what a Steam Machine would have replaced. I even have Bazzite on there so I for-sure would have used the Steam Machine, as I basically have a somewhat rougher-edged (and way bigger, with obnoxious "gamer light" horse-shit all over because that's hard to avoid for some reason) version of it already.

tekla 4mo ago

Oh man, you don't want to buy a generic computer because it won't make you look good in front of others and its only sorta expensive

jrm4 4mo ago

Person has a Steam Deck that they don't use? The only thing that keeps me from being genuinely baffled by this person taking the time to write this is the fact that I'm seeing similar takes elsewhere, which also baffle me to no end. Are people really this enamored by "the thought of buying new thing," as opposed to, like, thinking about whether they'll use it? Anyway, the Steam Machine seems like an extremely solid deal. It's a reasonably powered PC, and for an extra $200 or so, you'll get the guarantee that everything will just work, at least game-wise.

rjh29 4mo ago
> Are people really this enamored by "the thought of buying new thing," as opposed to, like, thinking about whether they'll use it? Yes. I know rationally it's overpriced and underpowered but a tiny part of me still wants to own it, just because. It's a shiny black box.

foo12bar 4mo ago

At this price point they should have never released it, they should have waited. Everywhere I see reviews of it on the internet, come along with forced smiles and talk about how they agree with the philosophy behind it and they should be commended for fighting against Windows. But ultimately no one recommends this to the general public. The writing is on the wall. This thing is going to flop. Only thing they can do now is keep it on the market, and in a few years upgrade *and* discount this thing in hopes of reigniting the hype. If they withdraw it, the very small but existing set of current buyers will scream bloody murder about being abandoned, and if they then try and re-release, trust will already have been broken.

minimaxir 4mo ago
Waited until when? 2028?
blitzar 4mo ago
> The writing is on the wall. This thing is going to sell out. If prices go back to normal, v2 of this product will be great. This version, at these specs, at this point in time would only be a buy if it was good value (like $500). People will buy them all anyway.
- foo12bar 4mo ago
  Selling out doesn't equate to success. They've already said the initial launch will be heavily limited. What matters is if they make a profit throughout the product's lifecycle. Not whether they sell out on initial release.
  - esseph 4mo ago
    > What matters is if they make a profit throughout the product's lifecycle. That may not matter either. In fact, the most likely outcome is that they sell out of inventory, and the next iteration of the device gets GTA6 level hype. The scarcity of the premium product.
    - 4mo ago

mnls 4mo ago

First world problems

smcg 4mo ago

The Steam Machine was $250 less before all of the price increases from hardware buyouts. Go complain to Big Tech. You can install Steam on almost any Linux device. The Steam Machine is great for those who want a portable console-like device. Have you ever tried to build and maintain a shuttle PC yourself? It's obnoxious. This makes the goal of high quality portable gaming much easier.

retired 4mo ago
> Have you ever tried to build and maintain a shuttle PC yourself? It's obnoxious. The benefit of a SFF PC you made yourself it that it doesn’t use proprietary hardware like the Steam Machine, is easily repaired and easily upgraded.
- drdexebtjl 4mo ago
  This is very true. I had a Ryzen Mini PC up until a couple of months ago, when it broke. Low quality VRMs, needed board repair. Support says I need custom molds to reapply the liquid metal thermal compound, or it would 100% leak. Regular thermal compound just isn’t good enough. It was true. I could send it to China and they would fix it for free, but it would take 60 days and I would have to pay tariffs. I just cut my losses and harvested the RAM and SSD for something more dependable.
apple4ever 4mo ago
Exactly. This is going to be perfect for my kid as he enters his teenage years. I dont want to mess with building one for him.
- St_Alfonzo 4mo ago
  Let's hope his friends don't try to drag him into any competitive mainstream games. Valorant, Call of Duty, Battlefield, EA Sports FC, … Kernel-level anti-cheat usually doesn't work on Linux.
  - TonyStr 4mo ago

yathern 4mo ago

I have a desktop with a relatively powerful 5070 (I think) GPU for playing VR games. But my priorities for couch & controller games is not really around super high graphics performance. Lately I find myself playing classic games on emulator, or generally games without huge graphics demands (been playing that climbing game PEAK a lot lately). For me, getting a random no-name-brand Mini PC is such a fantastic deal these days. Throw bazzite or now real Steam OS on it, have access to your whole library - it's a linux machine you can configure to your hearts content. I love it. Probably the best deal on amazon right now is this machine, though there's others if you know how to search. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DK34WJ84 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DK34WJ84 Example of real-life gaming performance here - nothing mindblowing, but more than you'd expect from a tiny box that costs like $400. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlup85AxRd0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlup85AxRd0 Just wipe windows immediately and put SteamOS on it and you're good to go

eboy 4mo ago
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rjh29 4mo ago
You can also stream games from your powerful PC to the mini PC using Steam, so specs are not as important.
- yathern 4mo ago
  I've always worried about latency for that - but it's ironic since I regularly stream over dedicated WiFi to my Quest VR headset. I'll have to give it a try some time. If they have some asynchronous reprojection tech for streaming that would be ideal
  - rjh29 4mo ago
    I've co-op games with my friend who lives 2 hours away. Same household should be fine.. It helps if your desktop is plugged into ethernet.

animanoir 4mo ago

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bebemama9393oe 4mo ago

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Aurornis 4mo ago

> So what now? The short answer is that I have (a) a nice couch; (b) a big TV; (c) a Steam Deck that I never use. I even have a dock for the Deck. So I should hook them all together and try out some games. This is the real answer. Why lust over new hardware and fret about finances when you have everything you need to play some games right now? There's not even any mention of what games they want to play on the Steam Machine that they can't play on their Steam Deck. They already bought a new TV to use with the Steam Deck and then didn't use it, so why even consider spending more money on more gaming hardware?

butz 4mo ago

It is possible to build an equivalent PC with Steam Machine specs, with same case size (internal PSU) and similar or lower price? I'll probably still a wait a bit to see reviews from actual users, but I really dig the form factor and was unable to find anything similarly sized with built-in PSU.

ChrisArchitect 4mo ago

Related: Steam Machine launches today https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48632884 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48632884

gos9 4mo ago

“homebrew steam machine” it’s called a computer computers have gotten more expensive, deal with it lmao

tossmysalad 4mo ago

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Fire-Dragon-DoL 4mo ago

I am flabbergasted by the negativity. It is more expensive of what we hoped for. Is it overpriced? I tried to calculate what a PC would cost NOW and it's exactly the same cost. I have a big Steam Library, a Steam Deck (actually 2), a desktop PC, a very old desktop pc. We are also a family of 4 and both my kids enjoy gaming (they are my kids after all), recently they started showing a lot of interest for games I play rather than Nintendo games, so I am getting one, here is what I see as positive that others don't: - I'm buying a console for which I have to buy zero games for. That's probably saving me more than 3k right out of the gate. - if I buy a game for such console I can play it on a flight, on the go, at my tv, at my desk - if I want to mod it, I can - I can finally give a computer to my kid that's not severely outdated, and it has linux, so they learn freedom and power before anything - I can finally play Nightreign with my wife without using Nucleus Coop (2 instances on the same pc), which makes my PC a furnace - Buying it puts me in the camp of "I have more linux gaming devices than windows gaming devices" Yeah there are some of us in the market for it!

libertine 4mo ago
I don't think the problem is that there aren't people in the market for it, but more that increasingly products that used to be meant for the average middle class are now perks for wealthier individuals - to the point where I think if there's a collapse of the AAA gaming industry is because there's not enough wealthy people time to accommodate for all the titles. Like GTA VI is speculated to release at around 90$, and any AAA game that will drop around that time will probably have a bad release. But regarding the steam machine, it's just yet another example that this product isn't at the reach of "the people", it's yet another luxury item. Not because Valve wanted to, but because this new standard of scalping, hoarding and squeezing the most out of the market is having repercussions across industries. The sad thing is that Valve used to be on the other side of the fence, at least for some products, it seemed like it was aimed to be accessible for gamers in a pro-consumer way (not all of course, that would be impossible). In the end even Valve had to fall in line with the rest, and it's just sad to witness it. So let people grief, they're not just grieving Valve, but also the last hope of a group that still thought there was a counter culture company in the current state of a greedy world, where shared holders value is more important than customers.

boesboes 4mo ago

Blame Altman et al.