5 ms·

You cannot play two different games at the same time with your 50ft hdmi cable. Can't people see any usecase for the steam machine? I understand, you are not

You cannot play two different games at the same time with your 50ft hdmi cable. Can't people see any usecase for the steam machine? I understand, you are not in the market for it. I am, I have a good usecase which possibly will make the cost drop below a ps5 over the years (if you include games cost)

weird-eye-issue 4mo ago
Have you looked at what sort of FPS it gets on the games you want to play? Overall it's performance is... Quite poor even on the lowest settings for lots of games
- onfromsofa 4mo ago
  If the benchmark has the words "RT" on it, like a lot did, you can safely throw them in the trash. That's people benchmarking the device in the same spirit as people who thought the Steam Deck and the Switch 1 could do 4K. Worthless.
  - weird-eye-issue 4mo ago
    Okay but we aren't talking about a handheld device here. You should not need to literally put it on handheld graphics settings to get decent performance. Also this thing is literally designed for running on TVs and everybody uses their TV at 4K resolution...
  - joe_mamba 4mo ago
    >If the benchmark has the words "RT" on it, like a lot did, you can safely throw them in the trash More like you can throw the console in the trash if you can't run current day games on it well, when those games mandate RT. A lot of AAA games have started mandating RT since 2025, like Doom the dark ages for example, and the number of games doing that will only increase moving forward as devs just take the easy way with Unreal Engine, instead of optimizing for performance with baked in lighting like it's 1999. So the already mediocre performance of the console will only get worse and worse over the years in the upcoming games. I like Valve, but there's no need to larp for Valve and run defense for them when they make mistakes, like with the steam box.
    - weird-eye-issue 4mo ago
      I feel bad for the people who are going to buy it and then have to run Cyberpunk at 1080p on the lowest setting to be able to maybe squeeze out 60 FPS
      - Fire-Dragon-DoL 4mo ago
        Maybe those people are fine playing a 30fps?
        weird-eye-issue 4mo ago
        Maybe but the thing is with averages it means that sometimes you'll be getting even less than that which is pretty unbearable
    - ThatPlayer 4mo ago
      Not disagreeing with you about lighting, but there is a differnce in older games that make RT optional. They use RT as a "ultra high quality" shadows/reflection graphical option. So there's no point of having a high performant, low quality RT option. This isn't the case with games that require RT. Doom Dark Ages can even run the RT entirely in software, implemented in AMD's Linux drivers: https://youtu.be/R5G2bYiA1hk https://youtu.be/R5G2bYiA1hk So I think it's fine to ignore benchmarks that mention RT, meaning it's basically testing the game at "ultra quality" settings.
      - joe_mamba 4mo ago
        >Doom Dark Ages can even run the RT entirely in software, implemented in AMD's Linux drivers: Running RT in Software doesn't mean it's free, it just draws the performance penalty from the rest of the system. And the demo in the youtube link you shared shows this. Like sure, it's playable, but it looks like game from 2009. It looks fine for playing on a small handheld device like the steam deck, but not on a 27"-60" monitor/TV.
        4mo ago
- Fire-Dragon-DoL 4mo ago
  The world is full of beautiful indie games, I barely play AAA games. But even then, I wouldn't consider it as a PRIMARY pc if you have budget for something more. It's a great secondary pc. That's what I mean by "market", I don't think they are targeting the global segment
  - dmonitor 4mo ago
    Yeah, 60fps in Slay the Spire 2 and Risk of Rain is very feasible with just about anything.
  - weird-eye-issue 4mo ago
    Well I play both and if I only had $1,000 I would stick to consoles
    - Fire-Dragon-DoL 4mo ago
      I mean, to everyone their own? I would have saved money in the long run with a steam machine
      - weird-eye-issue 4mo ago
        Yeah totally it just comes down to if you're able to play the "games you want to play". But I definitely think there will be some disappointed buyers who don't quite realize the limitations
onfromsofa 4mo ago
You also can't turn it on from your couch. There's a potential meme image demanding to be made. One shows the steam machine user playing a game with resume feature in just 2 panels. One sitting down and pressing the controller, the next playing. The other half of the comic has 10+ panels. One sitting down. One facepalming. One standing up and turning on the pc elsewhere, one sitting down, one opening steam link one staring at the screen waiting for the pc boot, one facepalming, one going to the pc to launch steam, one sitting down, one waiting to connect to steam big mode, one waiting for the game to launch because no resume feature.
- ThatMedicIsASpy 4mo ago
  My PC runs proxmox (multiple gpus) and a remote in homeassistant triggers a shutdown and start command for the streaming VM (bazzite booting into gamescope). Instead of picking jellyfin on the firetv stick I select moonlight. Wake on Lan is also a thing. -> I have a steam machine since 2023.
- servo_sausage 4mo ago
  All very achievable, I have a setup with a wireless keyboard to the htpc, and a script that wakes up my desktop with wake on lan, ssh's in and starts sunshine if I start moonlight. Booting the htpc can be a pain; personally my best solution has been wake on lan via phone. I've also used universal remotes before cec was reliable, and I had to control the screen separately.
- luqtas 4mo ago
  she-bang
swiftcoder 4mo ago
> You cannot play two different games at the same time with your 50ft hdmi cable ... do you spend a lot of time playing 2 different games at the same time?
- fragmede 4mo ago
  ADHD and cutscenes means a laptop game and a console game so you're never ever waiting. Must be nice to have a brain that doesn't need that.
  - swiftcoder 4mo ago
    I mean, I also have a smartphone to play games in quick 5 minute breaks Are console loading times really still that shit? I haven't found PC loading times to be much of an issue since fast SSDs came around
    - fragmede 4mo ago
      More like there's a waiting lobby for multiplayer games, e.g. Fortnite.
  - Leonard_of_Q 4mo ago
    Train your brain to not "need" it. Brains are malleable whether someone diagnosed and labeled them or not. Concentrate on something else during those cut scenes, read a book, study the clock or thermometer or cat or leaves on the trees. Imagine a scenario where the power fails and you can't play games. Anything which doesn't enslave you to technology.
    - picofarad 4mo ago
      "Just think your way out of ADD" is a take, for sure.
      - Leonard_of_Q 4mo ago
        Better than medication. Better than giving up and giving in. Better than learned helplessness. Better than being a slave to technology.
fbnlsr 4mo ago
> Can't people see any usecase for the steam machine? The only problem with the Steam Machine is the price tbh, and that's mainly Valve having a really bad luck with timing once again. Having a custom-made "Steam Machine" for the past 3 years thanks to ChimeraOS, it really changed the way I play for the better. I can play on my couch with my son and wife, and it made my wife (who wasn't really into gaming) buy a Steam Deck and enjoy my 500+ library instantly. Now, I can play CS2 in my office, my son can play Astroneer in the living room and my wife The Witcher 3 next to him. The Steam ecosystem is simply amazing, it's a real shame Valve had to launch their machine during a worldwide component crisis.
- joe_mamba 4mo ago
  >The only problem with the Steam Machine is the price tbh It's not just the price, it's more like the hardware that is dated on arrival(weaker than a 2020 PS5) and customers are expected to use for 6+ years into the future when more and more new games are demanding RT. Is not a problem for Nintendo to ship dated HW, sine one it's cheap, and two, since developers will walk through fire to optimize games for the Switch but that's because they're Nintendo and they ship tens of millions of Switches while Steam Boxes will not sell in such numbers to warrant this level of extra developer effort. Good if you're only intro playing older games or are willing to stomach a lot of upscaling and low graphics setting or must have a just-works linux PC, but given the price and performance this isn't gonna be a mass appeal product. >and that's mainly Valve having a really bad luck with timing once again. You know the saying "you make your own luck? Or the saying "luck is opportunity meets preparation"? So, no, it's not bad luck, it's that the problem with Valve is they just take forever to launch a product. Which is fine for stuff like Steam or games that you can keep delaying and delaying until you get it just right exactly the way you want it, but HW has a limited shelf life where it's most valuable and once you lock in a BOM, you're on the clock to get it out the door and need to haul ass. See the titanic efforts Microsoft put into launching Xbox and Xbox 360 on schedule, it was a rootless bloodbath, as all consumer HW is, but if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. So there's no bad luck here, just bad preparation on their part. Valve could have easily launched this earlier if they just spent less time trying to engineer everything from scratch with custom parts just to fit the HW inside a cube as small as possible just to flex their HW design skills, and instead just focus on quickly getting the HW in another boring VCR box into consumers hands ASAP the way MS did it with the first Xbox. The whole point of the Steam Box is the Steam ecosystem centered around just-works Linux emulation of windows games, not the box being an engineering and design marvel, so speeding so much time on perfecting the form for a first gen product, was pointless endeavour that cost them the product launch.
zamadatix 4mo ago
> You cannot play two different games at the same time with your 50ft hdmi cable. Why not? The use case of the Steam Machine is that it gives a great out of the box PC gaming experience for the living room (which is great for most people), not that it enables things impossible to configure on a PC (it's just a PC itself).
- Fire-Dragon-DoL 4mo ago
  I might not be understanding what you are saying. I am suggesting that having a PC + a Steam Machine, you can play 2 different games at the same time from 2 different people. With a 50ft cable from one pc, you can play at most 2 instances of the same game using Nucleus coop on Windows (so, not SteamOS), but you cannot play 2 different games without an enormous effort (it is technically possible to do the same of what Nucleus coop does, but that doesn't exist yet)
nomel 4mo ago
> The only problem with the Steam Machine is the price tbh Can you show the parts list where you found this level of performance cheaper, with new parts, current prices?

weird-eye-issue 4mo ago

Have you looked at what sort of FPS it gets on the games you want to play? Overall it's performance is... Quite poor even on the lowest settings for lots of games

onfromsofa 4mo ago
If the benchmark has the words "RT" on it, like a lot did, you can safely throw them in the trash. That's people benchmarking the device in the same spirit as people who thought the Steam Deck and the Switch 1 could do 4K. Worthless.
- weird-eye-issue 4mo ago
  Okay but we aren't talking about a handheld device here. You should not need to literally put it on handheld graphics settings to get decent performance. Also this thing is literally designed for running on TVs and everybody uses their TV at 4K resolution...
- joe_mamba 4mo ago
  >If the benchmark has the words "RT" on it, like a lot did, you can safely throw them in the trash More like you can throw the console in the trash if you can't run current day games on it well, when those games mandate RT. A lot of AAA games have started mandating RT since 2025, like Doom the dark ages for example, and the number of games doing that will only increase moving forward as devs just take the easy way with Unreal Engine, instead of optimizing for performance with baked in lighting like it's 1999. So the already mediocre performance of the console will only get worse and worse over the years in the upcoming games. I like Valve, but there's no need to larp for Valve and run defense for them when they make mistakes, like with the steam box.
  - weird-eye-issue 4mo ago
    I feel bad for the people who are going to buy it and then have to run Cyberpunk at 1080p on the lowest setting to be able to maybe squeeze out 60 FPS
    - Fire-Dragon-DoL 4mo ago
      Maybe those people are fine playing a 30fps?
      - weird-eye-issue 4mo ago
        Maybe but the thing is with averages it means that sometimes you'll be getting even less than that which is pretty unbearable
  - ThatPlayer 4mo ago
    Not disagreeing with you about lighting, but there is a differnce in older games that make RT optional. They use RT as a "ultra high quality" shadows/reflection graphical option. So there's no point of having a high performant, low quality RT option. This isn't the case with games that require RT. Doom Dark Ages can even run the RT entirely in software, implemented in AMD's Linux drivers: https://youtu.be/R5G2bYiA1hk https://youtu.be/R5G2bYiA1hk So I think it's fine to ignore benchmarks that mention RT, meaning it's basically testing the game at "ultra quality" settings.
    - joe_mamba 4mo ago
      >Doom Dark Ages can even run the RT entirely in software, implemented in AMD's Linux drivers: Running RT in Software doesn't mean it's free, it just draws the performance penalty from the rest of the system. And the demo in the youtube link you shared shows this. Like sure, it's playable, but it looks like game from 2009. It looks fine for playing on a small handheld device like the steam deck, but not on a 27"-60" monitor/TV.
      - 4mo ago
Fire-Dragon-DoL 4mo ago
The world is full of beautiful indie games, I barely play AAA games. But even then, I wouldn't consider it as a PRIMARY pc if you have budget for something more. It's a great secondary pc. That's what I mean by "market", I don't think they are targeting the global segment
- dmonitor 4mo ago
  Yeah, 60fps in Slay the Spire 2 and Risk of Rain is very feasible with just about anything.
- weird-eye-issue 4mo ago
  Well I play both and if I only had $1,000 I would stick to consoles
  - Fire-Dragon-DoL 4mo ago
    I mean, to everyone their own? I would have saved money in the long run with a steam machine
    - weird-eye-issue 4mo ago
      Yeah totally it just comes down to if you're able to play the "games you want to play". But I definitely think there will be some disappointed buyers who don't quite realize the limitations

onfromsofa 4mo ago

You also can't turn it on from your couch. There's a potential meme image demanding to be made. One shows the steam machine user playing a game with resume feature in just 2 panels. One sitting down and pressing the controller, the next playing. The other half of the comic has 10+ panels. One sitting down. One facepalming. One standing up and turning on the pc elsewhere, one sitting down, one opening steam link one staring at the screen waiting for the pc boot, one facepalming, one going to the pc to launch steam, one sitting down, one waiting to connect to steam big mode, one waiting for the game to launch because no resume feature.

ThatMedicIsASpy 4mo ago
My PC runs proxmox (multiple gpus) and a remote in homeassistant triggers a shutdown and start command for the streaming VM (bazzite booting into gamescope). Instead of picking jellyfin on the firetv stick I select moonlight. Wake on Lan is also a thing. -> I have a steam machine since 2023.
servo_sausage 4mo ago
All very achievable, I have a setup with a wireless keyboard to the htpc, and a script that wakes up my desktop with wake on lan, ssh's in and starts sunshine if I start moonlight. Booting the htpc can be a pain; personally my best solution has been wake on lan via phone. I've also used universal remotes before cec was reliable, and I had to control the screen separately.
luqtas 4mo ago
she-bang

swiftcoder 4mo ago

> You cannot play two different games at the same time with your 50ft hdmi cable ... do you spend a lot of time playing 2 different games at the same time?

fragmede 4mo ago
ADHD and cutscenes means a laptop game and a console game so you're never ever waiting. Must be nice to have a brain that doesn't need that.
- swiftcoder 4mo ago
  I mean, I also have a smartphone to play games in quick 5 minute breaks Are console loading times really still that shit? I haven't found PC loading times to be much of an issue since fast SSDs came around
  - fragmede 4mo ago
    More like there's a waiting lobby for multiplayer games, e.g. Fortnite.
- Leonard_of_Q 4mo ago
  Train your brain to not "need" it. Brains are malleable whether someone diagnosed and labeled them or not. Concentrate on something else during those cut scenes, read a book, study the clock or thermometer or cat or leaves on the trees. Imagine a scenario where the power fails and you can't play games. Anything which doesn't enslave you to technology.
  - picofarad 4mo ago
    "Just think your way out of ADD" is a take, for sure.
    - Leonard_of_Q 4mo ago
      Better than medication. Better than giving up and giving in. Better than learned helplessness. Better than being a slave to technology.

fbnlsr 4mo ago

> Can't people see any usecase for the steam machine? The only problem with the Steam Machine is the price tbh, and that's mainly Valve having a really bad luck with timing once again. Having a custom-made "Steam Machine" for the past 3 years thanks to ChimeraOS, it really changed the way I play for the better. I can play on my couch with my son and wife, and it made my wife (who wasn't really into gaming) buy a Steam Deck and enjoy my 500+ library instantly. Now, I can play CS2 in my office, my son can play Astroneer in the living room and my wife The Witcher 3 next to him. The Steam ecosystem is simply amazing, it's a real shame Valve had to launch their machine during a worldwide component crisis.

joe_mamba 4mo ago
>The only problem with the Steam Machine is the price tbh It's not just the price, it's more like the hardware that is dated on arrival(weaker than a 2020 PS5) and customers are expected to use for 6+ years into the future when more and more new games are demanding RT. Is not a problem for Nintendo to ship dated HW, sine one it's cheap, and two, since developers will walk through fire to optimize games for the Switch but that's because they're Nintendo and they ship tens of millions of Switches while Steam Boxes will not sell in such numbers to warrant this level of extra developer effort. Good if you're only intro playing older games or are willing to stomach a lot of upscaling and low graphics setting or must have a just-works linux PC, but given the price and performance this isn't gonna be a mass appeal product. >and that's mainly Valve having a really bad luck with timing once again. You know the saying "you make your own luck? Or the saying "luck is opportunity meets preparation"? So, no, it's not bad luck, it's that the problem with Valve is they just take forever to launch a product. Which is fine for stuff like Steam or games that you can keep delaying and delaying until you get it just right exactly the way you want it, but HW has a limited shelf life where it's most valuable and once you lock in a BOM, you're on the clock to get it out the door and need to haul ass. See the titanic efforts Microsoft put into launching Xbox and Xbox 360 on schedule, it was a rootless bloodbath, as all consumer HW is, but if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. So there's no bad luck here, just bad preparation on their part. Valve could have easily launched this earlier if they just spent less time trying to engineer everything from scratch with custom parts just to fit the HW inside a cube as small as possible just to flex their HW design skills, and instead just focus on quickly getting the HW in another boring VCR box into consumers hands ASAP the way MS did it with the first Xbox. The whole point of the Steam Box is the Steam ecosystem centered around just-works Linux emulation of windows games, not the box being an engineering and design marvel, so speeding so much time on perfecting the form for a first gen product, was pointless endeavour that cost them the product launch.

zamadatix 4mo ago

> You cannot play two different games at the same time with your 50ft hdmi cable. Why not? The use case of the Steam Machine is that it gives a great out of the box PC gaming experience for the living room (which is great for most people), not that it enables things impossible to configure on a PC (it's just a PC itself).

Fire-Dragon-DoL 4mo ago
I might not be understanding what you are saying. I am suggesting that having a PC + a Steam Machine, you can play 2 different games at the same time from 2 different people. With a 50ft cable from one pc, you can play at most 2 instances of the same game using Nucleus coop on Windows (so, not SteamOS), but you cannot play 2 different games without an enormous effort (it is technically possible to do the same of what Nucleus coop does, but that doesn't exist yet)

nomel 4mo ago

> The only problem with the Steam Machine is the price tbh Can you show the parts list where you found this level of performance cheaper, with new parts, current prices?