When I first saw the Arduino I didn't see the point - after all there were boards that cost less, did more, and the Arduino IDE seemed very barebones compared to what you could do with GCC and a custom toolchain.
Then eventually I saw how much community support, ready made hardware emerged around it, to the point that after a while, not going the Arduino route was a decision you needed to justify heavily.
Same thing with the Raspberry Pi - there are commercial devices now running or more or less stock Pi hardware with some accomodations - the power of the community is just too large - you can either spend an insane amount of time getting things working on your custom SBC, or get something well-supported for free.
I hope that the same thing will happen with the Steam Machine - the pull of the community will result in a well-supported 'default' device where people (and Valve) will put in the effort to create a comparable desktop experience to the commercial OSes.
Valve already helped immensely with Wayland - it's crazy to think that the project was stared cca. 2008, and today there's still arguments to be made it's not mature yet - by investing the necessary energy to make sure games run well, the drivers are optimized, and there's a high-quality end-user library (wlroots) for writing compositors has been the push that Wayland needed.
> a comparable desktop experience to the commercial OSes
Isn't it alteady comparable? My Linux desktop has almost the same game compatibility that Windows has, and none of the advertising and jank. Gone are the legendary days of xorg.conf. Linux has less problems than Windows now. Support from professional software vendors (Dassault, Autodesk, et al) and Nvidia could be better, admittedly, but these restrictions aren't very relevant to me. As for Mac OS it's fine, I guess, but I strongly dislike the settings program, and it's not like you can install an nvidia card there.
People will buy a Steam Machine who would not buy a Linux desktop.
The perception and the marketing are very different. it is small and looks like games console. This is something people will buy instead of a Playstation or a gaming PC. A lot of people buying it will not know what Linux is.
It does not use the word "Linux" at all and only mentions Arch and KDE right at the bottom of the specs.
> Linux has less problems than Windows now.
I agree, and it has been my experience for the last few years. I am not a gamer nor do I use any of the software you mention so its even better for me. I am very glad not to be using Windows 11 from what I hear of it.
>People will buy a Steam Machine who would not buy a Linux desktop.
I have a Linux desktop and a mental block around playing games on a computer. The computer is supposed to be where I work or write code, etc. If I have leisure time, I "should" do something away from the computer.
Getting a steam deck let me shake some of that. I'd be very tempted by a box that is a Linux computer, but for fun use only.
And this is due to Valve's big investments in Proton, Steam Deck and the new Steam hardware to get game compatibility working from both the Linux/Wine side as well as making game developers aim for compatibility.
> Support from professional software vendors (Dassault, Autodesk, et al) and Nvidia could be better, admittedly, but these restrictions aren't very relevant to me.
I think that's maybe what GP was getting at. If you know how to debug stuff and such then Linux is perfectly serviceable today.
With something like this, between Valve presumably publishing some docs and a big community for a single platform it should become a lot easier for people who are less familiar to search "I got xyz error on my steam box what do I do" and get help they can use. For mass adoption I think that's a big step. And then from there they can start venturing further out, if they want.
What do these things have to do with each other? You can't debug your way out of bad Nvidia support or nonexistent Dassault support. You have to just not use these products in combination with Linux, or just accept the issues that come with them.
> You can't debug your way out of bad Nvidia support or nonexistent Dassault support.
With bad Nvidia support very often you can, there exist a lot of workarounds found by people.
With Dassault support you are right, because a lot less people use their products than Nvidia products and those people typically don't share on public forums.
People using Steam Machine will be sharing problems and solutions on public forums and there will be more of them than people using Dassault products.
> Support from professional software vendors [..] and Nvidia could be better, admittedly, but these restrictions aren't very relevant to me.
Quality of support from Nvidia on linux is the reason that I went with AMD for my linux work+gaming rig. That's why probably Valve chosen AMD too. As amount of linux gamers increases, maybe Nvidia will see the light too. For me, linux+AMD+Steam stack "just works".
Nvidia has always had a hard time maintaining good relationships with partners (see the whole Apple fiasco in the early 2010s), their Linux support is anemic and now they're gorged up to the gills with stupid AI money.
They probably don't even bother picking up the phone when Valve calls. Only AMD will sell you an integrated CPU/GPU system with the power envelope needed for modern games.
Yes - but now what would you rather plug into a big screen TV? Supposing you opt for an OS like Bazzite/pop that is TV friendly then you are turning a desktop into a multimedia console foremost. People like stuff that works out of the box.
Conversely You can also turn the Steam Machine into a desktop by installing another OS
Experts tend to greatly underestimate the importance of friction.
By the time you’ve finished saying “gcc and a custom toolchain” you’ve lost most of your potential audience. If you’re a professional or even an experienced hobbyist, it’s no big deal. But if the idea of programming embedded systems is new to you, it’s a lot of effort. And it’s not clear how much effort it will be, or if you’ll even be capable of it. It’s not fun to be knee deep in a complicated install and have no idea if you’ll ever be able to get it working. Lots of people will find something else to occupy their time rather than attempt it.
That then leads to community and better tools, and maybe it becomes a good choice even for experts. And even if it never does, it provides a great stepping stone, since trying and failing to set up the more complicated tools is a lot more tolerable if you can fall back to the simple IDE you’ve been using.
Another nice thing about the Pi is that you know for sure there won't be any major Linux issues; the official distro is tested for that hardware and that hardware alone. I'm assuming the same will apply for Linux on the Steam Machine, whereas most of the time when I install Linux on a random PC, I have to debug some issue with audio/networking/video (which is less common these days, but I guess I'm unlucky).
Speaking of which, I recently bought a Ryzen Framework laptop assuming the recommended Linux distro would run smoothly, but unfortunately I hit a few glitches, including a really annoying amdgpu bug that keeps making the screen flicker. I might have to mess with kernel boot parameters. Disappointing.
Since the Steam Machine is meant as a consumer product, hopefully it will run Linux solidly, and that's a big plus for me. I wouldn't touch Windows with a 10 foot pole these days.
I have a Framework Ryzen AI 300 series. Had the screen flickering after a kernel update several weeks ago. Fix was to add "amdgpu.dcdebugmask=0x2" to the grub kernel cmdline. Running Fedora 43, fully up to date as of yesterday. I sadly can't find the official forum thread about it. Hope it helps though.
The Arduino was 30$ when it came out. The Raspberry was 35$.
I'd be astonished if they manage to get the Steam Machine down to 800$ (bundled with a controller). Knowing how Valve loves their margins, it's probably closer to 1000$ or even more. This is not something you spontaneously buy to play around with.
In one of the interviews that came out when the Steam Machine embargo ended, someone from Valve said that, unlike with Steam Deck, they can't afford to sell at a loss because the form factor and the OS of the Machine make it possible to buy it just for general compute, which would be devastating with negative margins. So, unfortunately, I guess it will be 800-1000$ in the end
That is still cheaper than the index when it came out, and it sounds like a general improvement in all areas. Flagship vr for less than the cost of the latest smartphone seems pretty reasonable given how low adoption is.
Moore's Law is Dead (chip analyst YouTuber) believes a $300 bill of materials and $600, maybe even $450 for the lower SKU.
The CPU and GPU in this are last generation, and he believes Valve got a bulk discount on unsold RDNA3 mobile GPUs. They did something similar with the Steam Deck riding off a Magic Leap custom design. People predicted that would be pricey too but launched with (and still has) a $399 model.
You have to take MLID with a several large grains of salt. He gets a lot wrong, and when he does, he deletes the corresponding videos. There are Reddit subs that won't allow links to his videos for that reason. Valve has also said that it won't be console-type pricing, more like the pricing of a decent SFF PC.
Having said that, it would be great to see the GabeCube come in around the prices he's guesstimating. I hope it finds great success.
300$ BOM sounds incredibly low to me, especially now with the exploding prices for storage and RAM. Maybe they have already stocked up on it, but I doubt it. The huge heat sink also cannot be cheap. Then of course there's the whole tariff uncertainty.
The lower SKUs for Steam Deck are sold pretty much with zero margin or even at a loss, as Newell said this was a strategic decision to enter the mobile gaming market. However, for PC gaming, Valve already has a monopoly, and selling general-purpose hardware with little or no margin sounds like a recipe for losing money quick, which is not what Valve is known for...
But hey, we don't have to argue. Let's meet on HN again when the price is announced and I'll happily eat my words. :-)
The hardware does not compare favorably to a 2024 (current, in other words) Mac Mini.
Consider what the Steam Machine requires sacrificing:
- fewer USB-C connectors
- larger physical footprint
- can't buy and take it home today
It's hard to do an apples-to-apples comparison between the chips, but where one is better than the other on some dimension, it's offset by some other. They're approximately comparable.
Now, what's the price of the Mac Mini? $598.92
When people are talking about price points that have a higher margin than even Apple's devices have, you have to stop and consider whether people who are tossing around numbers like $750 with a straight face are actually trying to be rational but failing or they are just totally yielding to getting caught up in the hype.
The Mac Mini for 600$ comes with 16GB unified memory and 256GB storage. To make it comparable, you'd need to configure it with 24GB and 512GB, resp., and voila, 999$. You are surely aware that the lowest SKUs from Apple have way lower margins, since nobody buys them anyway because who wants to live with 256GB of storage? It's just to have that sweet "starting at 599$" on the store front page.
Now, of course Apple takes ridiculous money for additional RAM and storage, but this is exactly how they achieve their famous margins (everything's soldered, so you cannot upgrade yourself). Thanks to the AI hype, DDR5 RAM is very expensive at the moment, as is GDDR5, as is SSD storage. Nobody here, including you, knows what kind of deal Valve will be able to get here. There's a reason they are not announcing any prices yet, because there are so many uncertainties at the moment (tariffs, anyone?), that most probably Valve themselves do not know yet.
Depends what people are buying a steam machine for and what are the alternatives. Can you use a Mac mini for pretty much the same purpose? Genuine question since I'm not a gamer nor a Mac user.
The Mac Mini does not have the sustained thermal capability of the big 6-inch fan in the Steam Machine. So it'll throttle. The Mac Studio probably has better thermals than what Steam will ship, but it's far more expensive.
The Mac Mini can play many games, but it cannot play most games like this Steam Machine. Developers barely supported the Mac before the ARM switch, and now it's somehow even worse.
Gaming with a Mac is an exercice in zen enlightenment.
AMD is in dire straits - their GPU market share is basically nothing right now, I wouldn't be surp
Plus the 7600M (which is suspected to be the Steam Machine GPU) is an existing design on a legacy node, and they don't have to worry about it threatening their current lineup. They can go pretty low with the price.
They might get something out of it - considering the modest hardware, devs will have to optimize for it, which might get them a couple extra percent on more modern hardware as well.
This is already happening with the Steam Deck! Some of the best AAA games released in the last few years play excellently on the Steam Deck. This is mainly because it provides an excellent baseline that developers can test and optimise for. When least 1.5% or more of your customers have this exact configuration, it makes sense to optimise for them.
The 2023 game of the year was Baldurs Gate III. During the development they specifically tested on the Deck and it played pretty well. But they optimised the heck out of it, finally shipping a native Deck build earlier this year.
That’s why the Deck punches well above its weight - all the optimisation that devs do for it. And that’s why gamers continue to buy it, years after it released. Devs aren’t lazy, or averse to optimisation. They just need a large enough target to optimise for. If the Deck/GabeCube is a large enough proportion of the player base, they’ll put in the effort.
SteamOS is locked down. it is not a community driven project. You cannot update if you modify the rootfs. Valve created a true console, it is not a PC.
Sorry that’s absolutely not the case. They’ve created “locked down” experience so that is serviceable and harder to break but you’re absolutely free to install arch, ubuntu, whatever and put Steam on top of it. You can install Windows even.
You don’t have to choose “all or nothing”. You are not being locked in an ecosystem like you do with the consoles Steam Machine aims to compete with.
It is locked down in exactly the same way you can go through a bunch of steps to unlock any other device. SteamOS is locked by default. you must run a series of scripts found on various forums to unlock it.
Windows is broken on steamdeck. the only OS that works properly is SteamOS for obvious reasons.
Then eventually I saw how much community support, ready made hardware emerged around it, to the point that after a while, not going the Arduino route was a decision you needed to justify heavily.
Same thing with the Raspberry Pi - there are commercial devices now running or more or less stock Pi hardware with some accomodations - the power of the community is just too large - you can either spend an insane amount of time getting things working on your custom SBC, or get something well-supported for free.
I hope that the same thing will happen with the Steam Machine - the pull of the community will result in a well-supported 'default' device where people (and Valve) will put in the effort to create a comparable desktop experience to the commercial OSes.
Valve already helped immensely with Wayland - it's crazy to think that the project was stared cca. 2008, and today there's still arguments to be made it's not mature yet - by investing the necessary energy to make sure games run well, the drivers are optimized, and there's a high-quality end-user library (wlroots) for writing compositors has been the push that Wayland needed.