This is why I would never make it in business. I just don't see the consumer case for buying a Steam Machine. They're too expensive for the console niche they're intended to occupy.
The sad thing is, they're not. A lot of people have not been paying attention to PC costs. This is what they cost now. I've seen a few "make your own" builds online. If you use new parts, you might save 80$, and you generally don't get the form factor, efficiency, integrated Steam Controller puck, or visual appearance with those builds, plus, you know, you're building then yourself which should be counted for at least some cost in most cases. Anything that saves more than that involves used parts or parts the person making the video/article already had, which is fine if you have them but not generally comparable.
You can get a better deal on some consoles at the moment, but I wouldn't count on that to last. The Switch 2 has a price increase scheduled. The Xbox line has a price increase scheduled. PlayStation did one earlier this year. Rather than being a permanent situation this feels like everything going up, just irregularly rather than smoothly, so sometimes one thing feels like a better deal, sometimes another, but it's not obvious that any of them are much better on a longer time frame. If you're looking out at the console versus Steam Machine and thinking the consoles look better for your use case, you don't already have one, and you're interested in one of them, I suggest moving sooner rather than later.
The Steam Machine is what got noticed, and earthed a lot of anger about prices, but it's not particularly out of line or especially expensive. The whole market is screwed up.
It was still overpriced when it was rumored to be ~$700 with the rest of the market priced commensurately, and I go online right now and buy significantly more powerful prebuilts for less, albeit without the integrated puck (which does nothing without buying the non-included controller anyways), HDMI CEC (probably want to hold off on that for a patch cycle or three if the complaints on r/SteamMachine are any indication), and the size (ok ya got me there).
If those prebuilts are desktop sized, I don't think they count as being the same. The form factor has a price associated with it, and has for a long time. If you're willing to let the size drift up you can do better... which is exactly what I did. I bought a prebuilt a few months ago when it became clear I didn't like the Steam Machine's value proposition, and put Bazzite on it. It has a much better bang-for-the-buck ratio partially because I have a place to drop a full-sized desktop into my setup without it bothering anyone, and much better upgradability. I might upgrade to the latest AMD later for VR if it ends up helping.
Which I suppose I'd add to point out I'm not a "Steam Machine partisan"... I was interested but bailed out about 3 months ago, before the price was even announced.
As for HDMI CEC, the machine I bought has an AMD 9060XT in it, and HDMI CEC seems to work fine. I didn't do much to make it happen. Maybe I flipped a switch to turn it on in the UI, but that was it. I've had a couple of people ask me why it works and all I can say is I don't know, because I didn't do much (if anything) to turn it on.
Valve very obviously isn't enjoying a fat margin on Steam Machines, but they're not a public company so profit is profit. And people who buy Steam Machines are more encouraged to buy games on Steam and pay that nice juicy 30%.
This is part of the controller, not the Machine. Unless you mean software integration, then it's on SteamOS and the Steam client, both of which can run on custom hardware.
You can use the steam controller over Bluetooth, the puck is really a 2.4GHz dongle that (allegedly) gives better performance/reliability of something.
The Steam Machine has the 2.4GHz dongle part as well as a Bluetooth adapter.
The selling point, for me, is that it's a console in both form factor (not a PC tower, smaller than small PC cases) and easy of use (you plug it in, you play games, no shopping around for parts), yet because it's a PC you have control over it (load non-Steam games, use the desktop to do whatever, install a different OS even).
Clearly not for everyone, but for someone like me who wants a more powerful box than the Steam Deck or Switch under a TV, yet hates the locked-down nature of the traditional console makers (which are just slowly getting worse, viz. Sony's announcement to kill physical media and the control it brings owners).
As a kid who grew up absolutely loving their GameCube, this is a perfect computer to me. Yes, I already built my own LAN cube ~2 years ago that fits in my carry-on and is significantly more powerful for a comparable price point... but the Steam Machine is WAY smaller! I can fit it in my backpack and still have room for a monitor, work laptop, peripherals, Steam Deck, and clothing. It's just not possible to build a DIY machine of this size + quality without resorting to extremes as a consumer.
I've had a Steam Deck since it was released and now an owner if a Steam Machine and controllers.
It's easily worth the price.
Factor in the amount of quality games you can get for cheap on Steam then it's not even expensive compared to other consoles. Switch games are ludicrously expensive for example.
Consoles are quite expensive too these days. I think if not for the whole AI hypetrain and subsequent chip shortage, price for Steam Machine would have been more friendly.
The global inflation caused by the the AI wild ride is so underestimated. Also, so many consumer products that cannot exist in the current economy. Really looking forward for all of that hype to calm down
Not only do you have to build them, but in all those builds the cases are several times larger than the Steam Machine, so they are not actually equivalent. If you care about the form factor, there is nothing directly comparable.
These options are up to 10 times bigger than the SteamMachine, approach almost twice the power draw, and are up to 2.8 times louder than the SteamMachine. They aren't even close to comparable... so why exactly are they making this apples to oranges comparison? No one is assembling a PC to put under their TV, and even if they are, ignoring the obvious form factor, heat and loudness issues... they'll most likely still want to install SteamOS for a "console-like" experience, which is still a win for Valve...
First option:
* 35 litre case (~10 times bigger than the SteamMachine)
* ~250W power draw (vs. ~185W SteamMachine)
* 32-36 dBA (vs. ~23 dBA SteamMachine)
Second option:
* 35 litre case (~10 times bigger than the SteamMachine)
* ~285W power draw (vs. ~185W SteamMachine)
* 32-36 dBA (vs. ~23 dBA SteamMachine)
Third option:
* 19.2 litre case (~5.5 times bigger than the SteamMachine)
* ~295W power draw (vs. ~185W SteamMachine)
* 34-38 dBA (vs. ~23 dBA SteamMachine)
Fourth option:
* 19.2 litre case (~5.5 times bigger than the SteamMachine)
* ~275W power draw (vs. ~185W SteamMachine)
* 32-35 dBA (vs. ~23 dBA SteamMachine)
The power consumption is a little silly to compare unless you are operating solely off-grid. It would take a few years of gaming daily for a couple of hours a day to make up for the price difference (assuming $0.20/kWh).
Physical size is definitely a bigger concern, nothing can beat the Steam Machine. But I do prefer the long and thin design like the PlayStation series has always used. It's easier to fit that on the shelves inside a TV stand that were designed to hold cable boxes and DVD players or it can fit upright behind a TV. I'm not sure if I actually have room to put a Steam Machine behind my TV without it overhanging the edge a bit.
As for loudness, that's a bit more subjective. It depends on how far away you are from the PC and how loud you play sound or if you're using a headset. Just totally based on my experience, games that are very quiet are usually the low-resource indie games that wouldn't be pushing my GPU to max fan speed anyway. The games I have that really push my GPU tend to have pretty loud sound design.
It's not the price of power that matters, it's the heat produced. Every extra W consumed is an extra W of heat that needs to be handled, and for consoles that tend to be chucked into confined spaces, that's an issue.
Loudness might be subjective, but if we're trying to compare builds, they should at least be in the same ballpark.
Looking at this article, they seem to only care about one dimension of this product: cost. It would have been far more interesting if they explored: cost, performance, size, heat (by proxy of power consumption), and loudness.
This is the old “why buy a prebuilt PC when you can DIY for less”. Which is true, but completely misses the point that may people will happily pay to 1) not have to build it, and 2) have e2e warranty, and 3) have someone else do the software setup.
We can debate if it’s the most efficient use of money for a technical person, but it’s indisputable that many people get enough value to pay for the prebuilt.
You can get a better deal on some consoles at the moment, but I wouldn't count on that to last. The Switch 2 has a price increase scheduled. The Xbox line has a price increase scheduled. PlayStation did one earlier this year. Rather than being a permanent situation this feels like everything going up, just irregularly rather than smoothly, so sometimes one thing feels like a better deal, sometimes another, but it's not obvious that any of them are much better on a longer time frame. If you're looking out at the console versus Steam Machine and thinking the consoles look better for your use case, you don't already have one, and you're interested in one of them, I suggest moving sooner rather than later.
The Steam Machine is what got noticed, and earthed a lot of anger about prices, but it's not particularly out of line or especially expensive. The whole market is screwed up.