Valve Starts Listing The Steam Machines In The Steam Store

[sarmad]

Out of curiosity, given the systems as they are advertised, how many people reading this plan on buying one of the currently advertised Steam Machines within 9-10 months of their respective releases?

I am planning to buy one of them when they are released. Haven't decided which one yet.

[profoundWHALE]

http://store.steampowered.com/app/353390/ The alienware steam machine seems to come with games and a controller already. If that's true and it costs $475 then it's a pretty great deal

No kidding.

That "powerful gaming" made me chuckle

Heh. Change gaming to play and you have a Sony slogan. "Powerful play."

[eydee]

I have multiple theories:

1. It's bundled with hardware +/or software like a console is
2. Niche: low stock, higher price
3. Size. Some of these are really compact
4. Labour to get these set up and working okay

Plus you can add official support, though valve is not too good when it comes to this...

[Vidar]

I have multiple theories:

1. It's bundled with hardware +/or software like a console is

http://store.steampowered.com/app/353390/

The alienware steam machine seems to come with games and a controller already. If that's true and it costs $475 then it's a pretty great deal

Key Features:
MASSIVE GAMES LIBRARY ? Play over 980 games locally including Portal 2, Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel! and Dying Light. In addition to over 4,000 games available via streaming.
VALUE ? Comes bundled with games and in-game content out of the box
STEAM CONTROLLER - The ultimate accessory to game in the living room is included
MULTI-PLAYER - Play with up to 4 Steam Controllers at once
POWERFUL GAMING ? Equipped with NVIDIA? GeForce? GTX GPU 2GB GDDR5 graphics and Intel? Core processors

That "powerful gaming" made me chuckle

[profoundWHALE]

Most steam machines have terrible price/performance ratio. It's insane to say that the alienware steam machine is the best price/performance there is, when alienware is well known for beefy machines that cost an arm and a leg, and even that one is a bit mediocre (2GB of VRAM, really?).

http://store.steampowered.com/app/353430/

$700 for a pentium dual core and a 960?

http://store.steampowered.com/app/353460/

This costs about the same as the alienware but has a god damn 250X with 1GB of VRAM

http://store.steampowered.com/app/353480/

$900 machine with a 960 when you could very well do one with a better card from AMD

http://store.steampowered.com/app/353490/

$800 for a 750GTX!?

How does Valve even allow this?

I have multiple theories:

1. It's bundled with hardware +/or software like a console is
2. Niche: low stock, higher price
3. Size. Some of these are really compact
4. Labour to get these set up and working okay

[Vidar]

That one indeed is. =p

Most steam machines have terrible price/performance ratio. It's insane to say that the alienware steam machine is the best price/performance there is, when alienware is well known for beefy machines that cost an arm and a leg, and even that one is a bit mediocre (2GB of VRAM, really?).

http://store.steampowered.com/app/353430/

$700 for a pentium dual core and a 960?

http://store.steampowered.com/app/353460/

This costs about the same as the alienware but has a god damn 250X with 1GB of VRAM

http://store.steampowered.com/app/353480/

$900 machine with a 960 when you could very well do one with a better card from AMD

http://store.steampowered.com/app/353490/

$800 for a 750GTX!?

How does Valve even allow this?

[eydee]

Those platforms actually have game exclusives to set them apart and, more importantly, they are the first target for new game releases.

Steam Machines have five-year-old retreads.





The point is................ there is a catch-22 here. Developers are not going to target Steam Machines unless it's an important platform, and that requires a lot of immediate interest up front so that it would take off rather than crash land. So Valve needed to generate a lot of interest in Steam Machines. But they didn't. They brought a knife to a gunfight.

The point is, major game engines are free now, developers won't bother and spend money writing their own. And these engines will make linux/steamos versions at a click of a button. Games will be multiplatform and run on anything.

Exclusives are actually a bad thing so I wonder why you mention them as a benefit. They only cause angry users and lost sales.

[iniudan]

Out of curiosity, given the systems as they are advertised, how many people reading this plan on buying one of the currently advertised Steam Machines within 9-10 months of their respective releases?

I might actually get the Alienware model, everything else is something I can build better and cheaper, but the Dell model is interesting due to size. If not that I will likely just build something that I will leave in a closet to act as a game server and just stream everything.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/353400/



$1,099 for an i3 and a 750Ti?

Are they out of their mind?

That one indeed is. =p

[Vidar]

Alternate Steam Machine

http://store.steampowered.com/app/353400/

Alternate Steam Machine
Price: $1,099 USD
CPU: Intel? Core? i3-4130
GPU: NVIDIA? Geforce? GTX 750Ti
Memory: 8GB DDR3-1600MHz
Storage: 500GB SSHD

$1,099 for an i3 and a 750Ti?

Are they out of their mind?

[johnc]

Tell us how the PS4 or Shitbox One is cheaper or arrived with a larger collection on release. They must as well be dead...

Those platforms actually have game exclusives to set them apart and, more importantly, they are the first target for new game releases.

Steam Machines have five-year-old retreads.





The point is................ there is a catch-22 here. Developers are not going to target Steam Machines unless it's an important platform, and that requires a lot of immediate interest up front so that it would take off rather than crash land. So Valve needed to generate a lot of interest in Steam Machines. But they didn't. They brought a knife to a gunfight.