Eh, I had a Steam Deck on release and that was buggy too. The nice thing is, Valve will keep working on it, seemingly in perpetuity.
My Steam Link still receives updates and that thing is like a decade old, was discontinued 8 years ago, and yet it got an update two weeks ago.
Love my Steam Deck and was considering a Steam Machine but I think I’m just going to spend a little extra for a solid mid range desktop.
Coincidentally, my Steam Machine turned up in the post today.
Initial review; if you like the Steam Deck, you’ll love the Machine.
Only tested Stray in 4K so far and it has zero issues.
I’m sure I could build a desktop cheaper but it’d be impossible to build something as tiny as it - my hand is bigger than the face of the Machine.
I bet you could build something close but yeah, I am waitlisted and I’m looking at making something with maybe a 5070rtx now for 4k or high settings at 1440
Meh. It’s just going to be a niche device anyway thanks to (not within their control) pricing.
100% agree. This would have been a great way for console lovers to get in on pc gaming.
But bc of wildly gestures at EVERYTHING this will be a collector’s item for people who are already into the Valve ecosystem.
It would have brought me over to PC gaming — even at that dumb price — if it had a few basic things right.
For example, 4K/60 not being baseline performance on a $1000+ machine is a deal breaker.
I was looking into how cost effective it would be to upgrade/build a new rig - from my research I think you’d struggle to make a new build that runs 4K/60 under $1000. I feel like the steam machine is maybe $100-200 above a similar build, but that ignores things like size/wattage/CEC
That’s fair, especially with new prices. I understand it, especially with RAM shortages driving up prices.
https://www.printables.com/model/1649679-nexgen3d-diy-steam-machine-redux-edition
Just FYI. Essentially 1:1 steam machine performance, <$350 fully built. BC250 on eBay for ~$175 + $30 power supply and assortment of other parts + filament.
I’m building 2 right now one for me and one for someone else
Do note the BC-250 can be LOUD with air cooling, uses much more power, and has no sleep or hibernate state.
That’s to say nothing of the pretty substantial tweaking and modification that’s needed to get it that 1:1 performance level. It’s also not 4K/60.
Still a fun project but certainly not the same type of thing as “open box, play games” which is what SM aims to deliver.
That’s a fair call out, you can definitely build cheaper if you’re using used parts, my research had been looking at new components (to try to make it a more fair comparison).
The form factor on that is interesting though.
Yeah, for sure – used makes a huge difference
I’ve had mine for a few weeks now and have experienced a few issues.
Mostly with game performance after it goes to sleep. Not sure why. Doom eternal was struggling at 45fps, but then I rebooted it and was getting 200fps in the same area on the same settings. It’s made much worse if my son was playing a game and put it to sleep while the game was open. Even switching profiles doesn’t improve it.
It gets stuck in a loop sometimes as well with CEC, I ended up turning it all off.
Sometimes it wakes itself up after going to sleep via the power menu, but if I let it wait 30 min it sleeps on its own no problem.
But other than that I love it. It’s such a great device and it has pretty good performance for its power usage.
I have just started rebooting the machine after I wake it if I know the kids were using it.
If anyone - like me - would like to print the Companion Cube stand, it’s on makerworld:
https://makerworld.com/en/models/2770553-portal-cube-stand-steam-controller
Replace Steam Machine with Xbox or PlayStation 5 and the internet would melt down.
How do some companies get away with inferior product releases while some can’t?
Have you ever purchased a console at launch? There are always minor issues like the ones described here.
I have. They never had all of these issues in the article (those are not minor). If they did I’d return them because they obviously were malfunctioning.
Same question: Have you?
Of course, I haven’t had any of the issues described in the article. Sleep mode works fine with the games I’ve been playing. In fact the steam machine wakes up in a working state more often than my apple TV.
This is fun, it looks like Xbox series x had basically the resume game issues at launch:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/barrycollins/2020/11/09/xbox-series-x-hit-by-several-big-launch-bugs/
And ps5 was not without problems too:
https://www.androidcentral.com/list-playstation-5-known-bugs-and-launch-issues
Man, people obviously lying is the most hilarious sub-genre of internet comedy.
Did you really say it wakes up better than your appleTV?
Thanks for the laugh. Saving this exchange.
Sure, it’s certainly plex’s fault but still true.
You ever heard of the red ring of death? And that was a hardware issue, not a software issue that can be patched.
Yeah, console had to be reissued. Way to prove my point about the backlash.
Now, same energy towards your overpriced Steam Deck that can barely hit 1080p and has basic functions fail.
No?
Because those other consoles are not general purpose computers that have value without the original locked down OS. A steam machine is just a compact desktop computer that happens to have a fancy version of steam on it. The fact that the OS is largely open source and hackable and the fact that valve contributes uncountable amounts of dev hours worth of code back to the FOSS community also helps.
So if it’s PC architecture it gets a pass for being mediocre and for malfunctioning/failing at basic functions.
Got it.
Nah they dont get a pass (as you can clearly see from this article…) but people will be less critical than for the companies that have been established in the console hardware sector for multiple decades. People that are too consoomer brained to deal with a couple temporary bugs should just buy consoles and stay boring.
This exact level of lying from PC-biased people (taking a few malfunctioning consoles and extrapolating to all) is exactly why a lot of people find it so easy to avoid PC gaming.
Nothing about consoles are boring compared to this Steam Machine shit show you’re all scrambling to defend.
That controller is pretty damned good, though.
To me any device that cant load a custom operating system isnt even worth talking about, so yeah the steam machine just wins no matter what as long as it works as a computer. Open hardware rocks :D
Yeah, to the majority of gamers that is work. People mostly just want frictionless gaming. The Steam Machine promised to remove the annoyances of everything-PC you mentioned and then failed to do so.
I’ll continue waiting.
Cope harder bro
