New Steam Hardware

[the-pi-guy]

https://store.steampowered.com/sale/hardware

[the-pi-guy]

[the-pi-guy]

[the-pi-guy]

[Legend]

Steam machines are back. Crazy.

New steam controller looks meh.

Doubt I buy any of this stuff. Frame is kinda tempting but not enough to get me to jump in.

[the-pi-guy]

I almost feel like there was more VR progress between 2016 and 2019, than there was between 2019 and 2025.

Resolution wise, standalone, inside out market less tracking. Rift to Quest 1 feels like a crazy jump.

Whereas this feels like a marginal upgrade compared to Quest 2, which came out in 2020. And even more marginally better than the Quest 3 that came out in 2023.

It feels like we went from 10x better at half the price to 20% better at twice the price. Which to be fair, a lot of that price is due to Meta subsidizing the hardware. Quest 2 was just a crazy good deal when it was out.

[kitler53]

so far all i know is what i saw in this video.   my hot takes:

MS's next xbox is DoA.   it's sandwhiched between just buying a regular old PC or buying a steam machine.   a PC is a PC.   and if I want a feature-less PC that better integrates to a TV i trust steam and their machines will do it better.   way less bloat.

Sony's ps6 very well could be DoA too.  maybe DoA is too much but i've been saying for years now that steam is clearly going to iterate on their original steam machine and come out with a better more console like product.   well here it is.   and if sony keeps putting all of their exclusives on steam there's going to be a sizable audience that will migrate to steam instead of upgrading into a ps6.   sony needs to get their own PC storefront asap and stop putting their biggest games on what is now their biggest competitor's storefront.

[Legend]

so far all i know is what i saw in this video.  my hot takes:

MS's next xbox is DoA.  it's sandwhiched between just buying a regular old PC or buying a steam machine.  a PC is a PC.  and if I want a feature-less PC that better integrates to a TV i trust steam and their machines will do it better.  way less bloat.

Sony's ps6 very well could be DoA too.  maybe DoA is too much but i've been saying for years now that steam is clearly going to iterate on their original steam machine and come out with a better more console like product.  well here it is.  and if sony keeps putting all of their exclusives on steam there's going to be a sizable audience that will migrate to steam instead of upgrading into a ps6.  sony needs to get their own PC storefront asap and stop putting their biggest games on what is now their biggest competitor's storefront.

It depends on price vs specs, but I'd certainly be more interested in a steam machine than xbox pc.

But probably neither. It's a pain to connect my laptop to my tv but it can do everything these guys can.

[the-pi-guy]

Overall thoughts.

Steam Frame: A little disappointing as mentioned above. I might get it anyways, if the price is good. But I don't think it will be. It'll probably be like $800. If it manages to be less than $600, I will probably get it. 

Steam Machine: had some similar thoughts to Kitler.

I've said before that I don't love PC gaming. Kind of goofy thing is that I just feel like all of the OS stuff feels distracting to me. Consoles solve that for me, by being so gaming focused. Steam OS would probably resolve that for me. I'm not sure if getting into PC gaming is meaningful enough for me. Like every new game I want to play is coming to PlayStation - including Xbox/Zenimax games. It would be more if I wanted to go into older games. I'd probably play Portal and Half Life on it. I'm not really sure if that's enough that I would buy this. 

But it was intriguing enough for me to think about it for several minutes. 


Steam Controller: I feel like it's probably great despite my view that I think it looks bad, but I don't feel compelled to get it or anything. 

[kitler53]

It depends on price vs specs, but I'd certainly be more interested in a steam machine than xbox pc.

But probably neither. It's a pain to connect my laptop to my tv but it can do everything these guys can.

yeah, that's why i started my post with the "hot take" warning.  this is just a gut reaction.    i saw the more detailed video Pi posted but then i was like a hour is too long to watch while at work so i'll have to look into it more later.

[kitler53]

Steam Machine: had some similar thoughts to Kitler.

I've said before that I don't love PC gaming. Kind of goofy thing is that I just feel like all of the OS stuff feels distracting to me. Consoles solve that for me, by being so gaming focused. Steam OS would probably resolve that for me. I'm not sure if getting into PC gaming is meaningful enough for me. Like every new game I want to play is coming to PlayStation - including Xbox/Zenimax games. It would be more if I wanted to go into older games. I'd probably play Portal and Half Life on it. I'm not really sure if that's enough that I would buy this. 

But it was intriguing enough for me to think about it for several minutes. 

more takes...

so i know big AAAA games will land on both platforms.   but PC still have a ton of exclusives.   i know that is mostly in the indie scene and that like 99% of them are crud but there are soo many that even that 1% is a pretty sizable amount of good games i'm missing out on.   if i wasn't soo overwhelmed with games this would mean more to me but it means something.

the "games on PC are soo cheap" argument is well,.. a lie?    after getting a steam deck i at least for most of a year did price comparisons between steam and playstation before buying any game.  for the games i looked at i saw price equality, and if not playstation was cheaper.   after hearing about "steam sales" for so long i was massively disappointed at how they were no better than on playstation.

free online is a thing though.   i'd drop ps+ extra if it were not for the online requirement.

but then a ton of steam games don't work on steam deck because of the whole linux thing.   so like maybe support for these get better or maybe these will just suck.

[the-pi-guy]

Steam Machine: I think it is probably going to be more expensive and weaker than it should have been. It sounds like it is around a PS5. And I doubt it will match PS5 pricing.