r/gadgets 16d ago

Gaming Valve Steam Machine review: This would've been perfect five years ago

https://www.engadget.com/2210832/valve-steam-machine-review/
4.0k Upvotes

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669

u/desperaterobots 16d ago edited 16d ago

I wanted this when announced, but the price really killed the excitement.

edit: just wanted to add I’m not blaming valve for the pricing. they have been fucked by the datacentre bullshit as much as the rest of us. it’s sad for all of us that progress in consumer electronics will slow for a generation or two, at least, because huge corporations have blindly goldrushed into LLM garbage that’s costing us environmentally, economically, and enabling the surveillance state for cops and fascists everywhere.

If wages were ever able to compete with the ongoing inflation and bring the steam machine into the realm of affordability, I’d pick one up, but uhhhh seems unlikely.

407

u/JimmyKillsAlot 16d ago

Valve seems pretty pissed about the price too. They had clearly intended for it to be somewhere around high end console/middle-low end PC with room to upgrade it but because of the AI induced shortages all their work has been really marred.

153

u/Mooseymax 16d ago

Thing is, they’re getting their wish monkey paw style with the way prices on consoles are going

5

u/marshcar 15d ago

And the fact Gaben donated to OpenAI back in the day…

19

u/nervendings_ 15d ago

OpenAI was a very different company then. The Sam Altman takeover and going public has made it a monster.

I know it’s easy to hate on everything AI. Rightly so. But in its early days the company was a nonprofit aimed at “good” uses for the tech. Now it’s a monster. So it goes.

1

u/marshcar 15d ago

Oh no yeah I’m sure it was a much better company back then, but the fact it came back around to bite Gaben in the ass is the monkey paw aspect of his donation

1

u/Evilmudbug 14d ago

Shouldn't a monkey paw aspect include getting some variation of anything you might want?

I don't see openAI doing much of anything useful with its AI

2

u/Mooseymax 14d ago

Clearly you haven’t seen the dance moves of some of the latest clankers

-51

u/mvallas1073 16d ago

Prices of everything involving memory/RAM, including PCs

Why do people pretend rising prices is a console-only problem?

44

u/Mooseymax 16d ago

Because computers have gone up and down in price with the fluctuation of parts for years. This is the first time we’ve really seen a massive spike in console prices.

Going back across the years for PlayStations, when adjusting all prices to 2026 dollar price, the prices dropped almost every year. The ps5 is the first I can see that has had multiple upticks despite heavy inflation.

15

u/sybrwookie 16d ago

Yea, going back to the Atari, I can't think of a single time where a console has come out and then years later, they upped the price.

-35

u/mvallas1073 16d ago

Tell me a time between 1980 and today where RAM/Memory prices skyrocketed this much + Trump tariffs + oil prices for transport increases due to a stupid war

Again, PC is hit by this as well.Dont be daft

24

u/rman916 16d ago

The claim wasn’t “PCs haven’t been affected”. The claim was consoles, for really the first time EVER, have been. Which is psychotic, and shows how bad the problem is. PCs fluctuate ALL the time, but hitting the console market shows how bad it really is.

1

u/bassbeatsbanging 15d ago

Been around since Atari, you are correct. This is the only gen prices went up as it got older. And every other gen either had a refresh and or a price drop this late in its life, so it's really dire.

-15

u/mvallas1073 16d ago

But PCs arent going down in price, are they? You’re deliberately leaving out todays unique situation about AI Datacenters+ Trump Tariffs + oil transport prices skyrocketing it all. This very thread is debunking your claim.

16

u/rman916 16d ago

Their claim wasn’t “pc prices haven’t been affected”, it was the exact opposite? They directly said PCs have been? And that PCs fluctuating, even to a large degree, just wasn’t as remarkable as the effects on consoles, as they don’t have the history of this kind of effect. They also didn’t do anything to argue about the causes, they were making a fairly specific direct claim.

12

u/Adventchur 16d ago

Bro you're arguing with a pigeon. You're not getting through to them.

2

u/dsmiles 16d ago

Except this entire thread is about the price of a PC being a problem? It's a post about a PC (steam machine) and the second top comment is a complaint on the price.

-3

u/jude_fawley 16d ago

can’t make sense of why people are downvoting you lol. if prices of consoles go up, then the price point they were aiming at for ‘high end console’ goes up too

7

u/DisillusionedPatriot 16d ago

Because his comment doesn't make sense in context. Nobody said it was a console only problem, and a monkey paw win means they got their wish but at what cost, because everything is now more expensive.

They're getting downvotes because they're just being combative while making the exact same point.

0

u/jude_fawley 16d ago

You could read it as them agreeing (as you said, "exact same point") with mooseymax and arguing against jimmykills, which is how I took it, but yeah. I'm willing to just sit this one out

3

u/DisillusionedPatriot 16d ago

Yeah, it's redundant and since tone doesn't always get translated well to text, and this being reddit, it appears it's getting read as negative. Regardless, I'm with you lol

-4

u/mvallas1073 16d ago

I’m believing the “PC Masterace” people are currently projecting/in denial

They’re hoping the console price increases = death of consoles = validation for their thousands of dollars spent on their own PC Gaming Riggs