Revenge of the Steam Machine.

[Ungnome]

So Steam announced that they are bringing out a new Steam Machine, this time designed in-house.

Steam Machine

Your games on the big screen

store.steampowered.com

IF they can hit a decent price point I think they might actually be competitive in the console market this time, especially if Microsoft does try and price themselves out of the market with the next XBox, like they seem to be trying to do. They've got a huge library ready to go day one, since it essentially has all the proton-compatible steam games available out of the box, it looks nice(and even has customizable faceplates) and it can also run desktop Linux apps making it more flexible than any console since the PS3(before Sony disabled third party OS support). Maybe this will also convince a few game companies to enable their anti-cheat solutions on Linux as well.

 

[Pocket]

They already said they intend to price it comparably to any other PC of its type, rather than sell at a loss like a console, so no, basically you're just buying a PC you can't upgrade or run Windows apps on for the same cost as one you can, just for an excuse to give Valve your money. And those so inclined are even less able to afford that now than they were a decade ago. I predict this thing will be dead in the water and have zero impact on the industry.

Hyped for the new controller though. It's been way too long but at least it's going to finally exist, and I'm eager to see if they finally fixed the haptic problem. New VR headset could be a game changer too if it's competitively priced.

 

[Tm_Silverclaw]

Where is the disc drive?

Oh yeah.. I forgot.. For STEAM "FULLY DIGIITAL IS FINE!!!" For any other system "HOW DARE THEYYYYY!"

 

[Pocket]

Sure, let's stick a disc drive in the machine that literally only plays games that no one sells on disc, and hasn't in like a decade and a half.

 

[Tm_Silverclaw]

Sure, let's stick a disc drive in the machine that literally only plays games that no one sells on disc, and hasn't in like a decade and a half.

So are physical games necessary. Yes or no?

 

[Ungnome]

I like the idea of physical games, but it's not deal breaker for me these days. It's rather simple to copy games on steam to backup media for archiving. Only tricky part is stripping the DRM out in case steam goes under or turns into a typical tech company.

 

[Princess Viola]

People still clinging to physical media for video games in 2025 is honestly ******* hilarious.

Like y'all have already lost the battle, digital games outsell physical games (and I don't just mean on PC) and have for a long ass time. You are the Japanese soldiers who didn't know World War II ended.

To say nothing of the fact that there's a goddamn reason why even the PS5 with a disc drive and the Xbox Series X require you to still install the content of your disc to the SSD - because optical media is slow as hell compared to an SSD. Even modern physical releases of video games aren't even actually being run off the disc.

They already said they intend to price it comparably to any other PC of its type, rather than sell at a loss like a console, so no, basically you're just buying a PC you can't upgrade or run Windows apps on for the same cost as one you can,

Because Proton and Wine don't exist, apparently.

To say nothing of the fact that this is a PC and Valve literally says you can put another OS on it if you want. So if you really need to use some piece of Windows software that won't run through a compatibility layer, you can go ahead and install Windows on it.

 

[Pocket]

OK, then it's a PC you can't upgrade that costs as much as one you can.

Also, the people complaining about other platforms doing away with physical copies are probably not the same people who don't even own those platforms because they get all their games on Steam.

 

[LBD "Nytetrayn"]

I like to have physical copies of games I'm strongly invested in, for various reasons.

In the Switch 2's case, it's in no small part to save on storage space in the system's memory for games I do have to get digitally for one reason or another.

I'm not a heavy Steam user, or PC gamer in general, though something like this might sway me. I was looking at getting some sort of dedicated PC for gaming on my TV if/when Xbox just full-on craps the bed, but what I have is already all digital there, anyway.

With Xbox and PlayStation, I have physical games I'd still like to be able to use going back generations, so having an option to be able to read those discs is important to me.

Frankly, I'm still annoyed that my wife grabbed the first discless PS5 she saw instead of our agreed-upon plan to get one with a disc drive. Incidentally, I've barely played PlayStation this generation...

 

[Ungnome]

OK, then it's a PC you can't upgrade that costs as much as one you can.

Also, the people complaining about other platforms doing away with physical copies are probably not the same people who don't even own those platforms because they get all their games on Steam.

While the processor and GPU can't be upgraded, apparently the storage is just a bog-standard NVME drive and is user upgradable and the system ram is on standard sodimms. It's more upgradable than a mac mini at the very least. It would make a great home theater PC, if the price is right.