The dedicated communication dongle between the PC and the headset sounds like a real game changer.
Right now getting fast enough and reliable wireless connection means either tweaking to death one's setup or spending car money on the entire setup. In particular normal people usually don't realize how crappy their wi-fi and assume it's all the same, which would end in blaming the poor perf on the headset.
Reminds me of Apple's AWDL, a similar workaround for crappy networks when the devices need a high speed low latency network. I do wonder if the headset here will do similar channel hoping tricks to join both the dongle's network and the normal wifi network.
At this point, the controller is the most exciting thing for me.
Steam machine is cool, but with how good handheld PCs already are, I'd be ok spending a bit more and just using those instead and docking it for TV gaming.
Steam Controller was significantly better than Xbox controllers for some kinds of games, but it was much clunkier for others. Steam Deck's controller is an improvement over either of them, and this new Steam Controller appears to be pretty much Deck's controller without the Deck, with some tiny extras added.
I have six of the previous generation controller and I love them, only minor annoyance is pairing them occasionally. I don't really use the haptics part all that much though
idk about that - integrated buttons, battery, screen, size constraints and the R&D work that goes into all of that is probably significant compared to 'box with hardware and usb ports' (oversimplifying to make a point here though - of course lots of design work went into this as well).
110 deg fov is a bit on the low side but I guess it'll have to do. I hate how 90% of VR headsets are designed to feel like you have binoculars strapped to your face, absolutely zero peripheral vision.
One of the reasons I put off getting corrective lenses for a long time and kept trying to use contacts despite how horrible they make my eyeballs feel, is that I have an extremely wide peripheral vision. I can see my fingers wiggle behind the plane defined by my shoulders, I will react to motion out there.
Having my FoV dumbed down to 90º sounds like hell, especially in a game where we are looking for opponents.
Playing Doom on a widescreen monitor with the FoV modifications made it a lot less annoying. I want that even more today.
It's funny - if you look at the most recent steam hardware survey results this new steam machine almost exactly matches the median system - 16gb ram, 8gb vram, 6 physical cores, and the GPU looks like be roughly similar in perf to a 3060 too.
Half Life 2 recently got a dev commentary track where Valve reflected on their decisions from 20 years ago. One of the things that stuck out to me was that, apparently, Valve called up Microsoft and said "Hey, what percentage of desktops have DirectX 8 compatible graphics cards?" and Microsoft had no idea.
And thus the Steam Hardware Survey was born. The specs automatically sounded a bit anemic to me, too, but seeing them placed on the hardware survey I don't think they're making an outright mistake, per se.
On the other other hand, the average system in that survey presumably cost more than what the Steam Machine will retail for, if we're correct in interpreting this as being a competitor to dedicated consoles.
If this gets enough adoption for gamedevs to prioritize support when testing games that's likely not going to be a huge problem. 16gb ram + 8gb vram is also similar to what all the current gen consoles have, although all three have the advantage of it being unified between the CPU and GPU so they can use more than 8gb vram if needed (16gb, 16gb, 12gb total system ram for PS5, XSX, Switch 2 respectively)
This is my concern as well. I suspect this will struggle versus a PS5 because even though the PS5 only has 16GB total, its unified, so it can be allocated more towards VRAM if needed.
If they are selling this for $300-400, it will be a hot item and I cant fault them at all. If it sells for $500+, its hard to recommend over a PS5 for most users.
1080p is already a struggle for some games with 8GB of VRAM in 2025, and this will probably be expected to have a service life of 5+ years.
I'm thinking maybe it's unified memory? They posted "16GB DDR5 + 8GB GDDR6 VRAM" as the specs as RAM. Typically you'd put the GPU-only VRAM together with the GPU, but the GPU has it's own separate row in the specs. Kind of suspicious how they placed those together like that, isn't it?
It's close to an RX7500/7600 paired with a Ryzen 5 7500/7600. Depending on the price it can be fine for gaming. Nobody expects enthusiast performance. It has to be priced to be competitive against consoles and lower end DIY PCs.
I don't think there is any reason a game _needs_ more. I don't think there is any gameplay experience that couldn't be enjoyably delivered on this hardware. And it's a massive disappointment that minimum requirements bloat has been out of control lately.
With how PC part prices have exploded after AI data center buying, I think we will see developers suddenly discover that you don't actually need half these specs to run games.
This is the real answer. Vram is largely dependent on the resolution you're running, and at 1080p 8gb vram is fine. People who want 20GB vram are probably going to build their own machines anyways, the steam machine is meant to be a console replacement to my understanding.
I'd argue that 1080p gaming is also perfectly fine. These days most games have split the UI/window resolution from the game resolution. So you can have 4k sharp text and UI, while the actual game runs at 75%/50% resolution and you largely can't tell the difference while sitting on the couch.
Is it dependent on the resolution your running, or is it the size of all textures that need to be cached in RAM? The amount of data needed to framebuffer 1080p vs 4K isn't that great
>Yes, Steam Machine is optimized for gaming, but it's still your PC. Install your own apps, or even another operating system. Who are we to tell you how to use your computer?
In a world of locked bootloaders and ever more locked down device, valve is pushing the envolope with a linux based gaming console.
Reporting indicates one of the use cases they designed for is swapping an SD card between steam deck, steam machine and steam frame to bring your installed games along with you, which is technologically unimpressive, but so far against the grain that it's shocking a company would include that kind of functionality.
It'd be a good plan. Make HL3 a VR game since you built VR experience by making Alyx, take it to the next level by launching your own VR headset, everything is perfectly made together and HL3 launch would be as big if not bigger than GTA, and you optimize it for your own hardware.
I find it weird that a new device in 2025 still comes with only one USB-C port and otherwise only USB-A. Is USB-C that much more expensive? Is it about power delivery?
USB-C is still not widely adopted for many specific uses, in particular peripherals (keyboard/mouse dongles)
Logitech finally got their USB-C dongle out last year I think ? Keychron only offers USB-A as far as I know. And many other keyboard and mouse brands are in the same boat. Depending on your setup that's already 2 USB-A ports needed. You can put an adapter, but you're then dongling a dongle.
PS: just realized Valve's own VR to PC adapter is also USB-A.
> [...] only offers USB-A as far as I know. And many other keyboard and mouse brands are in the same boat.
Many new computers (including this Steam Machine) have exactly two USB-2-only USB-A ports (the rest of the USB ports being more capable). It's not hard to guess what they're for: the keyboard and the mouse.
I was about to bitch about Logitech and their USB-A dongle yesterday and looked to see that they did finally produce a USB-C dongle. Miracles do happen.
Being in the park kinda loses its lustre when you've got a headset strapped to your face - I'd prefer a laptop with a screen that's still visible in sunlight.
> I'd prefer a laptop with a screen that's still visible in sunlight.
I don't understand why Amazon worked so hard to replace their neutral gray Kindles with "Kindle PaperWhite".
Paper, the material, is so white that trying to read it in sunlight will hurt your eyes. Why would you want a white reading surface instead of a gray one?
Little disappointing its not got colour passthrough. I am not convinced this generation of headsets will really be the ones that AR breaks through but still its a bit disappointing and has been useful with the latest Quest headsets. Other than that it looks fairly solid.
It was noted in some articles that the "expansion port" could hypothetically be used for a color passthrough module later. But I also read that the Index had a similar port and never did much of anything with it, so that may never happen.
Definitely a cost measure to not include color passthrough, I'm not in the market to replace my Quest 3S but I'm very curious to see what price they hit with this.
Nice that it has a microSD slot so you can buy the low storage on and not be stuck with 256 GB forever.
I thought it looked pretty attractive? Small, understated, something that would fit in pretty much anywhere without clashing. It doesn't have anything resembling a "gaming" aesthetic, which is a huge plus in my book.
It doesn't have to be all gamer RGB, but, for me, it has to look well-designed, e.g., like Apple products. The Steam Machine looks fine, but the controller looks cheap and all the buttons seem too far away from each other, as if it's meant to be held by someone with large hands.
Nothing really looks like Apple products except Apple products though, so you are locking yourself out of buying pretty much anything except Apple with this idiosyncrasy. Which I'm sure Apple is quite pleased about.
The biggest complaint about the PS5 is that it stood out too much. That's the one compelling point about the Xbox Series series designs - they don't look out of place in your entertainment centre.
This is the same - you can put it somewhere people can see it and it's not an eyesore.
Yeah the PS5 definitely went too far in the other direction. Too many curves making it take up even more space than it needs to as well (although that could have been an intentional choice to stop people from putting things on top of it).
We wanted to do something that was bold and daring almost. We wanted something forward facing and future facing, something for the 2020s [...] The PS5's design is meant to demonstrate Sony's belief that the technology inside and the games that run on it are as eye-catching as the outside you see [...] that the form factor of [...] the PS5 is meant to "grace" your living room.
The PlayStation sits in the living area of most homes, and we kind of felt it would be nice to provide a design that would really grace most living areas. That's what we've tried to do. And, you know, we think we've been successful in that.
Sony's dead wrong here. You want what's eye-catching in your living room to match your other things or fade out of sight. This design is nondescript and you can get your own custom panels if you want.
Because that worked well with the last Steam Machine in 2015 didn't it? Even though it was much cheaper. /s
Even with specs from 2019 - 2020, it already lost to the consoles on arrival and still can't even play the DRM'ed games on Day 1 as long as it is on SteamOS.
You might as well get a Macbook M4 Max or an equivalent Windows gaming laptop as the Steam Machine is too underpowered for PC gamers and as long as it runs SteamOS (Linux) is unable to play the same games as those on Windows on day 1.
The XBox Series X and PS5 both have 16 GB of RAM; in the case of the XSX that's 10 GB for the GPU and 6 GB for the OS and apps.
So 16 GB in this case, for running the same games and outputting to the same displays, seems entirely reasonable.
> The specs appear to be from late 2019. Pass
Probably more accurate to say the specs are from 2020, which is when the PS5 and XSX launched.
> it is no better if not much significantly slower than a MacBook Pro with an M4 Max
Does the M4 Max run SteamOS and your Windows steam games very well? I guess this Steam Machine is going to be embarassingly underpowered if it also costs $3500.
On the other hand, if it is a mass-market 'console' PC priced at ~$500-750 then I think it's okay if it's 'no better...than a Macbook Pro with M4 Max'.
> Probably more accurate to say the specs are from 2020, which is when the PS5 and XSX launched.
In 2026, those specs are significantly underpowered and close to outdated.
> Does the M4 Max run SteamOS and your Windows steam games very well?
Even if it does with Asahi Linux [0] it would still run over the Steam Machine in performance alone, especially with 2024 specifications.
We both know that neither of them can run DRM'ed games on Linux on Day 1 on Steam.
> I guess this Steam Machine is going to be embarassingly underpowered if it also costs $3500.
Not even the original Steam Machine sold well even though the lowest priced model was at ~$450 with the highest priced one was at $1,110 and was still also behind the state of the art console specs at the time.
> On the other hand, if it is a mass-market 'console' PC priced at ~$500-750 then I think it's okay if it's 'no better...than a Macbook Pro with M4 Max'.
Then there would be no point for Windows PC gamers or console players at all to switch. It only appeals to hardcore Linux users and at least competes against a Framework laptop running steam which is a very low bar to beat.
The old one used Bluetooth if you upgraded it during the transition period or you have a Windows box.
I had to borrow a friend's computer to get mine to run in BT mode because I gave up using the Steam Link fairly early and didn't use the controller again until I bought a Deck, by which point the grace period where a system update fixed it had long since expired.
My usecase for the steam controler was limited (robots); I've always used the dongle, and never needed/desired to explore direct bluetooth as an alternative.
It's a regression from the original in all the same ways that the Deck is, and it has less to offer over and above what conventional controllers like the DualSense do.
I'm willing to give it a try, but the smaller and less central trackpads compromise the only use cases that make it distinctive as a controller. (Same for the lack of dual-stage triggers.)
If I want to use analog sticks, I already have a ton of controllers with two analog sticks, some of which are generally excellent and have various advantages over the new Steam Controller.
There are some things that only a Steam Controller has ever made possible (e.g., dual trackpad movement), and others that only a Steam Controller has ever done as well (e.g., programmable dual-stage analog triggers, back paddles you can hit from basically anywhere). In the new design, each of them is either removed altogether or compromised and largely reduced to an ancillary role.
According to LTT the VR controllers have two stage triggers. Is the controller confirmed to not have them? Would be odd. PS5's triggers are the most advanced though, would be cool to have those. I'll reserve judgement on the new trackpad location until I try it. Though personally I was never a fan of the trackpads on the original or indeed any controller with trackpads.
Agreed. What this rebirth really needed was magnetic swappable input modules. We have IPD adjustments in our headsets, why not fine tuned button positions. Or trackpads. Or trackballs, whatever folks wanna build. An input hacker paradise platform.
Or a system of rails like the Switch. Or even, tbh, just more than one controller design. An option that forgoes analog sticks altogether and is designed that way from the start could also place buttons differently, have a different grip design, etc., in ways that could be nice.
Saw that the Steam Frame was wireless and lost interest. Wireless is always an extra complication that never improves things. I've learned lots about framing to hardwire my home network. Sure, make it an option, but I won't pay for latency, battery life, battery weight, cost, or pairing issues of wireless solutions. Give me (replaceable, standard) cables anyday!
That said, there is hope, because if there is a wireless version and it takes off, it can't be hard to make a wired version.
It doesn't improve quality and latency, but for VR it absolutely improves not dealing with a cable that you can't see and will tangle yourself up with if you turn either direction more than once
Two notes on how Steam Frame is handling this
- It's a standalone headset, less demanding games run directly on the Steam Frame and the wireless connection doesn't factor in to anything.
- It makes two simultaneous wifi connections, one on 5 ghz for connecting to your wifi network / internet, and another on 6 ghz for connecting to your streaming PC. They include an official 6 ghz USB dongle for the PC so you don't have to deal with finding which 3rd party option will work reliably.
The dedicated communication dongle between the PC and the headset sounds like a real game changer.
Right now getting fast enough and reliable wireless connection means either tweaking to death one's setup or spending car money on the entire setup. In particular normal people usually don't realize how crappy their wi-fi and assume it's all the same, which would end in blaming the poor perf on the headset.
Reminds me of Apple's AWDL, a similar workaround for crappy networks when the devices need a high speed low latency network. I do wonder if the headset here will do similar channel hoping tricks to join both the dongle's network and the normal wifi network.
They announced 3 products guys. The first time Valve has counted to 3.
Half Life 3 is coming.
At this point, the controller is the most exciting thing for me.
Steam machine is cool, but with how good handheld PCs already are, I'd be ok spending a bit more and just using those instead and docking it for TV gaming.
Their previous generation controller wasn't great (I have one). I got it on sale and the haptive stuff didn't work to well IMO.
I have a 8bitdo controller and they are really good. They work perfectly with Debian 13 and probably pretty much every other distro.
https://www.8bitdo.com/ultimate-3-mode-controller-xbox/
Steam Controller was significantly better than Xbox controllers for some kinds of games, but it was much clunkier for others. Steam Deck's controller is an improvement over either of them, and this new Steam Controller appears to be pretty much Deck's controller without the Deck, with some tiny extras added.
I have six of the previous generation controller and I love them, only minor annoyance is pairing them occasionally. I don't really use the haptics part all that much though
The non-handheld will likely be pricier than the handheld, due to the beefier specs. You may as well just buy one now.
idk about that - integrated buttons, battery, screen, size constraints and the R&D work that goes into all of that is probably significant compared to 'box with hardware and usb ports' (oversimplifying to make a point here though - of course lots of design work went into this as well).
2160x2160 in each eye for the headset
110 deg fov is a bit on the low side but I guess it'll have to do. I hate how 90% of VR headsets are designed to feel like you have binoculars strapped to your face, absolutely zero peripheral vision.
One of the reasons I put off getting corrective lenses for a long time and kept trying to use contacts despite how horrible they make my eyeballs feel, is that I have an extremely wide peripheral vision. I can see my fingers wiggle behind the plane defined by my shoulders, I will react to motion out there.
Having my FoV dumbed down to 90º sounds like hell, especially in a game where we are looking for opponents.
Playing Doom on a widescreen monitor with the FoV modifications made it a lot less annoying. I want that even more today.
Have you tried rimless glasses? I don't think you need eye sight correction for your peripheral vision.
> I can see my fingers wiggle behind the plane defined by my shoulders
I am a bit confused: you can see your shoulders while you are looking forward?
8GB vram in 2026?!
I think this is fine for a mass market device.
It might be easy to forget, but most gamers are not using the higher-end hardware that enthusiast discussions tend to focus on.
https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey
Perhaps an 8GB limit will encourage game studios to allow more time for optimization, which seems to have fallen out of fashion in recent years.
I imagine this will also help keep the price down, which is always nice.
It's funny - if you look at the most recent steam hardware survey results this new steam machine almost exactly matches the median system - 16gb ram, 8gb vram, 6 physical cores, and the GPU looks like be roughly similar in perf to a 3060 too.
Half Life 2 recently got a dev commentary track where Valve reflected on their decisions from 20 years ago. One of the things that stuck out to me was that, apparently, Valve called up Microsoft and said "Hey, what percentage of desktops have DirectX 8 compatible graphics cards?" and Microsoft had no idea.
And thus the Steam Hardware Survey was born. The specs automatically sounded a bit anemic to me, too, but seeing them placed on the hardware survey I don't think they're making an outright mistake, per se.
On the other hand the median system wasn't purchased in early 2026.
On the other other hand, the average system in that survey presumably cost more than what the Steam Machine will retail for, if we're correct in interpreting this as being a competitor to dedicated consoles.
If this gets enough adoption for gamedevs to prioritize support when testing games that's likely not going to be a huge problem. 16gb ram + 8gb vram is also similar to what all the current gen consoles have, although all three have the advantage of it being unified between the CPU and GPU so they can use more than 8gb vram if needed (16gb, 16gb, 12gb total system ram for PS5, XSX, Switch 2 respectively)
This is my concern as well. I suspect this will struggle versus a PS5 because even though the PS5 only has 16GB total, its unified, so it can be allocated more towards VRAM if needed.
If they are selling this for $300-400, it will be a hot item and I cant fault them at all. If it sells for $500+, its hard to recommend over a PS5 for most users.
1080p is already a struggle for some games with 8GB of VRAM in 2025, and this will probably be expected to have a service life of 5+ years.
I'm thinking maybe it's unified memory? They posted "16GB DDR5 + 8GB GDDR6 VRAM" as the specs as RAM. Typically you'd put the GPU-only VRAM together with the GPU, but the GPU has it's own separate row in the specs. Kind of suspicious how they placed those together like that, isn't it?
It's not unified here. The Steam Deck is and does not list them separately.
It's close to an RX7500/7600 paired with a Ryzen 5 7500/7600. Depending on the price it can be fine for gaming. Nobody expects enthusiast performance. It has to be priced to be competitive against consoles and lower end DIY PCs.
I rock a 2070 super with 8GB vram and I'm still waiting for a big reason to upgrade. Games run good, and I play them at 1080p on my couch.
The steam machine will be a very good upgrade!
what game needs more?
Many do, especially at higher resolutions.
I don't think there is any reason a game _needs_ more. I don't think there is any gameplay experience that couldn't be enjoyably delivered on this hardware. And it's a massive disappointment that minimum requirements bloat has been out of control lately.
With how PC part prices have exploded after AI data center buying, I think we will see developers suddenly discover that you don't actually need half these specs to run games.
I doubt the rest of the system will be able to do these high resolution versions. It's basically a console, not a gamer PC.
Especially if you do stuff like "AI" upscaling, frame generation, and raytracing.
This is the real answer. Vram is largely dependent on the resolution you're running, and at 1080p 8gb vram is fine. People who want 20GB vram are probably going to build their own machines anyways, the steam machine is meant to be a console replacement to my understanding.
I'd argue that 1080p gaming is also perfectly fine. These days most games have split the UI/window resolution from the game resolution. So you can have 4k sharp text and UI, while the actual game runs at 75%/50% resolution and you largely can't tell the difference while sitting on the couch.
Is it dependent on the resolution your running, or is it the size of all textures that need to be cached in RAM? The amount of data needed to framebuffer 1080p vs 4K isn't that great
Looks like the og Nintendo Gamecube but modernized.
Or the NeXTcube.
https://www.inexhibit.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/NeXTcub...
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/27/NeXTcube...
the GabeCube pun pratically makes itself
>Yes, Steam Machine is optimized for gaming, but it's still your PC. Install your own apps, or even another operating system. Who are we to tell you how to use your computer?
In a world of locked bootloaders and ever more locked down device, valve is pushing the envolope with a linux based gaming console.
[delayed]
Reporting indicates one of the use cases they designed for is swapping an SD card between steam deck, steam machine and steam frame to bring your installed games along with you, which is technologically unimpressive, but so far against the grain that it's shocking a company would include that kind of functionality.
So no Half Life 3? (':
Rumor has it that it’d be released with the VR set in 2026 ;)
It'd be a good plan. Make HL3 a VR game since you built VR experience by making Alyx, take it to the next level by launching your own VR headset, everything is perfectly made together and HL3 launch would be as big if not bigger than GTA, and you optimize it for your own hardware.
They announced 3 devices. 3! HL3 confirmed :D
Wasn’t that Alyx?
Perhaps Alyx walked so HL3 could run.
phoronix is blog spam. This ought to be duped to one of the other posts on the front page.
I find it weird that a new device in 2025 still comes with only one USB-C port and otherwise only USB-A. Is USB-C that much more expensive? Is it about power delivery?
I would imagine because most peripherals you'd connect to this are still mostly USB-A. Controllers, mice, keyboards, USB sticks, ...
Most peripherals these days have a detachable cable, so they can be used with USB-C or A. The main issue would be those wireless dongles.
USB-C is still not widely adopted for many specific uses, in particular peripherals (keyboard/mouse dongles)
Logitech finally got their USB-C dongle out last year I think ? Keychron only offers USB-A as far as I know. And many other keyboard and mouse brands are in the same boat. Depending on your setup that's already 2 USB-A ports needed. You can put an adapter, but you're then dongling a dongle.
PS: just realized Valve's own VR to PC adapter is also USB-A.
> [...] only offers USB-A as far as I know. And many other keyboard and mouse brands are in the same boat.
Many new computers (including this Steam Machine) have exactly two USB-2-only USB-A ports (the rest of the USB ports being more capable). It's not hard to guess what they're for: the keyboard and the mouse.
I was about to bitch about Logitech and their USB-A dongle yesterday and looked to see that they did finally produce a USB-C dongle. Miracles do happen.
Source https://store.steampowered.com/sale/hardware
It's a shame patent trolling killed the OG Steam Controller. But this one's got trackpads and seems like a decent substitute.
Indeed a massive shame. The case was ultimately thrown out but by then Valve had stopped production. I still boycott Corsair today over this.
I have the OG steam controller. I didn't realize it had turned into a collector's item.
Looks exciting! It would be amazing if the headset turns out to be useful for coding without a monitor. Say, in the park.
Being in the park kinda loses its lustre when you've got a headset strapped to your face - I'd prefer a laptop with a screen that's still visible in sunlight.
Yeah I’d go a sunglasses-like setup - preferably driven by my phone. But big tech companies have yet to take a shine to that use case.
> I'd prefer a laptop with a screen that's still visible in sunlight.
I don't understand why Amazon worked so hard to replace their neutral gray Kindles with "Kindle PaperWhite".
Paper, the material, is so white that trying to read it in sunlight will hurt your eyes. Why would you want a white reading surface instead of a gray one?
It's not actually paper-white, though, thankfully. It's more just 'not as dingy gray'
It's doable. But you need 8k per eye to read text comfortable. But what would you use for input?
A compact keyboard and an accelerometer based mouse replacement. All wireless of course. There are a few devices on the market that’d fit the bill.
Little disappointing its not got colour passthrough. I am not convinced this generation of headsets will really be the ones that AR breaks through but still its a bit disappointing and has been useful with the latest Quest headsets. Other than that it looks fairly solid.
It was noted in some articles that the "expansion port" could hypothetically be used for a color passthrough module later. But I also read that the Index had a similar port and never did much of anything with it, so that may never happen.
Definitely a cost measure to not include color passthrough, I'm not in the market to replace my Quest 3S but I'm very curious to see what price they hit with this.
Nice that it has a microSD slot so you can buy the low storage on and not be stuck with 256 GB forever.
Not a single piece of footage with someone wearing glasses and the Steam Frame
I guess we get screwed over again :-(
I'm in the same boat. But the specs do mention "Eye Glasses Max Width 140mm"
It looks pretty bad on the photos.
I thought it looked pretty attractive? Small, understated, something that would fit in pretty much anywhere without clashing. It doesn't have anything resembling a "gaming" aesthetic, which is a huge plus in my book.
I have a Steam Link and the Original Steam controller. The manufacturing while perfectly functional isn't that high quality.
This looks similar. Kinda like a mid-ranged PC case quality.
It doesn't have to be all gamer RGB, but, for me, it has to look well-designed, e.g., like Apple products. The Steam Machine looks fine, but the controller looks cheap and all the buttons seem too far away from each other, as if it's meant to be held by someone with large hands.
Oh, I was just talking about the steam machine.
For a controller, I don't care how it looks at all. All that matters is how it feels.
Nothing really looks like Apple products except Apple products though, so you are locking yourself out of buying pretty much anything except Apple with this idiosyncrasy. Which I'm sure Apple is quite pleased about.
It does kinda look like a regular SFF PC case rather than a bespoke piece of hardware, but maybe they were going for that.
The biggest complaint about the PS5 is that it stood out too much. That's the one compelling point about the Xbox Series series designs - they don't look out of place in your entertainment centre.
This is the same - you can put it somewhere people can see it and it's not an eyesore.
Yeah the PS5 definitely went too far in the other direction. Too many curves making it take up even more space than it needs to as well (although that could have been an intentional choice to stop people from putting things on top of it).
is that good bad or bad bad?
Irrelevant bad. It's a gaming product, you're not expected to wear it in public so the look doesn't matter.
"the look doesn't matter"
I think Sony would disagree:
We wanted to do something that was bold and daring almost. We wanted something forward facing and future facing, something for the 2020s [...] The PS5's design is meant to demonstrate Sony's belief that the technology inside and the games that run on it are as eye-catching as the outside you see [...] that the form factor of [...] the PS5 is meant to "grace" your living room.
The PlayStation sits in the living area of most homes, and we kind of felt it would be nice to provide a design that would really grace most living areas. That's what we've tried to do. And, you know, we think we've been successful in that.
https://www.gamespot.com/articles/sony-boss-explains-why-the...
Sony's dead wrong here. You want what's eye-catching in your living room to match your other things or fade out of sight. This design is nondescript and you can get your own custom panels if you want.
[dupe]
Steam Frame https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45903325
Steam Machine https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45903404
Meh, I'm hopeful, but I'll wait for specs.
16 GB of RAM, 4K@60 FPS, with USB3.
I’m afraid that this steam machine is so underpowered that it is no better if not much significantly slower than a MacBook Pro with a M4 Max.
The specs appear to be from late 2019. Might as well get a PS5 instead.
No thanks and No deal.
>> I’m afraid that this steam machine is so underpowered that it is no better if not much significantly slower than a MacBook Pro with a M4 Max.
Isn't that one of the fastest laptops money can buy?
"If the Steam Machine can't compete with a $3500 laptop I don't even want it!"
Because that worked well with the last Steam Machine in 2015 didn't it? Even though it was much cheaper. /s
Even with specs from 2019 - 2020, it already lost to the consoles on arrival and still can't even play the DRM'ed games on Day 1 as long as it is on SteamOS.
You might as well get a Macbook M4 Max or an equivalent Windows gaming laptop as the Steam Machine is too underpowered for PC gamers and as long as it runs SteamOS (Linux) is unable to play the same games as those on Windows on day 1.
The XBox Series X and PS5 both have 16 GB of RAM; in the case of the XSX that's 10 GB for the GPU and 6 GB for the OS and apps.
So 16 GB in this case, for running the same games and outputting to the same displays, seems entirely reasonable.
> The specs appear to be from late 2019. Pass
Probably more accurate to say the specs are from 2020, which is when the PS5 and XSX launched.
> it is no better if not much significantly slower than a MacBook Pro with an M4 Max
Does the M4 Max run SteamOS and your Windows steam games very well? I guess this Steam Machine is going to be embarassingly underpowered if it also costs $3500.
On the other hand, if it is a mass-market 'console' PC priced at ~$500-750 then I think it's okay if it's 'no better...than a Macbook Pro with M4 Max'.
> Probably more accurate to say the specs are from 2020, which is when the PS5 and XSX launched.
In 2026, those specs are significantly underpowered and close to outdated.
> Does the M4 Max run SteamOS and your Windows steam games very well?
Even if it does with Asahi Linux [0] it would still run over the Steam Machine in performance alone, especially with 2024 specifications.
We both know that neither of them can run DRM'ed games on Linux on Day 1 on Steam.
> I guess this Steam Machine is going to be embarassingly underpowered if it also costs $3500.
Not even the original Steam Machine sold well even though the lowest priced model was at ~$450 with the highest priced one was at $1,110 and was still also behind the state of the art console specs at the time.
> On the other hand, if it is a mass-market 'console' PC priced at ~$500-750 then I think it's okay if it's 'no better...than a Macbook Pro with M4 Max'.
Then there would be no point for Windows PC gamers or console players at all to switch. It only appeals to hardcore Linux users and at least competes against a Framework laptop running steam which is a very low bar to beat.
[0] https://asahilinux.org/2024/10/aaa-gaming-on-asahi-linux/
If it competes with a PS5, but runs my Steam Library, it’s automatically won IMO.
RIP Steam Controller. This headless Steam Deck is no substitute. The only halfway decent FPS controller has no substitute.
You're in luck! New one coming out.
https://store.steampowered.com/sale/steamcontroller
think that comment was saying that they don't like the new steam controller
Seems strictly better than the old one, what's not to like?
A niche usecase: it switches to a bluetooth connection instead of a usb dongle.
It has a USB wireless dongle that doubles as a charging dock with magnets and pogo pins
Indeed it does, I now see. Interesting!
The old one also used Bluetooth.
The old one used Bluetooth if you upgraded it during the transition period or you have a Windows box.
I had to borrow a friend's computer to get mine to run in BT mode because I gave up using the Steam Link fairly early and didn't use the controller again until I bought a Deck, by which point the grace period where a system update fixed it had long since expired.
My usecase for the steam controler was limited (robots); I've always used the dongle, and never needed/desired to explore direct bluetooth as an alternative.
It's a regression from the original in all the same ways that the Deck is, and it has less to offer over and above what conventional controllers like the DualSense do.
I'm willing to give it a try, but the smaller and less central trackpads compromise the only use cases that make it distinctive as a controller. (Same for the lack of dual-stage triggers.)
If I want to use analog sticks, I already have a ton of controllers with two analog sticks, some of which are generally excellent and have various advantages over the new Steam Controller.
There are some things that only a Steam Controller has ever made possible (e.g., dual trackpad movement), and others that only a Steam Controller has ever done as well (e.g., programmable dual-stage analog triggers, back paddles you can hit from basically anywhere). In the new design, each of them is either removed altogether or compromised and largely reduced to an ancillary role.
According to LTT the VR controllers have two stage triggers. Is the controller confirmed to not have them? Would be odd. PS5's triggers are the most advanced though, would be cool to have those. I'll reserve judgement on the new trackpad location until I try it. Though personally I was never a fan of the trackpads on the original or indeed any controller with trackpads.
Agreed. What this rebirth really needed was magnetic swappable input modules. We have IPD adjustments in our headsets, why not fine tuned button positions. Or trackpads. Or trackballs, whatever folks wanna build. An input hacker paradise platform.
Or a system of rails like the Switch. Or even, tbh, just more than one controller design. An option that forgoes analog sticks altogether and is designed that way from the start could also place buttons differently, have a different grip design, etc., in ways that could be nice.
Seems like that's already in the market with the Xbox Adaptive Controller
I forgot about this system. Anyone mess around with it? Does it work on Linux?
With HID Remapper it should.
Saw that the Steam Frame was wireless and lost interest. Wireless is always an extra complication that never improves things. I've learned lots about framing to hardwire my home network. Sure, make it an option, but I won't pay for latency, battery life, battery weight, cost, or pairing issues of wireless solutions. Give me (replaceable, standard) cables anyday!
That said, there is hope, because if there is a wireless version and it takes off, it can't be hard to make a wired version.
It doesn't improve quality and latency, but for VR it absolutely improves not dealing with a cable that you can't see and will tangle yourself up with if you turn either direction more than once
Two notes on how Steam Frame is handling this
- It's a standalone headset, less demanding games run directly on the Steam Frame and the wireless connection doesn't factor in to anything.
- It makes two simultaneous wifi connections, one on 5 ghz for connecting to your wifi network / internet, and another on 6 ghz for connecting to your streaming PC. They include an official 6 ghz USB dongle for the PC so you don't have to deal with finding which 3rd party option will work reliably.
I agree with you for most things, but a VR headset is definitely something where the pros outweigh the cons vis a vis avoiding wires for me.
It's also wired, and you could even take out the battery for the weight.