Hah, this is where they get you and I’ve been dogpiled for this continuously. This is an illusion of an open system. Where are you going to buy games for Steam Machine? Steam obviously, there’s no competition. Then as your library grows you get more and more vendor locked. Then Valve does an Android application notarising switcheroo and you have Linux machine that’s no different from a Mac. Of course they can subsidise it, it’ll only accelerate the process.

Steam deck has customization you can buy with their points, I could see them getting some extra game sales that way

Also some of those old steam machines were comically expensive, in part because all the different vendors wanted a cut, in part because some of them made new cases

>VR, controller, and console/PC that all interact seamlessly I don't see it as a killer feature. In fact, the main advantage of these individual devices (as in the new ones, not Steam Deck) is that you don't need the others, rather than that they interact seamlessly. e.g with Steam Frame, you don't need a gaming PC to actually run Half Life Alyx to be able to play it. If you already have a gaming PC, at most it offers minor advantages over any other VR headset. e.g with Steam Machine, you don't need a gaming PC to engage with the Valve ecosystem and play on your TV. If you already have a gaming PC, you can already stream it to your TV for free. Also, ecosystem maturity won't fundamentally change that as a prospective steam machine customer, you will still need to configure game settings. You will still accidentally touch the trackpads in a way that causes issues in some games. Granted, the relative maturity and design improvements will make a big difference. But it's more of a difference in customer retention and satisfaction than a difference that will get Valve's foot in the door with someone invested enough in gaming to prefer a more open ecosystem, yet not invested enough to already own an equivalent console or equivalent/better gaming PC. There are many ways they could leverage a lower cost which Sony/MS can't/won't, e.g. make generic controllers compatible, sell the console without one, recoup margin on steam controllers (one of the highest-margin tech product categories around these days)

Prebuilt PC market is fucked, it could be 800 and sell like crazy, if the experience is good

Based on the specs it is a bit bumped up Ryzen 7000/8000 series (Zen 4 arch), with a beefed up GPU (sounds to be about two 780Ms soldered together with a bit of overclocking). I wouldn't be surprised if MS wanted a mid-generation upgrade to the Xbox but the current economic situation put a damper on it before the hardware could fully materialise and AMD ended up with a practically ready for production APU they couldn't sell to anyone before Valve strolled up.

Doubt it. The steam deck provides at least a compelling reason and it didn't sell all that great. This is just pissing money away on shitty hardware. Console buyers are not going to be pulled away from their eco systems and PC builders are going to know better. At best they're going to get a sliver of the pre built market and they will quickly adjust while the box sku will remain largely untouched. I'm looking for small cheap boxes to put in other rooms for the family and to replace consoles and it's a non starter for me. Who is actually going to purchase this thing?

Theoretically people could use it for a cheap non-gaming PC, except the cheapest non-gaming PC would be non-gaming specs. Anyone using it for cheap crypto-mining is an idiot, the cheap option there is a rack full of bang-for-buck GPUs. Are there any other use-cases that involve gaming-PC specs? Making videos, perhaps?

Microsoft and Sony have no leverage at all over Valve when it comes to PC sales. Reneging on their deals to bring their published games to Steam would only mean fewer sales.

No. It's going to be sub PS5 in terms of performance and should be priced accordingly. You can make the argument that games are a bit cheaper on Steam so they can maybe charge a premium for that, but I would only consider one if it could do the things my PS5 does at a similar price.

The issue is that if you sell the PC at a loss, you're effectively subsidzing every person and business who wants an SFF-PC but may not necessarily buy games for them. It's not like the Steam Deck where you can bet the majority of those devices are ending up in the hands of gamers.

It failed for multiple reasons, but a big reason was that they tried to outsource the hardware and basically just got reskins of existing gaming-PC prebuilds, which didn't actually make PCs any less confusing. And they didn't actually save money (and some were overpriced scams) so buyers were basically forced to do as much research as buying an actual gaming PC. All of that will be solved, *and* the software/UX/other stuff you mentioned are far more mature, like you say.

Could be good for some home automation workflows- plex server, transcribing security cam video, doing object detection on said video.

Price out a build that will compete with this and not require an ATX tower.

And beyond the aggressive pricing, the one major benefit over other miniPC makers is the extensive support. I have a Minisforum mini PC. Took Minisforum over a year to release BIOS updates that were finished in March 2024... and against all CS promises it still hasn't fixed the initial discrepancies (advertised as the only 8945HS mini PC that can go over 57W due to their improved cooling, and the only Ryzen 8000 series APU that can handle RAM at 5400-5600MT/s - still can't get power over 57W and even though I have compatible RAM, it refuses to clock over 4800MHz, and there's no option to configure it either). Meanwhile Valve is _still_ dropping improvements on the Steam Deck, 3.5 years after release.

Asus B360 Prime with 32GB RAM i5 9400F CPU 6700 XT GPU w/ 12GB VRAM (all of that used) ... however, I originally bought it all for a virtual pinball build so I'm sure it could be done better with Bazzite in mind from the start. I went with a white+birch Lian Li A3-mATX to get something barely good looking enough to fit with the rest of the gaming room.

Meta sold Quest headsets at a loss to cover the market. Valve sold the Index for profit.

Have you seen a PS5? ATX is what people already do at this price point. ITX isn't the pull here.

The success of the Steam Deck clearly proves how many pc users prefer a ready to go console-like experience, over high performance. Anything under 850 will sell like crazy. And considering that this is a Linux pc, i saw this as an absolute win. 2026 could really be the year of Linux.

People seriously underestimate the performance that you can pull out a medium-level hardware with some highly-optimized OS. I mean, just watch what they were able to archive with the Deck.