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pweaver 2 hours ago [-]
The analysis seems mostly[1] solid but the conclusions are all wrong. The steam machine was sold out and wait-listed. Value doesn't charge until you are removed from the wait-list so these numbers reflect the number of manufactured units per week (e.g. manufacturing capacity and/or distribution strategy) of the steam machine and not demand. This is only a minimum demand. To get the demand you would need to derive info about the length of the waiting list.
[1] The unit mix would be what valve picked as the initial mix and not necessarily the market average. Also, the sales numbers would include the steam controller if you selected that option but I don't know if there is good data on whether any of the initial reservations had the steam controller.
brookst 2 hours ago [-]
I read the analysis and I don’t see anywhere that it claims to measure demand.
It seems pretty clear it’s about how many units Valve is selling (charging for, shipping) and explicitly not about reservations or demand.
Valve is being smart here. It is far better to be supply constrained at launch than to have enough capacity to meet initial demand (and then far too much capacity when demand slows over time).
pweaver 2 hours ago [-]
Ya, the article doesn't specifically use the word demand but in the final section Is It Good? says "The estimated 12k to 15k weekly sales volume reflects the fact that this is not a mainstream home run." this implies that the 12k-15k is a demand number but we can't reach that conclusion with this data.
ekianjo 1 hours ago [-]
it also says:
> On top of that, Valve may be constrained in the number of units they can actually ship, so there may be downward pressure on a higher demand. We don’t know for sure.
layer8 50 minutes ago [-]
Given that the waitlist still exists, I think we can be pretty sure.
ekianjo 41 minutes ago [-]
Yes, but it does not tell you if the demand is 3x what the supply is right now or simply slightly above supply.
1 hours ago [-]
mmusc 4 hours ago [-]
One interesting point I've seen online is that the steam machine is more of a budget Mac than a pc. As valve controls the whole stack including the OS which creates a very streamlined experience that just works.
Maybe its what will make Linux more mainstream!
Agingcoder 3 hours ago [-]
Linux has gone mainstream a long time ago - from dvd players to android phones. It just hasn’t succceeded on old preexisting markets ( personal computers ) but has taken large parts of most of the newly created ones ( servers , mobile devices , embedded devices etc )
fergal_reid 54 minutes ago [-]
Yes - but this will be the year of Linux on the desktop.
ReptileMan 40 minutes ago [-]
one of the more interesting things about the harnesses and agents is that they solve a lot of the ops issues in both linux and windows desktops.
A prompt with - "disable telemetry, disable useless services and memory hogging ones, disable auto restart" makes windows quite bearable.
KetoManx64 18 minutes ago [-]
And then on the next Windows update they will all be turned back on again.
Forgeties79 2 hours ago [-]
I feel like this is a little nitpicky. Clearly they are talking about mainstream for the average home computer user as a daily driver OS. Even with the steam deck it’s barely touching 5%. It’s still obscure and mysterious to the vast majority of the population in a way windows and macOS aren’t.
sejje 2 hours ago [-]
I've been a techie my whole life, and for me, the mysterious OS is macOS. I haven't used it since high school (late 90s), which is when I picked up linux at home.
I was never able to afford mac products as a young person, and now that I can, I wouldn't part with linux.
Forgeties79 50 minutes ago [-]
I really don’t feel like I need to explain how this is not what I’m talking about.
ZiiS 1 hours ago [-]
The percentage of computers involved running Windows when you Google, Netflix, Amazon, Bank, Email on your Windows laptop is less then 50%.
Forgeties79 49 minutes ago [-]
As I said to the other person, I really don’t feel like I need to explain how this is not what we are talking about.
Go ask 100 random people to name 1 Linux distro.
KetoManx64 15 minutes ago [-]
Go ask 100 people what operating system they're using and if they do say windows, ask them what version.
falsemyrmidon 1 hours ago [-]
With the steam deck 5% is around 300% to 500% growth over the last 5 years
pjmlp 54 minutes ago [-]
Linux kernel is an implementation detail on Android, not exposed to userspace.
Consumers don't care what kernel runs on their electronics.
fendy3002 3 hours ago [-]
Yes, sometimes it's difficult to find the correct driver for Linux and set it up. Having steam machine be start and play like steam deck really brings the console feel on PC. Moreover it's still Linux which you can use for other things, so people doesn't feel loss for this.
drnick1 56 minutes ago [-]
> Yes, sometimes it's difficult to find the correct driver for Linux and set it up.
It's interesting that you say that, because it isn't how drivers normally work on Linux. Finding, downloading and installing drivers is very much a Windows thing.
37 minutes ago [-]
dannersy 2 hours ago [-]
Nvidia has been historically tricky, but in the last two years or so (maybe longer), I have not needed to do any manual work for drivers. Sometimes, you may see some diminished performance on hardware that is brand new until drivers catch up, but that is usually just about waiting for an update on driver you already have.
I've been of the belief that 2026 has been year of the Linux desktop. As a user of MacOS for work and Linux at home, and being a former user of Windows for decades for video games, Linux has come so far that I think it has surpassed the mainstream OSes in terms of experience. The barrier to entry isn't really troubleshooting anymore, it is that we don't have any dominant desktop environment. Which is "bad" for adoption, but has been great for iteration by teams who are not bogged down by the need to support legacy users who don't want things to change.
pjmlp 55 minutes ago [-]
It doesn't control the games though, hence Proton.
If they controlled the whole stack Linux native games would be a requirement.
ekianjo 3 hours ago [-]
Valve's vertical control over SteamOS, the UI, and the hardware specs indeed gives the Steam Machine that taste of Mac. Not sure if Apple would have gone for something like that if they ever made a console: one key difference is that Valve keeps it open like a regular PC which is a major benefit to keep the device alive down the road for years to come.
gessha 2 hours ago [-]
It was always the disconnect between the people who made it work and the people who couldn’t that prevented wider adoption.
infecto 3 hours ago [-]
It is great timing in a way. There is a backlash with consoles and now more than ever the energy around AAA studios feels pretty low. You don't need incredible horsepower to play really fun games that still look visually appealing.
somat 1 hours ago [-]
Yeah PC is sort of the "forever" console, I mean it's not strictly, there is always the upgrade grind, but new hardware tends to run old software fine(ish) and many(most if you play a lot of the smaller indie stuff) new games work fine on older hardware.
It is a huge mess compared to consoles but that is often the price of freedom and I am happy that at least one system escaped control of a single corporation.
ray_v 3 hours ago [-]
And the price is steep but in my opinion, you really do get a lot of value here - especially with the fact that you instantly pull a ton of your library in seamlessly. If you've been in this ecosystem for a while that's a huge selling-point - or, at least it was for me!
infecto 2 hours ago [-]
Agree. I suspect others who use steam are thinking the same thing.
When I heard the news for playstation my mind instantly jumped to silly digital prices for games forever. I look at the nintendo switch store and they will sell a digital copy for new retail price for years after even if you can pickup a used copy on ebay for half the price or less.
weakfish 1 hours ago [-]
Yep. A large part of the value prop for me is easy portability of the same games and saves to couch or PC with zero effort or re-purchase.
ZekeSulastin 1 hours ago [-]
I never want to see HN complaining about Apple prices ever again now that I see multiple folks calling the Steam Machine a great value.
amarant 31 minutes ago [-]
The steam machine handily beats apple in terms of dollar per TFLOP and dollar per GB memory. It's also easier to upgrade, making it likely to last longer.
Unified memory puts Apple in it's own category for certain workloads however, but since we're talking about gaming here, and not local LLMs, Apple simply cannot compete on any kind of value comparison
doctorpangloss 1 hours ago [-]
A great value if you pirate games.
krzyk 1 hours ago [-]
Great value if you buy games in steam sales, which are so common and deep that it leaves any console way back.
thewrinklyninja 3 hours ago [-]
The Nintendo Switch was a great console for pointing that out as well. fun games on older mobile hardware even at the time it came out.
Fire-Dragon-DoL 3 hours ago [-]
I got one and I am considering switching everything to SteamOS. Unfortunately I still have nvidia cards around, but the experience is amazing for videogames.
As for the desktop experience, having access to linux is way better than windows.
wronex 60 minutes ago [-]
I run Windows on all my computers but was pleasantly surprised by the desktop mode on SteamOS. The incredible number of options on a simple config dialog such as changing the keyboard layout was incredibly impressive (which isn’t SteamOS specific but rather a Gnome thing?).
garciansmith 57 minutes ago [-]
SteamOS uses KDE Plasma for the desktop mode, not Gnome.
55 minutes ago [-]
tenuousemphasis 2 hours ago [-]
There's an Nvidia branch of Bazzite, and it works great. I'm even surprisingly able to play Star Citizen, which is notoriously finicky.
cgearhart 2 hours ago [-]
A few months ago I got tired of waiting for the steam machine and built my own. Geekom box on sale (note: would NOT buy from them again) and then a quick hour or so to get Bazzite running. The hardest part was purchasing a thumb drive (had 3 in a row fail to deliver from amazon—that’s never happened to me before). Despite all that, Bazzite has been amazing. And for the kind of gaming I do, this little machine is more than enough. The Steam machine is likely overkill for me, honestly.
YawningAngel 2 hours ago [-]
Can you explain what the point of Bazzite is? I don't really understand what it adds over installing Lutris onto whatever distro you would otherwise have used
omnimus 1 hours ago [-]
You can indeed install everything manually (it won't be just lutris though, there are many possible tweaks).
SteamOS/Bazzite/uBlue project are Linux distros with immutable core. The immutable part is tweaked, tested, fixed in time and can be easily switched/rolled back. Many people (me included) find it much nicer experience to get some battery included base that someone more competent put together and that can't be easily broken. So instead of figuring out how to put linux parts together you find immutable distro that fits most of what you need and then install just what is missing.
bikelang 46 minutes ago [-]
It’s just an opinionated, gaming-centric build of Fedora Silverblue/Kinoite. It ships with everything preconfigured for typical gamers that just want a low barrier to entry and low maintenance burden. It’s extremely plug-and-play.
cgearhart 2 hours ago [-]
I like my steam deck and got tired of waiting for the steam machine. I asked one of the AIs for something similar and it told me to install Bazzite. Took me an hour and I got the Steam-like UI that I wanted. I did not explore other options because my problem was solved.
laughing_man 3 hours ago [-]
This is why I would never make it in business. I just don't see the consumer case for buying a Steam Machine. They're too expensive for the console niche they're intended to occupy.
kittoes 40 minutes ago [-]
As a kid who grew up absolutely loving their GameCube, this is a perfect computer to me. Yes, I already built my own LAN cube ~2 years ago that fits in my carry-on and is significantly more powerful for a comparable price point... but the Steam Machine is WAY smaller! I can fit it in my backpack and still have room for a monitor, work laptop, peripherals, Steam Deck, and clothing. It's just not possible to build a DIY machine of this size + quality without resorting to extremes as a consumer.
garciansmith 47 minutes ago [-]
The selling point, for me, is that it's a console in both form factor (not a PC tower, smaller than small PC cases) and easy of use (you plug it in, you play games, no shopping around for parts), yet because it's a PC you have control over it (load non-Steam games, use the desktop to do whatever, install a different OS even).
Clearly not for everyone, but for someone like me who wants a more powerful box than the Steam Deck or Switch under a TV, yet hates the locked-down nature of the traditional console makers (which are just slowly getting worse, viz. Sony's announcement to kill physical media and the control it brings owners).
jerf 2 hours ago [-]
The sad thing is, they're not. A lot of people have not been paying attention to PC costs. This is what they cost now. I've seen a few "make your own" builds online. If you use new parts, you might save 80$, and you generally don't get the form factor, efficiency, integrated Steam Controller puck, or visual appearance with those builds, plus, you know, you're building then yourself which should be counted for at least some cost in most cases. Anything that saves more than that involves used parts or parts the person making the video/article already had, which is fine if you have them but not generally comparable.
You can get a better deal on some consoles at the moment, but I wouldn't count on that to last. The Switch 2 has a price increase scheduled. The Xbox line has a price increase scheduled. PlayStation did one earlier this year. Rather than being a permanent situation this feels like everything going up, just irregularly rather than smoothly, so sometimes one thing feels like a better deal, sometimes another, but it's not obvious that any of them are much better on a longer time frame. If you're looking out at the console versus Steam Machine and thinking the consoles look better for your use case, you don't already have one, and you're interested in one of them, I suggest moving sooner rather than later.
The Steam Machine is what got noticed, and earthed a lot of anger about prices, but it's not particularly out of line or especially expensive. The whole market is screwed up.
ZekeSulastin 1 hours ago [-]
It was still overpriced when it was rumored to be ~$700 with the rest of the market priced commensurately, and I go online right now and buy significantly more powerful prebuilts for less, albeit without the integrated puck (which does nothing without buying the non-included controller anyways), HDMI CEC (probably want to hold off on that for a patch cycle or three if the complaints on r/SteamMachine are any indication), and the size (ok ya got me there).
gary_0 1 hours ago [-]
> If you use new parts, you might save 80$
Valve very obviously isn't enjoying a fat margin on Steam Machines, but they're not a public company so profit is profit. And people who buy Steam Machines are more encouraged to buy games on Steam and pay that nice juicy 30%.
cassianoleal 1 hours ago [-]
> integrated Steam Controller puck
This is part of the controller, not the Machine. Unless you mean software integration, then it's on SteamOS and the Steam client, both of which can run on custom hardware.
tomku 42 minutes ago [-]
No, it's part of the Machine. Direct quote from the Steam Machine page:
"Steam Controller's wireless adapter is built right into Steam Machine for direct pairing. "
It has dedicated hardware for pairing with Steam Controllers without needing a puck adapter plugged into a USB port.
Not only do you have to build them, but in all those builds the cases are several times larger than the Steam Machine, so they are not actually equivalent. If you care about the form factor, there is nothing directly comparable.
brookst 2 hours ago [-]
This is the old “why buy a prebuilt PC when you can DIY for less”. Which is true, but completely misses the point that may people will happily pay to 1) not have to build it, and 2) have e2e warranty, and 3) have someone else do the software setup.
We can debate if it’s the most efficient use of money for a technical person, but it’s indisputable that many people get enough value to pay for the prebuilt.
Ronsenshi 3 hours ago [-]
Consoles are quite expensive too these days. I think if not for the whole AI hypetrain and subsequent chip shortage, price for Steam Machine would have been more friendly.
laughing_man 46 minutes ago [-]
They've said as much.
Havoc 3 hours ago [-]
Not going to buy one but I am stoked. The more energy flows into Linux gaming the better
Narishma 2 hours ago [-]
I'm not sure about their methodology.
They looked at the global chart, but did they take into account that the Steam Machine isn't available everywhere?
It's also a single point in time while the chart is constantly changing. Right now for example the Steam Machine is in 3rd place behind Palworld, while in their calculation it was above it.
brador 36 minutes ago [-]
It’s selling to collectors not genuine players. It’ll catch dust after week 1. Sales will crash out.
This is why you never wait to sell a product once the work is done.
Once the buyer has the card out do the deal. Never stall. You are never too big to fail.
kibwen 4 hours ago [-]
Very interesting, it didn't occur to me that hardware products would show up on Steam's top-sellers list.
At this rate, the Steam Machine will probably turn out to be a modest success. Remember, it's a PC, not a console. Unlike a console, it doesn't need to use hardware sales to convince game developers to ship games for the platform; the PC platform does not depend on the Steam Machine selling like hotcakes. Also unlike a console, Valve isn't selling these at a loss; Sony can sell you hardware at a loss because they claw that money back via online subscriptions and platform licensing fees. Valve will likely be happy enough if they can sell 100,000 by the end of the year, and based on these estimates they may already be about halfway there.
infecto 3 hours ago [-]
The steam deck has been on the top sellers list on and off for some time now.
1 hours ago [-]
nvarsj 3 hours ago [-]
This assumes Valve isn't artifically bumping up the Steam Machine for more exposure.
AndrewDucker 2 hours ago [-]
They already can't make enough to keep up with demand. Inducing more demand at this point doesn't make them any more money.
lapelusa 3 hours ago [-]
Why would we assume otherwise? Valve, with all its flaws, is the one mainstream company that I'm aware of that is consumer friendly and has no issues disclosing real metrics.
serf 3 hours ago [-]
why would we assume a corporate entity wouldn't manipulate popularity numbers on an owned and unregulated platform that sells their own goods?
owning 'the list' for a thing makes a company, it's why billboard still has any relevance.
hilariously 2 hours ago [-]
That guy basically saying that sampling bias is the problem, not the company steering numbers for games.
kibwen 3 hours ago [-]
This makes no sense. Valve can already just advertise the Steam Machine on the homepage, the page that everyone sees when they open Steam. They don't need to manipulate any rankings on the top-sellers list, the page that no ordinary person regularly looks at.
Onawa 3 hours ago [-]
Funny enough, I literally looked at the top sellers list last night, for the first time in probably years. I decided to look after I saw Palworld topping the charts, which I thought was interesting since it released early access 2 years ago. Turns out it just released v1.0.
infecto 3 hours ago [-]
Agree with the rest but I pretty regularly look at the top selling and new & upcoming.
lapelusa 3 hours ago [-]
Exactly. Plus, Valve is the last company that I know of that IA transparent about metrics.
[1] The unit mix would be what valve picked as the initial mix and not necessarily the market average. Also, the sales numbers would include the steam controller if you selected that option but I don't know if there is good data on whether any of the initial reservations had the steam controller.
It seems pretty clear it’s about how many units Valve is selling (charging for, shipping) and explicitly not about reservations or demand.
Valve is being smart here. It is far better to be supply constrained at launch than to have enough capacity to meet initial demand (and then far too much capacity when demand slows over time).
> On top of that, Valve may be constrained in the number of units they can actually ship, so there may be downward pressure on a higher demand. We don’t know for sure.
Maybe its what will make Linux more mainstream!
A prompt with - "disable telemetry, disable useless services and memory hogging ones, disable auto restart" makes windows quite bearable.
I was never able to afford mac products as a young person, and now that I can, I wouldn't part with linux.
Go ask 100 random people to name 1 Linux distro.
Consumers don't care what kernel runs on their electronics.
It's interesting that you say that, because it isn't how drivers normally work on Linux. Finding, downloading and installing drivers is very much a Windows thing.
I've been of the belief that 2026 has been year of the Linux desktop. As a user of MacOS for work and Linux at home, and being a former user of Windows for decades for video games, Linux has come so far that I think it has surpassed the mainstream OSes in terms of experience. The barrier to entry isn't really troubleshooting anymore, it is that we don't have any dominant desktop environment. Which is "bad" for adoption, but has been great for iteration by teams who are not bogged down by the need to support legacy users who don't want things to change.
If they controlled the whole stack Linux native games would be a requirement.
It is a huge mess compared to consoles but that is often the price of freedom and I am happy that at least one system escaped control of a single corporation.
When I heard the news for playstation my mind instantly jumped to silly digital prices for games forever. I look at the nintendo switch store and they will sell a digital copy for new retail price for years after even if you can pickup a used copy on ebay for half the price or less.
Unified memory puts Apple in it's own category for certain workloads however, but since we're talking about gaming here, and not local LLMs, Apple simply cannot compete on any kind of value comparison
As for the desktop experience, having access to linux is way better than windows.
SteamOS/Bazzite/uBlue project are Linux distros with immutable core. The immutable part is tweaked, tested, fixed in time and can be easily switched/rolled back. Many people (me included) find it much nicer experience to get some battery included base that someone more competent put together and that can't be easily broken. So instead of figuring out how to put linux parts together you find immutable distro that fits most of what you need and then install just what is missing.
Clearly not for everyone, but for someone like me who wants a more powerful box than the Steam Deck or Switch under a TV, yet hates the locked-down nature of the traditional console makers (which are just slowly getting worse, viz. Sony's announcement to kill physical media and the control it brings owners).
You can get a better deal on some consoles at the moment, but I wouldn't count on that to last. The Switch 2 has a price increase scheduled. The Xbox line has a price increase scheduled. PlayStation did one earlier this year. Rather than being a permanent situation this feels like everything going up, just irregularly rather than smoothly, so sometimes one thing feels like a better deal, sometimes another, but it's not obvious that any of them are much better on a longer time frame. If you're looking out at the console versus Steam Machine and thinking the consoles look better for your use case, you don't already have one, and you're interested in one of them, I suggest moving sooner rather than later.
The Steam Machine is what got noticed, and earthed a lot of anger about prices, but it's not particularly out of line or especially expensive. The whole market is screwed up.
Valve very obviously isn't enjoying a fat margin on Steam Machines, but they're not a public company so profit is profit. And people who buy Steam Machines are more encouraged to buy games on Steam and pay that nice juicy 30%.
This is part of the controller, not the Machine. Unless you mean software integration, then it's on SteamOS and the Steam client, both of which can run on custom hardware.
"Steam Controller's wireless adapter is built right into Steam Machine for direct pairing. "
It has dedicated hardware for pairing with Steam Controllers without needing a puck adapter plugged into a USB port.
We can debate if it’s the most efficient use of money for a technical person, but it’s indisputable that many people get enough value to pay for the prebuilt.
They looked at the global chart, but did they take into account that the Steam Machine isn't available everywhere?
It's also a single point in time while the chart is constantly changing. Right now for example the Steam Machine is in 3rd place behind Palworld, while in their calculation it was above it.
This is why you never wait to sell a product once the work is done.
Once the buyer has the card out do the deal. Never stall. You are never too big to fail.
At this rate, the Steam Machine will probably turn out to be a modest success. Remember, it's a PC, not a console. Unlike a console, it doesn't need to use hardware sales to convince game developers to ship games for the platform; the PC platform does not depend on the Steam Machine selling like hotcakes. Also unlike a console, Valve isn't selling these at a loss; Sony can sell you hardware at a loss because they claw that money back via online subscriptions and platform licensing fees. Valve will likely be happy enough if they can sell 100,000 by the end of the year, and based on these estimates they may already be about halfway there.
https://80.lv/articles/former-valve-developer-claims-steam-l...
owning 'the list' for a thing makes a company, it's why billboard still has any relevance.