The Steam machines flopped because of game compatibility, or lack thereof. That can be pretty much considered solved. These days a steam console would be much more attractive.
Steam Machines flopped because everyone with the badge thought it was a licence to print money and marked up mini PCs to the point where it made no sense to not buy a dedicatd gaming laptop instead.
We live in a very different world with 1080p capable mini-pcs abounds and SteamOS/Bazzite showing how a gaming OS should be.
I would love to see them sell the controller and mini PCs through hardware partners that get that this is an opportunity to shift units, not mark up, but I’m not optimistic, and if I save $200 by not having a little steam badge so be it.
It’s pretty obviously both things that were a problem. A mediocre prebuilt with a $200 premium over other mediocre prebuilts was unattractive, but plenty of people do buy overpriced mediocre prebuilts. The killer feature being that nearly no games were compatible was going to kill it even if the price was right, though.
Now we’re in the era of Proton, and games just work, if the price is fair, it’ll sell. If the price is you cannot get anything like this without spending much more like the Deck or how consoles used to be priced when the hardware made a loss and the profits came from games, then it’ll sell really well.
The Steam machines flopped because of game compatibility, or lack thereof. That can be pretty much considered solved. These days a steam console would be much more attractive.
Steam Machines flopped because everyone with the badge thought it was a licence to print money and marked up mini PCs to the point where it made no sense to not buy a dedicatd gaming laptop instead.
We live in a very different world with 1080p capable mini-pcs abounds and SteamOS/Bazzite showing how a gaming OS should be.
I would love to see them sell the controller and mini PCs through hardware partners that get that this is an opportunity to shift units, not mark up, but I’m not optimistic, and if I save $200 by not having a little steam badge so be it.
It’s pretty obviously both things that were a problem. A mediocre prebuilt with a $200 premium over other mediocre prebuilts was unattractive, but plenty of people do buy overpriced mediocre prebuilts. The killer feature being that nearly no games were compatible was going to kill it even if the price was right, though.
Now we’re in the era of Proton, and games just work, if the price is fair, it’ll sell. If the price is you cannot get anything like this without spending much more like the Deck or how consoles used to be priced when the hardware made a loss and the profits came from games, then it’ll sell really well.