[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.
So it's not clear what point you were trying to make with your "it also says" comment.
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.
To many people the internet and internet explorer ( or edge ) are the same thing, and for almost everyone I know , the daily driver is the phone or tablet OS not the laptop/desktop OS. And I’m not even talking about the ones who live in a browser.
I started using Linux in 96 and for many years it was going to be the year of Linux on the desktop. It never happened , and I’m not sure it’s that important these days , given the gigantic presence Linux has, and the way people interact with computing devices in general these days .
Edit / clarification : there are a lots of computer professionals on HN, and as such see actual pcs / Macs etc a lot. Many people don’t and just see their phones.
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.
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.
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.
If they controlled the whole stack Linux native games would be a requirement.
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
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.
As for the desktop experience, having access to linux is way better than windows.
It is incredible in desktop mode, in modern times it can literally provide all the computing a normal user needs, which is kinda ironic.
I heard though Valve is working closely with nvidia to get steamos working, so I am holding for that one instead
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.
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.
Which I suppose I'd add to point out I'm not a "Steam Machine partisan"... I was interested but bailed out about 3 months ago, before the price was even announced.
As for HDMI CEC, the machine I bought has an AMD 9060XT in it, and HDMI CEC seems to work fine. I didn't do much to make it happen. Maybe I flipped a switch to turn it on in the UI, but that was it. I've had a couple of people ask me why it works and all I can say is I don't know, because I didn't do much (if anything) to turn it on.
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.
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).
- games on steam are very often discounted, that makes it way, way cheaper in the long term than a console
First option:
* 35 litre case (~10 times bigger than the SteamMachine) * ~250W power draw (vs. ~185W SteamMachine) * 32-36 dBA (vs. ~23 dBA SteamMachine)
Second option:
* 35 litre case (~10 times bigger than the SteamMachine) * ~285W power draw (vs. ~185W SteamMachine) * 32-36 dBA (vs. ~23 dBA SteamMachine)
Third option:
* 19.2 litre case (~5.5 times bigger than the SteamMachine) * ~295W power draw (vs. ~185W SteamMachine) * 34-38 dBA (vs. ~23 dBA SteamMachine)
Fourth option:
* 19.2 litre case (~5.5 times bigger than the SteamMachine) * ~275W power draw (vs. ~185W SteamMachine) * 32-35 dBA (vs. ~23 dBA SteamMachine)
Physical size is definitely a bigger concern, nothing can beat the Steam Machine. But I do prefer the long and thin design like the PlayStation series has always used. It's easier to fit that on the shelves inside a TV stand that were designed to hold cable boxes and DVD players or it can fit upright behind a TV. I'm not sure if I actually have room to put a Steam Machine behind my TV without it overhanging the edge a bit.
As for loudness, that's a bit more subjective. It depends on how far away you are from the PC and how loud you play sound or if you're using a headset. Just totally based on my experience, games that are very quiet are usually the low-resource indie games that wouldn't be pushing my GPU to max fan speed anyway. The games I have that really push my GPU tend to have pretty loud sound design.
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.
It's easily worth the price.
Factor in the amount of quality games you can get for cheap on Steam then it's not even expensive compared to other consoles. Switch games are ludicrously expensive for example.
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.