Steam Machines - Are they worth it?

[nicklmg]

Amazon: http://geni.us/2wsP

NCIX: http://bit.ly/1NaLm4g

 

Steam Machines are finally here, and we're ready for dat sweet Steam experience in the living room. But is it everything we had hoped for?...

 

[aLemonNation]

Yay new video.

[Minzo]

Here's a decent steam machine.

 

 

[Darel321]

is it worth it?? no, some day maybe.. not today

[deficitdisorder]

Early reports suggest to me, not really. At least not yet. SteamOS has some things that needed iron outed. I'd still just get a windows mATX machine and use steam big picture

[Agent181]

time to F5 vessel

[JebKerman]

*immediately F5s Vessel*

 

time to F5 vessel

DAMN YOU!

[Rohith_Kumar_Sp]

@nicklmg wrong thumbnail?

[JebKerman]

@nicklmg wrong thumbnail?

no actually, look closely. (though a more obvious one might be in the works)

[Agent181]

*immediately F5s Vessel*

 

DAMN YOU!

[nicklmg]

@nicklmg wrong thumbnail?

That was the YT autograb one. For some reason it chose like, the one of very few frames from this video that were from another video lol.

[Chasem121]

The problem with steam machines is that they target a market that doesn't exist or is extremely small

[Agent181]

That was the YT autograb one. For some reason it chose like, the one of very few frames from this video that were from another video lol.

how long until the vessel vid upload?

[StrongAsFe]

Well, are they, Nick?

[TexasTech]

My honest opinion is that steam should stay on the desktop. Steam machines target a group way to small to make any profit. Even though i am a hardcore PC gamer, i would prefer to buy a console for "living room gaming,"  since they are cheap-ish, plus you would get console exclusives. Also, why would any PC gamer want to go from glorious 4k to the somewhat underwhelming standard 1080p Just my honest opinion.

[Paralectic]

Steam Machines are compact prebuilt PCs with Steam OS.

[Guest]

Are they worth it?

 

I think Linus' sweater says it all

[alextulu]

The biggest problem that I see with Steam Machines is that they're made for console gamers, while in the same time having different models with different specs. Console gamers don't want to learn all the CPU and GPU model numbers and which model can play which game. They expect all the games made for SteamOS to run on all Steam Machines. On a console, all you need to know is if you have enough free HDD space left.

 

Linus complained that in Big Picture mode you can't search for games that are Linux/SteamOS compatible (even though you can in the desktop interface), but that's not enough for console gamers. Steam should also analyse you configuration and tell you if you PC or Steam Machine has the minimum requirements for the game that you're trying to buy. And maybe even recommend which graphics quality setting to use based on your specs.

 

Actually, when you buy a Steam Machine, the website should have a list with all the games that can run on it, so that somebody doesn't buy a cheap Steam Machine only to find out later that it can't run his/her favourite game.

[chuiu]

So I don't know how Linus totally missed the fact that holding shift turns - into _ on the steam keyboard, the same way you get it on a normal keyboard.  Or the fact that you can filter by steamOS on the normal steam interface.  But I do agree that there need to be more features in big picture like filtering the games or the ability to use the steam controller as a mouse cursor, which looks like they are going to add in the future.

[You_are_a_cunt]

Somehow the conclusion does not surprise me.

[DoubleUx2]

I also tweeted this to Linus a week ago but didn't get a response, so lets try it here.

 

At the 3:00 mark Linus says that those are USB 2.0 ports, why is there a USB 3.0 logo on the ports?

[Ahaber]

I think this is probably as good as to be expected of a brand new first generation product where the os was basically built from the ground up and can have the option to be updated in the future. I think that in the future if valve is willing to pursue this product category, then there is a possibility that in a short time all games could be made available on steam os and the software could become optimized to the point of being as efficient as or more efficient than windows.

[Applesean]

This looks like the biggest load of crap, what is the point of it? Linus says it can play Bioshock Infinite at low settings. I'm pretty sure my Xbox360 runs that game on low settings, but that didn't cost £450. But even if I didn't have my PC I still got a ps4 that cost me £300 and what can this do better then my ps4 for the extra £150? Nothing! It does everything worse. Games are going to be better optimise for console any day. I wont bang on about the controller because I haven't used it. All I can say about it is, it ugly. And what video card does it have? "NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX™ GPU with 2GB GDDR5"  Unknown then? 

[NinjaCode]

Can we really call it a gaming console? I see it as a pc.

[T.Q.]

As someone who games in windows and does works in linux I wish Valve could get their shit together because some versions of linux have good GUI interfaces for doing everyday stuff. As of the moment like Linus said steam machine are not taking on PC nor console. Great job on the steam link though.