But there are economic benefits to an open ecosystem. The Steam Machine has a gigantic back catalog of games that can be had for cheap. You also probably already have all the peripherals you'll need for it. And of course they don't charge for online play.

That last part alone makes up for the cost after just 2-3 years.

I've been screwing around on pcpartpicker on and off for today, and I don't see a clean way to get steam machine specs for less than $800 if you build it yourself, and closer to $900 if i'm being honest (and in no way will it be SFF).

I think the big thing will be if steam can commit to this like the deck and get better performance over time. Consoles out perform their hardware thanks to lots of optimization, enforced by knowing you're stuck with/always going to have the same specs.

The steam machines success to me pivots completely on if they can capture a market of customers who want to jump from console and don't want to become hardware savvy (which has not gotten as easy as it should).

Compatibility and performance in the next 6 months is going to determine a lot.

And if someone better than me wants to check my PC Part picker work: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/HCtXkD

I've got $766 for CPU/MB/HDD/GPU/RAM.

Nintendo Switch 2 $450

Xbox Series S (512GB/1TB) $380 – $450

Xbox Series X (1TB) $650

PlayStation 5 Slim (Digital) $600

PlayStation 5 Slim (Disc) $650

PlayStation 5 Pro $900

Steam Machine 512GB: $1050

Steam Machine 2TB: $1350

According to LTT Valve made the conscious decision NOT to subsidize the Steam Machine to let the market compete. I very much respect that and will be willing to pay the premium because of that and:

- using my purchase to vote for/encourage the growth of the Linux ecosystem.

- as a PC gamer I'm already highly invested in the Steam platform with all of my other gaming purchases.