Valve’s Steam Machine sounds like a great option for those who are curious about getting into PC gaming but don’t want to give the complete experience a console can provide.
As someone who’s trialled a gaming PC and determined it wasn’t for me, yet, I can fully understand someone wanting to stick with a console.
It’s just simpler. The console is pre-made and ready to go straight out of the box and any problems you encounter can usually be dealt with by the console supplier, no need to open it up and try to fix it yourself.
With that in mind I have to say Valve’s Steam Machine looks tempting. I do own a Steam Deck and even got the TV adapter and I’ve enjoyed my time with it, but it’s a bit of a faff to set up and it can’t run all of the games I want to play.
The Steam Machine seemingly fixes that by packing in the power of a modest PC but without all the trouble of setting it up, though I’ve noticed one potentially frustrating problem with it.
What Isn’t Valve Telling Us?
On Valve’s official page promoting the new system it says it’ll be expanding the way games are assessed on Steam.
For the Steam Deck games are classed as either Verified, Playable or Unsupported, with Verified meaning fully-optimised, Playable meaning it works but not without some teething problems, and Unsupported being pretty self-explanatory.
From Valve’s wording it sounds like the Steam Machine will have a similar verification system, which feels both confusing and worrying, especially since a price hasn’t been announced yet.
Experts are saying it’ll be priced similarly to a PlayStation 5 Pro based on the specs which places it at around $700/£700.
While it’ll perform better than a Steam Deck, my desire to purchase one would drop significantly if I found out that the majority of games I want to play on it are merely Playable rather than Steam Machine Verified.
It also makes me wonder who this system is intended for.
If it’s for PC players with a massive library of Steam games then surely they’d already have a decent PC, so why bother with the Steam Machine if the only other benefit is you can plug it into a TV?
If it’s for console gamers why risk owning something that doesn’t support the games you want to play when your current console can?
There’s still a lot of uncertainty surrounding Valve’s Steam Deck, and while I’m sure it’ll be a solid option for gamers wanting to dip their toe into PC gaming we need to know more about it.
