I just threw together a PC with an 8500g and a 7600 (not the mobile version) and it came to about $780 while being about 30% faster. I think $750 is the most the market would bear but, honestly, it should just be $650.
Edit: Oh shit, I forgot the US doesn’t include tax on their prices. Those $780 are converted from local currency and after taxes. Sales tax in Mexico is 16% so the real price would be around $673. I changed my mind, Valve would be delusional if they price this a cent above $650.
While I agree it is cheaper to build your own it also wont be as small as the Steam Machine.
It’s just that Valve has made a point that it will be priced like a PC, if it is priced like a PC then $650 is far too close to current console pricing. I want to be wrong here, I want it to be cheap and really push Linux into the mainstream. I’m just far too cynical and I expect it to be the most pointless product until proven otherwise.
I don’t think it is, though. $650 is 44% over the $450 MSRP of the PS5. If we look at “PC prices” (whatever they meant by that) the desktop I specced outperforms it by 30% to 50%. That puts the size tax for the Steam Machine at up to 45%, which would be hard to justify when laptops with 4050s are regularly on sale. Pricing it above $650 means you can go to BestBuy right now and get an HP Victus for $550 and have a spare $100 for a controller. Then you’ll have a PC that is faster, smaller and cheaper than a Steam Machine. This has to be under $700 to succeed. Although… Valve has been fostering a sort of Nintendo effect where they could price it at $5k and send you a dildo along with the PC so you can go fuck yourself and people would still buy it.
Fun fact: I was looking for laptops with a 7600M to get a more direct price to performance comparison but I wasn’t able to find a single one. Guess now we know what they mean by “semi-custom GPU”.
I just threw together a PC with an 8500g and a 7600 (not the mobile version) and it came to about $780 while being about 30% faster. I think $750 is the most the market would bear but, honestly, it should just be $650.
Edit: Oh shit, I forgot the US doesn’t include tax on their prices. Those $780 are converted from local currency and after taxes. Sales tax in Mexico is 16% so the real price would be around $673. I changed my mind, Valve would be delusional if they price this a cent above $650.
While I agree it is cheaper to build your own it also wont be as small as the Steam Machine.
It’s just that Valve has made a point that it will be priced like a PC, if it is priced like a PC then $650 is far too close to current console pricing. I want to be wrong here, I want it to be cheap and really push Linux into the mainstream. I’m just far too cynical and I expect it to be the most pointless product until proven otherwise.
I don’t think it is, though. $650 is 44% over the $450 MSRP of the PS5. If we look at “PC prices” (whatever they meant by that) the desktop I specced outperforms it by 30% to 50%. That puts the size tax for the Steam Machine at up to 45%, which would be hard to justify when laptops with 4050s are regularly on sale. Pricing it above $650 means you can go to BestBuy right now and get an HP Victus for $550 and have a spare $100 for a controller. Then you’ll have a PC that is faster, smaller and cheaper than a Steam Machine. This has to be under $700 to succeed. Although… Valve has been fostering a sort of Nintendo effect where they could price it at $5k and send you a dildo along with the PC so you can go fuck yourself and people would still buy it.
Fun fact: I was looking for laptops with a 7600M to get a more direct price to performance comparison but I wasn’t able to find a single one. Guess now we know what they mean by “semi-custom GPU”.
The Xbox Series X is $650 and the PS5 is $500.
The digital PS5 is $450 and the Xbox Series X has about 15% of the marketshare, proving people won’t stand for ridiculous prices.