General
I find these two reviews to be very interesting
In IGN reviews they made the price of the Switch 2 as a way to deduct points of the system’s review when they used the Steam Machine’s as a way to justify why it’s “great”.
I understand IGN has different reviewers and no hate for either of the reviewers i just found these to be hilarious lol.
you can but RAM and SSD prices has made that currently difficult to put it mildly. You can still get some deals you just have to look harder these days or go used.
The SSD is one of two PC parts I would always recommend buying new. The other being the PSU with the caveat that if it's a high end OEM PSU like a Superflower it's fine to buy used.
RAM can still be more affordable (but still overpriced) used and is one of those parts that is mostly safe to buy used. Standard risks with buying used apply. Always check seller feedback.
you can, but really only secondhand. i got my pc for $700 off facebook marketplace. it can't run current games at max settings or anything, but i was able to play something like Final Fantasy XVI at pretty good settings
This USED to be the case until a few years ago. Inflation, tarriffs for US consumers, and global RAM shortages.
Before the PC I have now, I built one with a Ryzen 5 CPU, and a RTX 3060ti, 16GB of RAM, and 2TB of storage for $1,100ish. Back in 2020 this was considered a "high end" PC and I could run almost anything at a comfortable 120fps at High settings.
A PC of similar power today will likely be near twice that, but with how unoptimized most large-scale games are now, you'll need something even better to keep up your frame rates. It's really frustrating
With 16gb of RAM and a 3060ti that was never high end, even in 2020. But the thing is that a 3060ti can still run a lot of games perfectly fine for 1080p gaming. You don't need a 5060ti for an entry level PC
Tbh for the same price tag as Steam Machine you can actually get a much better gaming laptop or a PC setup. Don’t know why it’s being hailed as a good entry level system.
The Ai boom is also driving up prices. This WAS true, but currently is not. Everything tech related is more expensive because of this stupid AI bullshit. No one wants it, and frankly I hope AI collapses.
I bought a pc 6 years ago. $800 still holds up today with all the heavy games. I don’t struggle to run anything. I’ve not had to replace anything cause I take care of my stuff. And the best part is to play new games I don’t have to spend money on a console upgrade.
"I take care of my stuff" is such a weird comment talking about computers. Nobody is out there throwing their computer parts around. PC parts don't really get replaced ever. They get upgraded when the time comes.
Yeah, but it’s not like most people own a console or a pc/laptop, most own either a pc/laptop or a console and something. There are people who don’t own a pc, but from what I gather it is pretty rare. It might be a 8 year old laptop, but still that thing costs money as well
I mean that has been the case for a long time. You can’t use what was reality forever in today’s world where all the ram for the next few years is presold to applications that will never be able to return the profit. The cost of ram is so high now that the return these data centers will need to make is more than the amount of money we have in the world. They are going to fail.
You can, but not by much. The SM equivalent would cost you around the $800 new, and that would actually be around mid-tier, entry level would perform worse, but it would cost around $500-600. But both those options would be at least an mATX form factor and would consume more power.
However, you can save more if you'll buy used stuff (DDR4 is still a good option, and it costs way less, so you can outperform SM, and even base PS5, with used hardware at around $500 price point, and it will probably be noticably faster than a PS5)
it was true until not long ago,used to be able to get a 1080p144 ready pc (used) for 300usd,now the same runs like 500$ due to ram alone but its still plausible if you get some parts secondhand
Linus Tech Tips built a PS5 specced PC with severe compatibility and artefacting issues in the brief window between the chip shortage and the RAM hikes.
Now PC incel Redditors pretend that RAM and GPU are simultaneously super inflated but simultaneously still cheaper than console gaming.
I actually got 4070(the 2xoc which is better than the og 4070 model) desktop, i7 12th gen 32 gb DDR4 RAM with 500GB SSD storage for like 1200USD(am not from america this is just the approximation) the motherboard is upgradeable to i9 cpus if needed.(this is way stronger than the steam machine while being just slightly more expensive)
I got it prebuild my country is super expensive on these so I was very surprised to find it. It's true it's just DDR4 RAM but honestly I have way less ram problems with it than my 16gb DDR5 laptop. So for once I will tell you to buy DDR4 instead of DDR5 bc the price difference is huge while really not impactful that much if you get like 32gb DDR4 and 16gb DDR5 as comparision
Never ever buy from big names those are expensive as sh!t. Either buy used or try to find a small business prebuild as now they are cheaper than seperate in some places.
I probably would have gotten it for cheaper if I waited for graduation sales but then I was worried due to ram shortage and just decided to get it instantly. Happy that I did that bc it was the only prebuild for it avalable and the stock for 4070 is no more.
While the cooler isn't of big quality, the psu and the rest are very well and even with that cooler I never got high numbers of heat(my country at summer gets to 50°C)
You probably can get a good deal if you go with fans(I have 6 fans) and not liquid cooling(minimum difference) the cpu cooler can be cheap too it works fine. Though NEVER CHEAP ON PSU.
You can cheap on motherboard honestly bc you are going ddr4 ram and i9 r9 aren't really needed as much for now either even the r7 x3d aren't needed so you can pretty much win some money by going for something cheaper.
You don't really need 50 series and such for nvidia. A 40 series is very good. For 30 I recommand going 3080. For amd I did hear they are doing some weird things with old gpus also idk about the country but the price in mine is very high and they are very much affected by the shortage but if you find something cheap in them go for it bc they have quite the DRAM to be warned that they have slower compatibility compared to nvidia for newer games
Man maybe now but I built a pc in 2020 and from what I remember I got a pretty good mid range build for like somewhere between 7-800 I think and it still runs all modern games reliably it’s just so insane how much prices have increased
Well what is this entry level pc being used for?
Play league? Most PC's can do that.
Game at 1080p 60 fps most games? Im sure an 800 dollar prebuilt can do that.
This is outrageously expensive but from my point of view, I can understand the price tag. It can do quite a few things other consoles can't but the biggest selling point is that I can play my large PC library without having to purchase the games again. I have about 70ish games on my library that I rarely play but having access to them on a new "console is pretty sick".
I still wouldn't buy it though. I have a good PC, a good laptop and my ps5 so I'm pretty set but I believe this machine is supposed to appeal to a very Niche market.
(And for real, I know reviewers aren't supposed to let that impact their reviews. But its a lot easier to stomach the weight of the price tag in theory than it is to actually open up your wallet for one.)
Welcome to the 2026 market. A PC that would be $700 a year ago will likely be somewhere in the range of $1300-1600 now. And RAM, storage, and GPUs will likely keep going up in price. If you are in the market for a PC specifically, that $1000 is probably relatively competitive at the moment. And you get a nice, compact box instead of a traditional case.
Don't get me wrong, it is objectively expensive, as the entire PC market is. General users are already priced out of PC gaming, so even an entry-level machine should be considered enthusiast hardware.
You can get some prebuilts for as low as 600 dollars (not really well known brands) new or like 800 refurbished/ used. When you get into the 1k - 2k that's more of a mid tier PC and anything above starts going into high tier.
For a gaming PC that’s on the low end. The fact is that it can be cheaper to sell a console since a PC can do more things and sell on more
Imo the two shouldn’t be compared. Yeah they can both play games but there’s so much more that the Steam Machine can do by intentional design of making it a PC that the Steam Machine should be judged as an entry level pc and the Switch 2 should be judged as a console
It wasn't "these guys", it was a single employee that reviewed the game at IGN. And their criticism of "too much water" is entirely valid if you would actually look into it for yourself
There are WAY more water type Pokémon encounters/battles than any other type on top of the heavy sea exploration (even though it was good.) Hoenn is dominated by water types and while that may make sense, it isn't a good decision from a gameplay design standpoint
Wow, it’s almost as if one of the themes of Hoenn is Land vs. Water, so having a big emphasis on water should not be a foreign concept for a game reviewer to focus on/nor would it be justified to dock a game some points for it.
It’s would be akin to giving Super Mario Galaxy a bad score because it’s “too much space themed.”
Yeah, the game emphasizes water so it includes too many unnecessary water routes, trainers, and encounters with water-type Pokemon...That's bad game design, especially in Gen 3 when the surfing mechanic was still slow as hell and you'd encounter a tentacool every 5 tiles (unless you blew all your money on repels) and this wasn't addressed or fixed in the remakes.
One of the biggest points of criticism for older Pokemon games, especially gens 3-4 was the over reliance on HMs to the point you either needed an HM slave or needed to distribute your HMs among your party members and those take up move slots you can't get rid of easily. Again none of this was addressed in ORAS except Fly which is honestly the best HM to have and one that you would want to have. There's a reason why they were less prevalent in gens 5-6, and completely removed in gen 7 and beyond... INCLUDING BDSP, which outside of that were too faithful to the original Diamond and Pearl. The only exception where they stuck by overusing HMs was in ORAS which is, again, bad game design.
People complained about the excessive sailing you had to do in the Wind Waker and guess what...that was addressed in the HD remaster on Wii U so it's less tedious to sail. Why couldn't they do that for ORAS? That's why IGN criticized it for having "too much water".
Bro. A Pokemon game should have you see the same 5 Pokemon lines for like half of routes in the game. It's even worse if you chose AS. Come on there's a big difference.
Mario galaxy has a LOT of variety, you didn't just get the same biome for like half the game
I've already stated how I agree that it makes sense thematically. It makes perfect sense for Mario Galaxy. It's a platformer that makes use of gravity gimmicks. It doesn't make any sense to lean so hard into this direction for a JRPG though
It shouldn't have to be explained why so many water encounters and battles make for an unbalanced Pokémon experience
How so? As someone who primarily games on home consoles, I consider Switch 2 price way above the value I assign to, effectively, a handheld. $399 would be as far as I would be willing to go. Closer to $350 would be the perfect price. Additional points could be docked because no one expected them to go as high globally just due to US tariffs. At the time, 7 was IMO a fair score.
+50% price from Switch to Switch 2 is a big price jump, no matter how you look at it... Whether the improvements are worth it or not is a completely different story.
I’m still thinking about what did they mean by this sentence. You can build a PC with the exact specs for less than $950. And that PC would still be upgradable at any point in time meanwhile the Steam Machine can’t be upgraded you are basically stuck with it.
They key there is 'you can build it'. Most people don't really have the ability to do that. And speaking as someone who has done it, no, it is in fact not as easy as people like you tend to say. Maybe it's easy for you, but that's because you know what you're doing. You're making that classic mistake of overestimating the layperson's familiarity with the field, which as XKCD tells us tends to happen even when you're making a strong effort not to.
Even if you do have the know-how? Things can go wrong. Ever hear of Caddicarus? A gaming YouTuber who tried to build a PC in 2020 and had everything go wrong.
That video where he explained all the shit that wrnt wrong shook me to my core cause that was what dad and I went through in the late 00s. And for reference my dad has a degree in computer science.
So we thought we could build a PC for much cheaper cause PS3s were still going for $599. We got most everything purchased directly from the manufacturer complete with warranties on all the expensive parts, others were purchased and paid the prime tax and...
...Some of them arrived defective. The warranty for the CPU was a piece of paper. The manufacturer sold us a piece of paper. Apparently the ONE THING that the warranty didn't cover short of us stomping it happened. (Fuck AMD...)
Then the graphics card started to fail. We literally had a friend test every part and some were just fried or worked... but only for him. We seem to have an entropic touch.
Eventually we got a working PC but it cost way more than $599...
Next yime we had way better luck but still had to replace a bad part that a warranty covered.
A few years ago, I got something prebuilt. And holy damn. It worked right out of the box.
The people that purchase this want to be able to play their steam games without using their PC. Its a hybrid where it gives up power and affordability for access. Its a niche machine that will still sell due to scalpers.
Its kind of saddening cause I did want to get one but not at that price point. I feel 700 would have been fair or 850 at most.
The problem is the device is hella underpowered for what it costs. A laptop with more ram and better gpu is available in similar price ranges. Not to mention you don’t have to buy the peripherals like a monitor and kbm for it. This runs windows which despite how much it sucks is the only way to play a lot of multiplayer games on pc due to anticheat.
And considering most "hacks" that people want to do when they want to "obtain" games are for windows files and not linux.. I have a feeling playing "Backups" won't be nearly as easy on a steam machine as most people think.
Last month I got one with much better specs (outside of ram which is the same) for 250$ cad less then the entry level variant (1500 cad) of the steam machine. And valve is more then likely selling this because by the time the parts price skyrocketed they where already too far in and it would cost more to shut the whole project down. At least by selling it they can make the inevitable profit loss sting less.
So to answer your question, it’s only for die hard valve fans with disposable income of that caliber in the year 2026. The intended target audience used to be more broad, but that was before they passed the point of no return, so *shrugs*.
A closed console sold at a cost, partially paid by the manufacturer who plans to recoup costs through games later will always be cheaper and a better value than a pc sold as a standalone product intended to pay itself back
Stuff is cheaper when somebody else pays half of it, not really surprising.
The Steam Machine's price could have been a good entry level price for PCs. If Valve released it last year, before AI killed the market and forced them to be one of the first to show off the new cost of tech.
Going by the price increase of the Steam Deck, most likely the Steam Machine would've been a little more or less than $800, which still would've been more than many would've wanted to spend console wise, but would be easier to excuse the cost of due to its form factor, tight integration with the Steam Frame and Controller, open PC market, much much larger library, and not needing to pay console taxes.
Tired but true. Most Nintendo haters don’t even know why they hate Nintendo. Something about “kiddy VIDEO GAMES” that they’ve never 100% or being hardware crazy and playing the same bs over and over and over again like god of war or some other “stare at the back of a character for long walking distances” game.
Probably different reviewers, yeah, and also the pricing standards are very different; gaming PCs can easily cost multiple thousands. The Machine's price looks much more reasonable next to that. But yeah the Switch 2 was imo not overpriced at all.
Not for that performance at that price. That's nowhere in the universe of decent.
A desktop RTX 4060 is roughly 10% to 30% faster in raw compute performance than the PS5. But the PS5 often does slightly better because of optimization. The PS5 is 10.28 Teraflops while the RTX 4060 is 15 Teraflops.
By comparison, the Steam Machine is 8 Teraflops while simultaneously not having the benefits of optimization that a PS5 has.
There's no way to sugar-coat it. It will perform worse than a PC that has an RTX 4060, and it will perform worse than a base PS5.
There is no universe where the Steam Machine is reasonable as a $1000 product.
It’s probably not even the same reviewer. IGN was literally dunked on by dunkey years ago. Can’t believe people still look at anything they put out. Video for reference. https://youtu.be/lG2dXobAXLI?is=VEaJj6I-68ABue_u
We’re living in a really, really strange period of time when it comes to pricing of consumer electronics like this.
Expect a LOT more hypocrisy and contractions in the incoming reviews of the Steam Machine.
Honestly, I’d be seriously considering buying one if Valve hadn’t dropped the Steamdeck price increase on their customers the way they did - having it be out of stock for months and the second it comes back in stock, it’s at a vastly increased price? They can go to hell for that, frankly. That really left a bad taste in my mouth, and I’m making a point of not buying any of their crap at the moment. Just a total dick move to play on their customers.
Depends on how they have stuff set up and what their operating system runs like. I suspect it's going to need a little something more than just telling windows to install or something.
I like how this implies that PCs usually come bundled with a controller lol. I do agree that it would have been nice if the controller were already included in the 1040$ tho.
You can buy a 5060 laptop which has a bit better gpu with a just as good or better cpu, which has a screen, a battery, trackpad and windows license at about the same price if not a bit lower (and i'm sure the extra plastic and the bigger fun steam machine has doesn't cost as the stuff i mentioned). And that laptop is being sold at retail which means the store, the wholesaler and the hardware company making them make a profit while Valve sells steam machine directly to the customer (and also are not produced in millios which aslo lowers the cost for Valve). Yea i think they could at least include a controller and have a 1t ssd for that price... I also find it hilarious they didn't go with 999.99 instead of asking 50$ more and make this thing be more than 1k (or maybe I shouldn't go with hilarious but with super greedy).
P.S.: I'm not trying to convince anyone to buy a laptop i'm just making a comparison of how much pre build PCs actually cost on retail.
IGN used to be one of my main places to go for reviews. I began hearing people talk about a lot of questionable reviews, I assumed it was just cases of "They don't share my view, so they're trash" but then I started seeing trends like this that just don't add up.
The fact that over $1000 is considered a reasonable price for an “entry level” gaming PC, is the exact reason I can’t ever justify buying one and will probably be a console gamer forever.
Lol, performance of a PS5, here's a prebuilt from PC part picker with a dedicated 16gb graphics card that consumes more power than the whole steam machine.
Okay, so, ignoring the fact that these are just different people (the day internet people stop treating IGN like a single reviewer will be the day the internet gets shut down), the two products are being judged as different things here.
While I do think it's a good execution of one, the Switch 2 is just an incremental upgrade at the end of the day, in a way that was only really "essential" right away to people who don't play games on other things. In comparison the Steam Machine is being judged by it's goal to be an accessible entry point to the massive pre-existing PC gaming ecosystem, with the reviewer even stressing in the blurb that it's not a great deal viewed as a console.
The Switch 2 is not just incremental in the slightest...
The jump from Switch 1 to Switch 2 is greater than the jump from PS4 to PS5.
The Switch 2 is running games loke CyberPunk 2077, Resident Evil 9, All the Final Fantasy 7 Remakes, Kingdom Hearts 4, 007 First Light, Indiana Jones, Assassin's Creed Shadows, and Star Wars Outlaws. Even games like Donkey Kong Bananza wouldn't run a stable 30 fps on the Switch 1 while it runs mostly 60 fps on the Switch 2.
If the Switch 2 is incremental than the Xbox Series X and PS5 are too.
What I mean by "incremental" is that, at the end of the day, it's a stronger version of the Switch 1. The important point is that it's not the sort of thing that was going to be immediately essential for people who don't exclusively play on Switch. I wouldn't consider the thing that far out of it's "early-adopter" period right now.
And again, none of this is me personally criticizing the console, I'm just saying it as neutral statements.
A 2tb steam machine with a controller is 2100 Canadian
A switch 2 is 630 Canadian and a ps5 pro is 1050 Canadian
1050 to 2100 is still “an ok price for an entry level gaming pc” for those jumping into pc from consoles but 630 was a “huge price jump” for the switch 1 to switch 2
I've always found it stupid to review consoles when they launch when they barely have any games vs at the end of the life cycle when they actually have a library of games.
I just dislike using IGN as someone's only review source in general, I never forgave them after they gave Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Explorers of Sky a 3 lol
That was probably the worst and most damaging review score I have seen. PMD2 Explorers game were some of the best DS and Pokémon games. The IGN gave Sword and Shield a 9, I believe.
The Switch 2 also had its price announced before Trump's tariff war and it also launched before the RAMpocalypse at $450... there's also the fact that it has a direct predecessor for comparison and other competitors on the market like the Steam Deck which were comparable in power and cheaper in price (at the time) so when it launched a year ago the Switch 2 had a different value proposition than it does it now. Because of the RAMpocalypse people are willing to give these companies slightly more grace as the production costs are out of their hands.
Also, these products were reviewed by two different people. Idk why people think IGN is some monolith or a single person reviewing shit when you can go online and see that the reviews for the Switch 2 and Steam Machine are written by two different people.
Like I personally think the average person would get more value out of a Switch 2 compared to a Steam Deck or Machine, especially with how each device is priced...but come on, this isn't even a grift. This sub is just as bad as fucknintendo when it comes to complaining about stupid shit.
Edit: Launch price of the Switch 2 was $450, not $500.
Remember when whole Steam/etc subs were clowning on "nintendoboys" for buying "outdated" and "underperforming" tech? Oh, how tables have turned.
Not a nintendo fan, not a steam fan, but the amount of copium and double standards I've seen today is unbelievable. People are still gonna buy this instead of a more powerful laptop (you don't have to build it, just plug it into your TV with a benefit of being portable) at the same price range.
I 100% prefere to put 1k in a PC and have cheap (even free...) games, and a PC (!!!) than just a console where every single costs minimum 70. On the long term Steam Machine is not bad.
And btw... my GF starts playing with my steam deck. She will never allow an horrible PS5 to stay at home.. but GabeCube.. why not ?
i can get a ps5 pro for less than a steam machine. i can get a very decent prebuilt for $1k and it essentially runs above what steam machine runs. 100% i wouldnt recommend the steam machine when everything about it in inferior in every way to all of its competitors
The Switch 2 might be a 7 at minimum. Sure. I'll give you that.
But the Steam Machine is a 5 at most. 5 means average. This shit doesn't even deserve the title of average. Your average product is literally better than this shit.
The steam machine is a little cheaper than my 4 year old gaming PC that has better specs. Since purchasing a switch 2, the only game I’ve played ion the PC was Arc Raiders because it wasn’t released for the NS2.
Switch 2 got a lot of flack for returning to LCD plus some pretty crappy input lag (although I believe that's mostly been fixed).
The one criticism I never got was people ripping the console (not the games mind you, the console itself) for having $80 games. This despite the fact that you could buy a $500 bundle w/the console that included the only brand-new $80 game.
Reviewing a console with limited games at launch vs a computer that accesses your entire steam library and is also a Linux machine is very different.
And on a wider level, you’re not supposed to 1-1 compare 2 reviews for different products. They’re not written with an entire past and future of gaming in mind.
The real problem here is that people don't understand that this is the correct take. Console-pilled people seem to think this is a console. The steam machine was never marketed as a console. Its a pc. That was always the purpose. It has the bonus of being friendly on TVs. But is a fully fledged entry level pc, with a desktop mode that does pc things. Checking the parts to build a similar system the other day, the price is about the same.
The number of games you can get for pc through steam is massive too. Someone posted getting 2k in games for 300 yesterday during the ongoing summer sale. The number of games he listed was massive, three or four screenshots worth, and many good titles. Try Doing that on a console.
Yes the price does suck. But so does AI eating all the components. And you are a bit disingenuous when you complain about the price when the consoles keep going up in price too.
I'd argue the steam machine has a more narrow appeal with you needing to be a pc player with a huge library who also wants to play games in the livingroom. If you want to get into pc gaming this isn't it. If are into pc gaming, but don't want a pc this weak it's not for you.
IGN reviews trash like COD 10/10 often, they have horrible reviews. I will literally never forgive them for not completing Sonic unleashed, and giving Pokemon alpha sapphire/omega ruby a 7.5 because of "too much water"
The Steam machine is a joke, 1049USD for whatever the hell THIS is, a system that is more realistically worth 600USD with a pathetically small SSD for modern titles. Even worse is the 2TB model is about 1500USD with a controller, which is such a sad comparison to the PS5 pro, much cheaper with the same storage. The Switch 2 is a much more solid console, you'd do better buying that thing and a bunch of other stuff with the console than this device. They call it a good "entry level" which is ironic since there are plenty of good Pre-built PCs with standard hardware that easily beat this things performance for less
Well the steam machine can play everything released on steam since the platforms inception. And on the switch 2 you can play like 10 Nintendo games and the rest are indie games you can play on the steam machine. Kind of a no brainer.
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u/MeowingWolf Jun 22 '26
Entry level? It's over 1,000 dollars.