Yeah, I feel like Valve jumped the gun a bit with this one, needed more time in the oven to cook. Xbox's next gen PC-console hybrids that the new Steam Machine will be competing with are supposedly not coming until Holiday 2027 at the earliest, possibly even Holiday 2028, so I have no idea why they are rushing out Steam Machine in Q1 2026, well over a year before Xbox's competition arrives. An extra year and they could have bumped it up from Zen 4 and RDNA 3 to Zen 5 and RDNA 4,which would have brought it closer to Xbox's next gen offering which supposedly has Zen 6 and RDNA 5. The small size is impressive, half the height of Series X about, in a similar footprint, but it seems to be weaker than PS5 and Series X. 8 GB of VRAM is already starting to be not enough for AAA gaming, and the the same goes for 16 GB of system RAM, and those RAM issues are only going to get worse with each passing year as we move towards the launch of the next gen Xbox and PS6. This thing needs to come it at like $450 at most for the smaller SSD model and $550 at most for the 2 TB, or else it's not even good as a budget offering for recent AAA's, let alone future AAA's.
Last edited by shikamaru317 - on 12 November 2025
