I was hoping a game announcement was gonna happen as well lol. This would be quite the launch title to coincide with new hardware!

What are we thinking for price? Digital Foundry has a video on it with hands on impressions, one of the guys there is hoping it's $399, thinking $499 won't be competitive at those specs.

Yeah, because you honestly don't need any of these. If you have a Windows laptop or regular gaming PC, you can enable Steam's "Big Picture Mode" and you'll get the exact same interface you get on the Steam Deck or now on the Steam Machine.

So you can already get that console-like experience right now. At least with these products, the hardware is streamlined, so less hassle on the technical side of things.

So for the time being, you will only be able to buy these products directly from Steam, but potentially they'll be able to go further out to retailers.

$399 would be crazy. It's gpu isn't as powerful as the ps5, but it's still comparable and that's a now $549 machine. Plus it's a PC. I don't see how a $399 price, even for the 512gb model, is close to feasible.

$499 would still be a very good price also.

That included 6Ghz dongle that comes with the Steam Frame is great to have as it essentially future proofs the device since you're streaming from your PC, and however powerful said PC is.

That Steam Deck 2 tease at the beginning though!

Apparently it's HDMI 2.1 capable and supports VRR/HDR. Going by the Digital Foundry video, supporting 4K/120fps output.

My thoughts are: Laptop users

You want a lower cost PC (sometimes you need to look for many different retailers to find good prices), that is small and portable like a laptop to move between Monitor and TV, instead of a huge stationary PC

Yes, it will be less powerful than a console! But online is free, software is less expensive, you have disccounts of different stores (Epic, GOG, etc), and you can customaze your games, using mods

My BF plays a lot online multiplayer games with his friends, and he can't fathom using consoles because he doesn't want to pay for online

But he also wants something to keep with him when he travels, and he likes to play at a big screen. He buys a laptop for the portability, but laptops are more expensive and less efficient 

The thing is, the Steam Machine is supposed to be connected to a TV, so HDMI would make much more sense here.

The GPU in the PS5 is an RX 6700, the one in the Steam Machine is a 7600M running at full boost most of the time. While the latter will probably be weaker, it will only be very slightly so, as in roughly 5-10% slower. The desktop RX 7600 was actually a couple frames faster than the 6700 in most games, with the slightly cut-down GPU, it will probably be the reverse.

All in all, the difference should be measurable, but not really visible outside of some edge cases.

As for the price, as you mentioned, $399 is way too low. I'm expecting $549 for the 512GB model and $649 for the 2GB version