All about The Steam Machine, Valve’s new hardware
Andre Garcia Feature/Q+A
Steam’s new console is generating some buzz. After Valve’s success with the Steam Deck, (approximately 4 million units and growing) they decided to announce a new piece of hardware called the “Steam Machine”. Furthermore, with this announcement Valve decided to announce a new controller and a new VR headset. But the real question is how do these products that Valve are releasing compare to traditional gaming computers?
The first and most pressing thing when comparing these 2 products would be the comparison to PC’s. In the official video that Valve released regarding the Steam Machine, they state that the device will be able to run games six times better than the Steam Deck and on the AMD GPU. This means that the Steam Machine can essentially run all Steam games, which includes AAA games (which can be found on the Steam website). While this is a benefit of the Steam Machine other companies such as Alienware (who make hardware for PC’s) can do the same thing with their PC’s as well. What was really intriguing about the Steam Machine is the fact that it comes in a 6 inch cube that weighs about 6 pounds. This places the portability for the Steam Machine far greater than the portability of other PC’s which are often huge and uncomfortable to carry around. For reference, the Dell Website lists Alienware’s Area 51 desktop PC as about 24 by 9 in and 76 pounds. So, it seems that the Steam Machine is going to be a lot more portable than these other PC’s. Especially because the new controller and VR headset that will be released with it can help you bring this device to even more places. This isn’t the only thing good about the Steam Machine though. You’re getting all of this for about half the price of other powerful Desktop PC’s. Now, as for the Steam Machine’s comparison to consoles like the PS5 and Xbox Series X there is not much real competition. Despite the fact that there are a lot of PS5 and Xbox exclusives, Steam has an extensive library of games that you cannot play on those other consoles. Not to mention, there are even more ways to play if you include the VR headset and the controllers that are coming with the Steam Machines release.
Now that this console was compared to other PC’s, let’s take a look at how it will perform with games and other software. With the official video that Valve released about the Steam Machine, they mention that along with all the Steam games, the Steam Machine can also run som software explicitly showing the engine running Blender and other similar softwares.This is something that would be a very useful feature for the Steam Machine especially since its more portable. Although not entirely as useful as a laptop when it comes to the convenience of using development apps, it’s still a step in the right direction and very useful in its own right. As for the games, this console is specifically tailored to run Steam games, as mentioned earlier. This is be a very useful feature for the current games that are already on Steam, but especially useful for future games. Since game developers know the type of specs that every Steam Machine will have, they can make their games to tailor to those specs instead of having to generalize and guess what specs their playerbase has out of the many different specs out there. However, because all Steam machines will be running on the same specs that means that you cannot optimize your steam deck. This may cause problems for people who like to build their own hardware. Overall, this is a good change to make because now game developers have a uniform hardware they can cater their games around and not multiple different ones that do different things.