Article discusses the effect of rising hardware prices on the deck.
Some highlights:
How much worse has the pricing situation gotten for Valve since November? Superdata Research founder and SuperJoost newsletter author Joost van Dreunen suggested that the 512GB Steam Machine model would probably run $50 to $75 more than he expected when the Steam Machine was announced, and to expect a price “potentially $100+ above target” for the high-end 2TB model. That would mean a $599 to $629 price at the low-end and $849 to $899 for the high-end model, in his estimation.
Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter agreed that, even with the additional component costs, Valve would likely “try to get it out at $599 or so for the 512GB version,” A starting price higher than that would mean “abysmal” sales, he added. “I think $700 is a death sentence and $1,000 is unsellable.”
I’d recommend reading the article though, it has a lot more of value than just those quotes. It goes on to talk about how the price increases will likely hurt valve more than traditional console makers, and how these increases will affect sales.
Also to get access to using it as a PC fully, PC Games, Way More Apps, and mod support is more than worth it
Its basically Steam Deck in a different way
Yes, that’s all true.
It is not just a console, it is a full-on PC.
Run your own home media mode, browse the web, make stuff in Blender, write and compile code, etc, I do all of that regularly with my docked Steam Deck.
But I went with Mini PC rather than Steam Deck for comparison because, though it very much literally is a Steam Deck 3.0, in a lot of ways… I think its closer to a mini PC than anything else.
MiniPCs are basically small boxes often comparable to, I dunno, a large jar of pickles, in size. They… also do not have the functionality of a gamepad controller, or built in screen, as actual physical parts of them.
And they basically always have integrated cpu+mobo, RAM is usually laptop SODIMM form factor, and then either the cpu they use is actually an apu, or an npu, as opposed to laptops often having a discrete but laptop sized gpu, or full-on pcs typically having full-on gpus.
Or, its becoming more common for a mini-pc to juat be designed with either an oculink port, or a usb 4.0/tbunderbolt port, with the idea being that its a decent general purpose work pc in its own, and if you want to game on it (or do some other kind of more intensive work like video editing/rendering, complex 3d model creation, etc), you get an eGPU cradle, stick a power supply and desktop GPU in it, and then connect it to the miniPC, which can then use that GPU nearly as efficiently as if it were just directly plugged into it.
That’s true didn’t even think of all those use cases and good specs very beneficial indeed. Thanks for that a lot to think about
For fun I would love somebody have it be their daily driver for the day at work and then they go “alright I’m heading home” then plug it in at home to game
Maybe that one 3rd party company that made the screen that is attached to top of Xbox Series X|S that opens and closes. Can make one for Steam Machine to be able to use it anywhere. Just have to plug it into an outlet
Edit: Also wonder if they would ever do next Steam Deck in future to be a mini pc and Steam Machine in future to be a full-blown upper-end pc performance-wise
Happy to have an infodump/perspective appreciated, thank you!
=)
I should note that the Steam Machine unfortunately does not appear to be designed with an eGPU in mind.
(Err, well, thats kinda sorta not true. The way a Steam Machine and Steam Frame, the VR headset work together… well the Steam Frame has an ARM, cellphone stype chip, built into it, and it can run less intense games just on its own. So, it is arguably technically the case that… that is a kind of wirelessly connected sort of eGPU for the Steam Machine… or the Steam Machine is a wirelessly connected sort of eGPU for the Steam Frame.)
It may be possible to… somewhat substantially hardware modify the Steam Machine, to get something like a physically connected eGPU working, people did figure out a kind of ‘janky but does technically work’ way to do that with a Steam Deck…
But basically, we’ll have to wait for the thing itself, or detailed schematics of it to come out, to see if that’s possible with a Steam Machine.
Alot of Steam Deck type devices, not made by Valve, other handheld-pcs (have controller and screen built in, vs mini-pc which is basically a small box or closer to the size and shape of a console), they do have usb4/thunderbolt ports that more easily support an eGPU set up… but they tend to be significantly more expensive.
So yeah, we shall see!
Its very unfortunate that the AI/RAM-pocalypse is happening at the exact same time that… well what could potentially be a bit of a revolution in the entire concept how to build a pc/gaming machine seems to be possible.
It may be the case that it ends up making more sense to have a new paradigm where you just have the cpu+ram+mobo+minor integrated gfx as one physical thing, and then some kind of an eGPU as another thing, and treat them as two modular components of a total system.