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this post was submitted on 22 Jun 2026
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I think that they should have deferred it two years for component prices to drop. I had a graphic showing inflation-adjusted console prices a while back. Aside from the Atari 2600, no console has had a price near that level and been successful.
goes looking
https://lemmy.today/pictrs/image/92214dd2-8c37-4df1-8c80-7adb02e3ae4c.jpeg
The highest-priced successful console was the PS3, at $778 in 2024 dollars.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_3
But we'll see.
The thing to keep in mind, too, is that this isn't a console; it's a Linux computer with a focus upon gaming, so the comparison isn't exactly 1:1. You can only play games on a $1000 console. You can do much more with a $1000 computer that runs Linux and plays games.
The counterpoint is that PlayStation is a full feature media center whereas all the streaming services nerf bitrates on Linux. IDK if valve can work around that, but so far even the windows native apps for Netflix don't seem to get full bitrate 4K.
Kind of straying from the original point here, but you might consider Blu-Ray 4k/UHD versus streaming in general if you're specifically after the highest quality video that you can get. My understanding is that generally, commercial, streamed 4K stuff is heavily-compressed enough that quality suffers relative to the stuff on Blu-Ray 4k.
There are Linux challenges with the DRM stuff on Blu-Ray 4k too, but with an appropriate drive, most 4K stuff can be played in 2026.
I finally got around to getting a Linux Blu-Ray 4K setup, and I have to say that now, the limiting factor for a lot of film, especially the older stuff, is the film grain, frame rate, or the quality of special effects. Film grain you can often work around with temporal denoising, frame rate with frame interpolation, and special effects...well, no general solution for that.
True. And maybe there will emerge a new group of people who use a living room computer in a new way, and that might really mix things up.
But I still think that the principal market here is most-likely going to be people who are looking to use it in basically the same way that they have a console, and will probably have roughly the same price sensitivity.
EDIT: One factor in the Steam Machine's favor is going to be the vastly-larger existing launch library compared to the other consoles listed. The Steam store currently has 115,106 items in the "Game" category listed. Hard to quantify the impact of that, since we don't really have data points for anything on that scale (though maybe someone could still try to look for correlation between launch library size and sales
consoles have had varying level of backwards compatibility).
I know three console-only people who have signed up to the list/queue for the reason it’s both a PC and a console.
The fandom is insane for valve though. The steam controller is still flying off of ebay shelves at $300 a pop from scalpers doing their thing still. Prices are depressing though, i'm not going to lie. I predicted $1200 with no more than a $20 bundle savings for the controller and well, doesn't look like i'm too far off.
If you get a model with a controller you're effectively getting like $200 off after ebay sales fees if you sell it. The deck sold out quickly at $949, so i'm sure this will sell too, and that means someone who picks up the $1128 512GB model with controller will be in for less than 1k with a little work.
These will probably scalp for ~$2500 (2tb+controller) even if it makes absolutely no sense at that price. It's just how consumer electronic releases are from certain brands like valve or nvidia now as Day 1 scalping seems to be a hair under double for stuff like this. I don't think the market will bear much more than that, and not for very long anyway.
Basically, expect it to all sell out and for scalpers to have another pay day like they always do.
Component prices aren’t going to drop.
I think sitting on it does nothing. They might as well release it and then drop the price when they can during its lifetime.
We dont know how much longer this AI bullshit is going to go on for or how it will crash at the end, if at all.
I don't think that it will crash (well, okay, rather, it's not why I'm making the statement), but 2028 is when substantial new memory production will be coming online (well, okay, absent unforseen disruptions like a war with China or another COVID-19 or something).
The thing is that once they release it, they freeze the specs, if they want to have a consistent target. If they wait two years, they can bump the specs up as part of that.
Like, if they ship now, then they're really constrained to, in 2028, ship a two-year-old system.
They can absolutely reasonably re-release a refreshed version in two years, like the Deck OLED. If supply lines allow for it, they can drop the price on the current models and offer systems with more/ faster memory and storage, better CPU/GPU etc.