Valve prices revived Steam Machine at $1,049 with console tradeoffs
Valve’s living-room PC aims to make Steam gaming work on a TV, but The Verge found setup issues, manual tuning and PS5-level performance.
By James Whitfield · Staff Writer
3 min read
Valve’s revived Steam Machine will start at $1,049 without a controller and $1,128 with one, the company told The Verge. The price matters because Valve is pitching the compact SteamOS PC as a living-room game box, while The Verge found it still requires more tinkering than a traditional console.
The Verge’s Sean Hollister reported that the Steam Machine is far smaller than a PlayStation 5, runs cool and quiet, and can be controlled with modern gamepads without requiring a mouse or keyboard for basic Steam use. Valve told The Verge it is selling the components at cost and has negotiated with suppliers during a memory supply crunch.
Performance, however, did not clearly exceed current consoles in The Verge’s testing. Hollister reported that a $650 standard PS5 produced sharper results in Cyberpunk 2077 and Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered, despite the Steam Machine costing close to twice as much.
A PC that behaves partly like a console
The Verge described the Steam Machine as a PC with a console-style interface rather than a conventional closed console. Hollister reported that he could plug in a keyboard, mouse, speakers, headset, USB hub and two monitors, using the device as a Linux desktop, and even got an external Blu-ray drive working through the front USB ports.
For TV gaming, The Verge found the machine could deliver smooth play in many titles by rendering below 4K and using AMD’s FSR upscaling. Hollister reported playable results in games including Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, Returnal, Forza Horizon 6, Cyberpunk 2077 and Shadow of the Tomb Raider, with settings adjusted by hand.
The Verge said the device struggles with native 4K in demanding games because of limited graphics power and video memory. Hollister reported that the system paired well with variable refresh rate TVs when games were configured to stay above his preferred 40 frames-per-second minimum.
Setup problems remain
The Verge found the first-day experience uneven. Hollister reported problems with controller setup, surround sound through a Denon receiver, Samsung TV recognition, missing Proton downloads for Windows games and failed game installs that left 800GB of incomplete data on a full drive.
Valve told The Verge some of those problems will change. Hollister also reported that Valve fixed a bug involving reboots, freezes and graphical errors near the video memory limit within one day during testing.
The review’s main complaint was that games still needed manual configuration. The Verge reported that tested AAA games lacked Steam Machine presets, Valve set the system to 1080p by default, and users must override that limit before selecting an upscaled 4K output.
The Verge also found console convenience features incomplete. Hollister reported unreliable sleep behavior, no remote wake for streaming from another Steam device, no automatic downloads while powered down unless a download had already started, and controller disconnects that Valve said it plans to address.
Updates are planned
Valve confirmed to The Verge that the Steam Machine will receive AMD FSR 4 upscaling. The company also said a graphics driver update should improve ray-tracing performance by as much as 20% in some games.
The Verge gave the Steam Machine a score of 6, praising its size, quiet cooling and ability to bring PC games to a TV without a mouse and keyboard. Its drawbacks, according to The Verge, are the high price, manual game setup and sleep reliability issues.
This story draws on original reporting from The Verge.