Valve Says Steam Machine Is not a Console—however It Is

It is set to supply two inside storage capacities, with 512GB or 2TB SSDs, with storage additional expandable through microSD. Valve appears to be approaching the exterior storage format as a glorified recreation cartridge, as gamers will be capable of transfer a single card between Steam Machine, Steam Body, and Steam Deck. That additionally signifies that present gen SDXC format playing cards will probably be usable, moderately than requiring the newer, sooner microSD Categorical format that the Swap 2 does to run video games.

It additionally options 16GB DDR5 RAM, 8GB GDDR6 VRAM, a number of enter/output choices—DisplayPort 1.4. HDMI 2.0. One USB-C and 4 USB-A ports—and crams even its energy provide into “a roughly 6-inch dice.” That is in regards to the measurement of Nintendo’s traditional GameCube, or half an Xbox Collection X. It is cute! If you wish to make it cuter, you may swap out the entrance face plate (not not like the vary of beauty PS5 shells, hmm …).

That is all a far cry from the unique Steam Machines, which stood out by not having a particular kind issue. The Valve of 2015 as a substitute set a minimal spec that any producer might meet to label a tool as a Steam Machine, a level of confusion that little question damage its wider adoption. The brand new era is 100% a Valve product.

About the one commonality is that each generations have been designed round utilizing SteamOS to navigate your recreation library (it is set to run KDE Plasma for its desktop atmosphere). Valve provides that it’s increasing its “Deck Verified” program, which certifies video games as being suitable with the hand held Steam Deck, “to incorporate rankings for Steam Machine, so prospects can perceive how their video games will run.”

So. A gaming PC that appears to supply solely minimal {hardware} customization choices, in a set kind issue, produced by one producer, with video games designed to run on it. You already know what that appears loads like? A console. And that ought to be celebrated.

Comfort Wins

It is simple to know why Valve could not wish to embrace the “console” label for Steam Machine. As arguably the most important driving pressure in PC gaming, it’d virtually be tearing up its personal avenue cred to take action.

Nevertheless, consoles stay in style exactly due to their comparative limits—for a lot of gamers, having the ability to plug a field into their TV and luxuriate in video games on a sofa is only a nicer strategy to play. It is extra sociable, too, particularly for native co-op video games. Even hooking my gaming laptop computer as much as a TV to play PC video games with mates is extra of a faff than turning on a console. Plus, given the extraordinary quantity of video games launched on Steam—greater than 18,500 in 2024—why would not you wish to make them extra comfy and accessible?