The hardware prices seem competitive. But the important note is hinting at the real form factor tax: It doesn't have the same cost / performance ratio as a normally sized PC using the same hardware.

Wtf? The 16g of ram costs almost as much as the gpu. I really hope my ram sticks don't fail on me anytime soon.

This really reflects the reverse spiral gaming hardware has seen in recent years. The benchmarks are absolutely laughable for what you could get for the same price just a year ago. Go back 2 years and the gap is even larger. Gamers are being priced out by AI slop generators.

Honestly the fact that were able to push sub-1.1k prices with the mess we have now, and at the same time they so SteamOS can be used on your own steam machine (as in made by you) makes me think they knew of the corner they walked in for a long time.

Now also consider that the Steam Machine also has a tiny form factor, extremely quiet cooling, and CEC over HDMI that make it exceptionally suited for a living room PC and it more than makes up for that $71 gap. It really is about as good a deal as it could have been in 2026, but most people are still comparing it against 2024 prices. I think the $99 Steam Controller having a bundle price of $79 shows that Valve really are trying to do what they can here.

Where'd you find this?