The first reviews of Valve’s Steam Machine, a compact desktop PC that offers a console-like gaming experience for your Steam games, are out. While the design and performance appear to live up to the hype, reviewers are blanching at the price. Due to the ongoing memory shortage, the Steam Machine starts from US$1,049 (around S$1,350, unavailable in Singapore) for the base 512GB model. Adding the Steam controller pushes the price to US$1,128. Yikes!
Now, I’m old enough to remember when Valve introduced the OG Steam Machine. About a decade ago, Valve partnered with several PC manufacturers like Alienware to create Steam Machines that ran SteamOS, its Linux-based operating system. However, SteamOS was still in its infancy, and there weren’t as many games that could run on it. It also didn’t help that the Steam Machines all had different hardware configurations, which made for an inconsistent experience. Unsurprisingly, sales didn’t meet expectations, and Valve abandoned the co…
