The Steam Machine solves PC gaming’s most annoying problem
Did you see that Valve just released a console-killer desktop? Okay, that might be overstating it a bit, but the Steam Machine looks like it could actually be the most console-like gaming PC we’ve seen yet.
PC gaming has long been an enthusiast’s playground
I’m a PC gamer through and through. I’ve had a gaming PC in my house for over a decade at this point, and I don’t foresee a time when I won’t have one. The problem with PC gaming though is it’s designed with enthusiasts in mind.
When I fire up a new game on my desktop, the first thing I do is go to graphics settings and start playing with toggles and buttons. I have to get the right frame rate balanced with good enough graphics. It can be a difficult dance, sometimes requiring multiple game restarts to get things just right.
This is fun for me—someone who has been building high-end PCs for over 10 years—but it’s not fun for someone who just wants to play a game. The tinkering, crashes, driver updates, and all the other annoying parts of PC gaming are a turn-off to many—and that’s a problem.
I’m a firm believer that the best platform to play games on is PC, because on PC, games don’t die just because they get old. My wife loves an old game called Total Annihilation. The game was released for Windows and macOS back in 1997—the same year that the PlayStation, Nintendo 64, and Sega Saturn launched.
From time to time, my wife likes to play Total Annihilation still, and she’s able to because I have it on Steam. If all we had were consoles at home? She’d never be able to relive her glory days of gaming.
However, if I didn’t keep a gaming desktop around that was constantly updated, she still wouldn’t be able to play it—even though it’s on Steam and only $5. The problem is, until now, PC gaming just hasn’t been designed for the masses. That’s why consoles have been so popular.
Consoles come with pre-optimized, zero-config games
Gaming consoles offer a plug-and-play experience. Simply turn them on, run the simple updates, and start playing. While I tweak settings constantly on PC to get the “best experience possible,” on console, I just play the game.
Up until recently, consoles offered very little in the way of graphics settings. In fact, many console games don’t even run at 60 FPS. Now, some games offer two modes, either high performance or better graphics, automatically tweaking the settings to optimize for frame rate or render quality.
Even with the two options made available, there’s still nowhere near the range of options available on PC—and that makes consoles much more approachable and easier to use than desktops.
It’s also easier for developers to optimize games for consoles, as there’s only one or two hardware profiles to build against most of the time. When it comes to PC gaming, you have many more variables to consider as a game developer, and sometimes a game can work great on Intel and NVIDIA, and poorly on AMD, or vice versa. Consoles simply don’t have that problem.
The Valve Steam Machine is (almost) the best of all worlds
The Valve Steam Machine, however, solves the optimization dilemma. Valve already is optimizing games for its Steam Deck, so why not do it for desktop, too? That’s exactly what the Steam Machine does.
Valve is taking what they’ve already perfected on mobile with the Steam Deck and bringing it to your desk. The Steam Machine doesn’t have the best hardware in the world, coming in with relatively mid-range specs, but it’ll definitely have optimization down to a science.
On the product page for the Steam Machine, Valve claims that the desktop will run games at 4K60 with FSR. These games will likely not be running on ultra settings, but they’ll run smoothly, that’s for sure.
One of the downside to the Steam Machine is that it’s likely more similar to a console than a traditional desktop. It’s not yet known if the Steam Machine offers any user-upgradable parts, which is a staple of the PC gaming realm. Game consoles are similarly non-upgradable, having to be replaced with a new one each generation.
The other thing to keep in mind is not every Steam game will run on the Steam Machine. Battlefield 6 and Call of Duty require special anti-cheat programs that only run on Windows, while the Steam Machine runs SteamOS, an Arch Linux-based operating system.
If Valve can solve the software side of things, and find a way to get Ricochet working on SteamOS, then that will open the doors to many more games on the Steam Machine. Really, though, the value of the Steam Machine will be in its price, and if Valve can actually compete with consoles or not.
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