- Larian’s publishing director says there’s “really no point in making a high-spec steam engine”
- This mini PC is aimed at casual gamers, he claims, and Valve wants to create an entry level for that market and then watch it flourish
- Other PC manufacturers will step in with more powerful models, or enthusiast gamers can build their own compact SteamOS PCs
If you think Valve’s fresh take on the Steam Machine is disappointingly underpowered, you wouldn’t be alone – but you’re missing the bigger picture.
PC Gamer highlighted that several hardcore gamers are clearly unimpressed with the core specs of the Steam Machine – which runs an AMD Zen 4 CPU with RDNA 3 (semi-custom, 8GB) GPU – and wish it came with a more powerful set of components.
But as Larian’s (of Baldur’s Gate 3 fame) director of publishing Michael Douse makes clear, this misses the point. The point is, as Douse writes on X, that “there’s really no point in making a high-spec Steam Machine” since Valve is betting on enthusiast gamers who know “how to turn any PC into a Steam Machine” if they want a more powerful rig.
Value is probably betting that anyone who wants more demanding PC hardware on their TV is part of the crowd that knows how to turn any PC into a Steam Machine. Really no point in making a high-spec Steam Machine.13 November 2025
In other words, the Steam Machine is aimed at more casual gamers who don’t want to fuss too much about the exact performance they’re getting – people who just want an affordable PC box to sit discreetly in their living room (hence the rather bland and compact cube design) and let them easily kick right into playing PC games on the TV.
Douse expands on this argument to note that the bigger vision is that if Valve can establish the Steam Machine as a mini PC entry point for living room gaming this time around, third-party manufacturers (Asus, Ayaneo, and all the usual suspects) will build more powerful game cubes (probably a bit bigger than Valve’s, of course). That’s what’s happened with Steam Deck and the slew of handhelds that have followed, and Valve hopes to mirror that success here.
The theory is that eventually an entire ecosystem of mini PCs running SteamOS will emerge, and while Valve isn’t selling the hardware in all cases, it’s still selling the PC games via Steam for all of these devices.
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The dream, no doubt, would be for game developers to start taking Linux more seriously and consider compatibility issues more – and problematic elements like anti-cheat tools for online games (which is a serious wrench in the works at the moment).
So it all comes back to the software: drive forward with SteamOS while accelerating game sales on Steam itself.
The obvious reason the Steam Machine is relatively modest in terms of its performance ceiling, judging by the hardware of choice, is because Valve wants to be able to price the cube at an affordable level.
This brave new world of a new way to play in the living room won’t happen if the Steam Machine seems expensive, and the big hope is that Valve will really go hard on pricing. Mainly because it makes sense that this is the approach and intended angle, as Valve could certainly have gone a bit further in terms of pushing the hardware spec.
However, we do not yet have any kind of actual hint as to what the prices might be. The general hope is something like a $499 PC (in the US) here – although some are more optimistic than that – but actual costs may yet be affected by some unfortunate winds blowing in the component arena right now. These market forces are pushing memory costs up, which means more expensive RAM and SSDs, which could be a price snag when it comes to production time for the Steam Machine.
Of course, Valve has to keep in mind that the Steam Machine will have to deal with the question – “why should I buy this instead of a PS5 or Xbox?” – based on the relative cost of these gaming boxes for the living room. Although when it comes to game prices, there are plenty of cheap games (and big sales) on Steam and an expansive library of quality indie titles – all of which could again be tempting selling points for more casual gamers.
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