// KOTAKU — GAMING
Steam Machine Reviews Are In And They Are Far From Glowing: ‘There Is No Path That I Can Trace That Will Lead To Acceptable Performance On This Hardware’
The Steam Machine is finally here. People can sign up to get on the waiting list for the first units to ship and reviewers have already gone hands-on with Valve’s new device. It’s pricey, but is it worth it? The coverage so far runs from people impressed with the ingenuity on display to those disappointed with the overall performance given the cost.
IGN‘s Jacqueline Thomas called it “the best living room PC I’ve ever used, despite being a bit weaker than either of the base consoles.” PC Gamer‘s Andy Edser was much less enthusiastic. “The first question you need to ask yourself as a hardware reviewer is this: Would I buy one?” he wrote. “And despite the little black box’s lovely design, excellent controller, and sheer curiosity value, the answer is no.”
The devil is in the framerates. If you want a gaming PC that can run games up to 60fps with ray-tracing turned on, the Steam Machine might not be for you. In fact, some reviewers were struggling to get 60fps in newer games, even on medium graphics settings with ray-tracing turned off. The big pitch from Valve was that the device would run many Steam games at 60fps in 4K, thanks in part to frame generation. But some big games like last month’s 007 First Light might struggle to match the consistency and fuss-free experience of a version optimized for consoles.
At medium presets, IGN got Cyberpunk 2077 and Forza Horizon 6 to run at around 60fps. Death Stranding 2 was hitting around 45fps. 007 First Light was just under 60fps. “That’s not quite the same locked 60 fps that the PS5 or Xbox Series X gets, but those consoles typically use dynamic resolution in games, which means the resolution will scale up or down in order to maintain a locked frame rate,” reports IGN.
Therein might lie one of the challenges for the Steam Machine: You’re paying a PC price for hardware that can outperform consoles, but only when each game is tuned to it and even then not necessarily in a way that will blow those consoles out of the water. “Steam Machine delivers what we’d call ballpark entry-level performance for a mainstream PC capable of running the latest titles at decent resolutions,” wrote Digital Foundry‘s Richard Leadbetter. “This means that while 1440p is a viable output resolution (with upscaling depending on the title), settings management is key to getting a good experience.”
Linus Tech Tips was harsher. “There is no path that I can trace that will lead to acceptable performance on this hardware, especially in light of [Valve’s] unqualified claims of 4K 60fps, which still wouldn’t be a huge problem if it wasn’t for the big white elephant, the PlayStation 5,” Linus Sebastian said. “On paper, the Steam Machine and the PS5 trade blows, but in real life, I’m sorry, Valve, but it just doesn’t quite seem to work out that way.”
The good news is that despite being the smallest video game console since the GameCube, the Steam Machine apparent runs pretty cool and very silently. Reviewers praised the internal motherboard design and swappable faceplates as well. But it’s getting killed on the dollar-per-frame metric. Here’s what else reviewers are saying so far (Note: Kotaku will have its own review of the Steam Machine in the weeks ahead).
What really kills me is that I can’t yet trust the Steam Machine to properly suspend my game when I put it to sleep. Three times, I’ve left a game running and found it exactly where I left it 12 or 14 hours later. But three other times, I found my game session gone, and once I found my TV running in the middle of the night. Valve nailed this with the Steam Deck, so I’m hoping it’s just a matter of time.
How much is it? How powerful is it? Are you better off building your own PC? We’ve been hands-on with Steam Machine for just under a couple of weeks now and finally have some answers. However, while this is a PC built from existing AMD parts and fully comparable with existing PC technology, there is more to Steam Machine. Tiny, virtually silent, beautifully de