re: Steam Machine Standard Price $1049

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Sounds like you should get a Steam Deck.

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If I wanted a handheld.

I don't want a handheld.

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Except the xbox will charge you $23/month to play those PC games.

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There is no cost to simply hook up your XBox to the internet. If you're purchasing your games outright, it's a 1:1 comparison.

The cheapest Game Pass tier is $10/month and what is probably the best tier for people new to XBox who want console and PC games is $15/month. If you're PC only the best tier possible is $14/month.

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If I wanted a handheld.

I don't want a handheld.

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you can get the dock and play on the tv with it. i do it all the time

you can run a mouse and keyboard with the dock as well

I get it. Everybody wants to hate this thing.

I don't.

Meh, it'll fall short on every game that isn't heavily cpu limited. It will fall well short on games that require the 9.5 gb vram. This should've been 700 with a controller.

It's too expensive and unknown for the traditional console crowd and way too underpowered and limited for the hardcore pc gaming audience

Completely pointless.

Will have 0 legs. They'll gradually sell a modest first production run and then you'll never hear anything about again.

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They're allegedly selling it at cost. Hardware is just stupid expensive currently. People saying that if it was like 7-800 it would make sense, bit that's also allegedly around the original price they were targeting before ram and gpu prices went through the roof.

I like Valve as a company, they aren't perfect by any means, but they're about as consumer friendly as they can be and that's a rarity in this day and age. They also try. They push the envelope and try to put things out there that improve the situation for their customer base. I would love for this thing to succeed, though I don't know that I was ever really the target audience. I have a steam deck though and that thing is amazing.

Throwing out any sentimental crap and getting down to brass tax, this thing is at ita core a midrange pc. What I think it's real strenghts are is that it's tiny, it's quiet, and it at least has the potential to be a seamless drop in for couch gaming. The entire UI being controller-able is a big part of that, but also that they got CEC working properly on it. Meaning you could theoretically throw your TV remote away and use your steam controller to wake the pc and by extension the TV, and then put them both to sleep with the steam controller. That's not something at all straightforward with more or less any other pc.

And the other thing it has going for it, is that it is a pc. You can pull up a desktop and do legitimate work on it. If you like KBM play over controller you can do that. Any Bluetooth headset you want? That works. Those extra Xbox/playstation controllers you have? Probably works too. BC valve isn't trying to lock you out of this thing, they're trying to enable you. You can install windows on it if you care to (you probably shouldn't though).

I don't think it's at all pointless. At its current price point it's definitely niche though. That's not really Valve's fault though. You could say they could have subsidized it with theoretical game sales (which is the main reason you can get PlayStation and Xbox consoles at the price points they sell for), but since they by no means lock you into only buying games from steam, there's not necessarily a guarantee they'd recoup the loss from selling it.