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When buying a gaming console, I imagine folks think more about the upfront cost ($600 for PS5 vs $1,050 for steam machine) as opposed to the total cost of ownership.

The steam machine may be cheaper in the long run once you consider:

* Playing PlayStation games online costs $11/month.

* PlayStation games tend to be more expensive than steam games.

by somenameforme2 hours ago|

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Steam isn't the Steam machine. If somebody's on a budget a PC you could get for a couple hundred is way more than enough to run nearly all games on Steam; $600 could get you a beast of a machine. I don't really know who the market for the Steam Machine is, because that price is kind of insane. I suppose we'll see how things look in a year or two there.

by bhelkey1 hours ago|

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> $600 could get you a beast of a machine

Where can you get a new gaming "beast of a machine" for $600? In the past you could build a reasonable gaming machine for $600 but parts are drastically more expensive today.

If you go to microcenter and look for gaming PCs, their cheapest option is $800 [1]. PC Part Picker's entry level build is $780 [2].

The only option I found with these constraints is this computer from Walmart with a GPU released in 2017 and a CPU released in 2013 [3] (This is not a recommendation for this listing. Please don't buy it).

[1] https://www.microcenter.com/product/705867/powerspec-g530-ga...

[2] https://pcpartpicker.com/guide/fQscCJ/entry-level-amd-gaming...

[3] https://www.walmart.com/ip/STGAubron-Gaming-PC-Computer-Desk...

by kouteiheika2 hours ago|

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> That will put them in direct competition with Steam, though. Suddenly their cheaper console will result in way higher cost for the lifetime of the console.

...funny that so many people were complaining about the recent Steam Machine not being worth it compared to just getting a PS5; maybe now it's not that bad of a deal after all, huh?

by Fire-Dragon-DoL1 hours ago|

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It still costs double a PlayStation, but yeah, I just bought one. I have kids and a big Steam library, so I am actually saving money with that over a console