The Steam Machine was finally released on Monday, and many gamers were disappointed with its $1,049 starting price, which doesn’t include a Steam Controller (you have to pay an extra $79 to bundle one). Unfortunately, Valve’s hands were tied in this due to the current RAMpocalypse, where even the cheapest RAM kits now cost four times as much as before. While engineers Pierre-Loup Griffais and Yazan Aldehayyat said that they cannot give a hard number for the console’s original price point, they told IGN in an interview that it would have experienced a “probably similar” price increase to the one the Steam Deck got in May 2026.

Given that the Steam Deck 512GB and 1TB experienced a price increase of around 45%, it stands to reason that the Steam Machine would have received the same hike if it were already in the market. So, if we extrapolate the numbers, the Steam Machine would’ve been originally priced at around $729.91. The 1TB Steam Deck’s price jumped by 46.22%, but we can’t just apply that increase to the higher-tier Steam Machine because it has double the storage capacity. But if we check our SSD price tracker, the price difference between the cheapest 1TB and 2TB SSDs was just at $28 when they were at their lowest. If we add this to the 1TB "version" of the living room PC console, then we can safely estimate that Valve’s target price for the 2TB Steam Machine is around $950-$1,000.

The Steam Machine is still more expensive than the PlayStation 5 Pro, even at its original prices, because Valve refuses to subsidize its hardware sales with the sales on the Steam store. After all, the Steam Machine has an open hardware philosophy, allowing buyers to do what they want with the console. You can install Windows 11 on it and just stick with PC Game Pass to play your games on the console, meaning Valve will make zero dollars on game purchases from you.

This stark price difference could make the Steam Machine unpalatable to console gamers who are interested in switching to PC gaming through the living room PC console. After all, several tests reveal that the PlayStation outperforms the Steam Machine in several titles (although the Valve hardware still performed well enough). But the advantage that gamers are paying for in the Steam Machine is the abilities of a desktop PC (you can pretty much install anything you want on it without going through the Steam store and you don’t have to subscribe for online play), combined with the convenience of a living room console (like HDMI-CEC and the ability to switch the console on or off from the controller). Interested gamers will also likely have a library of titles ready to play.

Hopefully, the Steam Machine’s price will come down once the memory supply finally stabilizes, but it will probably be years before this happens, if at all. Valve’s new gaming console is quite a niche product — it’s built for PC gamers with an extensive Steam library who want to play games on their living room couch or while lying in bed without going through the hassle of building an SFF PC. But if you prefer playing games on your desk or already have a substantial game library on your PlayStation, you’re probably better off sticking with your current hardware.

Do you or someone you know have a Nintendo Switch 2? What about accessories for your new console? Whether you want to play with others, increase your storage, or add functionality, you may want some extras to deliver the best gameplay experience possible, and now is the best time to score a big deal on them during Prime Day 2026.

• Check out all the Switch 2 accessories deals in Amazon's Prime Day Sale

There are many official, licensed accessories alongside third-party extras available at a wide range of prices. It's Prime Day 2026, so now is an excellent time to hunt for deals and the best prices on Switch 2 peripherals and accessories.

One of the most important extras you'll most likely want to pick up is a microSD Express memory expansion card. The least expensive out now is Nintendo's own (SanDisk) 256GB card, but there are other, faster models available for a pittance more (see below). If you know that's what you want, check out our handy list of the best Prime Day microSD Express card deals for the Switch 2. Just be aware that pricing has absolutely skyrocketed, along with RAM, Storage, and video cards, in the last several months, so don't be shocked. Still, we found the best deals that we could.

Other accessories to consider are screen protectors, carrying cases, and peripherals such as controllers, headsets, and cameras, as listed below.

If you're thinking about, or already using a camera for your Switch 2, most of the styles out there are pretty boring. Most are just a camera on a stick, or may even clip to the device. I found something unique, the officially licensed Piranha Plant Camera! Relive your days of Mario and the feared plant that comes out of the pipes, but on your desk - and for less than the price of the official Nintendo Switch 2 camera-on-a-stick.

We also added another Switch 2 Pro-class controller on top of the official Nintendo Pro controller. 8bitDo's Ultimate 2 bluetooth controller is one of my kids' favorites. For less than the cost of the Nintendo controller, the Ultimate 2 offers TMY joysticks, switchable hall effect/tactile triggers, vibration and motion control. It is a lower resolution (640x480), however. The best part? It's it's on sale right now.

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Also, you can join the Tom's Hardware deals Discord for up-to-the-minute hardware deals.

It’s hard not to be impressed by what manufacturers have achieved with the numerous options that are now available among the best PC gaming handhelds. What was once a domain left largely to Valve with the Steam Deck has evolved into a broader market, with the bulk of the systems available running Windows 11.

These devices pair sleek exteriors with high-refresh IPS or OLED displays and pack powerful (for a handheld) computing hardware inside. However, even the gaming handheld market has been squeezed by rising component prices, leading us to the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+, the subject of this review. It’s by far the most powerful gaming handheld we’ve ever tested, thanks to its Intel Arc G3 Extreme SoC, but it’s also the most expensive ($1,799).

At every turn, the Claw 8 EX AI+ impressed with its performance, but the staggering price tag incessantly looms over the experience.

Design of the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+

We hope you like purple, as that’s the only color currently available for the Claw 8 EX AI+. Purple isn’t my favorite color in the world (that distinction belongs to blue), and it gives me Joker vibes from the 1989 Batman starring Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson. Not only is the top of the chassis molded in purple plastic, but it also has a sparkly finish that makes it look a bit jewel-like. The lower half of the system is constructed of traditional black plastic.

The handgrips on the Claw 8 EX AI+ are well-spaced, perfectly sized for my hands, and evenly distribute weight, which helps mask the system’s 785-gram heft. Speaking of the handgrips, there’s a laser-etched dot texture molded where your palms and index fingers rest on the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ — this helps keep it in place instead of sliding around in your hands (especially if they perspire during long gaming sessions).

Controls-wise, the Claw 8 EX AI+ doesn’t break any new ground, which is generally a good thing. If you’re familiar with an Xbox controller, there are backlit ABXY buttons on the right, with a joystick just below, along with another joystick on the left side, with a D-pad (which features a metal dome) below it. Both joysticks sport an RGB ring at their bases. There are also four buttons on the face of the handheld, flanking the display, with the bottom-left button assigned to bringing up the MSI Quick Settings overlay for the Xbox Game Bar. The bottom right button launches MSI Center M, for launching and configuring games.

You’ll find the usual allotment of bumper and triggers at the top of the Claw 8 EX AI+. While the triggers feel nice, the bumpers are a smidge “wiggly,” but that’s a nitpick on my part. If you’re a fan of macro buttons, you may be disappointed to find that there are only two on the back of the Claw 8 EX AI+, versus the three or four you’ll find on competing systems like the Steam Deck.

Unlike Lenovo’s Legion Go series of handhelds, you won’t find a touchpad on the Claw 8 EX AI+. So all of your screen navigation will be limited to touching the screen with your finger, or using the joysticks in the Xbox overlay or MSI Center M.

All of the I/O ports are located at the top of the unit; here you’ll find a power button that doubles as a fingerprint reader, two Thunderbolt 4 ports, a microSD reader, a 3.5mm audio jack, and volume buttons.

There are two intakes (one for each cooling fan) located beside the macro buttons, while vents below the IO panel exhaust heat.

Although I’ll talk about the screen in detail later on, I must mention that the display doesn’t fit neatly within the confines of the center mass of the Claw 8 EX AI+. Instead, the bottom portion of the screen extends roughly half an inch below the body. It looks a little wonky at first, but it seems to be the only way that MSI could fit the 8-inch display, at least without making the whole device bigger.

The Claw 8 EX AI+ measures 12.6 x 5.12 x 1.98 inches, compared to 11.42 x 4.76 x 2.00 inches for the Asus ROG Xbox Ally X, 11.64 x 5.38 x 1.66 inches for the Lenovo Legion Go 2, and 11.73 x 4.6 x 1.97 inches for the Steam Deck OLED.

MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ Specifications and Components

Gaming and Graphics Performance on the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+

The Claw 8 EX AI+ features the new Intel Arc G3 Extreme SoC, which includes a 14-core GPU (4.7 GHz max clock) and a 12-core Arc B390 GPU that clocks up to 2.3 GHz.

The default power mode is MSI's AI Engine, which typically runs games at 25 watts, but can vary between 15 watts and 30 watts depending on the workload. There's also an Endurance Mode, which leverages the Intel Endurance Gaming Efficiency Preset. This limits the chip to 15 watts and targets 30 frames per second (FPS) while gaming. Finally, Manual Mode allows you to run PL1 Max at 35 watts.

For our testing, we used the default AI Engine Mode when on battery, and Manual Mode when plugged in (35 watts PL1 Max, 45 watts PL2 Max). We ran games at 1280 x 800 and 1920 x 1200 resolutions on the handheld, leveraging the Xbox Full Screen Experience to limit resource consumption from additional Windows software. Please note, however, that the ROG Xbox Ally X benchmarks were run at 720p/1080p due to its 16:9 aspect ratio display, while the Steam Deck is limited to 1280 x 800 resolution.

While playing Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight, I was able to easily achieve 150-160 FPS on medium graphics settings at 800p with XeSS Balanced and the AI Engine power mode engaged. Battlefield 6 saw performance in the 70 fps range at 800p, with Auto detail settings and XeSS Balanced enabled.

Spoiler alert: the Arc 3 Extreme powering the Claw 8 EX AI+ is an absolute beast (in the handheld segment), delivering a 20 to 30+ FPS advantage over its peers across all the games in our benchmark suite. Starting with Shadow of the Tomb Raider benchmark (Medium, DX12), the Claw 8 EX AI+hit 98 FPS at 800p on battery power and 112 fps when plugged in (a 30+ FPS advantage over the ROG Xbox Ally X. Bumping the resolution to 1200p, the Claw 8 EX AI+ was faster at 1200p on battery power (67 FPS) than the ROG Ally X and Legion Go 2 were at 720p/800p on battery power. The system also impressed, reaching 72 FPS at 1200p when plugged in.

When benchmarking Cyberpunk 2077 (Steam Deck preset), the Claw 8 EX AI+ again showed its performance might, crushing all rivals. It delivered 78 FPS on battery power and 85 FPS when plugged in at 800p. At 1200p, those figures fell to 48 FPS and 52 FPS, respectively. We're at least getting a semblance of playability at 1200p resolution in the handheld space.

Red Dead Redemption 2 (Favor performance, Vulkan) saw the Claw 8 EX AI+ run the tables again, hitting 115 FPS at 800p and 87 FPS at 1200p while plugged in to the wall. Of course, those numbers fell slightly on battery power, but were still above anything that the ROG Xbox Ally X or Legion Go 2 could muster.

It was more of the same in Borderlands 3 (Medium, DX11), which saw the largest performance variance between the Claw 8 EX AI+ on battery power and when plugged in. The handheld hit 94 FPS at 800p while plugged in, a full 18 FPS faster than with battery power. At 1200p while plugged in, it still managed to pull 78 FPS at 1200p.

Forza Horizon 6 is the newest addition to our benchmark suite, so we only have Steam Deck numbers to compare with the Claw 8 EX AI+. The Claw 8 EX AI+ hovered around the 100 FPS mark at 800p and managed 72-76 FPS at 1200p, depending on whether it was running on battery power.

For stress testing, we ran Metro Exodus 15 times at 800p at Medium quality settings to simulate roughly 30 minutes of gameplay. The Claw 8 EX AI+ hit an average frame rate of nearly 70 FPS on the benchmark. For comparison, the ROG Xbox Ally X managed 63.44 FPS using the same settings.

The Claw 8 EX AI+’s two performance cores averaged 4.06 GHz, the eight efficiency cores averaged 3.18 GHz, and the four low-power efficiency cores averaged 3.0 GHz.

Windows 11 and MSI Center M on the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+

The Claw 8 EX AI+ supports the Xbox Full Screen Experience, just like the ROG Xbox Ally X. However, it doesn't have its own dedicated Xbox app. You can access the interface by opening the Xbox app and selecting Full Screen from the top-right corner. You'll then be able to reboot the system directly into the Full Screen Experience, bypassing unnecessary Windows 11 components that could affect gaming performance.

All the benefits and limitations of the Full Screen Experience, as discussed in our ROG Xbox Ally X review, apply here, so I won't belabor those points. I would like to elaborate on the MSI Center M, which provides its own dedicated, gaming-centric interface. The full-screen interface can be navigated using the thumbpads, eliminating the need to tap the screen.

MSI Center M pulls in all of your games from multiple sources, including the Xbox Store, GOG Galaxy, Epic Games, and Steam (among others). It pulled games from all those sources, and most of them displayed a nice, high-resolution thumbnail. One exception was Cyberpunk 2077, which only displayed a low-resolution Start Menu icon that was blown up to a blurry mess.

You can customize navigation within MSI Center M to use the joysticks in Gamepad Mode (for gaming) or Desktop Mode (for using the standard Windows 11 interface). You can tweak sensitivity for the joysticks, and the Desktop Mode provides key mapping so that you can see which UI shortcut each button corresponds to.

Another component of the software package is MSI Quick Settings, an overlay that appears in the Xbox Game Bar. It can be recalled using the MSI Quick Settings button beside the left joystick. MSI Quick Settings features a sleek, easy-to-use interface that provides access to power profiles, screen brightness, gamepad control modes, display refresh rate, and screenshot capture (among other things).

Display on the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+

The Claw 8 EX AI+ features an 8-inch IPS display with a 120 Hz refresh rate and a 1920 x 1200 resolution. Given the $1,799 price tag, it would have been more fitting for MSI to include an OLED display, as we saw with the Legion Go 2. I think that’s a big miss by MSI, and one that I hope will be rectified in future versions.

Unfortunately, due to time constraints, we were unable to perform detailed, instrumented tests on the Claw 8 EX AI+’s display. So you’ll have to trust my eyeballs and the manufacturer’s specs for the time being. MSI claims that the display on the Claw 8 EX AI+ covers 100% of the sRGB color space and offers a peak brightness of 500 nits.

Although I didn’t have a Legion Go 2 on hand for a side-by-side comparison, I do have a Legion Go and a Legion Go S on my testing bench. We measured the former at 476.7 nits, and the Claw 8 EX AI+ seemed at least as bright (at maximum brightness) as the Legion Go, if not brighter, across multiple games and while using the Windows 11 interface.

Games generally looked good on the Claw 8 EX AI+, with good color balance. I racked up plenty of hours in Battlefield 6, trying my best to soak in the lush reds, oranges, and greens of the city architecture of the Saints Quarter map without getting my head blown off. Forza Horizon 6 looked magnificent in the colorful Japanese landscape, with vibrant city centers and majestic outdoor environments reflected in the vehicles' finishes. Everything looked good, but color vibrancy and overall visual “pop” would have been even better with an OLED panel, but I digress.

Battery Life on the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+

I’ve been spending quite a bit of time recently playing more laid-back games; ones that won’t make my blood boil because of tense online matches. In particular, I’ve spent time playing Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight.

I played the game at 800p with medium settings, Intel XeSS Balanced, power mode set to AI Engine, and display set to 50 percent. After playing for an hour (with an average of around 150 FPS), the battery dropped from 100 percent to 52 percent. Switching the power mode to Endurance, locked at 30 FPS, I still had 66 percent battery after an hour (when starting at 100 percent).

If I were to drop the brightness a bit, I could see battery life extending past 3 hours in Endurance mode.

Audio on the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+

The Claw 8 EX AI+ has a pair of 2-watt speakers, which are fine. They’re perfectly serviceable for most games. Given that I spent plenty of time playing Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight, I noticed that the character voices sounded pretty good, and the plastic “clicking” sound of Lego stacking together during building exercises came through loud and clear.

Sound output was a bit more muddled in Battlefield 6, although I prefer to play games like that with headphones on anyway. In fact, given the mobility of handheld gaming PCs, most people will likely default to headphones for the best possible audio experience with the Claw 8 EX AI+.

Heat on the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+

While running the Metro Exodus stress test, the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ registered around 90 degrees Fahrenheit on the back of the chassis, close to dead-center. Moving towards the top of the unit, heat levels rose sharply to around 109 F near the cooling fans' exhausts.

The Arc G3 Extreme chip averaged 77.3 degrees Celsius.

Upgradeability on the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+

Cracking open the Claw 8 EX AI+ is incredibly easy – only six Phillips-head screws hold the back panel in place. Once the screws are removed, you can use a well-placed plastic pry tool to insert it between the black and purple halves of the chassis where they meet. Once you pry open a small section, the rest pops off easily.

Once inside, you’ll see the battery in the lower portion of the chassis and a full-length 2280 PCIe 4.0 SSD nestled between the two cooling fans (secured with one screw). In our review unit, the SSD was a 1TB Micron 2500 with QLC NAND.

MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ Configurations

As of now, there’s only one configuration available of the Claw 8 EX AI+ with an Arc G3 Extreme SoC. Our system came with the aforementioned Arc G3 Extreme chip, 32GB of RAM, a 1TB SSD, and an 8-inch 120Hz 1200p IPS touchscreen, for a whopping $1,799.99 at Best Buy.

Bottom Line

The MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ is an impressive machine that offers a solidly-built chassis, good ergonomics, and good battery life. However, the most impressive aspect of the handheld is its performance. The Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip allowed the Claw 8 EX AI+ to absolutely dominate our gaming benchmarks, delivering anywhere from a 20 to over 30 FPS advantage at 1200p or 800p resolution.

But that performance comes at a steep price: $1,799. That’s more than just expensive; it’s MacBook Pro pricing for a handheld, which is shocking, to say the least. For comparison, the Lenovo Legion Go 2 with 32GB of RAM, a 1TB SSD, and an OLED display retails for $1,349.99, and we already had extreme reservations concerning its price tag.

The Claw 8 EX AI+ is $450 more expensive and doesn’t even have the OLED display of the Legion Go 2. The saving grace for the Claw 8 EX AI+ is the Arc G3 Extreme chip, which gives unmatched performance across the board. However, it remains to be seen if the price premium is enough of a draw to more casual gamers.

While the coming availability of the Steam Machine is stealing headlines about Valve, the company quietly announced that it’s also working on SteamOS to give it wider compatibility. Pierre-Loup Griffais, one of the engineers Tom’s Hardware talked with to dig into the details of the upcoming console, told The Verge that the company is collaborating with Nvidia “very closely” to develop support for Team Green GPUs. Additionally, he mentioned the possibility of dual-booting SteamOS with Windows or other operating systems in the future. The measures would allow users to build their own DIY Steam Machines in future.

SteamOS 3.0 was built from the ground up for the Steam Deck, which uses AMD hardware. For years now, enterprising users could install the operating system on other systems that feature Team Red hardware. However, if you use parts from other brands like Intel and Nvidia, you’re going to run into a lot of complications. One enthusiast made SteamOS work with an Intel Arc B580 desktop GPU, but it required a lot of advanced steps and troubleshooting that would certainly turn off more casual users.

Valve released the latest version of the gaming operating system, SteamOS 3.8.10, just last week, and it comes with compatibility updates for Intel and AMD platforms, including upcoming Intel-powered handhelds. While support for Nvidia graphics cards isn’t expected to arrive this year, Graiffais told The Verge that “it’s certainly something that we’re working on in the background.” He also mentioned a SteamOS installer that would make it easier for users to wipe an existing operating system and replace it with SteamOS. While it cannot partition a drive for dual-booting yet, Pierre-Loup hinted that the feature might eventually arrive in the future.

Windows is still the most dominant OS for gaming, and we can see this in the latest Steam survey results, with Windows 11 getting nearly 70% of the market share. However, Linux, especially through SteamOS, is quickly gaining ground. Although it still has a negligible 3.99% share (compared to Windows’ overall 93.85%), it has already overtaken macOS’s 2.16%. This result is likely driven by the popularity of the Steam Deck, despite its recent price hikes, and we expect this to jump even higher once gamers get their hands on the Valve Steam Machine in the coming weeks.

Valve's Steam Machine is launching, finally, with reservations starting today. While the hardware is the same as it was when it was announced late last year, almost nothing else in PC gaming seems the same. There's a massive component shortage. Prices are high on tech in general, and speculation about how the Steam Machine would be priced took over the conversation about the entire launch.

Ahead of the system's launch and reservation queue opening, I talked to Valve engineers Pierre-Loup Griffais and Yazan Aldehayyat to discuss the system: how it was engineered, why Valve made the decisions it did, and how the company came to pricing that starts at $1,049.

"It's definitely the case that you know our original design was based on memory and storage prices from, you know, two years ago or so," said Griffais. "And so we were in a different segment than we were hoping to be, but I think it's more of a reflection of where the market as a whole is than Steam Machine itself, right?"

The engineers didn't dare forecast the reception to the price, nor how that would affect sales. But Griffais suggested that Valve expects anyone who wants the power in a Steam Machine would still have to pay a similar amount in another device, but highlighted what's unique to the Machine — the form factor, how quiet it is, the CEC integration, and the dedicated Bluetooth controller antenna.

I posited the possibility of people going for a console, instead. Even the PlayStation 5 Pro is currently cheaper, at $899. But the two engineers suggested that's not the right comparison.

Griffais said there's more to compare than just specs and price. He suggested that PC gamers would also have to rebuy games they want to play, and that some of them would have to get used to the idea of paying to play games online.

"I think the value of the Steam machine is inherently tied to the value of your Steam library in a lot of ways, right?" Aldehayyat said. "Like, the more games you have on Steam, the more valuable the Steam machine is to you, and the Steam machine makes your existing library even more valuable. So, those two kinds of decisions are very much intertwined. And I think at least early on, we suspect that it's for people who already have a big Steam library… it's just going to make a lot of sense to them."

The lack of subsidies

A lot has been made of the fact that Valve is not subsidizing the hardware, which the company has said would turn the PC into a more closed ecosystem. There has always been an assumption that Valve has subsidized the Steam Deck off of the profits it takes from the sales on the Steam Store.

That's not quite the case, the Valve engineers said."

If you look at like certain SKUs at certain points of time, it might be below or above cost bya small margin," Griffais said. "I think there's some comments that we made around it, you know, being painful and all that early on, that was more about being as close as possible to cost than anything, yeah, same thing [with the Steam Machine], right?"

In fact, Griffais claimed that despite recent cost increases to the Steam Deck OLED due to the component shortage (and, now, the Steam Machine), they're being more aggressive on pricing now than they used to be.

"We understand that the higher price is less accessible to people… and so we're even more aggressive now, trying to be as close as possible to the actual cost of the parts that we're shipping," he added."

But it's important that the Valve hardware is a self-sustained program, it's not subsidized by software sales," Aldehayyat said. "So that's kind of the important piece that we can get across."

8GB of VRAM? 4K support? Really?

As soon as the Steam Machine was announced, enthusiasts honed in on one very specific point on the spec sheet: the semi-custom AMD RDNA3 graphics with 28 CUs and, to many, a sparse 8GB of VRAM.

Griffais said that Valve is "very aware" that it is being "kind of aggressive" with 8GB of VRAM. But the way he talked about it, it seemed that the team was also taking a sort of artistic license with what players want out of a small box like this. He said that the team did calculations that that for "the kind of stuff that you would want to play" 8GB could support the level of detail and performance one would expect out of a small, TV-based system."

The cases where you're running out of VRAM are actually cases that you would not want to be playing on a system like that," he said. "Yeah, it'd be too slow… The cases where you're exercising the VRAM limits are actually cases that you wouldn't want to play as a real user, in my opinion" He admitted however, that it's possible that in the future that some games may need more VRAM to reach the same performance.

Still, on SteamOS, the team has been working to make VRAM more efficient. For starters, the current iteration of SteamOS was really only meant for APUs, but now has logic for discrete GPUs and VRAM. That came with a different set of features to add, like handling VRAM under stress to get the best possible outcome. The team at Valve is still working on it.

In Aldehayyat's opinion, the upgrade cycle for PCs has been "slowing down dramatically," and that they're seeing games come out with a better ability to scale across CPU and GPU generations, and that the PC ecosystem isn't designed with a single fixed performance target in mind.

"So, again, like for us, the metric that we care about is, can you play the games on Steam? Can you play every game on Steam? And we think the Steam machine absolutely can, right now, and we think the longevity for it is actually quite good, given the current reality of the upgrade cycles," Aldehayyat said. "I mean, maybe 10 years ago a device like this wouldn't last as long, wouldn't have the legs to be competitive for as long, but… given what the market is doing right now, and the upgrade cycles, it still has the longevity to be a good device for people for many years to come.”

But that 8GB of VRAM wasn't in isolation on the spec sheet. It also highlighted the idea of playing at 4K at 60 frames per second, provided you have AMD's FSR upscaling technology running. In my testing of the machine, that's possible for some games, but the Steam Machine really feels like a 1080p or 1440p box.

"A big part of that messaging actually came because we found a lot of people who are not as familiar with tuning their gaming settings want to just make sure that it's compatible [with] their 4K TV," Aldehayyat said, pointing out that not everyone understands the difference between render resolution and native TV resolutions. He agreed that 1080p and 1440p are probably the sweet spot.

Despite that messaging, 1080p is set as the default resolution across SteamOS globally out of the box, which Grifafis said was to have the "baseline be on the safe side." Like the Steam Deck and Steam Controller, Valve doesn't provide a ton of instructions when you start, so that's something players will need to figure out, whether they decide to change this on a game-by-game basis or across the system (or at all).

Griffais said the team wants to "make that more visible," though he didn't specify how Valve may do that. He also suggested that because Valve is testing games as part of the verified program, it could have different base resolutions on a per-game basis, like a higher resolution for a low-res indie game or an older game that doesn't need as many resources.

Several components, one big heat sink

Inside the Steam Machine's small frame is a massive heatsink and 120 mm fan that cools almost all of the critical components, including the CPU, GPU, and memory. That decision lets Valve make the smallest box possible, but it's certainly not the easy way of doing things.

One other benefit of not having two separate heatsinks big enough for a worst-case scenario is that the large, single option can be allocated to the CPU and GPU as needed.

"So, if the CPU is not eating up its entire thermal budget, the GPU can use that, or if the GPU is not eating its entire thermal budget, the CPU can share that," Aldehayyat explained.

But covering all of the components is difficult. Ideally, you want the smallest gap possible between a thermal module and a CPU or a GPU.

"In reality, things vary; the CPU is tall, and the GPU is taller, and the motherboard bows and the thermal module has tolerances, so actually getting the design to have enough compliance in the right places to accommodate all those tolerances was by far the hardest challenge we had to overcome," he said. "But by overcoming it, I think we ended up at the most compact design, cost-effective design. It's also the quietest."

Having one heatsink also allows for one fan, which Valve spins at lower rotations per minute to keep the system nearly silent.

The design requires just a single screw to access the components — a Torx T9 bit. Valve will partner with iFixit again on repair guides, and also plans to have them sell replacement parts, including the many daughterboards that attach to the mainboard under the heatsink, such as the ports.

The SSD is easily accessible, beneath the power supply. But if you want to access the other major replaceable part — the memory SO-DIMMS — you'll have to take off the whole heatsink.

"I don't say it was impossible, it was just, given the time and engineering resources we have, we just could not come up with a solution that that worked," Aldehayyat said. The SSD is on a flex cable, but they weren't able to do something like that with memory because of signal integrity. Trying to make an access hatch through the power supply, he said, was a safety problem.

Shortages and availability

Valve has opened a randomized reservation system for the Steam Machine. That new portion — the fact that you don't have to be on Steam at a specific time to try to get in the first batch of systems — was built on the back of the existing Steam Deck reservation process. But other console shopping experiences were also an influence.

"My experience trying to buy a PS5 painted a lot of that stuff," Griffais said. "We think the broad strokes of the system are good, but there's still an effect where people are rushing at the door, trying to refresh. Our websites might have problems, and then that seems unfair to people that run into that, right? We want to make sure that there's an even playing field initially, and then work from there.

At the moment, Valve is predicting that the reservation queue will go through the end of the year, with the waitlist picking up spots on canceled orders. But depending on supply, things could change.

“Six months was as far as we were willing to make predictions," Aldehayyat said. "If there's more demand, we are obviously planning to make more."

Memory and storage are by far the biggest choke points in the supply chain, but they're not the only ones. Aldehayyat noted shortages in FR-4 (a material used to make printed circuit boards) as well as some capacitors, stating that that "if this was a normal time, people would be concerned about these things," but that in supply shortages for memory and storage "this just doesn't really crack the top 10 problems."

This led Griffais to think openly about what it means to find more supply right now. Getting supplies from a wide variety of vendors, he said, also means getting a bunch of different prices, suggesting that you could make more in a way where the pricing comes out differently.

"And so we're still trying to figure that out," he said. "If there's ever a bunch of people that want the machine, but the supply is not there on the back end, we'll have to make hard decisions about, okay, what are we doing to secure more supply,” Griffais pondered. “And does it still result [in] the product at this price? Or would we have to rethink that,” he said.

Finally, Griffais admitted, much like the rest of us, that Valve doesn’t know how the hardware shortages will evolve. “Maybe things are going to go back down, and then it's all good, and it can continue to go like that, but maybe not,” he said. “So I guess what we're trying to convey… is that it seems like all bets are off, and we're going to work through it, just [like] the users as well.”

The Steam Machine is finally here, and Valve is aiming to get its small gaming PC into the hands of more gamers and fewer scalpers. While the Machine starts at $1,049 and goes up from there, the company is still expecting intense interest and has limited components.

The company is instituting a new, more randomized reservation system that aims to ensure that bots, people with faster internet connections, and people who "can schedule their life around that moment" aren't prioritized.

Reservations are open now on Steam, and you can sign up for the Steam Machine configuration or bundle that you're interested in anytime before Thursday, June 25th at 10 a.m. PT / 1 p.m. ET. When the sign-up period ends, Valve will randomize the list in order to determine the order. After that time, all new sign-ups will join the end of the waitlist.

Following the randomization, people who signed up will get one of two emails on that day. They will either be added to the reservation queue, and there's a Steam Machine with their name on it, or you’ll be on a waitlist and will be informed when units become available. The waitlist consists of people further down on the list than there are Steam Machines in this production run, and you're waiting for people with reservations to cancel or for future batches.

To sign up, you need a Steam account in good standing, with a purchase made on the platform before April 27, 2026. Only one reservation is allowed per household, with Valve looking at payment methods, shipping addresses, and "other information" to remove duplicates. While the purchase limitation stops scalpers from making new accounts to get on the line, it also may prevent new potential Steam customers from getting into the ecosystem.

You can sign up for multiple configurations, and if you're given a spot for more than one, you'll get a reservation for the "highest end one" and be removed from the other lists. If you sign up for multiple and don't make any lists, you'll be placed on a waitlist for the system you were closest to getting. The lists are also broken down by region: North America, the United Kingdom, the European Union, and Australia.

The week of June 29, Valve will start emailing customers in the reservation queue. They'll get an option to purchase, with 72 hours to buy before Valve skips to the next person in line. The reservation queue is expected to last through the rest of the year, suggesting many waitlist customers will be waiting quite a while.

Pricing and a lack of subsidies

The Steam Machine comes in four configurations: 512GB, a 512GB bundle with a Steam Controller, 2TB (including two extra faceplates, a wooden one and a red one, pictured above), and a 2TB bundle with a Steam Controller. Here are the prices:

The company said increases in the cost of components led to these prices. "The overall effect is that our original goal for the price of Steam Machine is no longer viable," the blog reads. "So the prices we're sharing today reflect the state of the world for manufacturing; or, more accurately, it reflects the price [of] the components as we've secured them over the past 6 months."

The company added that they couldn't source some components at all, which reduced the number of systems available at launch.

Valve said it's not subsidizing the Steam Machine because it goes against its belief in the "openness of the PC ecosystem."

"When companies sell their hardware under cost for competitive advantage, or buy exclusive content for it, they're doing that to build a more closed system, one where you don't get to choose what software you want to use," the blog reads. "We don't want that for PC hardware, and we don't think you should want it either. You shouldn't feel like you have to buy Valve hardware; you should be able to view it as just one option alongside all the devices for playing games, and select the one that makes sense for you."

Previously, Valve had said there would be no subsidy, but suggested it was because it was competing with PCs and because of the engineering work the company had done.

For those who can't get a Steam Machine or want to use other hardware, Valve says it's working on getting SteamOS to work on more hardware. Beginning with SteamOS 3.8, Valve says you will be able to put the OS together with a DIY rig, though for now, it only supports AMD GPUs.

For a long time, the best gaming PCs were relegated to desks. Under the TV has long been the realm of the console, even if some, myself included, have hooked midtowers up to their living room screens. Valve's Steam Machine is an attempt to bridge that gap, letting people who play games on their rigs and on their handhelds also play comfortably on the couch.

The hardware isn't brand new. Like the Steam Deck, Valve has turned to AMD for semi-custom chips using some older technologies. In the case of newer, intensive games, this makes the Steam Machine a 1080p or 1440p computer, though it can support 4K on older games and in some cases with FSR.

But the Steam Machine is pricier than many had hoped, coming in at $1,049 for the 512GB version and, in our review unit, a $1,428, 2TB bundle that includes two faceplates and a Steam Controller. That's largely a result of the current state of the component market, but it will leave a lot more people asking if the Steam Machine (can or should) fill their needs, given the cost.

Design of the Steam Machine

The Steam Machine really looks less like a gaming PC than a mini PC. It's a black box that, at 5.98 x 6.14 x 6.39 inches including the system's feet, can fit discreetly on a TV stand or a desk.

The one part that really stands out is the integrated LED strip with 17 addressable RGB LEDs, which can share the Machine's system status or be customized to your liking. For instance, you can see the strip appear like a light bar when you download updates, and you can choose from solid colors, rainbows, or animations, like breathing. You can even control each of the 17 lights individually for a truly chaotic look. My preference was mostly to keep it off entirely for a minimalist effect.

The front of the Steam Machine is effectively a faceplate, which pops on and off with magnets. Valve ships two extras with the 2TB version: a fuzzy cloth-like red plate, and one with dark wood, which went well with my furniture. The company has also committed to releasing files for people to 3D print their own. (They have a good track record of this, having recently released CAD files for the Steam Controller and its puck.) It doesn't, however, have plans to sell the wooden and red plates separately.

Located at the base of the system are the front ports: a pair of USB Type-A 3.2 Gen 2 ports, a microSD card slot, and the power button.

The rest of the ports are on the rear: DisplayPort 1.4 and HDMI 2.0, the AC power connector, an Ethernet jack, two USB-A 2.0 ports, and a USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 port. (Despite not being officially labeled HDMI 2.1, the HDMI port does support 4K at 120 Hz, and has some other niceties, like HDMI-CEC to turn on televisions).

Also on the rear is the exhaust for the 120 mm fan attached to the heatsink that cools the APU. It's much more obvious than the intake, which is behind the front panel and draws air in from the sides. That fan is truly whisper-quiet. Even while benchmarking, I barely even heard it, and I had to pay attention and move my head near the system to notice anything at all.

Steam Machine Specifications

You can decide whether you believe the Steam Machine is a PC or a console. In Valve's eyes, it's a PC, and the spec list certainly looks like one. On paper, it's easy enough to see the significant jump from what Valve uses in its other gaming system, the Steam Deck, simply by nature of moving from Zen 2 to Zen 4 and RDNA 2 to RDNA 3.

The processor is a semi-custom AMD Zen 4 chip with six cores and 12 threads, going up to 4.8 GHz with a 30W TDP. Meanwhile, the integrated graphics are also semi-custom, using AMD's RDNA 3 with 28 compute units, going up to a maximum sustained clock speed of 2.45 GHz and a 110W TDP. The big number people are thinking about here is the 8GB GDDR6 RAM, which many enthusiasts feel is no longer enough to play some games above 1080p, let alone future-proof a system.

The system is powered by a 300W power supply, smaller than both the one in the Xbox Series X and the PlayStation 5.

Like the Steam Deck OLED, Valve has integrated a discrete Bluetooth antenna alongside the Wi-Fi 6E connection, which should help with latency. There's also a built-in antenna for the Steam Controller.

The Steam Machine starts with a 512GB SSD, but a more expensive option (the one we're testing) comes with 2TB. For further storage, you can add a microSD card (or swap out the SSD entirely).

Gaming and Graphics on the Steam Machine

If you're coming from the Steam Deck, the Steam Machine is a powerful upgrade. If you compare it to other gaming PCs on the market, you'll see that its GPU's aging technology is far from the most powerful option on the market.

First, let's put this GPU into context. Based on testing, we found that the Machine's graphics card would land somewhere towards the bottom of our GPU benchmarks hierarchy. To figure this out, we put together a Linux machine running Bazzite, with an AMD Ryzen 5 7600X and 16GB of DDR5-5600, memory along with both the Radeon RX 6600 — the bottom GPU on our list — and the RX 7600, which is the next AMD-branded step up.

In the Unigine Superposition (1080p Extreme) and GravityMark benchmarks, both of which run natively on Linux, the Steam Machine's graphics ran in between those two Radeons. Using our Cyberpunk 2077 configuration for raster testing desktop graphics cards, the same happened, with the Steam Machine producing 79.98 frames per second, behind the 7600X at 85.48 FPS. This is capable gaming performance, but bottom-rung compared to modern desktop GPUs.

I spent some time playing Resident Evil Requiem on the system. With the resolution set to 2560 x 1440 without any upscaling or advanced features like hair strands, the game ran largely smoothly through the Cedarbook Apartments section, as Leon sneaks past zombies, takes on a violent boss, and escapes through the other side of the building, though there were a few hiccups as he first entered the dark building. The game typically ran between 60 and 70 FPS, though there were some drops to around 20 FPS during the environmental transition, which were extremely noticeable. Here are my recordings from MangoHud, showing how the game ran:

On SoulCalibur 6, the game ran great at 4K, hitting the game's 60 FPS frame limit with maximum graphics settings as I progressed through Arcade mode as Siegfried. Granted, that game came out in 2018 and isn't super intensive, but people have all kinds of games like that in their Steam libraries, and they should play well.

Games that barely run on the Steam Deck, like Black Myth: Wukong, can be made to easily run on the Steam Machine. It's just clear that Valve isn't aiming for people looking for the highest-end performance on every game.

In my time playing around on the Machine, I did notice some crashes and slowdowns, often (but not always!) related to changing settings. One time, this led to the entire Steam Machine crashing and leaving artifacting on-screen when it booted back up. (Another reboot fixed this.)

Some of this may be due to the fact that some games see the Steam Machine as a Steam Deck. You can turn off that auto-detection, which helped to a degree. Valve says it is updating its APIs ahead of availability to avoid these kinds of problems.

One way we tested the Steam Machine was in comparison to the Steam Deck. On paper alone, it's no surprise that the Machine blows the Deck away, but we wanted to see exactly what kind of gains you could get when moving a game from the handheld to the desktop. Here, we tested at our typical handheld settings, though we ran the Steam Deck at native 800p while the Steam Machine was tested at 1080p, 1440p, and 4K.

When I tested, I found that most games would only run at 1080p, unless I went into game settings and changed the maximum display resolution to 4K. Valve reps told me that "1080p is the system default game resolution on Steam Machine to ensure a good gameplay experience out of the box," but you can change it on a global level in Settings > Display, or, like I did, on a per-game basis.

What this reveals is a vision of SteamOS that is significantly stronger than we've ever seen, playing most of our test games at 4K better than the Steam Deck can at 800p, including Forza Horizon 6 and Red Dead Redemption 2. But again — that's at settings designed for the Deck. And it also proved that not all games can run at 4K on the Steam Machine, including Cyberpunk 2077 on the Steam Deck preset. If you were someone plugging your Steam Deck into a dock and outputting that to your TV, you would get a better experience on the same settings.

You'll see some things missing. Shadow of the Tomb Raider, one of our go-to systems-testing games, wouldn't allow the game to run above 60 FPS, even with V-Sync off. That game was tested exclusively at higher settings, where that wasn't an issue.

When comparing to prebuilt PCs, we chose the CyberPowerPC Gamer Xtreme and Acer Nitro 60 that we tested last year. These were two of the last sanely-priced systems we saw before the component crisis got really bad, priced at $1,099.99 and $1,599.99, respectively. The CyberPowerPC boasted an Intel Core Ultra 5 225F and Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060, while the Acer had a Core i7-14700F and RTX 5070. Each offered 32GB of RAM. Notably, you can't find these systems at these prices now, which simply highlights the type of problem Valve had in pricing the Steam Machine. (The newer Acer Nitro 65 is over $2,000.)

For the most part, those larger boxes with desktop-class GPUs significantly outperformed the Steam Machine without any upscaling, FSR, DLSS, or similar technologies. Most importantly, the highest-end settings were playable on those machines. But those boxes are also significantly larger and have room to fit power-hungry components – and they cost a lot more now.

Valve definitely has size on its side. If you want something smaller than a mini-ITX build that comes with SteamOS installed, this is for you. But on paper, if you have nearly any GPU from the last three to four years, you already have a faster machine. And given that the Steam Machine starts at $1,049, that matters a lot.

When testing using our prebuilt desktop methodologies, which include some aspirational settings, it is clear why Valve says you need FSR to get 4K at 60 FPS. Based on the aging hardware alone, it should be clear that you won't be playing games at their top settings. But FSR can certainly help the Steam Machine along.

For example, on Red Dead Redemption 2 at medium settings, the Machine played the game at 20 FPS at 4K. But with FSR 2.0 in Performance mode, it reached 60 FPS.

On Forza Horizon 6's Ultra settings, the game ran at 30 FPS at 4K, but turning on FSR 3.1.5 Performance nabbed an extra 10 FPS.

Still, Cyberpunk 2077 was unplayable on Ray Tracing Ultra even at 1080p. Here, FSR 3.0 performance made it technically playable (up to 41 FPS from 15 FPS), but given the latency that could introduce, I wouldn't try it. (You can play this game on the Machine though — see the Steam Deck comparison above.)

If 60 FPS is your goal, the Steam Machine isn't a 4K machine, and I'm not sure Valve should have advertised it as one. It's much more suited for 1080p or 1440p gaming with appropriately middling-to-high settings, depending on what you're playing.

Upgradeability of the Steam Machine

The only exposed screws on the Steam Machine are on the rear. The two captive Torx T9 screws are in the top corners of the machine, so at least you don't have to worry about losing them. From there, a small pry tool pushed into in two purposeful-looking indents on the bottom lifts the back cover right off.

From in there, you'll see some studs coming in from the bottom. If you look closely at the feet, you'll see they have the same Torx indents in the center of the rubber, and that they're actually screws. This is way better than how some devices require you to remove adhesive to take off screws that are under feet. It's a neat trick that shows Valve had repairability in mind.

Back inside, two more T9 screws hold the fan assembly to the chassis. With these out, you can remove the internals in one massive piece.

From here, you'll be able to see all the ports on small daughterboards, as well as the antennas for the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. But the real jewel is at the bottom: an easily accessible M.2 SSD slot mounted below the power supply. Ours came with a 2TB drive, which is fairly roomy, but this may become a must-have upgrade for 512GB Steam Machine owners if storage prices ever come down. And this drive is also held in with the same Torx screw, so you can use one screwdriver to make that swap.

Getting to the memory is far more involved and is more of a repairability compromise than we typically like to see. You need to remove the giant heatsink, which cools all of the components with the single fan, in order to get to the DDR5 SO-DIMMS. Given how tightly packed the Steam Machine is, with many cables and ribbon cables to daughterboards throughout the outside of the heatsink and PSU, that's a complex order that takes time and more risk than I think many Steam Machine owners may want to take. But given that the daughterboards are there, you should be able to replace broken ports, even if you have to do it in groups. Valve tells me it will partner with iFixit on repair manuals, similar to the Steam Deck.

Productivity Performance on the Steam Machine

The semi-custom, six-core/12-thread Zen 4 chip in the Steam Machine can hold its own against some current mobile chips.

The closest modern chip we had a record for is the AMD Ryzen AI 7 445, which has the same core count (with four Zen 5c cores and two Zen 5 cores), with a max boost clock of 4.5 GHz and a configurable TDP of 15-54 W. Valve's chip has 30W, but the GPU is discrete and isn't included here.

The Ryzen AI 7 445 ("Gorgon Point") in the Acer Swift Go 16 AI was marginally faster in single-core performance, but significantly faster in multi-core performance. On Handbrake, the Gorgon Point chip was 23 seconds faster than the Steam Machine, which completed the task in 6:33.

In our charts, you can also see comparisons to Intel's Panther Lake Core Ultra 7 355, a weaker chip than Valve's, and the Core Ultra X7 388H, which was stronger (but in far more expensive systems). Apple's M5, under air in the MacBook Pro, was the fastest of the bunch on both tests.

SteamOS and KDE Plasma Desktop

If you've used a Steam Deck before, everything on the Steam Machine will feel familiar. SteamOS 3 is the same here as it is on the handheld, just running on more powerful hardware. If you haven't used a Steam Deck before, but have used Steam's Big Picture Mode on a PC, you'll still be mostly at home, as the interface is very similar.

SteamOS continues to be Valve's primary advantage over the largely Windows-based ecosystem of gaming PCs. It's easily handled entirely with a controller. If you've used SteamOS on the Steam Deck, you might want to consider the Steam Controller, as you'll have all of the same buttons to navigate the operating system (and that's before you get into the fact that gameplay will feel similar).

Valve has adopted the Verified program from the Steam Deck to the Steam Machine. In Valve's documentation, it states that you need to hit 30 FPS at 1080p to be verified, which is pretty low stakes. Games that already run on Steam Deck should be shoe-ins, while the stronger hardware should enable more games to run on the Machine and earn the badge.

If you want a more typical desktop PC experience — perhaps you're playing at a desk – you can use the KDE Plasma desktop. While I suspect most people will never enter the desktop mode, Valve has added some significant updates here over the years, and I appreciate that you can use your computer as a computer. If you like to tinker and install extra software that isn't available through Steam, it's a great option.

Still, not all games run on Steam. While you can add most games to Steam through the "Add a Non-Steam Game to My Library" flow, not all work well. Some launchers have unofficial versions you can run through Linux, like the open-source Heroic Games launcher that will run Epic Games and GOG.

I wish that Valve offered a way to dual-boot Windows and SteamOS on both the Machine and the Steam Deck for these edge cases. The company said it would back when it announced the first Deck. With a 2TB drive, there is plenty of room.

"While Steam Deck is fully capable of dual-boot, the SteamOS installer that provides a dual-boot wizard isn't ready yet," Valve's page on Windows resources reads. "This will ship alongside SteamOS 3 once it's complete."

The Steam Machine is part of an ecosystem

There is a point in using the Steam Machine where I saw it as more of a platform. It was no surprise that the Steam Deck was built around playing games on a Valve platform, even if you can install other OSes. But with the Steam Machine in play, there's a fuller picture: playing your Steam games on the go, uploading the save to Steam Cloud, plopping yourself on the couch, turning on your Steam Machine, and resuming the same game, running locally, with the same controls thanks to the Steam Controller.

Perhaps one of the coolest things you can do is move your SD card from device to device. If you have an SD card in your Steam Deck, you can move it to your Steam Machine, and the games will be immediately playable. (Or, if you prefer, you could quickly move the games to the internal SSD.)

There are plenty of parts you can sub in there: You can play Steam on any handheld, or come home to your own custom-built rig, or use another controller. Despite its hardware, Steam still supports a ton of devices and ways to play.

But if you do have Valve's hardware, it starts to feel like an ecosystem on the level with Apple's, just focused exclusively on gaming. You get some benefits there — sleep and wake work just as well on this desktop as it does on Valve's handhelds. SteamOS is the best version of Steam's Big Picture mode out there. And this is way smaller than most DIY PCs. If you're all in on Valve, this is the way to go. But if you want more power and future-proofing, subbing in a more powerful PC will last you longer in the long run.

One thing that has been notable about the Steam Deck is Valve's commitment to updates. There have been a ton, adding features, squashing bugs, and making it more stable. In fact, that history is the one thing that makes me feel reasonably confident that the bugs I have seen will eventually be fixed.

Of course, Steam doesn't have every single game. Some won't run on SteamOS because of anti-cheat issues with Linux. Others simply have compatibility problems. Valve does have a method for running non-Steam games through Steam, but some, notably Epic Games' Fortnite, don't play well with it. You can install Windows or other launchers via Linux, but you will lose some of the ease the ecosystem offers. Valve offers minimal support for Windows, but at least it's something.

Steam Machine Configurations and Warranty

There are four configurations of the Steam Machine. First, there are two models of the computer; Both of them are identical with the exception of the storage. We reviewed the more expensive $1,349 version with a 2TB NVMe SSD and two extra faceplates, and bundling it with the Steam Controller brought it to $1,428.

The base model is a cheaper $1,049 option with a 512GB SSD. Bundling that with a Controller brings you to $1,128.

512GB isn't huge for a gaming system. Valve's spec sheet highlights that no matter which option you get, it comes with a high-speed microSD card slot. Luckily, the SSD is easy to access (See upgradeability above).

The $1,049 starting price is higher than consoles, including the more powerful PlayStation 5 Pro ($899) with 2TB of storage. A base PS5 Digital Edition is $599 with 825GB of storage. An all-digital Xbox Series X starts at $599.99. If you're looking for a living room solution to play games and don't care specifically about settings and your Steam library, those consoles are a better value.

In Asia, the Steam Machine will be sold through Valve's partner, Komodo, which also sells the Steam Deck. It will be available in Japan, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, but will not be sold in South Korea.

If you're buying this for a Steam library, you could also put Steam on any other computer and run it in Big Picture Mode. And given that supply is tight, that may be a better option for those willing to consider alternatives.

When we put together a parts list to estimate what a custom build looks like to match the Steam Machine, including a Ryzen 5 7600X, Radeon RX 7600, 16GB of DDR5-5600 RAM, a Gigabyte B650M Gaming Plus WiFi Micro ATX AM5 Motherboard, a 650W PSU, a case, cooler, and 1TB of storage, we hit $1,048.83. While our build gets you double the storage of the base Steam Machine, it doesn't get you the small case, dedicated Bluetooth or Steam Controller antennas, or super quiet operation. So if you're only comparing the Machine to other PCs, the price isn't terrible — it’s just the market, in general, that is.

Valve sells the Steam Machine with a one-year warranty.

Bottom Line

Valve's Steam Machine is a complicated little box. It was clearly designed for a simpler time, when components were plentiful, and it would be a somewhat affordable desktop that could be a more powerful option for Steam Deck owners to play their Steam games at home.

But it's not a simple time. The Steam Machine is still cute, still has a good selection of ports, still has an easily upgradeable SSD, and, most importantly, still runs SteamOS and gets all of the benefits that come with it. If you were docking your Steam Deck to the TV and wanted more performance, this will get you there, once Valve irons out the last of the bugs.

If you're just looking to get into gaming, a base-level PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X is a better deal. You can buy one and a Nintendo Switch 2 and spend less than the Steam Machine.

You can also get many of the benefits of the Steam Machine on other devices. If you have an effective gaming PC or laptop, Steam Big Picture Mode will do most of the work there. Valve is also working to bring SteamOS to more machines, though currently it's only working on Radeon GPUs.

But if you want something small for your living room that plays years of Steam titles and maybe even has a cute little wooden faceplate, the Steam Machine is for you, but you should go in understanding its limitations.

On this day in 1996, id Software unleashed Quake on the unsuspecting public. The game’s influence is difficult to overstate, with its pioneering 3D engine inspiring the first wave of 3D accelerator PC expansion card purchases, the establishment of online multiplayer competitive culture, and much more. Perhaps its impact on 3D gaming can only be matched by the same development team’s previous outing with Doom.

At launch, Quake drew criticism for its intense violence and gore, which also echoed Doom’s path to infamy among media and political pundits, and caused problems for ratings boards and regulators. However, id Software ignored such noise, insisting they simply made games they enjoy playing. Quake would be the last major id Software production with the ‘classic lineup’ due to burnout and various personal conflicts, notes Wikipedia.

Looking more closely at the technology behind Quake, it was clear the dev team eschewed ‘faking it with 2.5D tricks’ like in previous seminal PC FPS titles such as Doom, Duke Nukem 3D, System Shock, and others. Instead, Quake hit the scene with true 3D polygonal worlds and character models. The true 3D transformation meant that for the first time in FPS, games could enjoy real 3D collision and physics, as well as things like fully 360-degree vision and movement, and more.

With id Software’s new game engine arriving in the Pentium era, but still crushing the best CPUs of the time, it made a market for PC 3D accelerators. These add-in cards first became essential to PC gamers in the late 90s with full 3D engine titles arriving, led by Quake. So in the same era, we saw important hardware releases like the 3dfx Voodoo, ATI Rage, and Nvidia Riva cards. QuakeGL became the killer app to drive sales of these products.

As mentioned in the intro, 3D gaming engines and hardware aren’t the only long-lasting legacies we can attribute to Quake. The game also popularized online multiplayer gaming. Another huge influence Quake had was in inspiring (and allowing) the growth of a talented modding community. As well as numerous custom maps and campaigns, the moddability of Quake enabled total conversions like Team Fortress and Quake Rally, to drop a few names.

Quake would inspire imitators, tributes, and influence many more 3D gaming titles in the years and decades to come. There have also been several Quake sequels, remakes, and the game even sparked machinima film-making, where a game’s 3D world becomes a movie set. Many modern developers, including the founders of Valve, first cut their teeth on Quake modding.

Nowadays, folks have the luxury of the complete source code for winquake, glquake, quakeworld, and glquakeworld available on GitHub. It was released “for entertainment and educational purposes,” but under GPL, it can be used for possible commercial projects, too. Those into this kind of digital archaeology may also be interested in the GitHub repositories for Quake 2 and Quake III Arena.

In summary, Quake didn’t just splash down with one big innovation; it was the weight of multiple key advances that made it so important to the history and the future of PC gaming.

A curious new game titled Congratulations On Your Purchase recently appeared on PC digital marketplaces priced at $999. Its main claim to fame is that it is proudly “the most expensive game on Steam.” Buyers who purchase, download, and run this title will enjoy “a first-person luxury experience set inside a palace.” Perhaps most importantly, though, they will collect a ‘golden ticket’ Steam Achievement showing “you are now one of us” with the $999 proudly displayed at its center. It might be a cynical exercise in tapping into those compelled into conspicuous consumption, or it might be satire.

While Congratulations On Your Purchase asks for premium money, viewing the promotional video and screenshots doesn’t really give us palatial, luxury, exclusive vibes. It is more like being transported into a game credits screen where one is being congratulated for completing a Nintendo 64 game. The minimum system requirements of a GTX 1060 or RX 580 definitely seem like overkill for this 3D walking simulator ‘adventure.’

However, the gameplay, which can last about 10 minutes if you stretch it out, isn’t the point. “The most expensive game on Steam. A palace, a red carpet, paparazzi, and a wall where you leave your name — visible to every owner who comes after you. Ten minutes,” reads the Steam sales pitch – which may be AI-generated according to the small print. “The price is not a mistake. It is the point.”

Further insight into how the devs hope to get their hooks into the target audience to reel in $999 a pop is provided by the Steam page. “You paid for this. Not accidentally. Not on impulse. You saw the price. You read the description. And then you bought it anyway. Welcome.”

Towards the end of the Steam page sales pitch, the devs add a paragraph on the philosophical value of this kind of purchase. Of course, the answer isn’t discouraging towards the level of expense. Rather, the choice of how, when, and where to spend your cash is claimed to be “philosophically speaking, unanswerable.”

While Congratulations On Your Purchase may also be satirical, it can be added to your Steam Cart, purchased, and thus might raise a nice bit of pocket money for the devs at Minimum Viable Prestige and the publishers Worth It Studio. Visiting the game's associated website at www.steamelite.zone seems to confirm there have been two buyers, so far, leaving two personalized messages on the Congratulations On Your Purchase wall. We'd also grumble that this Steam game isn't even original in its satire/cynicism, as it shares much in common with the $999 Apple iOS app from the noughties dubbed I Am Rich.

Our conclusion is that you should definitely spend your money elsewhere this Amazon Prime Day week.

The Nintendo Switch 2 has suffered several price increases in recent months, most recently rocketing to $499. Right now, however, you can score a brand new console for just $399 if you're a new customer at the Amazon outlet website Woot with code CHEAPSWITCH2. Used Woot before? You can still save $30 with the same code, bringing the price to just $419, an $80 saving on the current MSRP.

• Check out this deal at Woot

As noted, Woot is Amazon's outlet website, so you'll sometimes see used, open box, or factory reconditioned items. However, this item is brand new and sealed. As you can imagine, there's a limit of one per customer, and we expect this deal to sell out extremely quickly.

The Nintendo Switch 2 is Nintendo's ultra-popular handheld gaming system. The console comes with a 7.9-inch 1080p screen, and it can be docked with a TV for 4K gaming at up to 120 fps. The Joy-Con 2 controllers (included in the purchase) can be used attached or detached for flexibility.

The console comes with 256GB of internal storage and supports expansion through microSD Express cards. Obviously, if you stack up a few titles, you might want to think about buying some extra storage, and the ongoing Amazon Prime Day sale isn't a bad shout for this. The best deal right now is this Samsung P9, currently $70, although this was $47 a few days ago, so it might be worth grabbing the Switch 2 now and waiting for a better deal.

As noted, this is an extremely good deal on the Switch 2, even if you just use the code for returning customers to score one for $419. If you're new to Woot or Amazon and get one for $399, however, it's an absolute bargain.

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69-year-old Claude Guillemot, who founded Ubisoft alongside his four brothers, died on Friday, June 19, after his private twin-engine Cessna 421 crashed on approach to La Baule-Escoublac Airport in France, near the country’s Atlantic coast. Le Parisien said that Ubisoft has confirmed the passing of one of its founders in the accident.

“Ubisoft ‌was deeply saddened to learn of the death of Claude Guillemot, co-founder of the group and chairman ​of Guillemot Corp, in an accident,” the company said. “Our thoughts are with his family ⁠and loved ones during this difficult time. No ​further statements will be made at this time.”

Claude and his brothers founded Ubisoft in 1986 when they established the business by importing and distributing games in the country. It was also during that same year that it launched its first game, Zombi. In 1989, the startup was already making millions of dollars in sales and revenue, but it made its first globally successful original title, the platformer Rayman, in 1995. This allowed the company to go public in 1996, when it raised $80 million in its IPO.

Its successful public debut injected enough cash for it to open studios across the world, including Canada, China, and Japan. From humble beginnings, the company grew into one of the biggest names in gaming and entertainment, owning some of the most popular gaming titles and franchises in the past and present like Assassin’s Creed, Brothers in Arms, Far Cry, Ghost Recon, Rainbow Six, Prince of Persia, The Division, and Watch Dogs, among others.

Despite its success, Ubisoft has recently been facing some troubles. This includes a major cyberattack on its servers which forced the company to take Rainbow Six Siege completely offline as well as issues with generative AI in Far Cry 7, with one insider saying that it “looks like s**t.”

The Guillemot brothers no longer own 100% of Ubisoft, although they still own a considerable stake. According to Investing.com, Guillemot Brothers S.A., a holding company that manages the brothers’ stake in Ubisoft, is still the largest shareholder with 12.27%, while institutional bank JPMorgan Chase & Co. is the second largest shareholder with 9.94%. Chinese gaming company Tencent Holdings Limited owns 9.46% of the company, with the rest spread out across different mutual funds and ETF, retail investors, and other institutional investors.

Claude Guillemot was the president of the Guillemot Corporation (different from the Guillemot Brothers S.A.), which was the original company founded in 1986 and still owns brands like digital audio solutions provider Hercules, DJ equipment maker Djuced, and gaming accessories manufacturer Thrustmaster. His younger brother, Yves Guillemot, still serves as the CEO of Ubisoft.

Aside from helping build one of Europe’s largest gaming empires, reports say that Claude also holds a pilot’s license and was an avid and experienced pilot. He was en route to the airport near the accident site for a planned air show this weekend when the tragedy struck. Alongside the Ubisoft co-founder, a 70-year-old flight instructor was also killed in the accident.

Officials haven’t made any statements yet regarding the cause of the accident. It will likely take months, if not years, before we get a comprehensive accident report from the Bureau d'enquêtes et d'analyses pour la sécurité de l'aviation civile (BEA), the French equivalent of the U.S. NTSB, tasked with investigating aircraft accidents.