Of course my prediction depends on the success of the Steam Machine, but I expect it to be highly successful, just like the Steam Deck, another piece of Valve hardware game studios have been pretty much forced to optimize for due to its success.
I disagree that the target market won't accept the price. I see the target market as less technical people, who don't care about hardware specs, but just want to play Steam games without issues.
The price is in the same region as an iPhone, and if you care enough about PC gaming to buy a gaming PC at all, you are certainly willing to spend at least as much money on it as you spent on your phone.
I bought my own version of a "Steam Machine" i.e. a mini-PC powered by an AMD APU for just €676 right before the RAM prices exploded.
It is an AOOSTAR GT37 which actually outclasses the €1,039 Steam Machine in most areas except graphics. One cannot blame Valve here though, the hyperinflation of RAM prices is too blame here.
AOOSTAR GT37 (€676 a few months ago [now vastly more expensive if you can still get one at all]) vs Steam Machine (€1039 right now)
CPU: 12x Zen 5 vs. 6 Zen4
Graphics: 16x RDNA 3.5 vs. 28 RDNA 3
RAM: 32 GB LPDDR5X vs. 16 GB DDR5 + 8 GB GDDR6
HDD: 1 TB vs. 512 GB (both NVMe-SSD)
I expect the Steam Machine to run graphically demanding FPS games quite a bit better due to the extra RDNA cores and faster VRAM. However it might actually be the inferior gaming machine for CPU/main RAM intense strategy or simulation games (e.g. Stellaris).
> However it might actually be the inferior gaming machine for CPU/main RAM intense strategy or simulation games (e.g. Stellaris).
On Stellaris: I remember having a pretty good experience (not stellar) playing on a 2012 AMD FX-8350 desktop cpu. The six year old midrange laptop cpu Ryzen 4650u smokes that desktop cpu.
Just to draw out the fact that with the Steam machine you will have a better Stellaris experience than what I had 7-8 years ago. (Because I assume even better performance than this laptop class cpu)
My thoughts go more on the question if 15GB ram 8GB VRAM is enough for the next 7 years. And if Steam verified will all be split up, and become more confusing, between the 3 different devices they have.
They show a 1080p/high benchmark of Stellaris on Gamers Nexus and it took 63.9s on Linux OpenGL and 67.4s on DX11 (https://youtu.be/66QzlDewigE?t=2021). I would guess the AMD R9 HX 370 in your GT37 will smash that.
This is the #1 argument for buying a Steam Machine IMO.
You can achieve a lot by specifically optimizing your game for a particular machine and Valve has such extreme market power that every game studio releasing on PC will make sure that their game looks and runs great on the Steam Machine.
This machine is more limited than I expected e.g. only 8 GB VRAM, however because of Valve's market power all game studios will see 8 GB VRAM as the new limit. Every game will now aim to look and run great with only 8GB VRAM.
As a poor gamer, I truly appreciate Valve setting such a low standard for gaming PC hardware. Game studios were certainly already looking at 16 GB VRAM + 32 GB RAM as the new standard for AAA games. That is now history.
Not being able to run adequately (even with tuned down graphics options) on 8GB of VRAM was already going to be an issue for most PC game devs. According to Valve's last hardware survey, a quarter of players only have 8GB, and another 15-20% of players have less than that.
there is patch on linux where you can mark which allocated vram is important or something and then when you do it with games they have the full 8GB the rest goes to system ram i think, this makes games on linux run like 30+ fps vs Windows on systems with only 8GB VRAM,
All of Europe's top AI talent immediately gets recruited away by the American megacorps. European companies simply cannot compete with the salaries and opportunities these corporations can offer. In addition the EU is infamous for being an overregulated bureaucracy monster.
The only two reasons for top AI talent not to move to the US are A.) Anti-Americanism or B.) Patriotism. Now, Anti-Americanism is an ideology of dumb socialist-leaning folk who are not high performers in anything and patriotism has been killed by Europe's left-wing ruling class. This is proven by the fact that indeed all top AI talent produced by Europe thus far has moved to the US.
The most recent, prominent example being Austrian programmer Peter Steinberger, the creator of OpenClaw.
"In February 2026, he announced he would be joining OpenAI and rejecting an offer to join Meta. [...] In 2026, he said he was moving to the United States, saying that there was too much regulation and "scolding" stifling AI development in Europe." [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Steinberger_(programmer)]
True, and that's exactly the reason why people want to buy this stock now.
If future returns were already (almost) certain, they would have been priced in and you couldn't make any money with this stock.
This is a classic high risk / high reward stock. IF the space economy takes off you might 10X your investment. If it doesn't, you might lose most of it.
Rich people (who own most of the stock market) can afford to make such high risk bets, because they can afford to lose the money and thus many will make that bet.
Actually given that the first colonists on Mars will live pretty miserable lives before dying early of radiation poisoning Musk and Co are trying to recruit other people to move there.
Musk, Thiel, Bezos etc. none of these guys have ever said they want to move there.
No they aren't. They're trying to design robots that can build the habit for them before they arrive and pamper them once they are there. Maybe they'll send a few human guinea pigs first to work out the kinks, but they ain't trying to go to Mars, or anywhere, for the good of the human race as a whole.
Musk has repeatedly talked about how he wants to go to Mars.
Tl;dw: Most people are already irrelevant to the economy. They are not even needed as consumers anymore because the corporations mostly sell to other corporations and the rich.
Is it just that? I see people praising not being reachable 24/7 by phone, but I don't see many people praising calling all the places your friend might be to guess where they are. I see people praising a world without Facebook but I don't see anyone praising a world without Wikipedia. It seems to be a rather selective effect.
I disagree that the target market won't accept the price. I see the target market as less technical people, who don't care about hardware specs, but just want to play Steam games without issues.
The price is in the same region as an iPhone, and if you care enough about PC gaming to buy a gaming PC at all, you are certainly willing to spend at least as much money on it as you spent on your phone.