Machine of Madness

The Steam Machine is Valve's new piece of hardware entering the scene as a mini PC built for living room gaming. I love a lot about it, had some issues with it, but overall came away from my time with it feeling very positive. The big question mark has been around the Steam Machine price. After the Steam Deck had a jump in price, we knew that would be a major factor in who to recommend this to for PC gaming. The Steam Machine specs in coordination with how well it works with the Steam Controller being still make this an appealing PC rig to consider.

A wonderful design can't beat the ugly realities of pricing, performance, and consumer value.

Valve opened Steam Machine pre-orders, giving you a chance to get your name down early for a reservation, though it may be a while until you get it .

In a grim week for the games industry where Microsoft laid off 1,600 people (with 1,600 further job cuts hanging over the heads of Xbox employees) one decision stood out as especially egregious. Id Software, developer of Doom and Quake, was forced to lay off 136 people – more than half of its workforce. Read more

Ever since the Steam Machine's price and release date was announced on Monday, there's been a lot of discussion about what the mini PC is actually capable of. And, seemingly in response to the discourse, Valve has updated the Steam Machine's store page, now claiming the CPU is capable of "up to" 4K gaming with FSR. Originally, Valve claimed that the Steam Machine's CPU and GPU combo was capable of "4K gaming at 60 fps with FSR." In my testing that is true, but only once you start tweaking the settings to hit that performance target. And, there are certain ga