I read the analysis and I don’t see anywhere that it claims to measure demand.

It seems pretty clear it’s about how many units Valve is selling (charging for, shipping) and explicitly not about reservations or demand.

Valve is being smart here. It is far better to be supply constrained at launch than to have enough capacity to meet initial demand (and then far too much capacity when demand slows over time).

Linux has gone mainstream a long time ago - from dvd players to android phones. It just hasn’t succceeded on old preexisting markets ( personal computers ) but has taken large parts of most of the newly created ones ( servers , mobile devices , embedded devices etc )

It doesn't control the games though, hence Proton.

If they controlled the whole stack Linux native games would be a requirement.

Yes, sometimes it's difficult to find the correct driver for Linux and set it up. Having steam machine be start and play like steam deck really brings the console feel on PC. Moreover it's still Linux which you can use for other things, so people doesn't feel loss for this.

It was always the disconnect between the people who made it work and the people who couldn’t that prevented wider adoption.

Valve's vertical control over SteamOS, the UI, and the hardware specs indeed gives the Steam Machine that taste of Mac. Not sure if Apple would have gone for something like that if they ever made a console: one key difference is that Valve keeps it open like a regular PC which is a major benefit to keep the device alive down the road for years to come.

And the price is steep but in my opinion, you really do get a lot of value here - especially with the fact that you instantly pull a ton of your library in seamlessly. If you've been in this ecosystem for a while that's a huge selling-point - or, at least it was for me!

Yeah PC is sort of the "forever" console, I mean it's not strictly, there is always the upgrade grind, but new hardware tends to run old software fine(ish) and many(most if you play a lot of the smaller indie stuff) new games work fine on older hardware.

It is a huge mess compared to consoles but that is often the price of freedom and I am happy that at least one system escaped control of a single corporation.

The Nintendo Switch was a great console for pointing that out as well. fun games on older mobile hardware even at the time it came out.

I run Windows on all my computers but was pleasantly surprised by the desktop mode on SteamOS. The incredible number of options on a simple config dialog such as changing the keyboard layout was incredibly impressive (which isn’t SteamOS specific but rather a Gnome thing?).

There's an Nvidia branch of Bazzite, and it works great. I'm even surprisingly able to play Star Citizen, which is notoriously finicky.

As a kid who grew up absolutely loving their GameCube, this is a perfect computer to me. Yes, I already built my own LAN cube ~2 years ago that fits in my carry-on and is significantly more powerful for a comparable price point... but the Steam Machine is WAY smaller! I can fit it in my backpack and still have room for a monitor, work laptop, peripherals, Steam Deck, and clothing. It's just not possible to build a DIY machine of this size + quality without resorting to extremes as a consumer.

The selling point, for me, is that it's a console in both form factor (not a PC tower, smaller than small PC cases) and easy of use (you plug it in, you play games, no shopping around for parts), yet because it's a PC you have control over it (load non-Steam games, use the desktop to do whatever, install a different OS even).

Clearly not for everyone, but for someone like me who wants a more powerful box than the Steam Deck or Switch under a TV, yet hates the locked-down nature of the traditional console makers (which are just slowly getting worse, viz. Sony's announcement to kill physical media and the control it brings owners).

The sad thing is, they're not. A lot of people have not been paying attention to PC costs. This is what they cost now. I've seen a few "make your own" builds online. If you use new parts, you might save 80$, and you generally don't get the form factor, efficiency, integrated Steam Controller puck, or visual appearance with those builds, plus, you know, you're building then yourself which should be counted for at least some cost in most cases. Anything that saves more than that involves used parts or parts the person making the video/article already had, which is fine if you have them but not generally comparable.

You can get a better deal on some consoles at the moment, but I wouldn't count on that to last. The Switch 2 has a price increase scheduled. The Xbox line has a price increase scheduled. PlayStation did one earlier this year. Rather than being a permanent situation this feels like everything going up, just irregularly rather than smoothly, so sometimes one thing feels like a better deal, sometimes another, but it's not obvious that any of them are much better on a longer time frame. If you're looking out at the console versus Steam Machine and thinking the consoles look better for your use case, you don't already have one, and you're interested in one of them, I suggest moving sooner rather than later.

The Steam Machine is what got noticed, and earthed a lot of anger about prices, but it's not particularly out of line or especially expensive. The whole market is screwed up.

Agreed. Those guys put together as many as four configurations that are cheaper than the Steam Machine https://www.digitalfoundry.net/features/build-your-own-steam...

Consoles are quite expensive too these days. I think if not for the whole AI hypetrain and subsequent chip shortage, price for Steam Machine would have been more friendly.

The steam deck has been on the top sellers list on and off for some time now.

They already can't make enough to keep up with demand. Inducing more demand at this point doesn't make them any more money.

Why would we assume otherwise? Valve, with all its flaws, is the one mainstream company that I'm aware of that is consumer friendly and has no issues disclosing real metrics.

This makes no sense. Valve can already just advertise the Steam Machine on the homepage, the page that everyone sees when they open Steam. They don't need to manipulate any rankings on the top-sellers list, the page that no ordinary person regularly looks at.