$1000 for a base-PS5-strength machine with no controller, or $1200 with one. At the original rumored $7-800 price point, the Steam Machine might have justified its existence to me for its living-room form-factor/access to my Steam library. But adding in the AI RAMflation, I just don’t even know who this device is supposed to be for anymore.
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All that belly-aching in Beyond Thunder Dome about nukes and it was data centers all along.
Wasn’t Sarah Conner put into a mental institution for going after data centers?
Yes! If she targets enough of them, one of them is bound to be Skynet!
Nah. Turns out it’s the combine. This is just the vanguard of the 7 hour war. First they take control of the fresh water supply before poisoning the bulk of the remainder and they effectively control the planet. Half Life 3 confirmed!
And here we thought we’d never get half life 3. Miracles happen after all. And wow, the graphics are so realistic I can’t even tell the difference. Extremely immersive.
Unfortunately the balance is terrible and there were a lot of awkward design decisions, so it only gets 3 stars. I mean, some players start in easy mode with almost limitless resources, and others are in such bad situations they’d be lucky to last a year, and don’t even get me started on Spines.
But very impressive on a technical level at least. Also very hard to stop playing.
I have always thought PCs were the better value, since they can do a lot more. However, the downside is obviously their price(if you want a good one). Though we are getting to the point were consoles are just as expensive and it makes me wonder if there is any reason to have one at all.
Yeah, Consoles are a lot more limited compared to PCs and the real draw of them over PCs was the price being pretty low. Now Consoles are approaching PC prices of a similar level and most people will just not buy a console at all or just buy a PC instead for a bit more for more flexibility in use.
Consoles are definitely rising in price, but don’t forget the parts that are rising in price are rising in PC builds, too.
Not looking forward to years from now if/when memory stabilizes out again but the companies realise they can just keep the prices high.
The really crazy thing: €1200 doesn’t even sound all that crazy any more for a decent gaming machine.
We’ve come really far, in a negative way.
I bought my current PC two years ago, and when I got it I upgraded the RAM from 2x8GB to 1x32GB + 1x8GB. I was considering putting a second 32GB stick in, but it was €80. That was quite a lot of money, and when would I actually need that much RAM?
Now it’s €400!
(And I could use the extra RAM to run larger LLMs locally).
I know the feel. I got 64gb of DDR5 6400 for 225 and a 2TB m2 SSD for 150 in 2024,
Same ones are 1100 and 640 right now.
Really hoping when the bubble bursts all the investors that put everything into this bollocks make wall street look like the bodies falling scene in the new RE movie
I heard something about how they’re also using gas turbines for power because the power grid can’t handle their rapid expansion. The turbines that break existing pollutant laws but are allowed under the basis of emergency use.
Remember how before we couldn’t push a shift to EVs cuz the grid couldn’t handle it?
Yet no complaints here from those liars.
The grid can’t handle it! Pushing power to one data centre by building a substation on the same estate as it, is very different to putting an EV charger on every building in a town/city that can fully charge a vehicle in a reasonable amount of time (minutes rather than hours).
Except the slower level 2 chargers are exactly what you want for people’s homes and workplaces. Who cares if it takes 6 hours to charge a car when you’re at work for 8 hours or asleep for 8 hours? Fast chargers are only needed for road trips and emergencies.
Yeah, I doubt many people are doing that much driving that they need to charge their cars in like an hour for around town driving.
I still feel market forces are going to curtail this. Data centers just don’t translate into enough actual profit to justify the costs spent getting them up and running. This is going to go the way of fiber optics with everyone pouring money into the next big thing, it doesn’t yield $$$ anywhere near compared to what was invested, they’re forced to sell it for pennies on the dollar to recoup some of the loss. Then the buyers get the entire infrastructure already in place for a fraction of the price and can just enjoy the mediocre profits with almost… Read more »
Data centers give government the ability to better monitor and control their people. And they can (theoretically) allow large-scale social engineering operations to influence cultural trends inside and outside their borders.
They’ll continue using tax dollars to fund the centers.
The probelm is even if it WERE reasonably priced the scalpers are going to swoop in on day one, buy up the entire inventory, and sell them back to the population for tripple the price. Personally I’d tack on a years wait to any release date anyway, at the very least. Not only will that mean the scalpers won’t get the quick profit they want and the company can roll out more inventory, but hopefully by then a few decent games will have come out as well. These days almost nothing video game related it worh getting excited over day… Read more »
Iirc Valve has pretty good antiscalper measures
Scalpers already put them in sold out…
Well, a mid-tier video card is $600 and 32GB DDR5 RAM is another $600. $1200, and you haven’t added anything else at all.
“AI” sucks.
2006 called. They want their overpriced PlayStation back.
I too want their overpriced PlayStation, is it still for sale`?
$200 extra just to have a controller included is nuts to me. When this was announced I was 100% on-board to have a console experience option for my Steam library. If I could put this bad boy in my game room it would get way more attention than all the other consoles in there currently. But at $1200, absolutely not.
I think there’s some justification there in that any controller will work with it and odds are most people already have one to use.
Me, in a year or 2 when my pc will become obsolete. Unless price goes down, it will be better for me to buy the steam machine than build a new rig.
Blame Trump for his taffifs which caused this.
I must be living under a rock because I didn’t know this even existed.
Can we stop with the dumb “water” usage comments about data centers? It’s really not even that big of a factor – if you really hate that they use some water, you’re really not gonna like what they do with Golf courses or 99% of industrial stuff…
there are way better arguments to be made to argue against irresonibly plonking down datacenters everwhere – take your pick:
1) Power usage
2) sound pollution
3) corruption in politics letting them be built against the populace’s wishes…..
I don’t think even THEY know anymore. They just threw something at the wall and hoped to Satan it would stick.
Literally every PC-like device is going to be more expensive because of RAM though.
And SSDs and graphics cards. This BS made 2 of the 3 cheapest parts of a PC the most expensive. 32GB of ddr5 used to be ~100-125, now it’s 500. 2tb m2 ssd used to be 150, now it’s 700. All cuz some loser that won’t try to learn a skill thinks typing in a few sentences makes him better than someone who tries.