Hva Steam-maskinen gjør som en PS5 ikke gjør

Valve's Steam Machine is the closest thing to a real Valve console, a plug-and-play mini PC that runs about as simply as a PlayStation 5 while costing hundreds of dollars more. It is less powerful than it looks for the money, and a PS5 is the safer buy for anyone who only wants games to run well. The case for the Steam Machine rests on what it does beyond that.

The split comes down to how the machine is built. SteamOS makes it look like a console, but the device runs Linux underneath, and that changes what you can do with it.

• It works as a PC, browser and all. Desktop mode drops you straight into the operating system, where you can browse the web, download apps, and send email. Plug in a keyboard and mouse and it becomes a full setup. The limits are real: it is not built for video editing or music production, and getting Netflix running in a browser took some fiddling out of the box.
• You can mod games, with patience. Because it behaves like a normal PC, you can pull mods from sites like NexusMods to the Linux desktop, then jump through some hoops to get them working in SteamOS. Years of Steam Deck documentation carry over. The difficulty varies by game: a veteran Elder Scrolls modder spent hours failing to mod Skyrim on the Steam Machine before quitting, yet got Morrowind running with ease despite no Steam Machine-specific guide existing.
• You can turn it into an emulation machine. In theory you install your emulator of choice and archive a game collection in one place. In practice the setup is as daunting as modding for anyone new to Linux, though connecting a keyboard and mouse speeds things up, and Steam Deck emulator guides mostly apply.
• You can play early access games and PC exclusives. SteamOS means full Steam access, including titles that stay on PC. Slay the Spire 2 runs on the Steam Machine but not on PS5 or Xbox Series X until its 1.0 release, as was the case with Hades 2. Meccha Chameleon, Steam's multiplayer hide-and-seek hit, is PC-only for now, and it needs no online subscription fee to play.
• You can customize the startup animation and more. The Customization tab holds a library of boot-up animations, many themed around PC games, plus controls for the LED light on the underside, its color, pattern, and brightness. The front faceplate pops off and swaps magnetically, including faux wood and soft red versions.

None of that bends the math on price. The Steam Machine starts at $1,049, and on raw power it sits on par with the PS5 at best. Polygon highlighted that the extras only pay off if you actually use them, and that modding and emulation are easy to get excited about and then never touch.

The performance picture is worse than parity once independent testing enters the picture. Steam Machine falls behind the base PS5 in early benchmarks from Digital Foundry, which found Sony's current console the more powerful system across a range of games. The hardware package compounds it. The base model ships with 512 GB of storage, a tight figure when AAA games routinely pass 100 GB, and Valve sells the system without a controller, while the PS5 includes a DualSense in the box. Stack performance, accessories, and contents together and the PS5 reads as the stronger value at the same money.

Image credit: Eurogamer

I run a channel built around open-world games, and the modding line is the only one of these five that would change how I actually use a living-room box, because most of the open-world games I cover live or die on community configs that consoles never allow. I think Valve priced this for a narrow buyer rather than the mainstream, and the company more or less admits it, having said roughly 70% of Steam users play on hardware equal to or weaker than the Steam Machine, which means absolute performance was never the target.

The price itself is moving under outside pressure. Steam Machine prices announced at pre-order run $1,049 for the 512 GB base model, $1,128 bundled with a Steam Controller, $1,349 for a 2 TB drive, and $1,428 for the 2 TB plus controller configuration. Valve engineers Pierre-Loup Griffais and Yazan Aldehayyat told IGN the device was meant to cost 30 to 35% less, which would have landed the base model near $750, before component costs pushed it up. A separate IGN report put a potential ceiling as high as $1,400 amid global memory crisis conditions, with rising DRAM and GDDR prices squeezing manufacturers across the industry and Valve weighing a delay to wait for the memory market to stabilize. The same supply pressure may lift next-generation PlayStation and Xbox pricing too, which would make the Steam Machine look less like an outlier and more like the new baseline. Demand for memory chips is being driven by AI, data centers, and mobile devices at once, not gaming alone.

Whether the niche features justify the spend is the buyer's call. Modding and emulation are the real value propositions, but both are easy to overestimate before purchase. The advice that holds up is to decide which of these features you would use long-term before committing.

Read also, Valve launched the Steam Controller on May 4 for $99, months ahead of the Steam Machine and Steam Frame, after the global RAM shortage forced the company to split the trio it had announced together in November 2025 for a simultaneous early-2026 release. Mechanical engineer Steve Cardinali told IGN the $99 price came from holding the line on the bill of materials while keeping input parity with the Steam Deck, against comparable high-end PC controllers that run $150 to $200, with the two trackpads and gyro treated as core features rather than extras.