2012 was an important year for Valve. The company introduced Large Picture Mode – a Steam interface designed for the living room holy trinity of big TVs, joypads, and couches – it was also the year when Gabe Newell'south behemoth revealed it was because the development of a video game console. The press quickly gave this PC hybrid device an unofficial proper noun: The Steam Box.

Valve beingness Valve, things went a scrap quiet for a while on the announcements front. Merely in late September 2022, everything arrived at once; the Linux-based Steam OS, the Steam Controller, and the console-mode PCs, named Steam Machines, were unveiled. The company called the mini computers "a powerful new category of living room hardware."

A yr later in the run-upward to CES, Newell announced xiii hardware partners that would make the machines, based on Valve's designs. They included heavy hitters like Alienware, Digital Storm, and Gigabyte. When asked if he could beat out the and then three million Xbox One consoles that had been sold, Newell replied: "It's going to take a lot for them to catch up. We're at 65 meg," referring to the number of Steam accounts.

"If I purchase a game on Steam and I'm running it on Windows, I can become to one of the Steam machines and already have the game. And so you lot benefit as a developer, you benefit as a consumer in having the PC experience extended in the living room."

But today, Steam Machines feel like an embarrassing late night text Valve sent when information technology was drunk and now refuses to acknowledge. Which begs the question: what went wrong?

Launch

All the same again, Valve'due south legendary love of taking its time meant the first official Steam Machines weren't made available to the public until November 2022. Many launched with a diverseness of configurations to cull from, and all in a small-scale, living-room-friendly form factor. Quite a lot like a SFF PC, only only able to support games that work on Linux, and not as powerful – even when using the same hardware.

Yes, afterwards Valve boasted in 2022 that SteamOS immune for a huge performance boost on an OpenGL-powered Linux port of Left 4 Expressionless 2, a 2022 report showed that when using a dual-boot machine, Windows ten ran 5 out of six games noticeably faster than Valve's OS. Fifty-fifty Left 4 Dead ii was faster, though only marginally.

The chart beneath is taken from this Ars Technica article testing Steam OS 2.0 performance:

While a lack of Linux optimization, particularly when information technology comes to video cards and the games themselves, was put forward as the main reason behind the results, many saw it as another alibi non to buy a Steam Car.

Then there's the Steam controller. Most gamers weren't enamored by Valve's try to bring the functionality of a mouse to a gamepad past adding configurable touchpads, and there were complaints about its questionable build quality. Since its launch, however, the controller has slowly gained traction, helped by Valve releasing the device's CAD files last year so people could mod it.

Probably the biggest event belongings dorsum the Steam Motorcar at launch was the aforementioned fact they only run games that have Linux versions. 3 of the platform's biggest titles in recent years: The Witcher three, Grand Theft Auto five, and Metal Gear Solid V, however aren't supported, which is a big problem for a automobile aimed at gamers.

Sales

Unsurprisingly, Valve has never been forthcoming when talking near exact Steam Machine sales figures. But in June concluding twelvemonth, the company revealed it had sold merely over 500,000 Steam Controllers since launch – a figure that includes those packaged with every branded Steam Car. Not only does this hateful that fewer than half a million Steam Machine were sold in the six months since their release, but when accounting for Windows gamers who purchased a controller, along with whatsoever Steam Os users who bought more than one, the actual figure is likely much lower than 500,000. The Xbox One and PS4, by comparison, both sold 1 one thousand thousand units on their first day, and, over the side by side seven months, Microsoft shipped v.5 meg Xbox Ones while Sony's PS4 reached 10.2 million units.

Today

Right now, Steam'southward site lists iv official sellers of its Machines: Maingear, Fabric.net, Scan, and Alienware. While there are plenty of other retailers not listed, I make up one's mind to bank check out the ones Valve suggests.

Alienware

Alienware, whose UK website boasts of Steam OS'due south "Massive game library" (Over 990 games or 1200 games, depending on what function of the page you lot read) including Portal ii, Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel, and Dying Light - seems this hasn't been updated in a while.

Things are fleck better over on the Alienware's US site, where the Steam Machines are available in multiple configurations going up to Core i7 6700T, 8GB RAM, 1TB HDD, and a GTX 960 for $900. But why buy that when, for $50 more than, yous can get an nigh identical-looking, living room-friendly Alienware Alpha that comes with Windows 10, 16GB RAM, and a K.2 PCIe SSD?

Maingear

Visiting Maingear's site, I was interested to see that their have on the Steam Motorcar, the Drift, could be specced upwardly to a Titan X. It sounds very impressive: liquid cooling, SSDs, up to 16GB of DDR4. But clicking on both the "performance" and "Enthusiast" pick brought upward the message, "This product is no longer active in our catalog." Hmmm…

Material.cyberspace

Adjacent, it's over to the French Fabric.net site. Strangely, the link from Steam doesn't bear witness a page of Steam Machines, but some generic gaming PCs; are they trying to hide Valve's boxes? Doing a search on the site itself does bring upwards a unmarried Zotac Steam Machine. The specs - GTX 960, i5-6400T – are pretty uninspiring, though it does accept a 5-star rating. On closer inspection, nevertheless, it seems only ane person has always left a review. I wonder if it was a Mr. Nabe Gewell.

Browse

Finally, I spring over to the site where I buy almost all of my PC equipment, Scan.co.uk. It contains a huge amount of info on Steam Machines, along with promos for some more modern titles like Civilization V, Rust, and even Football Manager 2022. I excitedly click on the 'Steam Machine configuration' link, and I'm taken to… the previous page! What the…?

As with Fabric.internet, I find a manual search of Browse'due south website yields improve results. There are ii options: mid-range and high-end, and they both appear to be very compelling. Configurable up to Core i7 7700, GTX 1080, SSDs, etc. Only what really catches my eye is the option to add Windows 10 and make it a dual-boot system, essentially solving the car's biggest drawback. Information technology does, withal, cost an extra £93 ($119) for the privilege, and you can always become one of their many better (and ordinarily cheaper) pre-built gaming PCs that come up with Microsoft'south Bone every bit standard.

As a final experiment, I visited three big, contained PC retailers near where I live. None of them sold Steam Machines, and never have.

Streaming

While the Steam Machine'south Bone is limited to Linux games, you tin always play Windows titles using the streaming option. This does, of course, mean you'll already need a bulky PC (and a good network) to stream from. Moreover, if streaming to your living room TV is the route y'all desire to take, Valve offers a much cheaper and meliorate solution: The Steam Link.

The Steam Link may not get above 1080p and 60fps, simply for those that already own a gaming PC, it's the best way to savour your favorite titles in another room. I dearest mine and have never experienced any problems, though some reviewers complain virtually bugs. The device is said to offer a smoother feel than when streaming to a Steam Machine, so it seems Valve has cannibalized the marketplace for its mini PCs with this $50 device.

If you're a fan of streaming and Samsung TVs, good news: the Korean company plans on integrating the Steam Link into some of its future televisions, or at least that's what they said late last year.

So, what did become wrong?

It may be cliched, but the line that's and then often used when talking about Steam Machines is an accurate ane: Who are they for? Valve liked to push the narrative that they offer the best of what a console and a PC has to offer, when in reality they aren't as satisfying as either.

If someone is agonizing over whether to buy an Xbox One or a PlayStation 4, they're certainly not going to remember "Hmmm… maybe I should become a Steam Box instead. I wonder how many exclusive titles they have…" And most PC gamers are unlikely to consider one, peculiarly with the amazing mini-ITX/micro-ATX systems available, living room peripherals similar the Roccat Sova, and, once more, the Steam Link.

Gabe Newell has never hid his distaste for Microsoft – he called Windows 8 "a catastrophe for everybody in the PC space" in 2022 and talked almost needing platform alternatives. But his fears of a closed and controlled Windows Store, essentially turning the PC into a walled garden, hasn't happened, though it's something Ballsy Games' co-founder Tim Sweeney has too expressed concerns most.

In reality, it's hard to imagine the all-powerful Steam being brought to its knees by the Windows Store, which still has plenty of problems.

The Future

While Steam Machines are still available, and I know some people who genuinely savor theirs, I fully wait them to fade away over the next few years. The future of gaming has never looked so exciting: Nvidia and AMD's incredibly powerful GPUs, new thin laptops that can run 4K games, increasingly smaller living room PCs, and even Microsoft's Project Scorpio (Xbox One X). But information technology's a futurity that doesn't seem to include Steam Machines.

I love Valve and Gabe Newell for what they've brought to my favorite gaming platform over the final 13 years. And they should be applauded for trying to bring PCs, and Linux gaming, to more people. But perchance Steam Machines were an answer to a problem nobody had. Round 2, anyone?