The Steam Machine is good hardware. It works remarkably well as an appliance, not a fussy PC. Gaming is great on it. It just feels like a gaming console. And compared to PS5 or Xbox, Steam has access to a huge variety of interesting little games, the whole indie gaming scene.

The important thing is that the Steam Machine just works. I’d feel entirely comfortable giving an ordinary person one to use, there’s no need for any Linux hackery. I’ve been using Linux in earnest for awhile now, including a mini PC plugged in to my TV before I got the Steam Machine. It works but has a lot of rough edges. Valve has sanded off all those rough edges on the Gabecube. They’ve had a couple of years with the Steam Deck to get the experience right.

I’m not as sold on the Steam Controller. It works great as a normal gamepad. But the extra stuff, the two touchpads and the gyros and the extra buttons and all… I only interact with those for games that don’t have good gamepad support. And despite their best efforts to substitute as a mouse it is very clumsy. The controller mapping software is also a little awkward. I find myself only playing games that have gamead support as a first class feature and don’t much use the extra Steam Controller features.

There was a lot of disappointment when the price came in at $1100. At $700 it would have been a no-brainer, $1100 seems like a lot. But given electronics shortages it’s a fair price. It’s well built hardware. Also thoughtfully designed, the GPU is nicely beefy and can run most any game well at 1080p.

The Steam Machine can do more than just Steam. It’s pretty easy to add alternate game launchers, emulation… There’s a whole desktop mode to use it as a general Linux system (with limitations). But I think it’s real strength is as a simple game console running Steam and PC games. It does that very well.