The Steam Machine is supposed to be faster than 70% of all gaming PCs on Steam. At least that is what a developer from Valve explained in an interview. In developing the Steam Machine, the focus was mainly on performance and price, and on what most players are really interested in.
Valve has introduced the Steam Machine. In an interview, Valve’s hardware engineer, Yazan Aldehayya, explained that they put a lot of thought into the Steam Machine.
One important point, he explains, is that besides the price, performance is crucial. And here they claim to outperform 70% of all gaming PCs. This is reported by the English-language magazine WCCFTech.com.
Performance and price are important for the Steam Machine
What the developer says: In the interview with the channel “Adam Savage Tested”, he explained that two things had to be taken into account during the development: First, the performance must be sufficient for all Steam games. Second, the price must be right. They focused on what interests the users. Thus, they developed a device that is stronger than 70% of all gaming PCs. He explains:
The first thing is that it needs to have enough power to run all your Steam games. That was really important to us. We want it to be a pretty straightforward experience. You shouldn’t have to worry about whether you can play these games.
(…)
But we also wanted to target more of an entry-level device. We know that affordability is really important, right? The price definitely plays a big role in what performance level we aim for. Essentially, we used these two directions to determine what we think makes the most sense.
Another thing we looked at is the Steam hardware survey. Basically, it gives us a good indication of where people’s home devices stand in terms of performance, and the Steam Machine is at least as powerful as or better than 70% of the devices that people have at home. That’s another way to think about how we arrived at this performance level.
In addition, the developer stated that they will not use a special chip in the Steam Machine, but rather a model that you can buy off the shelf. However, they have optimized the software for SteamOS.
The Steam Machine could therefore be the best choice for many players, if the model is indeed available in spring 2026 and the price is set such that a wide audience of players can afford the Steam Machine.
MeinMMO presents the best alternatives to the Steam Deck below. This might be particularly interesting for those of you who either didn’t want to pre-order the Steam Deck or are looking for an alternative, high-performance gaming console: Steam Deck: These are the 10 most exciting alternatives 2025
