I know it’s supposed to be a little tongue in cheek but in reality: if you have a steam deck and like it, just dock it to your TV and you have a low powered steam machine.

I have a deck but got a MiniPC and have that plugged into my TV. Essentially a steam machine.

Why? I wanted to game at 4k (the deck can do it but struggles), I wanted more convenience (I had to unlock my steam deck on its front face before I could use it which was annoying if I wanted to game from the sofa), i wanted to play more powerful games at higher settings generally (not just 4k, but simulations games that need more cpu and ram to play well so I wanted a more powerful machine). I also make more extensive use of the desktop mode and use it for browsing and streaming - it’s become an all-in-one device in a way Microsoft or Sony failed to achieve.

I don’t think the Steam Machine will be as big as the deck, but it’ll have a decent market. If you want a mobile gaming platform get the deck, but the subset who only really wanted to living room game will be better off with a steam machine. The real competition for the steam machine is other living room PCs.

I do think Valve could to with adding an app store in their client for installing progressive Web apps. Because being able to stream video content easily from within steam itself opens all their devices into being multimedia machines.