"Hard to recommend to people unless for research."

Image credit: Valve

Former PlayStation Worldwide Studios president, and later the head of indies at PlayStation, Shuhei Yoshida has received his Steam Machine, and he has some blunt feedback about the new console.

Posting his thoughts on X, Yoshida gave the new console-styled PC a few hours' play before sharing his thoughts with the world.

Here's the Steam Machine overview guide and trailer.Watch on YouTube

His full takeaways are as follows:

• 3D performance is just...meh.
• The system recommends to default to 1080p - am I going back to PS4 days?
• Some games take a looooooong time to boot, what is it doing?
• System UI is easy to use.
• Being able to boot up by pressing a button on Steam Controller is a killer feature.
• Changeable face plate is nice.
• Random boot up videos is a nice touch :)
• Sticks on Steam Controller is a bit looser than my taste.
• Having touch pad is nice, but it is very "touchy" and hard to use.
• It allows me to play Steam games on my living room TV, which is a reason enough to keep it.
• But the price was very unfriendly. Hard to recommend to people unless for research.

So it's not entirely negative. It's interesting to see that Yoshida came away liking aspects of the Steam Machine such as the changeable face plate and easy-to-use system UI, even if he thinks the performance is lacklustre. Those performance woes have been picked up by many others out there, who have rightfully noted that the Steam Machine is weaker than current-gen consoles.

It looks as though the core premise of the Steam Machine - being able to play PC games from the comfort of your living room and a big TV - is enough of a benefit that Yoshida will keep it around. The elephant in the room being the price, of course.

In Valve's defence, price is the one point that isn't really its fault. Valve has said it isn't the price it wanted, and it's hard to recommend many consoles right now from a financial standpoint. Still, the Steam Machine is expensive, and that sticker shock is a major thorn in its side whichever way you cut it.

Eurogamer's own review of the Steam Machine did come away similarly charmed by the hardware, but of course did note it was probably too niche, and definitely too expensive.

Mentioned in this article