It might be a good thing overall, as it might force/convince more companies to optimise their games. “Doesn’t work well on the Steam machine” won’t be the label you want on your game.

Not sure I’d put it as “low” spec. It’s a budget PC which should run most games at 4k with a reasonable FPS. It’s marketed as a console competitor, not a high end gamed PC. So, don’t expect to crank Cyberpunk up to ultra settings and have it cranking out 120FPS. But, you could throw it under your TV and play most games at a reasonable level.

Personally, I don’t see the appeal, but I have high-ish end PC. I also have one of the original SteamLink boxes under my TV (fantastic bit of kit). Other than the fact that it needs a wired ethernet connection, it’s a rock solid way to play PC games on my TV. I have even used it to stream games from my Steam Deck, which worked OK with the Steam Deck on a 5Ghz wireless network (I plan to get the dock for exactly this use case and it’s wired connection).

That said, I agree with @JASN_DE@feddit.org, this may give developers a rough baseline to shoot for in the PC market. One of the advantages of the console market is that the hardware is a well known quantity. In the PC market, the “standard” is much less clear. If developers embrace the Steam Machine as a sort of, “let’s make it work here” baseline, that means folks with less high end machines may stand a chance of running modern games at reasonable framerates.

Valve says its designed to be better than 70% of surveyed computers. If that’s accurate, I wouldn’t call it low spec.

Based on the specs, and targeted performance, it’s as low spec as a PS5 or equivalent PC. Which I would not call low spec at all. More like mid.

A year ago? I’d have said 16gb RAM were entry level. Right now? I’m fearing 16gb RAM will cost more than an used car so we’ll see it becoming something like a mid-high PC if things keep going like this.

In fact, I plan on getting 2 at home as soon as they are available.

I think it’s fine. The most demanding game I have is Spider-Man Remastered, the highest res TV I have is 1080p, so the Steam Machine would be fine.

I do play Planetary Annihilation: Titans, which can chew up 32Gb of RAM or more, but that’s a niche use case; it’s not a living room game anyway.

It won’t be low-spec when it gets released. But soon after it.

As a patient gamer, I played a port of an old PS4 game a month ago. Now I’d like to play the successor of this game, but it’s now a port from PS5. My old PC isn’t good enough anymore.

The Steam Machine can probably handle it. But when the first PS6 ports are available for PC, it will have a hard time.

Gotta have intel integrated graphics to be low spec 😎

I haven’t looked into it because I don’t plan on getting one.

Just like any of the consoles, I don’t care for the specs because they don’t matter to me.