Former PlayStation boss dismisses Valve’s Steam Machine's performance as ‘Meh,’ while praising its console-like experience

A renowned former president of Sony Interactive Entertainment Worldwide Studios and a longtime champion of the indie gaming niche at PlayStation, Shuhei Yoshida, recently gave his two cents on Valve’s latest Steam Machine. After finally receiving his Steam Machine, he tested it for a few hours. The industry veteran and former PlayStation leader shared his personal take on the living-room gaming PC and highlighted its shortcomings.

Former PlayStation Boss Says The Steam Machine’s Performance is “Meh”

After experiencing the pros and cons of the Steam Machine, Yoshida took to X, the social media platform, and laid out his thoughts, stating:

“The 3D performance is just meh.” Not only did he criticize the performance of the Steam Machine, but he also raised questions about the default resolution settings for Valve's new hardware, saying, “The system defaults to 1080p. Am I going back to PS4 days?”

The Steam Machine, despite boasting a PCIe Gen 4 NVMe SSD, also struggled to launch a few games during Yoshida's time with it. Discussing the boot times and his struggles with Valve's hardware, Yoshida said, “Some games take a long time to boot. What is it doing?”

Later in his short review on X, Yoshida discussed Valve's new Steam Controller and shared a personal take on its analog sticks, stating, “Sticks on the Steam Controller are a bit looser than my taste. Having a touchpad is nice, but it is very touchy and hard to use.”

Plenty of "nice" things too

Despite his initial complaints about Valve’s new Steam Machine, Yoshida's feedback was not entirely negative. He also praised the device for its user-friendly features, which make the Gabecube’s PC-based hardware feel much more like a living-room home console. 

Yoshida further stated in his mini review of the Steam Machine, “The system UI is easy to use,” calling the ability to boot it up by pressing a button on the Steam Controller “a killer feature.” He also delved into the intricate design touches on the Steam Machine.

He continued, “Changeable face plates are nice. Random boot-up videos are also a nice touch. The small form factor and quietness are super good.” Ultimately, Yoshida found the Steam Machine essential for a living-room setup in terms of accessibility. He stated, “It allows me to play Steam games on my living room TV, which is reason enough to keep it, but the price was very unfriendly, making it hard to recommend to people unless it is for research.”  

 For those out of the loop, Valve's Steam Machine was released at the tail end of June 2026 as a compact, cube-shaped living-room PC for big-screen TV gaming. It comes packed with a semi-custom AMD Zen 4 CPU consisting of 6 cores and 12 threads, alongside an RDNA3 GPU with 28 compute units.

Furthermore, it includes 16 GB of DDR5 RAM and 8 GB of GDDR6 VRAM. However, the main problem with Valve's Steam Machine is its pricing, as Valve’s living-room gaming solution starts at a steep $1,049 for the base 512 GB model, which does not include the Steam Controller. This does, however, rival what a Steam Deck OLED currently goes for on Amazon, indicating that scalpers are essentially grabbing whatever they can to resell at a hig when it comes to Valve products.  All in all, the former Sony leader plans to keep his Steam Machine because of its accessibility in his living room, but he finds it hard to recommend to the general public.