No game streaming: Valve Steam Machine guns for console status without popular PS5 or Xbox Series functionality
Much has already been said about the Steam Machine since its announcement yesterday alongside the Steam Controller 2 and the Steam Frame. Following its debut, Digital Foundry and others questioned in what games the Steam Machine could hit Valve's advertised 4K and 60 FPS gameplay experience, even with FSR 2 or FSR 3 enabled.
As we have also discussed separately, the Steam Machine seems to combine AMD's Ryzen 5 7640U APU with a Radeon RX 7600M laptop GPU. Based on current estimates, the Steam Machine could end up costing more with worse performance than Radeon RX 7600M XT-backed eGPUs like the AD-GP1 that GMKtec launched earlier this year (curr. $499.99 on Amazon).
Another aspect overlooked and not mentioned by Valve on its Steam Machine product page is the device's media streaming capabilities. Currently, Valve advertises the Steam Machine as a console competitor aimed at being put 'under your TV'. However, Digital Foundry has confirmed that the Steam Machine will ship without any media streaming capabilities pre-installed whatsoever.
In other words, the Steam Machine will be unable to even run Netflix out of the box, let alone a game streaming service like Amazon Luna or Nvidia GeForce Now. Worse still, Digital Foundry adds:
Valve has no plans to offer bespoke media-streaming app downloads via the default SteamOS interface.
So on launch day and thereafter, one must switch to Steam OS' desktop mode and fire up a web browser to watch streaming services or attempt to play streamed games. Of course, one could install Nvidia GeForce NOW and other services yourself, but this will take a while to get up and running to provide a native-like experience.
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