According to the latest news from well-known Steam information miner Brad Lynch, the default startup animation of Valve’s yet-to-be-officially released Steam Machine game console has appeared in data mining, which may mean that Valve is about to announce more details about the hardware.
Start animation:
Brad Lynch said that the leaked startup animation is official material dug directly from the Steam client and is not self-made content. The overall style of the animation is highly consistent with the default startup screen of the Steam Deck, with the main change being the incorporation of the iconic cubic design element of the Steam Machine, which later evolved into the Steam logo. This design is consistent with the previously exposed hardware appearance concept.
Although Valve has yet to announce the final price and release date of Steam Machine, technology content creator Linus Tech Tips recently gave a bold prediction in an in-depth analysis.
Linus' analysis is based on Steam Machine's known custom AMD six-core processor and RDNA3 architecture GPU equipped with 8GB GDDR6 video memory. Since these components do not have desktop retail versions, he chose the Ryzen5 platform with similar performance paired with the RX6600 graphics card as a reference. By comparing the historical low price, current retail price and large-scale manufacturing costs, he finally estimated that Valve's internal hardware cost may be "under $600 to $650."
The leak of the splash screen, combined with the recent intensive speculation on pricing in the industry, indicates that the release of public information about the Steam Machine project may have entered the countdown stage. The final market positioning and competitiveness of this console, which aims to bring the Steam gaming experience into the living room, has yet to be officially announced by Valve.