'Meh': Ex-PlayStation president Shuhei Yoshida weighs in on Valve's Steam Machine after a few hours with it
Overview & Key Takeaways
Suppose it does seem like a decent indie machine.
Previously serving as the president of SIE Worldwide Studios for Sony and then becoming the head of PlayStation Indies in 2019, Shuhei Yoshida retired last year. He has since taken to giving industry analysis over on X. With the Steam Machine and its mighty price tag serving as a big discussion point, Yoshida has had a couple of hours with the machine. So far, he doesn't seem mighty impressed.
Yoshida recently said on X, "3D performance is just…meh", going on to add, "The system recommends to default to 1080p—am I going back to PS4 days?"
This middling performance is something our Andy said of the device in his review. We saw performance sitting at significantly less than even comparably priced mini PCs, with the Atomman G1 Pro handily beating it. The Steam Machine's RDNA 3-era graphics hardware seems to particularly struggle with ray tracing, but it's not particularly pretty across the board when you consider the price.
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Yoshida is critical of this, saying, "But the price was very unfriendly. Hard to recommend to people unless for research." He also finds that games take a "loooooooong" time to boot.
Yoshida also had thoughts to share on the new Steam Controller. Though he likes the notion of having touchpads in a controller, he does complain that they are very "touchy" and hard to use.
He also finds the sticks are looser than he'd like. Assuming the ex-PlayStation head of indies likes the PS5 controller, these two complaints make some sense to me. I lament the lack of stick drift protection in the DualSense, but they do have tactile, snappy sticks, and the touchpad is pretty out of the way (unless you play with a claw grip like I do).
(Image credit: Future)
Still, not all is bad, according to Yoshida. The ex-Sony president likes SteamOS as a UI, enjoys that you can turn on the system through nothing but the Steam Controller, and he praises the changeable face plate. He also enjoys the boot-up videos. Ultimately, he says, "It allows me to play Steam games on my living room TV, which is a reason enough to keep it."
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Yoshida does clarify he has only gotten a few hours with it so far, but I suspect his observations will be fairly common for Steam Machine owners, considering our own testing. It's a pricey and underpowered device. Yoshida does offer one bit of praise to finish out his thoughts, though: "The small form factor and quietness is super good."
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