Gaming Blend "While Steam Machines will obviously be slightly more expensive than the PS4, the question to many gamers is: is it worth it?
In our article detailing how to build a Steam Machine for only $550, you can get comparable video performance and much higher processing, storage and RAM for just $150 more than the price of a PS4. For many gamers they have to weigh if that's what they want out of a living room solution though. You could still use the Steam Machine for other things like word processing, e-mail, live-streaming, media streaming and emulation.
You still get many of the media options with a PS4 that you would have with a PC, except there's a stark lack of openness for the PS4 that you would otherwise have with a Steam Machine, such as mods, using whatever controller best suits your tastes in gaming, and the ability to upgrade when you feel like it so that your games can look better when you feel they need to look better."
In the battle between Baldur's Gate 3 and Dragon's Dogma 2, Baldur's Gate 3 wins in more ways than players would expect.
It's balancing old and new, then, and embracing a sort of breezy retro simplicity. Pleasing as that is, though, it so far feels a little shallow by comparison to other genre heavy-hitters. Despite moving to an open world and offering sumptuous presentation, Visions of Mana clings to the past and lacks truly fresh ideas of its own. It's a welcome return and a fun, bubbly, frivolous experience, but the Mana series looks set to remain in the shadow of Square Enix's premiere franchises for now.
Hopes are high as Open Roads allows us to take in a Game Pass, Xbox, PlayStation, Switch and PC road trip.
Already preordered PS4, just a little more than a month left :)
Nobody's forcing you to choose just one console lol, get both
well if you are going to make direct comparisons, don't be lazy about it article author.
Things not even mentioned:
Remote play
Ability to sell/trade physical media
PS+ freebies and discounts vs Steam store sales
lack of Blu-Ray on Steam Machine
fragmentation caused by various Steam Machine configurations
... sure there are plenty more but these are pretty basic considerations tbh
I fail to see why the two are even compared. There a lot of PS4 games that you won't see on Steam and vice versa. Including 3rd party games. The price doesn't really matter because if you can only afford one, you'll buy the one that has the most games that you want to play.
I preordered a PS4 because of all the 3rd party games, but primarily because of Sony's stable of first party devs. I don't game on PC so even if the cheapest steambox was $200, I still wouldn't get it.
$550 will not get you a comparable Steambox. That is pure, and very poor, speculation.
PC equivalent of the PS4:
Cheap motherboard (~$70)
high-end i5 (~$220)
HD 7850 with GDDR5 (~$170, and 2 GB might be limiting, compared to the PS4's available memory)
500 GB HDD (~$60)
BD drive (~$50)
8GB well-overclockable DDR3 RAM (~$50)
~650W PSU (~$50)
Well-ventilated case (~$50 + $25 for some fans)
Operating system (~$70 for an upgrade, which is technically cheating on price)
KB (~$15)
Mouse (~$15)
Controller (~$15)
...looking at about $860, and that's with low-grade components. Still, even $750, if you pirate the OS, and re-use KB and mouse.
But $550? No way, unless you recycle some components from a previous system. Thank god for Steam sales, because you're gonna need it to make up the $400 difference.
These kinds of lame price comparison articles love to forget that the PS4/XB1 come WITH controllers, a PSU, a case, AND an OS, or that the GPU is the high-end, lots-of-memory variety, as opposed to the cheap 1 GB discount variety. They also use used (the $550 machine uses eBay prices) components? Can't buy a PS4 used for $400, can you?