Steam Machine set up

A couple of days ago, thanks to some free time on a Sunday afternoon, I got round to setting up my newly acquired Steam Machine. While I don't have a lot to say about it, I thought I'd note here that the event happened and jot some notes about how it went.

On unboxing, two things struck me: just how small it is, while also how hefty it feels. I'm not a hardware person, as I've mentioned here many times before, so can't speak to the how and why -- but it feels like the whole thing is cleverly and densely packed. Having owned plenty of PCs over the years, especially a lot of towers and mini towers, it was pretty neat to hold in my hands a machine that would put most of them to shame.

I also really appreciate that it can pretty much hide behind a plant pot next to the TV. It's just... there. It's not a feature.

As for setting up, that was dead simple. I pulled the machine and cable out of the box, unboxed the controller that came with it too, plugged an Ethernet cable between it and my router, fired it up and followed the instructions. Logging in was the usual dead-simple QR code scan from the Steam app on my phone.

The only issue I ran into was when setting up the Steam Controller itself. While it worked perfectly with its own puck plugged in, right from the start (so I could do the setup without need for a keyboard and mouse), things didn't go so well when it offered to switch over to the internal puck. When it asked if I wanted to do that, the Pair button (I think that's what it was called) could be pressed but always resulted in an instant error. Then using Retry was an instant error too. I tried a few times, to no success, so then just carried on using the controller's own puck on the end of a cable.

After going through that, it then wanted to do updates on the puck and controller, which I followed. I had hoped that at that point it might repeat the process to move to the internal puck but that wasn't offered as an option.

Once through all that I was all up and running and my library was available. I tried a couple of games and the whole thing felt nice and fast. In fact, it felt like exactly what I wanted: a better-performing Steam Deck that is always plugged into my TV.

After testing a couple of games, I searched online and then dived into the settings and found that, from there, I could swap the controller over to the internal puck. The method for doing this wasn't obviously available in the settings, hence the search online. Annoyingly I can't find the page I landed on, but I seem to remember it simply involved directly plugging the controller into the machine (USB->USB, not connected to the puck) and then messing in the controller settings on the machine.

Overall, while there was that little hiccup, the experience pretty much felt like setting up a console -- which seems ideal to me. As for what I can do with it: the "Great on Machine" tab in my library looks to contain about a fifth of my total library, and a lot of that is made up of games I'm happy to play. I've not paid too much attention to the what and why of the other four-fifths -- I also imagine there are a good few in there that would also work but which haven't had the seal of approval yet.

Would I recommend this to anyone? Eh, if you're a full-on "PC master race" type who loves to build their own kit and cares about the hardware and stuff... I would imagine not. On the other hand, if you're someone who has a reasonable library on Steam and wants a low-to-no-maintenance PC that's almost invisible in your living room: I'd say it's ideal. Sure, the price isn't great, but that's the way stuff is at the moment¹. Additionally, you're getting a desktop Linux machine and something that can be tweaked and tailored how you like, if that's your thing.

Next up on my list of things to do with it, aside from playing on it more (currently low-key obsessed with Iron Nest and am also enjoying having more runs in Vampire Survivors), is to figure out the easiest and best way to record video (with audio and voice) and, ideally, also stream to YouTube. Given the nature of the machine (Linux box with gaming UI) I imagine it's as "simple"² as adding OBS and setting things up. To be fair to the consoles though: this is where they do win just a little; on both my Xbox Series S and my PS5 there are dedicated tools for streaming. I wish the Steam Machine came with similar built-in functionality so I could be extra lazy and also have a setup that is very unlikely to be disturbed by random updates.