There’s a new block on the block, or at least there will be soon. The Steam Machine, Valve’s new cuboid mini gaming PC disguised as a game console is coming early next year. And that’s exciting! I mean, when was the last time anybody had a shot at squeezing into this market lorded over by Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo for more than two decades? And how will it fare, specifically, against the PlayStation 5?

I wish I could say this is a straightforward choice, but it’s just not. The Steam Machine will come with all of the full richness of the Steam game library, and it will have certain capabilities beyond what Sony offers for the PS5 – it is a full-on Linux computer, after all. Yet it’s likely that the PS5 will be the cheaper, more performant machine, and will continue to be home to some huge exclusives, or games that run better simply because developers know exactly what hardware they’re making them for. Optimization matters!

But the choice isn’t just about specs and price. The gaming industry is in flux: every month brings more high-profile game industry layoffs; prices have shot up in response to President Trump’s tariffs; and 2025 has seen a lot of high-profile cancellations in series like Perfect Dark and Kingdom Hearts. Picking a game console, now more than ever, is a bet that it’ll give you reasons to keep coming back to it. Unfortunately, there aren’t many of us that can just buy every console we want and pay rent – so hopefully I can help you decide: should you buy a PS5 or a Steam Machine?

Specs and Performance

We won’t know how well the Steam Machine truly runs until we’ve gotten to put it through its paces, partly because of its custom chipset. But we can sure guess based on what Valve has revealed so far, as well as on our own time spent with the hardware when it was announced.

At roughly six inches cubed, things are cramped inside the Steam Machine. Under its black plastic facade is a collection of good, but largely laptop-friendly components. The company has been careful not to frame it as a hot rod, making clear, for instance, that it’ll be relying on upscaling to hit its 4K resolution targets. As IGN has written before, the Steam Machine’s custom RDNA 3 GPU is about on par with a mobile RX 7600. For the CPU, Valve went with a slightly older 6-core Zen 4 chip.

You know what’s even older? The PS5’s components. But age is just a number, and you’ll find more compute in the PS5’s 8-core Zen 2 CPU and its RDNA 2 GPU than what the 5-year-newer Steam Machine offers. We’ll see how the two stack up when the Steam Machine’s GPU actually hits our test bench, but it would be surprising if it was an even match.

The numbers only tell part of the story. Remember, the Steam Machine is console-shaped, but as far as your games are concerned, it’s still just another gaming PC. Very little, if anything, that runs on it will have been created with its specific hardware in mind. Meanwhile, PS5 game developers will have known exactly what hardware they’re programming for (PS5 Pro notwithstanding). That doesn’t mean every PS5 game is perfectly optimized – but it does mean it’s a little more likely to have great-looking AAA games, even as it continues to age.

It’s possible, if the Steam Machine sells well enough, that some developers will start to make games with Valve’s hardware in mind, but I wouldn’t count on that happening frequently, if at all. Heck, even on the PS5 it can feel like developers got about 80 percent of the way there before studio execs called it good, released the game, and laid off the team that made it.

Now, all of that said, will games look bad on the Steam Machine? Oh my, no; there’s plenty of debate over just how well it’ll perform. Just don’t expect its games to be the absolute cream of the crop.

Winner: PS5

Library and Features

Deciding will be tricky if you’re looking at what actually runs on these consoles. The PS5 can only play games one generation back, not counting older remasters and the like. Meanwhile, the Steam Machine will be packed with decades of digital games, via Steam, right at launch. You might already have a huge library at your disposal! That’s a huge advantage that can’t be overstated.

But what about those sweet PlayStation 5 ‘sclusies? Sony hasn’t quite followed Microsoft down its magnanimous path of making its exclusive games multiplatform, so the PS5 is the only way you’ll play titles like Ghost of Yotei or Death Stranding 2: On the Beach. With more than 80 million PS5s sold, there’s no guarantee that the company will veer meaningfully from that strategy. Then again, some games have jumped to other platforms, like the Spider-Man games; and the list of remaining exclusives isn’t long at all.

There’s also approachability to consider: the PS5 is a game console, through and through. When you want to play a game on it, you buy the game, load it, and, generally speaking, play it – so long as it doesn’t require you to log into an account before you can play. (He wrote, while looking askance at Star Wars Outlaws.) That’s mostly how it works with SteamOS, too, but you’ll still have to fiddle with settings in some games, particularly those Valve hasn’t already given a Steam Machine verified badge.

There’s also a very real difference to consider in terms of physical size and hardware features. The Steam Machine is tiny, like a Very Serious take on the GameCube (a GabeCube, you might say), while the PS5 is a behemoth that looks a bit like a black-and-white vampire when it’s sitting upright. Just finding somewhere to put the dang thing is a real challenge. But on the flipside, you can get a PS5 with a disc drive, meaning you can fill your shelves with physical game cases if that’s your thing. (No judgement, friend, I used to be you.) Sure, Valve could have stuck a disc drive on top of the Steam Machine, but in a world where physical PC games have all but vanished, what would have been the point? To play Blu-ray movies? Actually, that would be rad.

Outside of their games libraries, size, and plug-and-playability, the PS5 and Steam Machine are almost bizarro versions of each other. Both systems have touch pad features on their controllers, and both have a handheld story to tell, via the game streaming-only PS Portal and the standalone (but also streaming-capable) Steam Deck. The latter is a standalone system that starts at $400, the PS Portal only streams games and is half the price. That’s not to mention VR – a similar dynamic plays out between the Steam Frame and PSVR 2.

Winner: Tie

Price

Price is where the PS5’s biggest advantage may lie. Even after tariff-induced price hikes, it starts at $499 for the digital edition, which is much cheaper than the $700-$800 that the Steam Machine could cost. The same goes for the $200 PS Portal and $400 Steam Deck, or the $400 PSVR 2 and the Steam Frame, which could easily cost $500 or more.

But there’s more to consider, like the size of your Steam library and the depth of your restraint. If you’ve already got enough compatible games, you could easily get a Steam Machine, then avoid buying any new games for a while to let your wallet cool off. Meanwhile, the PS5 is limited to its own library, plus PS4 games and remakes of older titles. Even if you have a healthy PS4 library, the PS5’s identity is all wrapped up in what a power plant it is. You’ll want some new games that show that off. And it doesn’t take much – one Ghost of Yotei here and a Death Stranding 2 there – before the price differential starts to become a wash.

Assuming a $700 Steam Machine price point, the calculus swings a bit back toward Sony if you buy a disc edition. A lot of PS5 games have come out in the five years since the console landed, and you can get some great secondhand hard copy deals on some of the best PS5 games out there. If Valve just says “to hell with it” and charges $500, though? The Steam Machine is practically a no-brainer from a price perspective. But that’s probably not going to happen.

There’s a lot of “if this, then that” that goes into whether the PS5 is a better deal than the Steam Machine, so for right now, this one is a tie that could tip either way depending on how much Valve asks for its new gaming PC.

Winner: Tie

The Winner Is… the PS5 (For Now)

Sony gets the edge here, but just barely. It’s a more powerful system for one thing, and as this console generation wanes, it will probably age better than the Steam Machine, at least when it comes to AAA games, purely because of console optimization – when developers know the hardware they’re aiming for, their games tend to play and look better.

But the delta between the performance of the Steam Machine and the PS5 is still unknown at this point. And even if it’s about where we think it is, it may not be a meaningful difference for all but the most pixel-peeping among us. The rest won’t notice a difference unless you stick visuals from both systems right in front of them. And even then, most won’t care.

In every other area, the two consoles come up about even, although that depends on certain things. If you have a huge and growing Steam library already, then the Steam Machine could be the obvious choice, even if Valve charges $200 more for it than Sony does for the PS5. If your Steam library is lacking or nonexistant, the PS5 might be the better bang for your buck.

Wes is a freelance writer (Freelance Wes, they call him) who has covered technology, gaming, and entertainment steadily since 2020 at Gizmodo, Tom's Hardware, Hardcore Gamer, and most recently, The Verge. Inside of him there are two wolves: one that thinks it wouldn't be so bad to start collecting game consoles again, and the other who also thinks this, but more strongly.