Technologies

PS5 vs. PC vs. Steam Machine: What’s the Right Gear for Gaming?

It may not be apples to apples, but there’s plenty that can be compared between these gaming platforms.

Valve’s upcoming Steam Machine is an exciting prospect for both the console and gaming PC markets, as it looks like it’ll straddle both realms. However, it will also add another option to the diverse and potentially confusing home gaming scene. The hard choice between Sony’s PlayStation 5 console and a gaming PC looms as large as ever, and now the Steam Machine turns the situation into a three-horse race (especially with Microsoft focused less on hardware and more on playing Xbox anywhere).

While some key details about the Steam Machine are still unknown — including any firm performance numbers, an exact release date or even a confirmed price — we’ve used the information we do have about it, and everything we know about gaming PCs and the PS5, to piece together a picture of how these platforms compete against each other.

Cost of entry

One of the big dividing lines between consoles and gaming PCs is price. None of this type of hardware comes cheap, but the PlayStation 5 in all its iterations still has the price advantage over comparable PC hardware.

The standard PS5 Digital Edition has a $499 retail price, even though it was introduced several years ago — tariffs and other economic turmoil have kept prices from going down. Getting a disc drive costs an additional $50. For the PS5 Pro, the price jumps to $749, but it offers a performance boost over its basic siblings.

Meanwhile, PC pricing ranges from far below the price of a PS5 to simply atmospheric compared to Sony’s console. You can find PCs from a couple of hundred dollars to well into the thousands, depending on the quality of components included. What you get for the money will vary considerably. Short of buying used or refurbished, you’ll be unlikely to find a PC that can operate on the level of a PS5 for under $800, with much recent fluctuation due to factors such as the RAM shortage.

The Steam Machine still has no confirmed price, but rumors have given us a predicted range. It is expected to be priced above console levels based on a discussion between Valve and Linus Sebastian shared on the WAN show and reported by IGN. Given the hardware inside, I’d wager it’ll sit somewhere in the $800 to $1,000 range, though it could go higher due to RAM and storage costs. It seems to have much in common with the Framework Desktop, which currently has a base price of $1,139, for reference.

Raw performance and specs

The PlayStation 5 is a known quantity at this point. It uses custom AMD hardware, combining what are now fairly dated Zen 2 CPU cores and an RDNA 2 GPU with 36 compute units capable of 10.3 teraflops. It also comes with 825GB of storage. This has been enough to let it run games in 4K at 30 to 60 frames per second, though it uses special graphics settings tailored to its capabilities and tends to rely on subsampling rather than native resolution. The PS5 Pro steps this up with a newer GPU that uses RDNA 3 architectures and 60 compute units for a rated 16.7 teraflops.

While the PS5’s specifications and performance are known and set, that can’t be said of PCs. PCs can be built with infinite combinations of parts, ranging from barely enough performance to run Windows to high-end configurations that make the PS5’s performance look laughable. You can also tune a PC’s capabilities in more variable ways. Different cooling setups, configurations and BIOS settings can make the same components operate in vastly different ways. The games themselves typically offer more granular graphics settings that let you choose higher frame rates for smoother play over visual quality, and vice versa.

The Steam Machine will be akin to the PS5 in that it will also use semicustom AMD hardware, but it has the advantage of being newer. It will reportedly feature a Zen 4 CPU and an RDNA 3 GPU with 28 compute units intended to enable 4K gaming at 60 frames per second with ray tracing. Given that the PS5 Pro also runs on RDNA 3 architecture, but has more than double the compute units, it seems likely the Steam Machine will fall a bit short of that performance level.

We do have a rough performance ceiling of what the Steam Machine is likely to accomplish. The Framework Desktop I recently tested had an AMD Ryzen AI Max Plus 395 CPU, a powerful 16-core Zen 5 CPU with an integrated RDNA 3.5 GPU with 40 compute units. That hardware was enough to give the system performance somewhere between the mobile variants of an RTX 4060 and 4070. With the Steam Machine featuring older CPU and GPU architectures and fewer compute units, it’s all but guaranteed to deliver lower performance.

Exclusive games and library access

One perk of the PlayStation 5 is its access to exclusive games. There are some games, such as Ghost of Yōtei and Gran Turismo 7, that are still only available on PlayStation. That said, this perk is quickly eroding. Many games that launch as PS5 exclusives are actually timed exclusives that eventually come to PC.

The PC ports of these games also tend to offer more support for graphics customization, including higher graphics presets that can cost extra to unlock on PlayStation (I’m looking at you, Ghost of Tsushima).

So, there are pros and cons to the PS5’s game options. It is, by its nature, limited in what games it can support, i.e., only PlayStation games. There’s a big selection, but not nearly as extensive as what you can find on PC. Also, how you get those games also comes down to just a couple of avenues: You either use Sony’s digital marketplace or buy physical discs (if you have a disc drive). This more limited marketplace can mean higher prices. However, second-hand discs are an affordable way to grow your library.

PC, meanwhile, gets just about every game under the sun. Microsoft hardly keeps anything exclusive to its consoles, with many games launching on PC at the same time. The PC can run web-based games, cloud gaming and supports a ton of different game launchers and stores. This provides PC gamers not only with a huge selection of games to play but also with many ways to buy and run them.

The Steam Machine should be much like the PC in this area. Simply having the Steam store and library of games will give gamers plenty of options. The Steam Machine will theoretically support third-party game stores and libraries, like its gaming handheld, the Steam Deck, but they will likely be just as hard to install as on that system. All that said, since SteamOS is also Linux-based, it may be compatible with more games.

User experience

PS5:

Just three sizes, with little difference between them in terms of how much space they take
Every PS4 and PS5 game will run
Some variability between Pro/base models, including options for performance or visual quality

Steam Machine:

One size, though potentially other companies will make them
Presumably, like the Steam Deck, there will be verified titles that will just work, perhaps with optimized settings
Performance should be adequate, but not as powerful as a new gaming PC

PC:

Every size imaginable
There can be issues, and checking system requirements also becomes crucial on low-end systems
Occasionally, less obvious things become an issue, like TPM 2.0 support for Battlefield 6
Performance can be anything from poor to epic, depending on your wallet

The simplicity award goes straight to the PlayStation 5. In true console fashion, it makes things easy. If a game says it’s for PS5, you can put it on any PS5 and play it, perhaps with just a required update or installation. Maybe you’ll need a paid online service plan, but the simple fact is that the PS5 can play all PS5 games. The operating system is designed to make navigation easy and get you playing quickly. There are some limitations: The console doesn’t allow much customization of the user interface, and it doesn’t support every display you might want (1440p went unsupported for a surprisingly long time, and ultrawide monitors are still a no-go, for instance).

PCs are essentially the opposite. You might buy a game only to find your PC can’t play it well or at all. The potential reasons for an issue are vast. You might even have a PC that’s overpowered for the game you’re trying to play and still have an issue simply because something isn’t enabled, like Battlefield 6’s requirement for TPM 2.0.

The complexity means there’s also a lot of flexibility. You can tweak your PC to offer a console-like experience or not. You can generally adjust game visuals to your liking, choosing between higher frame rate or more visual fidelity. You can also set up PCs with just about any display type and make it work (assuming the graphics card supports the output format), from ultrawide monitors to the best TVs. There’s certainly more fuss involved, but it’s worth pointing out that even though there can be all sorts of issues with PC gaming, there usually won’t be issues, as long as you’re on a decently powerful machine with up-to-date software and drivers.

The Steam Machine should work a bit more like the PS5, with a simplified interface to make getting into games quick and easy. Presumably, it will also support a desktop-like mode like the Steam Deck. However, unlike the PS5, the Steam Machine won’t support every game available to it. The Steam Deck has suffered from plenty of games in the Steam library not working properly, or not at all. Valve’s Deck Verified program helps guide users toward seamless experiences, but plenty of games are still in the fog of uncertainty, even if they could actually run just fine. The Steam Machine will presumably see similar guidance, but still won’t be as surefire as the PS5’s compatibility.

Longevity and futureproofing

The PlayStation 5 launched at the end of 2020, making it over 5 years old. In the world of computer hardware, that’s long in the tooth. Even when it launched, it wasn’t at the cutting edge of what gaming hardware could offer. The PS5 Pro may have stepped up that performance when it launched in 2024, but it also lags behind the levels of performance that mid- and high-end PCs can attain.

With PS5 hardware, there’s also little you can do to upgrade short of replacing the whole system. Storage is the only real upgrade you can make, and even that’s limited. Given the platform’s age, it’s probably only two or three years until we see a PlayStation 6. Who knows what that’ll mean for the PS5? Probably, like the PS4, we’ll see some PS6 games with PS5 versions, perhaps at lower graphics settings, but inevitably, the PS5 will be left in the dust just like all previous PlayStations.

With desktop gaming PCs, it’s almost impossible to get completely left behind. When one component becomes the outdated weak link, it’s generally possible to make the leap to a newer one while retaining much of the rest of the PC. Many gaming PCs can have their graphics cards swapped out every few years and still run the latest games very competently. You can often also swap your CPU and motherboard while keeping your graphics card, memory, storage, cooler and case. Keeping a gaming PC up to date is generally a more frequent, small purchase.

Some components can cost as much as an entire console, so it all depends on what you’re going for. All of that only applies to tower desktops, too. When it comes to smaller desktop PCs, all-in-ones and laptops, upgradability is less of an option. Most laptops can’t have their CPU or GPU upgraded. And some AIOs and compact PCs like the Framework Desktop have their components integrated, so there’s no changing out memory or upgrading the CPU/GPU without a full mainboard swap. Even some prebuilt tower PCs will come with proprietary components that can make upgrading difficult. Suffice to say, the PC is very variable. For better or worse, the options available to you are vast.

Given the hardware inside and the footprint Valve is going for, the Steam Machine seems more like what we see with highly integrated PCs. Which is to say, upgrade options will probably be limited. The Steam Machine has two M.2 storage slots, giving you some expansion potential. However, it’s an open question whether the memory can be upgraded. It’s all but certain that the CPU/GPU combo is permanently in place until a theoretical «Steam Machine 2» or other mainboard upgrade comes along.

Final verdict: PlayStation 5, PC or Steam Machine?

For simplicity, the PlayStation 5 is still the winner. You can get games running with ease, no specialized knowledge necessary, and the library of game options is certainly not anemic. For the money, it offers a polished experience that’s hard to match with a PC of similar cost.

Gaming PCs remain the ultimate option for those who want flexibility and the freedom to achieve the game performance they want, plus the ability to upgrade only the necessary components for greater performance or to keep the machine in service. The library of PC games is also simply unbeatable, and the availability of deals and free games, not to mention the ability to play online games (generally) without any kind of subscription, can all add up to considerable savings over the years. There can be a little extra fuss with PC gaming, especially when trying to get games working on older or less powerful hardware, but every hour of headache sorting out some gaming PC issue is balanced out by a hundred hours of great gameplay.

The Steam Machine finds itself in an unenviable position, somewhere between the PS5 and proper gaming PCs. A lot will depend on its price. With Valve suggesting it won’t be priced like a console, it’s hard to imagine it offering performance worth the money compared to a similarly priced PC.

Given I can go out and buy a refurbished desktop PC with an RTX 4060 for under $700 or a new one with an RTX 5060 for about $1,000 today, I can’t think of much reason to wait for a Steam Machine unless it’s somehow cheaper than those. It might be easier to use, smaller, require less PC-specialized knowledge and so on, but at what price premium and performance deficit? We’ll find out soon when we get our hands on it.

Technologies

If You Miss MTV and Dunkaroos, This Indie Game Is for You

Mixtape is an upcoming game about being a teenager when «everything meant the end of the world or the start of the world.»

At a record store in northern Los Angeles, I walked past racks of albums, a DJ spinning records and a stack of Dunkaroos, a cookies and icing snack that was all the rage in ’90s America. It felt like stepping back into an earlier era, the same one backdropping the upcoming game Mixtape, a story about a group of self-mythologizing teens hanging out before life pulls them away from their suburban American town.

In an amusing twist of fate, the main brain behind the game is an Australian rocker who didn’t step foot in the US until his 30s. Johnny Galvatron (a stage name and lead singer of the band The Galvatrons), creative director at studio Beethoven & Dinosaur, dreamed up Mixtape based on a blend of American youth culture that was broadcast worldwide, along with his own upbringing loving music of the period and playing in bands.

In a recording room behind the record store, I chatted with Galvatron about why a man from the Antipodes would tackle American youth, nostalgia through the lens of music and analog audio tech, the earnest wrongness of being a teenager and why the US is like Middle-earth.

I also got to play a short slice of Mixtape ahead of the conversation, a demo I originally saw at Summer Game Fest last year (but with a couple extra scenes exclusive to this event). It opened up with the game’s older teen heroine, Stacy Rockford, skateboarding down a winding road with her friends, lazily pulling kickflips and calling out oncoming cars in the golden hour before twilight, a fitting start for a game about the last days before adulthood knocks.

From what I saw, there’s a bit of overlap with other nostalgia-laden narrative games about teens growing up, such as studio Don’t Nod’s Life is Strange series or last year’s Lost Records: Bloom and Rage. But Mixtape avoids the plotty drama of those games in favor of lionizing the humble wonder of teens killing time. And it does it in style, with kinetic editing and needle drops that immerse players in the MTV-drenched lives of kids whose rebellious days are numbered. It’s tonally different, reflecting Galvatron’s memories of being an earnest teen, liking music and tossing out strong opinions.

«There’s a lot of stories about teenagers where they’re portrayed as very shy and not confident. And that’s not really my experience of being a teenager,» Galvatron said. «I was very confident and wrong about things and about how I felt about music.»

Galvatron’s earnest teenagehood was in Australia, but setting the game there might have been too close to home. Plus, his favorite music and culture came from America. Despite not coming to the US until he was 32, he’s watched America every single day of his life, he said. Seeing it in person is like coming to a theme park, or a fantasy land: «To people who live in Western cultures, America is Middle-earth,» Galvatron said.

The game is split into chapters, each patterned after a carefully-chosen song. They all come together in the titular mixtape, the swan song of a cherished friend group, one last rock-out to tunes that speak to the moment. It was those songs that drove the creation of the emotional sequencing of Mixtape, Galvatron told me. Whereas most games start development by creating a «vertical slice» that represents the core loop of the game, Beethoven & Dinosaur made «a real shitty version of the whole game» and swapped around the songs to see what different stories the configurations told.

«We would play with that soundtrack until it seemed to have this cinematic flow to it, like a really lovely narrative that chained these songs together,» Galvatron said. «Once we had that right, we could put the story and the characters in.»

Picking the songs was a delicate process to find the right tone (and to ensure variety, as Galvatron joked he kept wanting more Devo songs, which the team vetoed and limited him to one). There’s a pivotal moment in the game where the main character Rockford is betrayed by her friend, and despite digging up the saddest songs they could think of, none worked. So they flipped the emotions to the other extreme, trying tunes evoking over-the-top happiness like Stuck In The Middle With You, and went with songs from the artist BJ Miller from the 1960s, «and that seemed to make it just all the more devastating,» Galvatron said.

I saw parts of 4-5 song chapters out of what Galvatron told me will be a total of 26 or 27. But each felt like a sublime snippet (in Pixar parlance, a core memory) that the player gets to control, from an embellished shopping cart escape from the cops to a flailing first kiss of awkward tongues to rocking out in the car on the way to a party. It sounds mundane, but these delightful moments hearken to a time in everyone’s lives when the people and the songs around you elevated the simple into the unforgettable.

«We don’t have skill trees, we don’t have (gameplay) loops. We have moments where mechanics, music, dialogue, narrative all meet and hit these crescendos,» Galvatron said, and emphasized the importance of their brevity. «Get in, deliver the mechanic, make it beautiful, make it a great experience. Don’t overstay your welcome.»

It’s undeniable that Mixtape reaches back into the past to evoke a feeling of place and time, specifically this moment in the American 90s where music was blasting from cassette tapes and CDs. There’s a warmth to this equipment, Galvatron noted, and to the music it produces. Moreover, the tactility lends itself very well to touching, spinning and clicking motions on game controllers, giving players a real feel for the music they’re playing on screen.

Yet when I asked how he felt the game fit amid our current era of nostalgia — which media like Stranger Things have built IP empires upon with period-appropriate references, fashion and songs — Galvatron asserts that the game has a different aim than prompting viewers to remember specific songs, CD players and Tamagotchis. «What I want people to remember is when you defined yourself by the singles you liked, by art, and I think that’s something naive and sweet,» he said.

If the rest of the game meets the bar set by the demo I saw, players will be pretty awestruck by the polished, electric delivery of moments from scene to scene. Mixtape feels intentionally designed, likely meticulously storyboarded, to land moments with camera angles and timing that make you feel along for the ride.

Beethoven & Dinosaur’s strengths are leaning into the grandness of cinematics and music, Galvatron said. «That’s how I remember being a teenager,» he said, «[it’s] something theatrical and fast, and everything meant the end of the world or the start of the world.»

Technologies

These MWC Phones and Gadgets Wowed Me, but Where Are They Now?

From AI hardware to wearable phones, these products promised a lot. So what happened to them?

Mobile World Congress sees the biggest and best tech companies, the world over, gather in Barcelona to show off their latest, greatest products. MWC 2026 runs March 2 to 5 and we expect to see several major phone launches, some wild concepts and a lot of tapas. But what about products we saw in prior years?

From Samsung’s flagship Galaxy S phones to incredible hardware from Xiaomi, we’ve seen some amazing devices in the years CNET has been attending the show. But we’ve also seen a lot of unusual products that have promised more than they’ve delivered.

From concept devices that are quickly forgotten to new gadgets that boast revolutionary functions, these are the MWC tech launches that arrived with a fanfare… but aren’t necessarily where you’d expect them to be today.

Humane AI pin

AI might still be the biggest buzzword in tech, thanks to every phone company cramming their devices with all kinds of bizarre AI functions. But at MWC 2024, one company wanted to take that further. The Humane AI pin was a wearable badge that you could talk to and ask questions about your schedule, the weather or things like sports results. It could read answers out and even project them onto your hand with a laser. Because everyone loves lasers.

Sounds fun, right? And the company’s rhetoric around how AI-based devices like this will replace phones sounded compelling. However, the product, well, sucked (just ask CNET’s Scott Stein, who spent extended time with it) and the company was eventually swallowed by HP, with the Pin itself ceasing to function in February last year. If you were one of the early adopters, do let us know what you’ve done with that $699(!) paperweight now.

Motorola Rizr

MWC is a great place to show off concepts that will excite technology nerds like us. Motorola has a good history of this at the show and the Rizr is one of my favorites. This phone didn’t just have a flexible display like we’ve seen on many of today’s foldable phones, its display could actually mechanically unroll at the push of a button, extending the top of the screen to give a more immersive display for watching videos or playing games.

It was amazing to see in person and it was certainly a different idea on how to use flexible displays. But that’s all it was; an idea. Motorola hasn’t deployed the Rizr’s mechanical unfurling into any of its products, with its upcoming Razr Fold launch being just a standard book-style foldable. The reason is obvious: The technology is likely expensive and probably fragile too. Three years on and Motorola hasn’t said a thing about this cool concept, but I’ll still keep my fingers crossed for this year.

Xiaomi SU7 EV

Xiaomi might be better known for its superb camera phones, but the Chinese firm has fingers in many pies, including scooters, vacuums, air fryers and, er, water pistols. It was no surprise then that during MWC 2024, the company showed off its first EV, the Xiaomi SU7. With sleek, sporty looks and a promised range of over 470 miles, I was excited.

I was excited again when the company showed off an even more performance-focused model at last year’s show, which had already delivered some blistering track times on the infamous Nürburgring. But I’ve yet to get behind the wheel. While Xiaomi is already producing and selling cars in its native China, the company has no plans to launch in the UK or wider Europe until at least 2027 and they almost certainly won’t sell in the US at all.

As a result, I feel like I’ve been teased somewhat with the promise of this slick, powerful EV that would have sat perfectly on my driveway. In reality, I still have a big wait ahead of me, if the SU7 European launch happens at all. Sales of the SU7 in China have surpassed those of the Tesla Model 3, according to a report by Car News China. Meanwhile, the same story shows that the SU7 Ultra’s sales have declined dramatically due to a number of controversies and lawsuits around the car and Xiaomi’s rollout.

Samsung Galaxy Ring

Samsung’s Galaxy Ring made for an interesting MWC in 2024. Here was a new type of wearable that promised advanced health and fitness tracking, while blending into your daily life by sitting unobtrusively on your finger. And that’s what it does, with CNET giving it a healthy 8.5 out of 10 in our full review.

But that was in 2024, and a full two years later, I’m left wondering what’s happening with the wonderful world of smart jewelry. Samsung has made no official comment around a follow-up, through rumors suggest we may see one in late 2026 or 2027. Smart ring manufacturer Oura, meanwhile, has filed a public lawsuit against Samsung and other smart ring companies claiming patent infringement. This is likely one of the reasons we’ll have to wait for a Galaxy Ring 2. While other smart rings do exist — like the Oura Ring 4 — it’s not a category that flourished after Samsung launched its ring.

There’s no Google Pixel Ring, no Apple iRing and not even an LED-infused Nothing Ring (1). Most other smart rings are made by smaller companies, such as Pebble’s recently announced $75 recyclable ring. Smart rings may have a place on our hands for a while yet, but Samsung’s lengthy delay in launching a follow-up might suggest that it’s not exactly a priority product.

Motorola wrist phone

I said that the aforementioned Moto Rizr was «one of» my favorite MWC concepts.That’s because the company’s flexible wrist phone from 2024 absolutely takes my top spot. This candybar-style Android phone had a fully flexible body that let you to wrap the whole thing around your wrist and wear it like something resembling Leela from Futurama’s wrist-mounted doodad.

I found it extremely intriguing. Here was a phone that doesn’t bulge out your skinny jeans when it’s in your pocket, but that’s also just a glance away like a smartwatch. And compared to the precision engineering required for the Rizr, the wrist phone’s technology seemed relatively achievable. After all, we already have flexible displays and this didn’t even require any specialized tiny motors — you just whack it onto your wrist like a ’90s slap bracelet.

But, like the Rizr, the wrist-mounted phone remained just a flight of fancy I experienced oh so briefly for a few days in Spain. And like any holiday romance, perhaps it’s best for me to simply remember it for what it was and not spend my days pining for what could have been.

With MWC 2026 just a few days away I’m excited to see new and wild products show their face, and I’m curious to see which of them will have staying power.