5 things that the Steam Machine can do that the PS5 can't

Valve's pricey PC has a few perks over traditional consoles Valve is taking a big leap into gaming hardware with the Steam Machine. The mini PC is the closest thing we’ll probably ever get to a proper Valve video game console. It’s a plug-and-play gaming computer that’s about as easy to use as a PlayStation 5, though a little less powerful. It’s also significantly more expensive than a PS5 by hundreds of dollars, which might leave you wondering why you’d actually want to buy a Steam Machine. As similar as the PS5 and Steam Machine might sound, they’re fundamentally different gaming devices, depending on how you use them. A PS5 is the smarter investment if you’re just trying to run games reliably well, but the Steam Machine offers a lot of extra utility. Here are just a few of the things you can do with a Steam Machine that you can’t with a PS5 — whether those are meaningful enough to justify the hefty price tag is your call. The most important thing to know about the Steam Machine is that it’s a PC, not a console. While SteamOS makes it look like the latter, the whole thing is actually powered by Linux. By enabling desktop mode, you can pop straight over to the operating system and