For basically a decade now, many fighting game competitors have been wishing to see big tournaments adopt PCs to use over consoles, but that still largely hasn’t come to pass yet.
Valve just announced their new Steam Machine systems among other hardware today, however, so is that finally going to be enough to get tournament organizers to make the switch?
The PlayStation 5 has remained the default system of choice for most fighters for the past five years, and we still regularly see players airing complaints about the console at events.
There are those who feel that overheating PS5s introduce more input lag in titles like Street Fighter 6, and we’ve even witnessed reports of PS5 USB ports essentially melting back at Evo 2023 too.
While much of the competitive-focused scene uses PCs for their own setups often citing reasons like reduced lag, roadblocks have remained in place that have stopped them from being widely adopted for major tournaments outside of things like some invitationals.
Valve’s new Steam Machine, though, could patch over many of those issues, but we’re not hedging our bets on it being the future of FGC events yet.
Some prominent FGC tournament organizers like Alex Jebailey and Alex Valle have chimed in on the Steam Machine and showing interest in the system, so it’s at least potentially one small step in that direction.
Nobody jump the gun yet please but I’m excited to see the costs & potential the Steam Machine hardware has for tournaments running on a straight to gaming PC setup with Steam OS. Especially if this is 6x more powerful than the current Steam Deck. https://t.co/aeHePFfuO5
— Alex Jebailey (@Jebailey) November 12, 2025
One of the longstanding hurdles is hardware consistency since PC hardware can be installed and configured in nearly infinite ways.
The upcoming Steam Machine of course does does offer consistent hardware with its AMD 6-core Zen 4 CPU, AMD RDNA3 GPU and 16GB of DDR5 RAM.
It will run the Steam OS standard, though, which could introduce some software and controller compatibility issues (but at least you can install Windows on there too if you want).
FGC tournament standard machines might be a reality soon… https://t.co/fydqpTKcdq
— Alex Valle ➡️⬇️↘️+👊 (@TheAlexValle) November 12, 2025
While we don’t seem to have benchmarks for the Steam Machine yet, there is some concern that it may not be powerful enough to ultimately stack up.
Reports indicate that the Steam Machine is not as powerful as the base PlayStation 5 though it may be closer to something like the Xbox Series S.
That should still technically be enough to handle most modern fighters at this point, but it would probably come at the cost of some visual fidelity at least to keep things running at a constant 60 fps.
The other major hurdle keeping PCs back from being adopted at larger fighting game events is on the logistical side of things.
Capable gaming computers obviously generally cost more than a standard console, and event budgets are already strained enough as it is.
Valve has yet to announce the price points for their Steam Machines, but there’s a strong chance they will be at least if not more expensive still than the PS5 — so that would still be a tougher sell to many TOs.
The other part of the logistics is being able to procure dozens of systems just to use at one event, and that may still be an issue here too.
Judging by the past release of the Steam Deck that saw high demand and waves of releases, it will probably be quite difficult if not impossible to acquire enough Steam Machines for a sizable tournament at least anywhere close to launch.
So ultimately, we feel that PCs should starting to close the gap more in terms of feasibility and logistics, but the computer revolution for the FGC is still likely multiple years away at least.
And PlayStation presumably won’t be going anywhere so long as Sony remains one of the largest sponsors for fighting game tournaments even though they did sell their ownership stake in Evo.
Things will likely proceed like they have been with PCs only really showing up at smaller events, invitationals and games that need them like 2XKO since it doesn’t have a console version yet.
But even if the Steam Machine itself isn’t the harbinger of change when it arrives in 2026, the door will remain open for one standardized box to potentially make that leap in the future.