Surprised that they have 4 USB-A and only 1 USB-C. With their power profile, Steam Machine should be powerable by a single USB-C cable on extended power range which should reduce the need for the power supply altogether and greatly simplify mechanical as well as thermal design, although the power electronic design would be more complex as a result.
I would also be expecting Wifi 7 support as well as unified memory considering they ordered custom AMD silicon. Understandable that it is a rather conservative design for their first generation though.
That's because you've been making a concerned effort to buy usb-c stuff. The average consumer has way more usb-a stuff than usb-c, even more so when talking about pc desktop users.
I even bet many mac users wished their device had a usb-a port or two in order to not be so dependent on adapters, hubs and docks.
USB C ports cost a lot more, needing extra controller chips and special HCIs. USB-A, especially 2.0, is dead cheap. I would've expected more than 3 though? Standard consoles used to support 4 controllers, plus you'd probably want a mouse and keyboard at the same time if it's also a PC. I guess it's fine if you're assumed to be using wireless controllers.
Not quite right, USB-C ports are generally cheaper nowadays because they are smaller, consumes less material for plastic/metal, more easily automatable production wise in terms of tooling, and scale for them is a lot higher because of mobile usage. You don't really need extra production chips since the console USB-C ports are designed for PD and crippled 14/16 pin versions that only supports the USB 2.0 speed, because the high-speed pins literally do not exist on those.
They are extremely common actually. Why do you think the standard iPhones only does USB 2.0 transfer speed? The high-speed signal pins are simply not there, but the connectors themselves are still standard compliant.
Lower transfer rate means less shielding is needed for the cable as well as the overmold, and enables longer and more flexible cables, as extra shielding stiffens the cables.
> Why do you think the standard iPhones only does USB 2.0 transfer speed?
Because they saved die space in silicon? Same reason the MacBook Neo only has a single USB 3 and a USB 2. It seems that their A-series Pro silicon only has hardware for a single USB 3, and their non-Pro silicon doesn't even have it at all. I highly doubt they are sparing pins from the connector, the complexity of making a special port variant for that far surely outweighs any potential savings.
I just bought a few 8bitdo controllers, wired and bluetooth, both. These are basically the best-bang-for-the-buck low- to mid-priced controllers around, super-popular in gaming circles. Best you'll get without bumping up to modern 1st party console controllers at $70+ each. I bought these within the last 30 days.
The wired controller is USB-A. The bluetooth controllers "are" USB-C... but came with A-to-C cables, not C-to-C.
Approximately every time I want to plug something in to my laptop that's not a charging cable for another device, it's USB-A.
This past calendar year I bought a new document scanner, controller, mouse, and DAC that all came with usb-A on the computer end of the included cable. On the peripheral side, I must not have done enough research on 'new' products because only the DAC and mouse have USB-C. Brother's document scanners in 2026 ship with the incredibly horrible usb-3-micro-b and the controller uses a low latency wireless dongle on usb-a.
Keyboard, printer, mouse, joystick, scanner,color calibrator, steering wheel, game controller , everything I bought recently other than external ssd was usb a. Even, shockingly, a nice Scarlett audio interface!
More to the point, anything I'd want to plug in to a gaming machine, is usb a.
I can vouch for this still not really being true even in Apple-land, since almost any peripheral, external disk, printer, whatever, that I'll want to plug in isn't gonna be from Apple.
In 2026 the single most useful port to add to my Macs would be USB-A, with no close competition. On any device with 2+ USB-C ports, it'd easily be worth sacrificing a USB-C to get a USB-A.
Yes, but we're talking about the ports on the Steam Machine, so the host end is what matters. And gaming peripherals are likely even more skewed towards USB A, because Macs are not the main target for that.
If it has USB-C on one end then you can use a C to C cable or a C to A so it doesn't really matter. It's not a show stopper either way but I've long wanted to slim down my birds nest of cables. Since my laptop and phone are USB-C I can get by with C to C cables only so I probably wouldn't get a computer that required me to double the number of cables I have to keep.
That might be the case for you. But if I search for USB mouse or keyboard on Amazon they're mostly USB A on the host end. And desktop PCs still have way more USB A than USB C ports. Macs are an exception.
There’s also the issue that users would plug in their own random usb power supplies and most of them wouldn’t work. Some would work for 15 minutes before overheating and lowering the power output.
Xbox 360 controllers (and their knock-offs) are still extremely common choices for PC gamers who want a controller. Xbox because they have good windows plug-and-play, 360 because there are still plenty of $20-ish dollar ones available, as opposed to the ~$40-50 range for the Xbox One controllers.
Wired Xbox 360 controllers (and most of their off brand alternatives) have a non-removable USB-A cable.
It's not "these use cases". It's the primary use case for the USB ports on this device.
The entire pitch for the Steam Machine is to use it as a gaming console. Needing adapters for the most common controllers would be nuts. There's plenty of C-to-A adapters for other use cases.
Steam machine uses about 200W. Can you even buy any 240W pd power bricks. Quick search on amazon shows that all that advertise 240w can only output 140w max on single cable
That said I would not trust this as a PSU for a computer which uses almost all the available power output and does not have it's own internal battery. Most USB-C chargers are not designed to run at 100% capacity for extended periods and could not handle sudden spikes over the rated capacity. Even for desktop PSUs you always want to get something that has a good headroom over the actual power draw for stability.
I would also be expecting Wifi 7 support as well as unified memory considering they ordered custom AMD silicon. Understandable that it is a rather conservative design for their first generation though.