Today was a big day for gamers as Valve just introduced three products: the Steam Controller, the Steam Machine, and the Steam Frame. When you add this alongside the Steam Deck, I think it’s safe to say that Valve is about to win the next console generation.
Premature celebration much? They haven’t even announced pricing. Steam Machine could be $1200 and DOA for all we know.
A lot of people are talking about loss-leading, but I think what the Steam Machine needs is a dual purpose.
The best the article seems to mention is using it as a desktop. I don’t think that’s quite on par with the PS3’s blu-ray player and use in scientific workloads.
I don’t think it could be a loss-leader for Valve. If the price/performance is good enough, what’s stopping companies from buying a lot to use as work stations? No company is going to buy Steam Decks for office software, but they might buy a Steam Machine.
If that happens and every Steam Machine is actually sold at a loss then it’d be a big problem for Valve
I might be way off the mark, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see it priced like the OLED Steam Deck. At least at launch.
With a later price increase due to RAM and SSD shortages.
It’s smart of them to give it a consumer friendly price and it would track with what they did with the steam deck.
Just like the other big names, steam can sell it at a very low margin since they make their money with the store. I wouldn’t be surprised if they even sell it at a lost to quickly gain market share.
Loss-leading with new hardware has been a de facto standard for about as long as consoles have existed, so I’d be shocked if a company as consumer-attuned as Valve somehow missed this and priced themselves out of the market.
Especially because they are literally known for creating things that sell at a loss and learning profound lessons from the thing they sell.
Also, they’re the most progressive group to not engage in Patent warfare since Volvo made the 3-point seatbelt.
Valve knows how to help an ecosystem grow and pays attention to it’s user base.
Nobody was talking shit and you still had to come in here and bootlick.
Steam is the exact same as every other big platform, they grab their 30% like everyone else. Gaben literally has a billion dollars worth of boats. Stop defending billionaires and their money sucking contraptions.
I forgot that Gaben is literally all of Valve.
I’m not here to lick Gabe’s boots, I’m here to point out that sometimes, companies do good things. There are a lot of people making money and doing development at Valve, almost none of them are Gabe, but I guess fuck the laborers because their CEO consolidates money and fucks around on the Stock Market.
Yes, Gabe is included in Eat the Rich, but the people that work at Valve shouldn’t be held accountable to to his faults. Conflating the Labor with the Owner is a take though.
If it’s more expensive than a entry-level gaming laptop, then I doubt the average user would buy a Steam Machine, when a laptop is far more flexible.
It has to be cheaper and more convenient than what’s currently available.
I think you’re kind of missing the point. This thing is meant to take a bite out of the much larger console market. It doesn’t need to compete with a gaming laptop’s pricing if the people it’s targeting weren’t going to buy a gaming laptop.
“Flexible” doesn’t sell as much as “Easy”
Sure pricing hasn’t been announced, but people can start speculating about the BOM.
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Steam-Machine-price-Gamers-might-finally-have-good-budget-gaming-PC-as-leaker-estimates-sub-600-MSRP.1162206.0.html
So they can start making inaccurate guesses about something only tangentially related to the price. Cool.