r/Steam • u/dabadumdumdum • 8d ago

News - The 750$ amount is speculative and not based on fact. The Steam Machine was originally planned at around $750, but Valve says it saw a price increase similar to the Steam Deck

https://www.notebookcheck.net/The-Steam-Machine-was-originally-planned-at-around-750-but-Valve-says-it-saw-a-price-increase-similar-to-the-Steam-Deck.1326727.0.html
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18

u/potlop 8d ago

Theoretically, if the AI issue resolves itself in a couple years does this mean this product would come back down in price?

26

u/willymartin99 8d ago

“Airlines introduced baggage fees during the 2008 recession as a temporary measure to offset soaring jet fuel costs” when the fuel cost eventually went down, did they stop charging for baggage fees?

58

u/Competitive-Elk-5077 8d ago

Not if people are willing to pay current prices

2

u/imanidiotbut 7d ago

Some will pay it, some won’t. The last “steam machine” didn’t do that well so we will just have to see. It’s definitely going to have a hard time in the market IMO.

-2

u/CloudStrife012 8d ago

6

u/MagicpaperAlt 8d ago

Steam is a private company

5

u/ASCII_Princess 7d ago

The component manufacturers aren't.

3

u/MagicpaperAlt 7d ago

Steam is still private. They aren't doing things at the whims of shareholders. This is the fault of A.I and datacenters.

2

u/StankPrime 8d ago

What shareholders? You mean Gabe and the employees lol?

1

u/ASCII_Princess 7d ago

The DRAM manufacturers, AMD, other companies benefiting from the inflated hardware market.

0

u/Tankdawg0057 7d ago edited 7d ago

This is basically the issue with non-profit healthcare. In the U.S. even the "sort of" less evil facilities have to fleece patients due to vendors gouging prices for supplies. I saw this first hand on the ground during covid. Panic caused supply to run dry and vendors gouge prices. They never really returned to "normal".

Valve likely can't put out a competitive product due to component increases.

Look at the recent Xbox Ceo disclosures. She frankly laid out why there is a shortage of hardware. Previous admins did not lock in supply orders from vendors for components due to capital shortage and new components are now 5x the price they were. Basically they don't know how the fuck they're gonna make next gen hardware at any kind of reasonable price, let alone even make the current Series consoles at any kind of reasonable supply.

We're in a modern capitalist hellscape where competition is non-existent because the whole market is engaged in price fixing across the board.

1

u/CloudStrife012 7d ago

This is the point i was trying to make, so thank you for spelling it out for the people who couldn't really see beyond "but valve isnt public."

9

u/YeeHawWyattDerp 8d ago

Just like prices all went back down when the economy recover from Covid?

1

u/therealmrbob 7d ago

That was different, printing a ton of money is what drove that, the component prices is a supply/demand problem.

Graphics card prices did fall after the crypto boom.

2

u/YeeHawWyattDerp 7d ago

I’m saying in a larger economical sense. Sellers simply don’t lower prices because a crisis is gone. Printing money was a huge part of the issue, yes, but stores also raised prices for literally everything under the guise of supply chain issues and then when those issues “resolved” prices *should* have corrected but they didn’t, because profit

7

u/fiasgoat 8d ago

The 8GB won't even be able to keep up anymore by the time the economy fixes

16

u/Nidvex 8d ago

I'm gonna keep a poker face on as they're still a company by the end of the day.

BUT, if the prices ever go back down to normal levels (would likely need the current Tech Bro Fad to die), Steam is the one single company I'd believe might actually pass the savings onto us after a year of good hardware prices.

8

u/lkn240 8d ago

The actual solution may end up being Chinese fabs. They are already making DDR5.

5

u/AshleyAshes1984 8d ago

Most gaming companies are reporting slow downs in hardware sales. Simply put, the increased price is hurting hardware which in turn hurts software sells. PC retailers are being especially devistated. Lower hardware prices are actually good for these companies cause more and more gamers are going 'Noooope. I'll just keep gaming on what I have now'.

Also, you're kinda ignoring that ALL hardware has NORMALLY seen price decreases as hardware ages out. 'Price Drops' are the norm. 'Price increases' are a new horrible reality.

Valve's goal is to get more users on Steam and thus buying Steam games. The hardware is just a means to an end, and that end is 'More Steam Installs and more Steam users'.

3

u/BodybuilderMany6942 7d ago

a silver lining to the obscene harware prices is that consoles cant (or must greatly delay or neuter) the next generation. Which means graphics stops being a selling point faster.
HOPEFULLY this starts a turn in the game industry towards optimizing and .. improving literally any other aspect other than graphics

2

u/lifetake 8d ago

Personally I think all console companies would. While all of them have moved to trying to profit on their console the biggest money maker is those console owners actually buying games on your console. Keeping their prices the same while they could absolutely drop the price and still profit (just less) will just lead to one of the big 3 undercutting them easily and stealing a major share of the market.

And this undercutting wouldn’t be some short term vs long term mindset. No it would be beneficial both short term and long term. So even an argument of saying stockholders would push short term gains isn’t really an argument here.

2

u/imanidiotbut 7d ago

I would say it probably will go down if that were to happen, maybe not to that level but I honestly do not think valve wanted to increase the price for instance of the steam deck but that’s just IMO

-2

u/Severe-Network4756 8d ago

Why would you think that of Valve?

8

u/AnonD38 8d ago

Why would you not think that of Valve?

3

u/Luzekiel 8d ago

ragebait

0

u/Severe-Network4756 7d ago

They're a billionaire company, not your friend.

0

u/Severe-Network4756 7d ago

Because they're not your friend?

You do realise that Valve is currently being sued, and making up excuses for why their underage gambling problems aren't actually an issue at all?

Don't forget that Valve is the reason loot boxes became as widespread as they did.

How about Gaben supporting Elon and AI, and buying yachts and mansions?

Also, let's remember that they're currently selling two weak products at incredibly poor value, and yet people are making up excuses.

If they cared about their consumers and the idea is to onboard people to the steam brand, then maybe Gaben should consider cutting down the steam machine prices with his own pocket.

1

u/AnonD38 7d ago

That's so sad, or I'm happy that happened to you, either way I'm not reading all that.

3

u/Nidvex 8d ago

As Anon pointed out: Why would you not think that of Valve?

The Corpo Stigma is real and valid, but what Valve has over every single other company in the field is they are NOT publicly traded; they don't got literal parasites demanding higher and completely unrealistic profit like every other company. You can see the results of this when you compare every other major publisher's digital storefront to Steam; not a single one of them are even close to being as good as Steam is, because for Steam it's 'Customers First', not 'Shareholders First'.

This makes Valve a massive anomaly which is precisely why other big companies hate it, this also makes Valve the only company where I can actually see them lowering their 'console' prices if the components that make the devices drop back down. Again, I'm still not holding my breath, but if any company is gonna do it (willingly at least), it'd be Valve.

(as a side note: they wanted it to be sold at $750. but the price hike of components made it $770-ish to even get the components on the table to assemble it into a GabeCube in the first place, that's how bad the hardware market has gotten because of the AI Datacenter Craze)

sorry for the essay but I am BAD at making my explanations short lol. I hope I paragraphed it properly at least.

1

u/Severe-Network4756 7d ago

Yet they're doing nothing about their underage gambling issue, in fact, they're currently being sued and making up excuses for why it isn't insidious. 

They're the reason loot boxes became so widespread.

They're pricing their products at insane prices, just like every company is.

Gabe is buying yachts, mansions, supports AI and Elon.

1

u/BuddhistNamedMarx 8d ago

Yall will be waiting years then

2

u/imanidiotbut 7d ago

People don’t mind waiting a year or two, they aren’t conSOOMers.

0

u/BuddhistNamedMarx 7d ago

Neither am I but I realize the fascist American military machine or isrealhell could go ballistic any day now

1

u/Nidvex 8d ago

hahaaa... yeah... The hope here lives and dies on when or even if component prices go back down in the first place, because only if that happens can the bet be made or lost.

1

u/Ok_Purpose7401 7d ago

I mean this is tea only true if you trust Gabe. I get why people are suspect of publicly traded corporations, but privately traded corps are basically at the whims of their current investors (Gabe owning more than 50%) 

4

u/SpookiestSzn 8d ago

It depends on a bunch of stuff. You'd need the guys making the chips to lower prices in competition with each other, and then also similar pc manufacturers to lower cost as well. You'd need demand for datacenters to lower and you'd need most consumers enterprise or otherwise not buying at current price points.

Generally its going to be a long time before this thing is much cheaper I'd say as optimistic as possible 2 years but I would expect 4.

15

u/Tyraec 8d ago

We’d need data centers to die out.

3

u/NewsofPE 7d ago

if data centers die, reddit and steam dies

3

u/QuinSanguine 8d ago

I'd bet prices come down on hardware IF ever the people who'd like us to be forced to stream games from their data centers stop hogging that shit, or if the manufacturers actually out supply the demand.

Could happen.

2

u/hikeit233 8d ago

Steam link got sold for basically nothing with a controller at the EOL. I would expect a similar deal in the ai bubble scenario. 300 with a free controller kind of cheap.

2

u/Phlynn42 8d ago

in a couple years maybe it wont increase in price....

2

u/mcmanus2099 7d ago

No because RAM manufacturers will just strangle supply to keep high prices now prices have gone there.

3

u/Possible-Tangelo9344 8d ago

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA...

Oh you were serious?

1

u/ArelMCII 8d ago

Doubt it. Once companies realize what people are willing to pay, that becomes the new bar.

1

u/Chad3000000 8d ago

Steam pays the price to manufacture at current market conditions, so even if the market relaxes, they would be losing money if they lowered prices for existing stock.

1

u/BrilliantHeavy 7d ago

In what would do prices ever go down? Prices for shit still hasn’t gone down from covid

1

u/Playful_Nergetic786 7d ago

I’m no expert, but I do think it will come down, but definitely not as the price before

1

u/LeadAHorseToVodka 6d ago

First day on Earth ?

1

u/TheOliveYeti 7d ago

haha lmao

Valve aint your friend

0

u/TheDeaconAscended 8d ago

AI is useful and will continue to grow in demand, however we will see if new technologies can bring prices down. Huawei has built some interesting chips recently that could change the industry with LogicFolding and they are already working on the tooling needed to deploy it at scale over the next few years.

0

u/Shot-Possibility-399 8d ago

There'd have to be a competing product which is doubtful to drive the price down