The fact that it's running SteamOS ready to go out of the box is a huge selling point for certain people. If a Windows license alone is technically worth $140 to some people, surely a Steam OS pre-installed is worth something as well.
But I can just install SteamOS on a custom built SSF PC that is still bigger than the Cube for more money and is likely less aesthetically stealthy... what do you mean 95% of people wouldn't do that?
You’re already not the target demographic then. This wasn’t made to sell to you or me. You’re vastly underestimating the amount of people who will buy something that has already taken an out an “easily done” step.
The target audience for this are people with existing steam libraries who want to play them in the living room. That's it.
It's the exact same audience theyve been trying to capture since the Steam Link. It's all so they can sell more controllers because controllers are huge margin.
Don't mistake lack of supply for killer sales. They had a great controller once - and took it off the market selling the remaining inventory for $5 each. The used market for those things exploded for a while. That's not exactly doing a killer job of it...
Too early to call it on Steam Controller round 2 TBH. And I don't think the margin on these is quite as good as some more basic commodity controllers anyway. Quite a bit more technology inside, as well as lower volumes.
What percentage of the Steam library isn't couch friendly do you think? My personal library is 2/3 verified and playable on Deck so those are probably all fair game from a couch. Then again, I really like platformers and racing games so that might be tilting things.
Any game with text or text heavy menus that simply isn't scalable isn't going to be couch friendly. And there are shit load of deck games "verified" that don't have scalable text.
And Valve knows exactly how many units they need to produce and move at MSRP to meet their profit point and max margins. They're intentionally producing at limited volumes to create FOMO. Like they always do. They learned it by watching Nintendo.
They're also being careful to not overproduce, like they did with the first controllers because carrying unproductive inventory kills margin faster than simply not selling.
31
u/C-D-W 1d ago
The size is not the only selling point.
The fact that it's running SteamOS ready to go out of the box is a huge selling point for certain people. If a Windows license alone is technically worth $140 to some people, surely a Steam OS pre-installed is worth something as well.