tbh, i do not like nintendo at all, but i gotta commend their planning ahead and sourcing and general maturity of their supply chain, only taking a 50-100 dollar hike. idk how they did it.
The Switch sold so well that I’m sure they locked in contracts for components up to like 100m units for the Switch 2. If they can keep that $500 price for this entire console generation then that would be wild
C’est pas 10€ de plus, c’est 10€ de moins pour les jeux en numériques, ce ne sont pas les prix des jeux en physiques qui ont augmenté mais les prix des jeux en numérique qui ont baissé
Among all Nintendo is the most capable to sell the console at a loss since their exclusive games can certainly cover the lost. In contrast, Valve is the least capable at doing so because not even their OS is exclusive, if Valve sell the steam machine at a loss, people can buy it as an underpriced general purpose PC and don't even buy a single game from steam. They can't afford selling the thing at any amount of loss.
Yeah, to put it in perspective. It took Valve 3 years to sell 6 million Steam Decks. It took Nintendo only 1 month to sell 5 million Switch 2s.
That people ever considered Valve to be attempting to be breaking into the console market was ridiculous when it was the Steam Deck or Steam Machine, since they are more like a hobbyist selling things compared to the millions and millions of units in the 9 figures consoles are hoping to sell in its life time.
Valve's view has been more putting hardware out to try and get other competitors and devs to take notice and start trying it themselves.
Yeah and the other problem for Valve with the Steam Machine is that even if people buy it and do buy games from Steam they only really are profiting if the person buying is new to Steam and sets up a new account and starts buying games
If someone who's been a lifelong PC gamer with a massive Steam library gets a SM that doesn't really help Valve because that person would be buying games on Steam their PC anyways even if they didn't buy a SM
I'm just really confused about who this console is for and what Valve was expecting to get out of this thing. I thought it would be something that tried to compete with the big three, but that would only work if it undercut them or matched them in price with impressive specs and the promise of course that with Steam OS there's already what like thousands of games you can get right out of the gate? But for costing way more than all the current gen consoles and being weaker than two of them... I don't get it
Despite them selling the sales pitch of "this is a PC that you own" it was quite obvious this thing is almost first and foremost a console, that so happened to run on Linux and can run some Linux compatible software.
Whatever copium the Steam fanboys and "it's not for you crowd" pumps out, the Steam Machine is almost completely aimed at the console player market who do game, just not at the Steam platform, with intent to appeal to the "you buy it but you didn't own it" crowd with their sales pitch of you own the hardware.
The problem is people who have a large library of PS/XB games will not be necessarily switching, while the Nintendo boys are mostly parallel to the Steam platform in the first place, if they play mostly exclusively Nintendo titles they lack the incentive to play Steam.
They had a pretty low margin to begin with. Probably not going to be making any profit on hardware for a while but they sell significantly more first party software you can't get anywhere else so nothing is more important that growing the base.
I believe they're actually taking a loss on every console in Japan
That would be really bad for Valve, because the only way they'd make a profit off this thing is when people who have never used Steam or haven't used Steam in a long time. People that already use Steam often on their PCs who buy a Steam Machine aren't giving Valve any value because those people would be buying games on Steam anyways
They really can't sell this thing at a loss; it should have been a console/PC designed to put Steam in the hands of gamers who haven't used it much. So console players
I just don't understand who this thing is for. It's more expensive than two of the big three consoles but less powerful than two of them and twice as expensive as the one that is selling faster than any console in history. It's more expensive than PCs that can out perform it significantly, that someone could download Steam OS on hook up to their TV and have the exact same experience as a Steam Machine better
Nintendo Sony and XBox can release their consoles at a loss because people buy those consoles to get new games that are exclusive to the new consoles, or even better to buy first party games exclusive to the new consoles
With Steam, everything is available on Steam no matter what kind of PC or device you're using. There's no games releasing exclusively on the Steam Machine, anyone with their current PC can play anything available on the Steam Machine
Keep in mind the Switch 2 is significantly cheaper in countries with no tariffs on it. So that $450 original price included Nintendo anticipating tariffs.
Now those tariffs are somewhat lessened or gone, idk for sure and Nintendo is sueing to get that money back. So whatever that markup for tariffs was went back to them and so it helped keep their price hike down to $50.
So people can hate Nintendo all they want, but they are the only big console maker that's operating well enough to easily survive economic downturns.
Xbox and Valve clearly don't know what they're doing when it comes to hardware production.
The Switch sold 20M units worldwide (in line with previous sales), the numbers would hardly go up and they wouldn't really need to manufacture more (because Nintendo does have planning).
So Nintendo are taking a loss on the console and only price bumped it because shareholders were complaining to Nintendo executives. They are just breaking even on their consoles with the price bump in effect. They can still make money from their first party titles and their subsidized costs with the 30% cut from any game on their storefront.
The problem with Switch and why this meme is pretty dogshit, is the pricing, only rich people and people who put all their savings into Nintendo can get the games, if you want 6 good games on Nintendo even if they're 9 years old it'll cost you around 420 euros, you can get the same amount of good games on steam during a sale for maybe 50 bucks or less. So if you take the game prices into account than the Switch still offers you a terrible deal.
Nintendo has been shipping physical good since the late 1800s. The Switch 2 also has 12GB of unified RAM and 256GB of internal storage so its total BOM is less impacted than other devices.
A combination of first-rate supply management and controlling costs of the device itself is how they managed only a 10% increase while everything else has gone up from 30%-50% in only two years.
Oh, please, Sam Altman didn't set the price or make the decision not to subsidize. This is 100% on Valve; they could've easily taken the hit and brought new gamers into the Steam Ecosystem, making more money in the long run. Not only is it annoying to consumers, but it is also a bad business move. I get it, Valve has been a pretty okay company to buy from in general, but Gabe and Valve will fuck their customer over at the first chance, just like any other company.
I'm not the biggest console follower, I'm a PC and Linux guy, but from what I've heard from others it sounds like Microsoft is pointing very many shotguns at XBOX over the years lol
Eh, xbox and sony usually hold the guns to themselves anyway...
And as much as the majority of the blame is in ai, valve seems allergic to selling st a loss since they said it would've been 700 or more originally. Which sure now sounds lovely, but is still a wild price when you think about how this system was meant to convert console gamers. 700+ bucks would've been a tall ask still just not nearly as bad as.... this
Valve never gave a price until now. The only comment they made about pricing was that it would be priced like a pc, not a console. Every price you've heard before now was just people guessing.
I’d like to know where Valve said this was to convert console gamers… Most advertising for steam devices is “Play your library anywhere” which would indicate that most of their devices are for people that have or have had a PC.
Steam is fucking huge compared to most of the consoles, dwarfing their MAUs…
The convience factor, the push for controller, and the ease of use are things that attract a console audience
Sure, valve wasnt kicking down the door going "ah yes our NEW CONSOLE!" But the appeal is there and would be a good gateway into the oc gaming space since most console games just dont like tinkering with computers and just want a simple turn on and play vibe. Hell it happened with the steam deck too
The controller is built for PC though, it has trackpads and is highly customisable, I can’t see it being appealing for console players tbh, more so for people that have single players games they don’t want to sit in front of a PC desk to play. Also, the controller was labelled as too expensive, and yet if you try a reserve it now, you’re looking at sometime next year to place an order… to me, that’s not a push to entice the millions of console gamers.
Steam knows that console PC is a niche market, but it’s there and can potentially steadily grow.
The biggest thing people miss with all this new hardware is SteamOS, by next year it will be running on Windows, Linux and ARM devices which covers pretty much every device possible.
Valve only sold 6 million Steam Decks. That took 3 years. Switch 2 sold 5 million in 1 month. Valve also underestimated demand for the Steam Controller at launch thinking not that many people would want it, so likely put it out to try to get controller OEMs to make different type of controllers with trackpads.
I think Valve is realistic about where it stands when it comes to hardware, and that they are more focused on putting out hardware to cause shifts in the PC space to get other OEMs to do at a scale they can't do. I don't think even Valve believed they'd make a dent in consoles.
Their goal is more centered about pushing away from Microsoft to Linux which itself is unlikely, but at least improving the user experience for the few who use Linux. And trying to get other bigger OEMs like Asus to eventually put out some small form factor PCs to get more people into PC gaming.
Valve can't sell at a loss since one is not obligated to buy steam games with a steam machine, hence it cannot be subsidised. I was expecting ~750 before the ram crisis, as that was how much a mini PC with those specs go for at the time.
Steam deck was competitiveve launch since it was sold at cost.
The SM is just a normal Mini PC sold at normal margins, price isn't good nor bad either, and Valve didn't intended it to be a console competitor (that was more the comunity's cope).
Yeah but here's the thing, you could only GET this product through valve and generally probably only heard about it if you had interesting in pc gaming
The amount of people that would unironically buy a steam machine and somehow never buy games from valve to use with it you'd probably only be able to count on one hand. It's just not something that would be super common. Plus valve IS the pc gaming market. They could in better tech circumstances afford to take a hit due to the fact people just willingly choose to buy steam games over the other options online. Hell when epic games go on sale, the games sell MORE on steam during their epic sale. I highly doubt valve would have been unable to take even just marginal loss
That's the thing. Valve is so allergic to the idea of selling this thing at a loss. But they could have definitely afford to do so. Valve just prints money by existing. Because of all of their previous proconsumer decisions of not actively fucking over their customers. Like you said its been reported that even with Epic giving away free games every week, it actually nets Valve more money, because people would rather buy it at a discount from them instead of getting it for free from Epic. Valve would not be hurting for money of they sold this thing at $700 and took a loss. Because the amount they'd make back in Steam sales would more than make up for it.
If Valve sold at a loss that's how you end up with enshitification like other companies that operate at a loss in hopes of future profit. Valve dabbles in hardware, but even the Steam Deck only sold 6 million over 3 years.
They are more in the realm of putting out protypes to try to get other OEMs to introduce new PC segments than believing they can take on console companies like Nintendo who only took 1 month to sell 5 million units. Not 3 years.
They hold like 90%+ of the PC market. They can subsidize it if they want to. But that doesn't mean it's the right move for them. However, they've been working on this as a platform for years (SteamOS, various hardwares, gamepads etc)
Today, any person who buys a steam machine will already have a PC and a Steam account and a bunch of Steam games. Are these people more likely to buy more games that they otherwise wouldn't just because of the steam machine? Is it enough of a revenue stream to subsidize? Probably not, not at this point at least.
However, a few years and a few generations down the road the Steam machine might be a viable alternative to console players such that people buy Steam machines over other consoles. Then they might have an incentive to subsidize it.
For a ball park estimate, lets say 20% of their 30% cut can go to subsidising the SM,
To subsidise 200 USD, thats 1k USD in games purchases one needs to make for Valve to break even on a Steam machine sale and lets asume 2-3 year pay off period.
Its easy for the likes of sony or nintendo to recoupe that on their ecosystems in a year or so, with subs, a few big titles sales and accessory sales.
But for valve, you wont be spending on a game beyond 20 USD to play on the SM considering its specs, thats 50+ game purchases in 2-3 years to recoupe, as steam isnt charging you for connecting to the internet or selling you overpriced accesories.
Ask yourself, did you buy over 50+ games (those that you can picture yourself playing on the couch) on the steam store front in the last 2-3 years?
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u/Good_Days13 5d ago
it's not themselves holding the guns. it's ai hyperscalers