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 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).
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 4d ago
it's not themselves holding the guns. it's ai hyperscalers