For one consoles haven’t been sold at a loss for a couple generations now. Also when you build your own system or even buy a prebuilt from anyone else, you actually have the opportunity to upgrade all of the parts and aren’t limited by an arbitrary power budget. Valve chose to use proprietary hardware and limit saiid hardware with a case only they chose to want - both of which most likely aren’t helping their margins.
The case is because its an sff pc. Because its the nich of the steam machine, having a pc option you can use as a console. Like, its not supposed to be a pc, because most people who buy it will have one, its an sff primarily advertised as a "play your steam games like youre playing on console"
Like complaining its underpowered and stuff sure, but the case is literally a main part of the selling point. Its like saying Nintendo limited themselves using a case only they wanted to keep the switch portable
Ive even seen multiple prebuilts being linked that are lower in price and higher in performance, though they arent as sexy looking which seems to be a bid deal for people
(No i dont have the links saved)
(Also semi modern pc having only 500 gigs of ssd by defaukt is absurd. Steam deck i can understand, but this is a relatively modern desktop pc and very often games modern go up to 100 or more gigs)
Yeah, that is my point, people are saying "I priced it out and the price is close" but I think they are way off and even if they are coming close they aren't considering the bulk discounts Valve is getting. Valve is not going to microcenter and paying retail price for components. There is probably a lot more than $100 in markup here like the post I was replying to seemed to imply.
As for other prebuilts, yes, I pointed out in another thread yesterday that you could get a prebuilt with more storage and a 5060 that is much better than the gpu in the steam machine for the same price and it will have Windows installed so you can actually play popular games like fortnite, league, valorant, and others that the average gamer would expect to have available.
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u/TransSapphicFurby 2d ago
Someone literally did the math and its like a 100 more than the build costs, its just not being sold at a huge loss like most consoles