It’s a huge gamble but Valve surely has enough liquid capital to be able to subsidise the price to get more gamers buying games on Steam instead of in the Playstation, Xbox and Nintendo Switch stores. It could be the best possible year in gaming history if they make it the most attractive option for gamers.
The risk for Valve is that people buy the machine simply to use as a general purpose PC, but the specs are surely low enough that it’s only a small segment of the PC market that would find it useful. It’s not an AI accelerator or a high performance workstation.
They aren’t going to do that for one very good reason: it’s a PC. And unlike the Steam Deck it’s actually in a PC form factor.
If they sold the Steam Machine at a loss, what’s to stop companies from buying a bunch of them to use as workstations? Those units wouldn’t be bringing any game sales to Valve, so they’d have no way to recoup costs.
Its still a valid concern when companies are buying up 500$ Mac minis to use as AI chat bots. If the steam machine becomes the cheapest way to do a specific business thing that’s common enough, then they would get purchased. I agree that they won’t be able to subsidize them with an expectation of recouping from steam digital sales.
The Stream Machine will launch in the worst possible year of gaming history.
It’s a huge gamble but Valve surely has enough liquid capital to be able to subsidise the price to get more gamers buying games on Steam instead of in the Playstation, Xbox and Nintendo Switch stores. It could be the best possible year in gaming history if they make it the most attractive option for gamers.
The risk for Valve is that people buy the machine simply to use as a general purpose PC, but the specs are surely low enough that it’s only a small segment of the PC market that would find it useful. It’s not an AI accelerator or a high performance workstation.
They aren’t going to do that for one very good reason: it’s a PC. And unlike the Steam Deck it’s actually in a PC form factor.
If they sold the Steam Machine at a loss, what’s to stop companies from buying a bunch of them to use as workstations? Those units wouldn’t be bringing any game sales to Valve, so they’d have no way to recoup costs.
It’s like you only read the first half of my comment.
Its still a valid concern when companies are buying up 500$ Mac minis to use as AI chat bots. If the steam machine becomes the cheapest way to do a specific business thing that’s common enough, then they would get purchased. I agree that they won’t be able to subsidize them with an expectation of recouping from steam digital sales.
Second worst after 1983.
ET phone home ?