The title is a bit misleading, as the article lists diverging analysts’ opinions, ranging from Valve willing to sell at a loss or low margins, to high prices due to RAM and SSD price volatility.
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.blackeco.com/post/2330473
It’s going to be more than an Xbox, but not too crazy. Probably $800 is my guess.
Doubt they’ll be that pricey. I think they’re aiming for 600ish or thereabouts. I’m not the target audience (beefy gaming pc) but I love the concept and what it’ll do to further indie gaming. It’ll probably also pull people from consoles to pc gaming. Valve can’t stop winning.
Also, they use standard components. You can get the cheaper Version and upgrade in e prices drop. The beauty of pc gaming.
The problem is dram prices right now are crazy so the price might get pushed up quite a bit
Depends on whether they negotiated contract pricing beforehand. The price increases aren’t because of manufacturing cost increases, they’re because of high demand. Retail pricing isn’t really related to bulk wholesale contract pricing at all.
I think they might eat the extra costs because they know they’ll more than recuperate it from increased software sales. Hell, XboX as a console was a loss leader for MS for over a decade.
Valve willing to sell at a loss
I don’t think that Valve will sell the Steam Machine at a loss.
Closed-system console vendors often do, then jack up the prices of their games and make their money back as people buy games. So why not Valve?
Two reasons.
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They sell an open system. If Valve sells a mini-PC below cost, then a number of people will just buy the thing and use it as a generic mini-PC, which doesn’t make them anything. A Nintendo Switch, in contrast, isn’t very appealing for anything than running games purchased from Nintendo.
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They don’t have a practical way to charge more for games for just Steam Machine users — their model is agnostic to what device you run a purchased game on. So even if they were going to do that, it’d force them to price games non-optimally for non-Steam-Machine users, charge more than would be ideal from Valve’s standpoint.
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I’m supportive of the effort, but unless it’s under $500 (it’s not) it’s garbage and DOA.
I built a $700 Bazzite-based Steambox with some parts used and the Steam Machine seems about par on performance and is both better looking and has additional features so … yeah
Can get an ‘aoostar GODY’ on AliExpress for US$1000. Basically the same GPU, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD. The steam machine has less cores and less ethernet. Though it also has a way bigger heatsink, LEDs and extra Bluetooth/valve gamepad antenna.
Comparing the deck to comparative brands, it is wayyy cheaper. I think valve are going to be aggressive on price, especially when the CPU/GPU are fairly old and meek.
The Steam Machine seems to be using the Nintendo model of using low cost off-the-shelf parts instead of expensive custom components.
Then again the Steam controller and VR headset seem kind of fancy.
Hopefully, they get very popular and manages to steal significant market share from Windows.
The rumor is that the cpu in the steam machine is leftover from another AMD partnership with Microsoft. The GPU is a mobile GPU that AMD had a hard time selling. It’s about the same performance as a PS5, though valve won’t be subsidizing it as much. I’d bet $600-$800.
I don’t think it would make sense for them to sell it at a loss. On the other hand, they don’t have to make a huge profit from it either. I really hope it’ll come down to a range of about €600. That would make it a no-brainer for me.
They already tried that with the original steam machines and it flopped hard. It’ll be significantly better value or it’ll flop again, simple. They’re clearly optimizing for price based on the vram/ram specs. Yeah maybe it’ll go up after launch but out of the gate it’ll be sub-$500/512gb otherwise the whole exercise is pointless
This isn’t why it failed. It failed because the software, user experience, and compatibility was immature. That is no longer the case, as proven by the steamdeck, and offering a mature ecosystem with VR, controller, and console/PC that all interact seamlessly will be the major selling point.
I’m expecting $799.99 for the low storage model, and if it performs as well as a typical $1000-$1200 PC, I think they’ll enjoy the same level of adoption seen by the Steamdeck. The target will be people looking for an entry level to PC gaming, and current PC enthusiasts on lower end hardware looking for an upgrade that’s simple and reasonably positioned price wise against traditional PCs.
Competing with the console prices is not likely. Not only will they probably sell hardware at a loss, but they step on Sony and Microsoft territory, with whom they have deals to bringing games to steam.
Selling at a loss works for consoles because games will recoup the loss. For pc there is no guarantee. If the steam box is that cheap, corporate sector will order steam machines (by the 100s or 1000s), without guarantee to recoup the loss.
