Can everyone please stop claiming and speculating that Valve’s new hardware will be loss leaders? If you watch LTT and Gamers Nexus’s first videos on the announcement, they actually spoke with Valve’s engineers. And the Valve representatives already said that the new hardware WILL NOT BE LOSS LEADERS.
There isn’t even evidence that the Steam Deck was a loss leader. All GabeN said was that the lowest cost launch model was priced “painfully”, which doesn’t necessarily mean it was sold at a loss, it could easily have been sold at a very tight margin.
And no, low margins does not meet the definition of a loss leader. A loss leader is a product sold below cost, in that every unit sold actually costs the seller money.
I get the desire to speculate on new hardware. It’s fun and it helps pass the time until we hear more info from Valve. But there’s limits to what is reasonable. Valve has already stated that the new hardware won’t be loss leaders, so hoping and/or claiming they are isn’t reasonable.
Sorry for the rant, but all of the comments that seem to have only skimmed headlines are quickly getting to me
You must log in or register to comment.
It can’t be a loss leader.
The steam machine is, hardware-wise, just a regular Mini-PC. Valve even lets you put whatever OS you want on there. So if this was a loss leader, that would mean that non-gamers and even small businesses would buy these, would install Windows on them and use them as office PCs, with Steam probably not even installed on the PC.
With the Steam Deck, the form factor made it impractical or at least really weird to use them as office PCs. The steam machine doesn’t have that issue.
I was thinking that they might require a Steam account to order, the same way they stopped scalpers for Steam Deck, but there’d be ways around that.
It’d be hilarious if you needed something like “profile level 10” to order though.
This part’s basically guaranteed, yeah. But there’s a secondhand market and also surely some scalping companies saw the Deck launch and went yknow what? It doesn’t cost us much in the long run to make a few hundred Steam accounts now and buy some $0.10 team fortress hat on them just in case Valve does the incredibly predictable thing of releasing more desirable hardware.
Ohhh only allowed to buy steam level / 10 whole numbers only. I could get 9. Woot.
Lol this reminds me of that time the US Air Force built a giant compute cluster using PlayStation 3s. Idk if Sony sold those at a loss, but they certainly didn’t see any game purchases coming from the US Department of Defense
I guess this small articles provides us with the beginning of an answer? https://www.engadget.com/2010-02-05-playstation-3-still-a-loss-leader-six-cents-for-every-dollar.html
Exactly, but I don’t see anything keeping them from selling the Frame at a loss or tight margin. What else are you going to use that with but Steam games?
Even the Steam Controller is useless without Steam Input, but I’d argue it won’t necessarily sell more games. Maybe they could include it with the Steam Machine for “free” to bump the price of the machine up enough to not make sense for a company, but still sell it at a tight margin to sell more games.
Was it confirmed that you can install Windows? The video said software, I don’t remember that you could install any operating system. It comes with an Arch Linux.
You can install OSX on there /s
Hackingtosh Steam Machine will definitely happen.
🤮
That reaction makes sense is a gaming forum because gaming totally sucks on OSX.
OSX is a great OS. I don’t know how anyone can use Windows after 7.
OSX has several things going for it, primarily, it’s got the clowns at apple running the show, thus, it has a bunch of “natural” interface bullshit that only make sense if you intend to live like a caveman and not understand that computers can function differently to physical objects.
On top of that, they pushed themselves as an “alternative” to windows back when they were even more corporate than fucking Microsoft, while blaring out the ignorant ass ipod adverts whose goal was to make the user into consumers making computing choices based on fashion. The iphone and it’s money gated, walled garden BS was just the cherry on top.
If you wanted a fucking alternative to microsoft, linux has been there for you all along instead of the “worse but shinier” osx, which mac served to just overshadow with its increased advertising budget and psychotic CEO.
And I mean that literally, Steve Jobs was actually fucking insane and a horrible person. From firing people at random, to abandoning his kids, to stealing livers and trying to cure his cancer with smoothies.
Also, it’s basically open/free BSD with more propriety bullshit on it than you can shake a stick at.
I don’t know how anyone can use Windows after 7.
Yeah, windows 8 , 10 and 11 are toxic shitholes. You know what macs did before windows started begging you to log in and create microsoft accounts? Force you to have Icloud or whatever the fuck it is accounts. You know how I know? My work laptops suck ass and forces me to have mac accounts, and is complaining that it can’t sync HEALTH DATA. MY WORK LAPTOP WANTS TO SYNC HEALTH DATA.
Apple blew the doors off for enshittification. They primed the fucking pump, and now microsoft and google are following through the door, you guys are like “yeah, putting osx on a steam box would be cool” fucking no. Ew.
It seems like you’re too emotionally invested to have a normal conversation like a person.
Health is an app you can delete. It’s not forcing you to do anything. You don’t even need iCloud for anything. You don’t even have to use their walled garden App Store. I know because I download and install shit from the internet all the time.
Yes, it’s free/bsd based. Who cares? I just want it to work and the chassis and build quality on the laptops are excellent.
Look at their website. It pretty explicitly states you can do with the Gabe Cube whatever you want. Including changing the OS.
You can install Windows on the Steam Deck (psychos), so I imagine it’ll be like that.
“Hello chat! Today’s challenge is to make the Steam Deck lose 20% of its performance. I can’t wait to get started!”
I found an answer on the Steam Machine page: Yes, Steam Machine is optimized for gaming, but it’s still your PC. Install your own apps, or even another operating system. Who are we to tell you how to use your computer?
Hearing that is so refreshing. Microsoft/Google would never put something like that on their website because you are the product.
They said that you can change it if you want, but did they say they will provide Windows drivers for their semi-custom Ryzen chip?
I’m pretty sure that is up to AMD and not Valve.
It’d be interesting seeing Microsoft in a position where the vendor isn’t automatically making their drivers for them. It’s a massive advantage they have.
I just realized that “another operating system” can mean so many things that aren’t Windows.
We need to be patient and wait until some crazy people defile their Steam Machine for Internet points.
It’d be really funny if it’s designed specifically not to meet Windows 11’s arbitrary requirements. You can install Linux though! :D
I see what you mean, but this device is a little overtuned for an office PC, at least GPU wise.
There are quite a few office jobs that benefit from a decent CPU. Anything to do with images/photos/video/rendering for example.
Plus PCs cost fuck all compared to staff, may as well get them efficient tools if they will be using them a lot.
You’re 100% correct at a sane company. At my employer the hardware team is incentivised to cut costs and impacts to productivity are someon else’s problem. Corporate metrics lead to some pretty hilarious situations.
You get what you measure
This happens so often. The new version of the framework our frontend developers use has massive performance problems, which meant that our FE devs couldn’t test their changes locally, they had to upload a release to the cloud to test every single change. That reduces productivity to close to 0. A developer isn’t cheap, so you’d think the company would be quick to issue macbooks that we are also allowed to have so that they can work again.
Nope, it took 3 months for our manager to convince the helpdesk that they can get macbooks. Helpdesk originally said they’d have to wait for 2 years for the scheduled replacement of the laptops.
On the one hand, i get it. It will be for enthusiasts only if that’s the case. On the other hand, I feel like for the amount of profit this company brings in, I am a little shocked that they don’t even try to cut the price back a bit to sell more. I guess whats the point when you don’t even have to do this at all and it sounds like the entire project is just a fun way to spend some time seeing what you can come up with and sharing that with the people that can afford to buy cool things.
On the one hand, i get it. It will be for enthusiasts only if that’s the case.
Note that I haven’t said anything about what the price will be, just that Valve has stated that it won’t be a loss leader.
I’ve seen rumors that the Bill Of Materials plus Valve’s usual overhead would still result in a system valued at $500, though I haven’t seen the source and am very skeptical of it.
On the other side, XBox is allegedly targeting $1200 on their standardized custom gaming PC, which I doubt would be worth the price, especially with it running Windows.
Oh, I agree. My price is just speculation. Also, Xbox is done. They had a handful of exclusives this year that, as far as I saw, were nothing to sell systems over, and from the looks of it, only Fable is set for next year. As soon as I saw them jump ship with a console and finally share their best games like gears of war, I knew it would only be a matter of time.
That handheld is also windows only and to late to the party, and your right they just went full pc only at a price nobody will pay when you can probably get your own pc that will have little difference. They will be with Sega soon enough and probably use the companies they purchased to continue creating games for everyone else and maybe just focus on the windows store for semi exclusivity after the pc thing fizzles out.
We could, you know, just wait and see.
*ducks*
But will the new valve hardware help fill the empty pit in my chest?
Sure, if you eat it.
… Duck… Goose.
Duck Game? Goose Game? OMG … Duck Duck Goose Game! I will be a billionaire
Worked for Goose Goose Duck!
Grey duck*
WHY YOU LITTLE…
If you don’t have a rigid and openly hostile opinion within 3 seconds of a new product announcement, you are an anti-capitalist commie!!
but… I want it now?
I would be happy to wait and see but idiots online keep trying to insist it’ll be $2,000 even though the hardware isn’t close to worth that much. Some of these people are big influencers and really should know better.
Nah, it’ll probably be $800-1k. It’s basically a 7600 CPU + RX7600 GPU or whatever, and it’s not really upgradeable. So somewhere between the Series S and X in performance, and not subsidized by game sales.
So what exactly does that change? Valve already decided the price and that is what you will have to pay. Who cares what anyone ever predicted?
There are people online who are wrong. I can’t just ignore that, they must be told why they are wrong.
Seriously though it’s a good idea to correct people when they make stupid baseless claims because other people won’t necessarily have the technical understanding to judge whether their claims are based on reality or not.
Many of the people who are doing this are YouTube or Instagram personalities with lots of children following them, I like this product and want it to succeed, and I don’t want children to lose interest in the idea because their favourite idiot instagrammer reckons it’ll cost an absurd amount of money.
I’m utterly confused about why you are upset that people are doing that. There’s absolutely no need for you to engage in it.
Valve will have a good enough overview on the situation and if they think it will hurt sales they can simply make a statement. They can handle it.
It’s interesting to discuss about the price but being upset about „idiots“ who have wrong ideas and playing hero for a multi billion dollar corporation is something I’m confused about.
I want it to be a successful product, that I can buy, and will be supported for a useful number of years. $800-1200 feels OK for that. $2000 feels like Apple Vision territory.
Jesus, man: haven’t you ever been excited about a thing before it’s on shelves? Speculated about a sports game before it’s over? Talking about your anticipation is part of the fun.
Cost aside. If they don’t price it competitively between the Xbox and the PS5, the Steam Machine will be DOA.
The Deck is a perfect example of what they should try to replicate. If they don’t do that, it will flop.
I’m not sure cost can be set aside from a price discussion when they’ve explicitly stated it won’t be a Costco rotisserie chicken.
With the number of consoles sold this generation, I’m not sure where the limit is for what people will spend to play the games they want. With console pricing has trailing budget gaming PC’s, I could see a number of people getting a Steam Machine in lieu of the next Playstation or Xbox.
What would be interesting to see in the future is the split between units sold to lifelong console players making a change, and pre existing Steam users with stuffed libraries buying one for the couch. If the latter make up the majority of sales, but they priced it like a chicken, that’ll be a problem pretty quick.
Hopefully it shakes out well and indie game developers reap some well deserved rewards.
It’s a small computer, it isnt going after the Xbox or PS5 customers. It’s going for the people who want a computer in their living room.
This comment is so silly and yet I keep seeing it everywhere. What do you think the Xbox and Playstations are? What is it that xbox and playstation customers are looking for that this small computer isn’t?
You are correct in that all technically fit the definition of computers. However consumers don’t care about technical definitions or think rationally about purchases. They don’t all do a rational analysis of the products on the market that would accomplish their goals and spend accordingly. They walk into GameStop and buy one of the boxes that makes call of duty show up on their living room tv. Just like the Deck fits the definition of a handheld computer with a built in screen and controllers for playing games but isn’t stealing any customers from the switch.
Deck isn’t selling millions and it’s doing just fine. The Steam Machine will be a small computer box priced as such and there won’t be a single person that decides to buy it over a ps5, and that’s fine. Valve doesn’t have to compete with consoles cause they don’t make consoles.
Valve themselves have said that the Machine will not be priced like a console but like an entry level PC whatever that means. The only people that will notice this to buy it are people who already know what a PC is.
Deck isn’t selling millions and it’s doing just fine.
I don’t have have an issue with the rest of your comment but this quote is factually wrong. The Deck actually has sold multiple millions of units.
I’d say the Deck isn’t stealing customers from the Switch because they are filling different market niches. The Switch is a portable console with portable Nintendo games made for it. The Deck is a portable PC that gives you access to your entire Steam library on the go.
The GabeCube, however, could absolutely pull some customers of the PS5 and Xbox depending on the pricing - especially with Microsoft’s demands that every part of the Xbox division see a 30% profit margin. The Big Three isn’t going to become the Big Four, but I think it will make some ripples. Steam running in Big Screen mode is effectively a console interface, and it plays Call of Duty just like the consoles. And with Sony finally moving away from console exclusive games, it means that Steam has almost full parity with the libraries of both of the consoles going forward while also offering access to all kinds of indie games that the consoles don’t. The GabeCube can play Call of Duty and Ghost of Tsushima, but it can also play Ultrakill and
BloodborneNightmare Kart, and neither Xbox nor Playstation can say that.Edit: And this doesn’t even mention old games. The Steam library has access to all kinds of old games that never get ported to new consoles when a new generation releases, meaning that its library grows in step with the consoles but you can still play your old favorites without having to keep buying them again or keep your old consoles around.
I know my case is specific but having a Jellyfin running on a Steam computer looks to me as good case for having a computer in the living room. Adding a TV applications to Steam such as Netflix is also a case. Then there are people who have their workstation close to the TV so they can use it instead of their laptop and just switch displays with one of these HDMI branching dongles.
Yup, I might try the Jellyfin thing as well. I currently use an app on the TV, but it’s flaky and the TV keeps losing network randomly. Newer TVs at adding ads, so I’ll need an alternative.
I think the difference is that the Xbox and PlayStation are locked down to their respective ecosystems with monthly subscription and only one online store. Microsoft and Sony have almost guaranteed return based on that alone. If valve prices this as a loss leader what’s to stop a large corporation to buy 20k steam machines and use them as computers instead of consoles. Then valve is just eating that cost with no return on the other side.
The Ukraine military has been using steam decks on the front line Do you really think it’s affected their bottom line?
What do you think the Xbox and Playstations are?
Consoles.
What is it that xbox and playstation customers are looking for that this small computer isn’t?
I have a hard time even figuring out what you’re trying to ask here.
Consoles.
Consoles are just small computers lol
I have a hard time even figuring out what you’re trying to ask here.
Don’t know what else to tell you. Person I replied to said console customers aren’t interested in consoles. That’s silly
No, it isn’t, in practice. Xbox and PS5 have more in common with my iPhone than my desktop PC or NAS when it comes to being able to do what I want with it.
It will be interesting to see how proprietary the Steam machine is. That’s how I’d end up classifying it as console or miniPC.
The steam deck is also a small PC, just like the consoles and was priced perfectly for success
None of those consoles would directly boot into desktop Linux with just a few button presses.
Having more features and flexibility than other consoles doesn’t take away its main function and selling point.
I’m not really following your response. Steam Machine’s feature set doesn’t make the Xbox Series X/S or PlayStation 5 into computers. Yes, they’re x86, but they’re so proprietary and locked down they’re not computers in the colloquial sense.
If the Steam Machine can dual boot Linux, which I bet it can, that’s much more a general purpose computer than either of those consoles.
As far as how most people use their computers there is little difference.
I don’t use my PS5 to surf the web. I know you can use it to watch movies and stuff, but I don’t use it for that either.
At best, it depends on what kind of user most of the console owners are.
Is the machine competing with consoles? I thought it was just packaging an adorable sized pre built PC.
I think this is the goal that it would be priced competitively with the Pro or higher end consoles
They’ve built an ecosystem that gives you that console experience and if you really want to use it as a PC then you can.
The whole thing screams high quality experience for those that want it to just work or those that want to tinker
They really know their audience
“stop speculating! it doesn’t align with MY speculation” oh ok.
Uh, it’s not speculation if OP is referencing what Valve staff have said literally and unambiguously.
Tell me you didn’t read the post before commenting without telling me
To be fair, I don’t watch either of those youtubers. So I had no knowledge of this.
What the hell is a “loss leader”?
An item that is sold to you at a loss in hopes that you buy more profitable stuff from them to make up for said loss. Game consoles are usually sold at a loss in order to get people into their ecosystems, so they can buy things like games and subscription services, which are more profitable.
Gilette gives away razor handles to men to encourage them to buy their blades.
Inkjet printers are often cheaper than a change of ink cartridges.
I think it was Standard Oil, gave away hurricane lanterns in order to sell kerosene.
Most video game consoles are sold for less than they cost to make because the company expects to earn more in video game sales.
A product sold at a loss to attract customers who hopefully buy other products with higher margins that result in a net profit for the retailer.
When a business sells something at a lower price than it costs for the purpose of attracting more customers.
Another example is Costco rotisserie chicken.
I thought they originally started their first attempt with Alienware? They gave up. I’d have to see how their newer one is better.
Lots and lots more compatible games is probably the biggest one
Since they’ve said it’s basically an entry level gaming PC that will cost more than a console, I think the >700, <$1000 speculation is most likely.
that will cost more than a console
Is that part of the quote? Because I just saw “priced like an entry level PC, not like a console”, which was more ambiguous than saying “priced like a console”. One man’s entry level PC is $300, and another’s is $1000. I have a mini PC with the power of a PS4 Pro, which I’d easily consider entry level, and it cost me $530 about a year and a half ago.
It’s possible I’m just interpreting the quote wrong. I figured they were making the distinction between “console” and “entry level PC” as a way to say “The price isn’t set yet, but don’t expect this to be $400-500”
Yeah, leaving it ambiguous like this leads to wild speculation, and I think you misquoted that with your own assumptions. You might be right, but Digital Foundry seems to think $400-$500 is possible. Given the cost of my own mini PC, which is older and requires higher margins than Valve can get away with, I would even believe $400-$500. But we just don’t know. Everyone’s best guess for the price of this thing has a low floor and a high ceiling, which will make this all really funny once we know the actual price.
I know they don’t have the same supply chain at all but Apple sells an entry Mac Mini for $600. That makes me feel like a similarly priced Steam Machine is possible.
Apple mini is a hard comparison to make because the cheapest mini is a loss leader. Add a bit of extra ram or extra storage, which you have to do since the base model is very limited and the only way to get it is through Apple because everything is soldered together, then it is suddenly more than a $1k PC. They make the profits up with those upgrades which are practically mandatory and grossly overpriced.
The cheapest mini ain’t a loss leader if no one buys it
I wouldn’t be sure the mini is a loss leader…
Let me show the math:
The base M4 model is 16GB ram and 256 GB of storare and it costs $600, “cheapest minipc ever with such performance”.
The 512GB storage model costs $800.
May I point out that 256GB of ssd storage does not cost $200.
The 24 GB model costs exactly $1000.
No matter how much ram prices are ramping up right now, 8GB of sodimm ram does not cost $200…yet.
Anything else above those specs throws the Mac mini into $1k+ territory. It can go all the way up to $2600.
Now, Apple rarely publishes manufacturing numbers to the public. But historically this has always been their strategy. A base product that seems too good to be true (because it is) that leaves buyers wanting a bit more. For which they get skinned alive, price wise. Of course, I can’t be 100% certain that the base Mac mini is sold at a loss. But evidence suggests the $600 mark is priced exactly to act as a loss leader.
I will be so impressed if they manage that. It would be a day 1 buy for me at that price.
It’s not particularly great hardware. It’s fine, but not great. The most obvious thing is 8GB VRAM, which is bare minimum for modern gaming really. Add in that they’re buying in bulk, that price seems reasonable.
I’m right now in the process of building an “entry level PC” from components, here defining it as new currently produced off the rack parts, no used, no refurbished, and with a Ryzen 7500F and a Radeon RX7600 “AMD can’t decide whether their cards get an XT or not, so why should I?” I price it out right at $900. To go much below that, I’m gonna have to resort to some jank.
Dumpster dive a core i5 10400F Optiplex, stick a GTX-980 in it, install Linux Mint and you’re making 120FPS in CS:GO for the price of a foot pic.
Your entry level PC is what I would have called high end as little as four years ago. I built a machine in 2021 with a Ryzen 5 5600x and an RX 6800 XT; it still runs the latest UE5 games at high settings. I would call that above and beyond entry level.
High end would be the high end of the market components, right? So RTX 5090 ($2k+) or RX 9070 ($700+). High end CPU would be Ryzen 7 9800X3D for $400. Add a motherboard and copious RAM and you’re looking at $2k+ for all AMD, $3-5k for Nvidia.
Mid tier would be somewhere in the middle, so cut those numbers in half ($1-1.5k). Low end is what you can get away with, so cut the mod tier in half again, though going below $700 would be hard for anything but the most casual of games.
It’s a little hard to comment on high end 4 years ago with low end now because technology marches on, but no I don’t think it would.
I also built a PC with similar specs for my cousin (we’ll call her Lila) to that in October of 2022, Ryzen 5600X/Radeon RX6800 (non-XT). Built that rig for my cousin. Socket AM4 B550 chipset, 16GB DDR4-3200 RAM. I had a budget of $1500, $500 alone went to the GPU. The 6800 was two years old at that point. Solid mid-range PC that can handle 1440p gaming with no questions asked…okay one question asked: “are you sure you want ray tracing enabled on an RDNA 2 platform?”
You could go higher. 32 or even 64GB of RAM, a 5800X3D CPU, a Radeon 6950XT or RTX-3090 would provide much more solid 4k gaming with significantly better ray tracing…for a couple more grand.
The machine I built last year, a Ryzen 7700X/Radeon 7900GRE for myself. I spent $2000, I got socket AM5, 32GB DDR5-6000, a 16 thread CPU, and the third-to-highest GPU in the range. This thing does 1440p ultrawide or reaches into 4k with aplomb and ray tracing is worth turning on. You can still go up from here; the 7900XT and XTX are even more powerful and again Nvidia offers even higher, and there’s several CPU SKUs above me. Mine is a mid-to-high end PC, I expect it to be relevant for 5 more years, then I’ll buy a Ryzen 11800X3D on clearance for it.
Meanwhile, the PC I’m building now is for a 12 year old (Lila’s daughter, let’s call her Maggy). 16GB of DDR5-5600, a spec’d down 6-core without integrated graphics, the pack-in Wraith Stealth cooler, and a x600 tier GPU for a solid 1080p experience, more than enough for the hand-me-down 1080p60 monitor she’s gonna get with it. This computer is the same generation as mine, but less than half the price at $900 and change. And I honestly struggle to build much lower than that without resorting to used parts, new old stock, or jank.
Not like a console says not a loss leader to me.
Personally I don’t think I would say that most people would consider a $1,000 PC to be entry level. To me entry level means something that a kid could save up their pocket money for in a reasonable amount of time maybe with a paper route to supplement. I’d say entry level ends at about $700 just to throw a number out there. For $1,000 you could get a PS5 and a PSVR2
Surely the steam deck is comfortably entry level?
True, but it’s also nowhere near $1000.
But it’s also a handheld console so that doesn’t really track.
An entry level gaming PC doesn’t have to have a battery and it doesn’t have to have a screen which are big expenses. You can’t just take the price of the steam deck and multiply it because so much time has passed between the releases of the two products and they’re not equivalent anyway. It’s an apples to oranges comparison.
Yes, so an entry level gaming PC without any extras like screens should be even cheaper
…the fuck is a “loss leader”?
A product sold at a loss/very attractive price to attract customers. The idea is that they customers will come due to the cheap price of a desirable product and buy additional other stuff at the store, which should hopefully make up for the loss.
E.g. a restaurant advertise cheap burgers to attract customers, and then make the profit on alcoholic beverages that customers buy alongside the cheap burger.
So the Razor and blades model (printers) but in games?
From the second sentence on the page:
It is different from loss leader marketing and product sample marketing, which do not depend on complementary products or services.
So the Razor and blades model would probably be the more accurate term for what people thought the new steam hardwate would be, yeah.
Though steam won’t lock you to their services.
I was expecting an APU
…and you got one.
No, the Steam Machine has a CPU and a pcie GPU.
Even if you could argue Raphael was an ‘apu’ since it has the 2CU GPU, those are lasered off on Steam Machine’s CPU.
And honestly, we probably should have expected this from the leaked benchmarks. It was already showing hits of using a separate 7600
AFAIK: It depends.
The Cube: No
The VR headset: Yes. But it’s rather an SoC.
Yeah they said they are pricing the Steam Machine at PC market prices, but they do having to contend with reality. There are consoles on the market that are more powerful at a lower price point, it will dampen their sales for sure. I mean most pcgamers probably have more powerful hardware already, what is the incentive? Sure small form factor, but is it worth a premium price to the average pcgamer? Console peasants will turn their noses up at it, so who are they marketing to?
I can see the Steam Frames selling better due to it being a fully untethered VRPC headset that can play more than just VR games. Not to mention you can stream from a more powerful PC to the frames making the battery last much longer and better gfx fidelity.
The Steam Controller has to contend with a flooded market of users used to using one type of controller, so a little bit of an uphill battle there too.
I mean most pcgamers probably have more powerful hardware already
According to Valve, it should outperform or match 70% of current PCs owned by gamers. So while not crazy powerful, it might be an affordable (hopefully) upgrade for some more low spec gamers.
Isn’t quest 3 sold at a loss? Selling similar hardware at no loss will present a challenge.
Though, at the same time, there’s not much wrong with making low quantities of something and selling them at a profit, slowly.People still say this about the Steam Deck 3 years later even though, as you said, there’s no evidence of that, so, good luck with your message LOL
They can’t sell them at a loss without a locked-down ecosystem. Sony learned that the hard way with the OtherOS support for the PS3 that lead to a ton of them being purchased to build cheap supercomputer ls and never spending a dime on games or software to cover the loss.
I think that was overstated. Sure there were some “fun” projects for fun or publicity.
However supercomputer clusters require higher performance interconnect than PS3 could do. At that time it would have been DDR infiniband (about 20 Gbps) or 10 g myrinet.
Sure gigabit was prevalent, but generally at places that would also have little tolerance for something as “weird” as the cell processor.
OtherOS was squashed out of fear of the larger jailbreak surface.
The US Air Force built the Condor Cluster out of 1,760 PS3s in 2010 which I believe saw some actual use. So more than just publicity stunting.
I think that one was also significantly a publicity thing, they made videos and announced it as a neat story about the air force doing something “neat” and connecting relatable gaming platform to supercomputing. I’m sure some work was actually done, but I think they wouldn’t have bothered if the same sort of device was not so “cool”
There were a handful of such efforts that pushed a few thousand units. Given PS3 volumes were over 80 million, I doubt Sony lost any sleep over those. I recall if anything Sony using those as marketing collateral to say how awesome their platform was. The losses from those efforts being well with the marketing collateral.
IIRC, the Deck, at launch, had a limit per Steam account, and it had certain requirements. There’s no reason they couldn’t do something like that here. Sure, it makes it harder to convert console players if they do the same technique, but it could be restricted sales based on something.
