KraidenThe Steam Machine is actually a great prospect — we're just looking at it wrong
So I read this article and a lot of people are saying it’s likely to be priced out of competitiveness in the console space due to the parts shortages.
I understand why they couldn’t sell it at a loss. It’s a general purpose computing device, and it would be too easy for a call centre somewhere to buy 100 of them, which would lead to 0 game sales for Valve…
But why couldn’t they release it at the stupid $900 price point, but then offer a $100 - $200 Steam voucher along with it? It sidesteps the call centre issue because the hardware is still full price, but they recoup (some) of their costs for those that ACTUALLY want is as a games console
CethinI understand why they couldn’t sell it at a loss. It’s a general purpose computing device, and it would be too easy for a call centre somewhere to buy 100 of them, which would lead to 0 game sales for Valve…
I’m not saying they will, but I hear people repeat this as if it’s fact, and it’s pretty nieve. They’ve had other products people wanted to scalp, or whatever, before. They have a system for it. You have to have a Steam account older than a set date before you can purchase, and your number of purchases is limited.
That’s even assuming it makes sense. Yeah, the price could be low for the hardware compared to average consumer products, but does that mean it’s lower than the, comperatively, cheap hardware used by offices? Almost certainly not. They probably don’t even have a GPU. They have to compete with gaming hardware prices, not office computers. A low gaming hardware price is still going to be expensive for an office. It’s also going to be expensive for the product for a data center. They have specialty hardware they use that’s purpose-built for the task. Sure, once upon a time the PS was used for a supercomputer. That was a much different time for hardware.