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"It's too dangerous for us to speculate": Valve don't know if Steam Machine prices will drop in the future, after admitting that "some people are going to priced out" (www.rockpapershotgun.com)
submitted 1 month ago by [M, B] to c/gaming@lemmy.zip
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[+] -6 points 1 month ago (2 children)

The real question here is if console manufacturers can sell consoles at a loss expecting to make up the shortfall with game sales, why can't Steam? Gabe/Steam have billions and could easily do this. The only answer I can think of is greed.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    Because console manufacturers can rely on their customers buying stuff at their store.

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  • [–] -4 points 1 month ago (2 children)

    The game store that has so much of the PC market that people call it a monopoly can't?

    That doesn't make any sense.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 month ago*

    If it's sold at a loss, then you would get companies buying them in the thousands and installing Windows for office use.

    Remember the old story with the US military using PS3s as a supercomputer because they were sold at a loss and so were the best value for getting lots of compute? That's what you get, except with the Steam Machine using it for something else is just straight up a supported use case.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    I guess this explains it better than I could: https://lemmy.world/post/48534116

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  • [–] -1 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    Yeah, I see your point. To paraphrase, it says that they have to make a profit and can't guarantee game sales from their own store to offset any potential subsidisation.

    My point is that Gaben/Valve have billions and don't need the profit from it. So what if some people use it to play games from other stores? They'll be in the minority for sure.

    I guess everyone is too capitalism-brained to see past the profit motive.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 month ago*

    I'm not sure you do see my point.

    To be clear, nowhere in that article suggests that valve would be making a profit on the current price, or that they "have to make a profit" - just that they would not sell it under cost.

    I'm genuinely confused how that becomes "profit motive", or shows greed.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 month ago

    If it's cheaper to buy a steam machine than it is to buy another pc with the same or weaker specs companies would just buy out all of the steam machines to stick in their offices with windows booted on it. Games consoles don't have a use outside of gaming but a pc does. Not to mention the lack of vendor lock in to recoup costs by selling the games at a higher markup.

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