To your last point, Beach when the Steam Deck launched they described its price point at the time as “painful” but felt it was necessary. Turns out they made the right call and it was wildly successful, so hopefully they stay the course on “painful” pricing.
Comment on Steam Hardware Announcement - (This is wild)
TheYang@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I think all of these are nice, if priced correctly
Steam Frame needs to compete with quest, so prices over $800 are a really tough sell.
Steam Machine needs to compete with consoles, PS5 (non-pro) and Series S, so prices over ~$700 will become really tough.
Prices start becoming really good, if they manage to come it at ~$600 for Steam Frame and ~$500 for Steam Machine.
But with current hardware prices, Valve being valve and no-one can know if they want to make money on the hardware, or if they are willing to sell at cost, or if they are willing to subsidize, who knows where we will land.
vithigar@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
krooklochurm@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
Also pretty much all modern consoles have been eye watering my expensive on launch save the switch. Even the switch 2 was very pricey.
Early adopters will jump on at the higher price point and everyone else will get on board when the price falls.
Honestly the thing I REALLY care about here is the steam controller 2. I LOVED the original. Gimme gimme gimme
vithigar@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
I think you misunderstand. It was painful for Valve to cut the margin so thin, assuming they kept one at all.
Allowing to Valve’s messaging at least the Deck launched at the lowest price they possibly could manage.
krooklochurm@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
Ahhhh I did misunderstand. Thanks for clarifying.
samus12345@sh.itjust.works 23 hours ago
when the price falls.
No longer a given, but Valve did lower the price of the Deck while every single other console got a price hike, so there’s hope.
RisingSwell@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 hours ago
Steam Frame I’ve seen reported will be like $1,800 aud, so just over 1k US probably.
I’m buying it regardless as long as it doesn’t launch to be shit
zhyl@feddit.uk 1 day ago
Their goal with the first iteration of Steam Machines (RIP) was explicitly to provide an alternative to Windows and to reduce dependency on Microsoft. I’m pretty sure that’s why they priced the deck so competitively, to make a dent in the market as a loss leader.
To that end, I would expect them to be taking a large hit on these in order to get them into people’s hands. It’s not even about steam sales per se, it’s about platform commoditisation.
TheYang@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I personally expect that they will want to cover hardware cost, while being willing to subsidize development cost with the steam store.
So I think the low storage models will make a slight loss for valve in the beginning, while the higher storage models will get that back to even overall for valve.