Look, Gabe needs another yacht, OK?
Comment on AMD say the Steam Machine is "on track" for an early 2026 release
iamthetot@piefed.ca 11 hours ago
Gabe could afford to eat the price spikes of the components and sell a reasonably priced machine.
But he won’t.
garretble@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
Eufalconimorph@discuss.tchncs.de 10 hours ago
That’d be anticompetitive and would be used against them in lawsuits. By Epic, who use anticompetitive exclusivity agreements & subsidise giveaways, but aren’t in a dominant market position so it’s totally not hypocritical.
iamthetot@piefed.ca 10 hours ago
I can’t tell if this is sarcasm or not (Poe’s Law, and all) so just to be safe I’ll remark that releasing a product at an affordable cost is the opposite of anti competitive.
cecilkorik@piefed.ca 9 hours ago
I am not a lawyer, but as far as I know that’s actually incorrect, selling a product below cost is considered predatory dumping, as it means literally nobody can afford to compete with you on anything resembling a level playing field. How is any competitor supposed to release a competing product when Gabe is using his own financial resources for “eating the price spikes”. Unless you have your own financial resources or massive speculative investment, you cannot also “eat the price spikes” so your own products will have to be priced at realistic levels so that it is something that actually earns you some level of profit in order for your business to continue and grow, and thus those products will be far more expensive than Valve’s subsidized product, and thus, you probably won’t sell any unless you have some significant further advantage, which you shouldn’t need to have in order to simply compete with the market leader. That’s a clear barrier to entry, and is the definition of anti-competitive.
Usually, this would be done to lock the subsidized buyers into a particular ecosystem, or even just to bundle that ecosystem by default (aka illegal bundling, like Microsoft did for years) from which additional profit can later be expected. In Valve’s case, this would be Steam, and it pretty clearly would profit them in the long run, and this strategy also keeping all competitors out by dumping hardware below cost, thus abusing their Steam distribution monopoly to fund a second monopoly on the Steam Machines market to maintain their first monopoly. That’s literally what antitrust laws were designed for. Just because we don’t really effectively enforce them anymore I feel like people have started losing sight of what they mean and what they are supposed to be for and I don’t think we should just normalize that this is how businesses are supposed to operate.
And that’s why Valve probably won’t do that. (at least I suspect they won’t, based on my view of their history, I have no insider knowledge)
NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
Selling hardware at a loss when you make it up in subscriptions or sales in that ecosystem is incredibly common.
Sony is a prime example of doing this in the same market, they’ve sold generations of Playstations at an initial loss knowing games sale and subscriptions would make it up.
iamthetot@piefed.ca 8 hours ago
That makes a lot of sense, thanks for explaining it.
Fubarberry@sopuli.xyz 5 hours ago
Usually when you think of something being anti-competitive, it’s because it’s bad for consumers. But you can also be anti-competitive by doing things that are appealing to consumers in the short term (like selling a product at a loss) but help ensure market domination for the longer term.
Valve’s position here is tricky, the steam machine would have a small marketshare compared to consoles, but as a PC it could be considered furthering Valve’s PC game “monopoly”.
Eufalconimorph@discuss.tchncs.de 9 hours ago
Selling products below cost is legally anticompetitive behavior. Anticompetitive behavior is only illegal for monopolists, which Valve aren’t. But they have been accused and sued, part of why those suits haven’t lead to them being declared a monopoly is because they don’t engage in enough anticompetitive practices. So adding anticompetitive practices would be extremely risky for Valve.
Truscape@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 hours ago
Credit where credit’s due, Valve did that for the Steam Deck’s entry pricing. Although the danger for the Steam Machine would be potential abuse for massive orders (at Valve’s expense) for things like call centers and offices rather than individuals.
horse@feddit.org 9 hours ago
People keep saying this, but Valve could easily prevent companies buying up Steam Machines simply by limiting purchases to a X amount per account. If they are worried about people creating burner accounts just to purchase Steam hardware, they could require the accounts to be a certain age or a minimum amount spent on Steam. Not saying they will or should do this, but they could.
NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
That’s a really interesting idea to give preference to existing steam users with a legitimate history.
ReluctantZen@feddit.nl 5 hours ago
Not even that. Since it’s just a PC, regular consumers can buy them without ever using Steam.
Truscape@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 hours ago
That’s actually the same case with the Steam Deck, apart from the hardware form factor.