We expected it to be more than that, actually. If it’s $700, that’s pretty good. It’s not a Switch. It’s a prebuilt gaming PC in a tiny form factor. Building a gaming PC today with the same horsepower would probably set you back a lot more than that, and you’ll also have a giant tower taking up space.

It’s not for me, but I can think of at least 3 people in my family who would get a lot of value out of it at that price point. No PC-building headaches, no researching every bit of hardware and comparing prices and performance, no tedious planning of the cooling layout, no thermal paste, no separate warranties and RMA headaches for every individual component, no Windows bullshit, not needing an entire corner of the room just for the tower, perfect for the living room, driver and software updates that apply to and work for every customer, I could go on. I don’t see any downside for the average gamer. Sure, if you’re an FPS penny pincher who simply has to OC and have the best of the best and latest hardware, it’ll not appeal to you. But that’s a minority of gamers.

$700 is a dream. $1,000 is reasonable in the current climate I guess, but pushing it a little. $1,500 would be unfortunate, but it really depends on what extra value the system comes with from Valve. I wanna know their RMA and warranty plans. If they’re anything north of “Kafkaesque”, which is how it is with virtually every other hardware manufacturer/reseller, the extra money might actually be worth it, for one’s mental health. If they send out a replacement unit before you have to return a defective one, for example, that would be enough to justify a little more cost, but that’s coming from someone with a long and storied history of nightmarish, abusive RMA practices. I’d suck a dog’s dirty dick to not have to go through that shit again.