Article discusses the effect of rising hardware prices on the deck.
Some highlights:
How much worse has the pricing situation gotten for Valve since November? Superdata Research founder and SuperJoost newsletter author Joost van Dreunen suggested that the 512GB Steam Machine model would probably run $50 to $75 more than he expected when the Steam Machine was announced, and to expect a price “potentially $100+ above target” for the high-end 2TB model. That would mean a $599 to $629 price at the low-end and $849 to $899 for the high-end model, in his estimation.
Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter agreed that, even with the additional component costs, Valve would likely “try to get it out at $599 or so for the 512GB version,” A starting price higher than that would mean “abysmal” sales, he added. “I think $700 is a death sentence and $1,000 is unsellable.”
I’d recommend reading the article though, it has a lot more of value than just those quotes. It goes on to talk about how the price increases will likely hurt valve more than traditional console makers, and how these increases will affect sales.
I have been, since day fucking one, befuddled by how people think this thing is going to be anything less than $700, it just does not add up to me.
People are looking at the price of the steam decks and non-pro versions of consoles.
They can set the asking price to whatever they want but I have zero interest in the “why” in terms of a high price, which for me is anything over about £450. Anything more than that and it simply isn’t appealing to me. I don’t care whether that’s reasonable or not in terms of their costs. My wallet cannot in any form justify anything more on what is primarily a toy. It’s one of the reasons I don’t have a current gen console but have had at least one from each generation going back to the mid 1990s.
If you ask more than I’m willing to spend, no sale. Sorry, guys.
Valve also said they are not willing to sell hardware at a loss so there is that
Michael Pachter is, was, and always will be a complete idiot. Back in the PS2 era he stated that it was no big deal if Sony sold out in North America, they could just move units over from Europe… ignoring the fact that both the video and electricity standards don’t match.
$700 isn’t a “death sentence”, know how we know this?
ROG Xbox Ally X - $1000
PS5 Pro - $750
Xbox Series X - $650
ROG Xbox Ally - $600
PS5 - $550
Steam Deck - $550
Xbox Series S - $450If Valve REALLY wanted to break people’s brains, they would release a “Supply your own RAM and storage” version for $399.
€399 I’m sold for a kit without ram or ssd
The steam NUC
Right now i have my steam deck in a dock hooked up to the tv along with a couple cheap bluetooth controllers. A tiny silent PC capable of true 1080p instead of upscaled 720p would be attractive. Sure I could build a SFFPC that could easily outperform the steam machine (but why? as my TV can only do 1080p/60fps), but I doubt I could build something as nice for a similar price.
It’s not a console, stop expecting console prices. A $1000 price point wouldn’t even surprise me.
That’s actually what i figured it would be. I’m 42 and this will be my first ever premade since i was old enough to build my own.
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.
Yeah.
My instant reaction was “$700? It’d be a miracle if Valve hits that. What’s Ars thinking?”
Yeah at 700 I’d probably buy one once my wife and I have permanent employment. It would make it a great htpc/game console
I really don’t understand the hand-wringing about the cost. I see comments all the time about how it’s “DOA” at some price or another and it strikes me as someone projecting their own preferences and values, including the “analyst” quoted in the article.
As an outside observer you don’t know a) Valve’s goals; b) almost anyone else’s preferences and values.
I say this as someone who enjoys gaming, won’t ever buy a console and won’t ever build a gaming rig. This product is perfect for me and I’d have to feel like Valve were purposely screwing me to not buy it. I may be a minority but I can’t be alone.
Yeah, you’re absolutely right. I’m in a slightly different demographic, but am still really interested in the steam machine. I’d be happy building my own gaming rig, but:
- Pricing out all that stuff, ordering it, building it is a lot of work, I’d want to see some benefit for that work,
- After pricing it all out, maybe I look at a steam machine and decide it’s a better deal.
Realistically, steam machines, consoles, and custom gaming rigs are all approximately the same hardware and the same market. If the price of the steam machine is going up, so is its competition.
Yeah I think that was my point about feeling like Valve is purposely screwing me. Microsoft showed with the Xbox Ally X that their appetite for hardware subsidies is waning (perhaps even their appetite for hardware at all).
Valve has a lot of goodwill with Steam Deck owners and I think if they price it at a number higher than any one person’s expectations, that person is less likely to think it’s Valve’s fault, than if Sony were to do the same.
I may be a minority
That would be a problem.
See point a. Everyone is so capitalism-brained they assume every company’s goal is to sell the maximum amount of product and anything less is abject failure. (Ok that’s a bit of hyperbole.) But Valve is a weird company and we just don’t know what their criteria for success is.
If they’re aiming for a market the same size or larger than the Steam Deck, they will probably struggle at higher price points. But if they’re look at 1-2M units? That could be doable with people like me. That’s a relatively small portion of the gaming market, but might be enough for them to be worth it.
A an 8GB RX 7600 is around $300. Add everything else and $700 sounds about right. May not sell high volumes but there’s got to be dozens of manufacturers making minipcs. It’s still a full on computer. It’s be a good value workstation. My gaming PC is my photo and video editor
Yeah… $700 sounds totally reasonable to me. Do I wish it were cheaper? Sure! I would love for it to be accessible to more people.
But $700 seems very reasonable for the hardware being offered.
If it’s 700 I’ll wait for a few months of reviews, 500 I’ll preorder it. I do want to replace my Xbox.
It’s basically a gaming laptop.
Taking out the screen, the windows license, and some of the margin since Valve will make it back with game sales, $1,000 was the minimum expectable price before RAM got pulled into the “AI” bubble.
If they can make the steam deck for $350, why would the steam machine cost 3x more? Similarly if Sony and Xbox are selling their consoles for $500-600 it would indicate that something a bit more would be feasible. Sony and Xbox get some economies of scale, but most evidence points to them selling at cost or making some profit (from what I recall).
Yeah, making something portable tends to cost more. If it wasn’t for tariffs and sudden ram price hike Steam Machine would have been priced cheap with the specs not being anything crazy over powered for a desktop PC.
If Valve had been able to move up their release by just a couple months they could have pushed out some reasonably priced Steam Machines out before ram prices went out of hand.
That couple months made a huge difference.
As long as it’s comparable price or cheaper than a pre-built of similar specs or building a similar build yourself, they’ll be a market for it. There’s always people looking to get into PC gaming and existing PC gamers who want their Steam library in a console form factor.
I’m still buying it
“I think Valve was hoping for a much lower price and that the component issue would be short-term,” Cole said. “Obviously it is looking more like a long-term issue.”
I think we all knew this would be a long term issue.
The shortages will be addressed. But prices ain’t coming down.
Probably 2 or 3 years before shortages are addressed.
With all the revenue from Steam, how much of a loss could they afford to go all in on with these? Do they care about profit or shifting the market from Windows to Linux (or, hell, just giving the finger to Microslop)?
Valve stated that they want this to be self sustaining by selling it at a normal profit.
Maybe with the RAM prices they’ll turn this back and just sell without a loss and focus on profits from Steam itself.
Right now I don’t think even they have the answer yet. They don’t have the volume to get the RAM prices down or stable so they’re getting buttfucked as much as the rest of us.
The problem is that these are computers. If they’re too cheap, companies will buy them in bulk, slap windows on them, and use them for office PCs. And if they’re sold at a loss, that then turns into a huge loss
Valve has said repeatedly they won’t subsidize it heavily because it’s more of a generic desktop than the deck was. A low subsidized price could attract buyers that wouldn’t spend money on games (ie. using for office machines)
Exactly. And we saw people doing that with the Steam Deck. Disney was using it to control their robots. Ukraine was using them to control IRL turrets. That’s just what we know of.
They would instantly catch an anti-trust case from Epic for trying to use their dominant software position to undercut hardware manufacturers and take control of both gaming hardware and software.
Do they think valve’s lawyers are not as good as Nintendo’s or something?
They were supposedly able to take a loss on the original Steam Decks, at least the lower priced 64GB models. There’s also an argument to be made that this device is primarily competing with consoles, where Steam doesn’t have a monopoly. Steam also allows games from other stores to be run on their unlocked device, it’s not their fault that Epic decided not to make an offical linux launcher.
But I’m not a lawyer, and I’m sure Epic will try to start anti-trust investigations over anything they can.
They were supposedly able to take a loss on the original Steam Decks, at least the lower priced 64GB models.
They. Did. Not.
The only thing remotely suggesting that is GabeN saying the price point was “painful” in a single interview.
Valve has stated that the Steam Decl wasn’t sold at a loss. GabeN was likely referring to the profit margins being very low, which is not the same as selling at a loss
Why the hell can’t this myth just die already?
Sweeny would sue Steam because Gabe farted and Tim didn’t get to smell it.
The problem with a price war is Valve is “just” a multi-billion dollar company, very impressive for their size but a $100bn company like Sony and especially a $3 trillion company like Microsoft could squeeze them out of the market.
And they would have to subsidise the cost by far more than Sony/Microsoft do due to the smaller scale of production and more expensive newer contracts.
Will the steam box have slots for ram or SSD so the user can upgrade the hardware later?
The m.2 SSD is easily accessible, it comes with a 2230 m.2 (same size as the Steam Deck), but has room to install a full size 2280 m.2. It only has room for 1 though, so while you can upgrade to a larger size you can’t add a second. Swapping out the m.2 will require cloning your drive or reinstalling SteamOS to the new drive.
There’s also a high speed microSD slot for even easier space upgrades, and microSDs with games can be swapped directly between the Deck and Machine.
For RAM, it uses laptop DDR5. It is user upgradable, but isn’t as easy to access as the m.2 drive is.
1Oh, Pachter. People listen to him again… He used to be a lolcow in the noughties.
