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Valve confirms Steam Machine will be priced ‘like a PC with the same level of performance’
(www.videogameschronicle.com)
this post was submitted on 23 Nov 2025
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No, they couldn't, have you read about the PS3? They were a lot cheaper than building a similar system so several companies bought thousands to build clusters, I personally worked at a relatively small university that had a cluster made of dozens of PS3s, since each Playstation costed Sony around $200 my university on its own costed thousands to Sony, and I imagine every other university and some private companies did the same.
You mean the same PS3 that still was profitable?
Only after they closed their system, which they did because they were losing money to every single enterprise in the world who wanted a cluster and PS3 were the cheapest option.
The PS3 was using a rare CPU that you could only get from it or from some enterprise dealer at a much higher price. The Steam Machine is a standard x86 computer that can't match the ubiquitous ThinkCentres in price/performance.
If it's sold at a loss like a console it would beat the price/performance of any other x86 chip on the market, which is why they can't sell it at a loss, ergo my point.
Thry could absolutely do that. Valve makes a cut off every Steam game sold. If anything, it'd be MORE viable for them than any other console maker given the wider library
You're completely missing the point. People can buy steam machines and use them as a PC without ever opening steam, or worse, use them as servers or parts of a cluster. If Steam Machines were sold at a loss they would , by definition, be cheaper than equivalent hardware, so companies would buy 10k of them to put into a warehouse to run stuff because it would be cheaper than buying the same thing from other places. This is what happened to the PS3, non-blocked systems can't be sold at a loss because you can't guarantee that whoever is buying it will use them for your intended purpose.
If you're playing video games on PC, you fucking have steam.
@IzzyJ @Nibodhika
I personally think, that if your are gaming on linux you should value valve alot for how much money they have put into the linux ecosystem and it's not bad to buy at their store. On the other hand there is alot of gaming happing outside of steam (including things which won't make it to steam).
I do absolutely celebrate the contributions they've made, Proton beats the shit out of every alternative and it's not even close. Black hole vs mouse levels of curbstomp
I also think people with bad values should suffer for those values. I am an ideologue
So? PCs have other uses outside gaming, you know?
If you're playing video games on PC, did you not read it?
Yes, but my whole point was that PCs have other uses, so Valve selling a PC at a loss can't recover the money with games because people won't necessarily play games on that machine. Saying "if you're playing games" to that point is like someone explaining to you why seatbelts are needed in cars and you replying with "if you never crash they're useless", like OF COURSE that if we enter your hypothetical example everything works, the whole point is about the disaster that would happen if that wasn't the case.
I find it highly unlikely that those purchasing a steam machine aren't doing so with gaming in mind
Re-read my answer, if they were sold at a loss like you suggested it would be beneficial for companies to purchase them to be office, servers or anything, costing Valve money without bringing them any profit afterwards because those machines would be purchased without gaming in mind, only because they were the cheapest available option (since all of the others have some profit margin and steam machines would be sold at a loss).
They could do what many early tech companies did and offer a seperate price for business use if that becomes an problem
Yeah, because business can't simply ask employees or random people to buy the machines, rebuy from them and still get them cheaper. Hell, they can even advertise they will be buying machines for 10% higher price and let random people offer it to them. It's an open platform, you can't prevent people from getting it. Selling the machines at a loss is a sure way to have Valve bleed money, just like it happened with the PlayStation 3 until they closed the system. I would rather the hardware costs a bit more so that the platform can remain open.
That is what lawsuits are for. Why didn't this happen every other time a company did it?
Can you name any other time someone sold hardware with an open platform at a loss?
You seem to think the Steam Machine will be much faster than the specs imply.
If they're sold at a loss, by definition they have to be cheaper than anything sold at a gain with the same performance.
And if my grandma had wheels she'd be a bicycle.
And then we could make money having people riding her. If you're going to start a hypothetical scenario of Valve still being able to make money selling at a loss you can't be angry that people are replying on the basis your premise is true.
You're the one that brought up Valve selling at a loss because you think anything under $800 would be selling at a loss. I'm telling you it is not.
I never said $800 would be selling at a loss, in fact I said that there's a good possibility that they can sell it cheaper than 800 and still make a profit because they buy things in bulk. You were the first one who even mentioned it being profitable for them selling at a loss:
Which is completely false, if they sold at a loss by definition they would lose money on each sale, and because it's an open platform people would just buy the cheap hardware to be used for any project which would make Valve bleed money like Sony did with their PS3 until they closed the system.
You're quoting someone else.
Regardless, this is a thread about whether Valve could still make money selling at a loss, you stepped into it claiming they couldn't compete in price/performance, which implies that they couldn't compete even selling at a loss (since that was the central point of the discussion)
I wasn't, it was the person I'm replying to, the one I mixed out with you. Sorry for that, thought it was the same person.
I never claimed that.
No, it's a thread about the market differences between the PS3 and the Steam Machine. You're just being so irrational in your obsession with being right that you don't know what you're talking about or with whom.
Nope, the PS3 was just an example of why you can't sell at a loss with an open platform. Selling at a loss was the central point of the discussion, if that flew over your head it's fine, but don't try to make it my fault that you jumped in the middle of a discussion about why Valve can't sell at a loss and said:
Which implies that even with the Steam Machines being sold at a loss a ThinkCenter would have a best price/performance which is just impossible.
This is going in circles and bringing nothing constructive.
Yes, you are definitely bringing nothing constructive with your goalpost moving.