this post was submitted on 24 Nov 2025
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[–] The_Grinch@hexbear.net 31 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (4 children)

They're afraid of a company doing what happened to the PS3 when it allowed you to install whichever OS you wanted. Companies bought 1000s of them and turned them into cheap supercomputer clusters, never buying a single game. That would be even easier to do with the steam machine since it's just a computer. Think of all the AI startups.

[–] Le_Wokisme@hexbear.net 19 points 3 days ago (2 children)

they could do something like give you back $120 of steam bucks rather than directly cutting the retail price

[–] The_Grinch@hexbear.net 17 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

That's an idea. Even $60 in your account, and maybe it comes with all the valve games preinstalled or something like that. I'd love that course because you would be getting all these new PC users with no steam games, and every one of them would have a base set of games they could play together. That would give them a baseline network effect, which is what was keeping them on xbox/playstation in the first place.

I get the impression though that valve likes to keep the value proposition of their products as simple and straightforward as possible, with a minimum of whizbang extras. I imagine they do it because in a market full of scammy microtransactions, it feels more "honest" to the customer.

[–] JoeByeThen@hexbear.net 9 points 2 days ago

Iirc, when they released the knuckles/index they gave away copies of Half Life Alyx. So free shit isn't necessarily out of the equation.

[–] ElChapoDeChapo@hexbear.net 12 points 3 days ago

Yeah that makes too much sense

[–] Alaskaball@hexbear.net 7 points 2 days ago

TRUE! fuck the techbros, keep those prices reasonable.

[–] The_Walkening@hexbear.net 2 points 2 days ago

It doesn't seem all that great for that with its specs anyways - 8GB VRAM, 16GB RAM doesn't sound terribly appealing unless it's well under 1k for that when you're probably getting less VRAM per dollar than buying a Mac Studio at like 4k (96GB)