I don’t quite understand the criticism. It’s not gonna be top of the line, but it’s more than enough to replace my dying laptop from 2015 that I pretty much only ever use like a desktop anyway. And I can save myself the time and effort of picking parts, building, and dealing with shit not working as expected.
If it was sold at a loss, businesses would scrape the whole supply and pave them for windows desktops.
That just wouldn’t happen unless the steam machine costs less than $300. That’s usually the top a corporation is willing to pay for bulk mini nucs, which is all that they want for clerk desks. Information workers get laptops with dell or HP embossed in the lid. Workstations for top design or video editing require way more juice than the Steam Machine can deliver, those are bought on order to professional boutiques, or they just buy Apple. Also, no administrator will sit on the steam shop page to buy one at a time, they like their bulk purchases and Valve can simple refuse anyone buying hundreds of machines. Then, corporations don’t just want the PC, they want tech support, advanced guarantee schemes, etc. This usually come with a subscription per seat. All things Valve simply won’t provide. It won’t even register as an option for businesses.
This is an unfounded concern.
Lotta small businesses out there.
Not enough to cause a shortage. As I said. No business will pay more than a couple hundred for a PC. If they need more juice, then the steam machine won’t be it. It is more like an enthusiast or a content creator midlevel machine.
This definitely isn’t true. Every company I’ve worked for has provided fairly expensive laptops. Really curious where you got the idea that businesses are universally so cheap they’d end up spending more long term because they bought absolute trash computers.