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.
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.
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)
Disappointing mostly because this was the perfect time for valve to eat all 3 console maker’s lunch
Honestly could sell them at a modest loss to make the price competitive with consoles then just rake in mountains of cash with game sales
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.
they could do something like give you back $120 of steam bucks rather than directly cutting the retail price
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.
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.
Yeah that makes too much sense
TRUE! fuck the techbros, keep those prices reasonable.
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)