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.
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.
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
Michael Pachter being comically wrong and out of touch was a running joke at Ars Technica and gamesindustry.biz back in the day. He’s the Jim Cramer of industry analysts.
Honestly, if they make it with upgradable RAM, M2 SSD and GPU you’re essentially buying 1 and getting gen 2 and 3 for 50% off.
I’m game for the barebones version. As a matter of fact, that’s what I’m hoping they do, otherwise, I don’t think I’ll get a Steam Machine.
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 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.
Well, they should be looking at low to mid range modern gaming laptops and minimum the pro versions of consoles
What would be a good price range to compare it for low to mid range modern gaming laptops?
$650-1200 USD
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
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)?
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 could prevent this by doing it like the Steam Deck and requiring an x year old Steam account with at least y game purchases on it to be allowed to order one. Businesses aren’t going to grab secondhand consumer hardware to save a buck, and even if they are the majority of Machine buyers wouldn’t be looking to sell (and the margin necessary to get someone to effectively put the price of a Machine on layaway then ship it to some business and pay taxes twice will probably erase any gains the company would possibly see from using Steam Machines instead of Optiplexes)
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)
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.
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.
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.
Back in November, the SM announcement inspired me to get an off-brand mini gaming PC with a 8745HS and 16GB DDR5 / 512GB SSD for a little less than $400. That machine today is now $500. Its 780M is about double the graphical power of the Deck, so assuming pricing is proportional to the GPU, the SM would’ve been like $499 in November and $599 at today’s prices.
Small sample size and perhaps invalid assumptions, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s correct. Then again, the RTX 5080 I was also looking at the time for $1000 is now $1500.
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
As I said, how they arrive at the price isn’t something I care about. They could be making a loss or a killing and it’d be all the same to me.
What is life if you aren’t spending some of it on stuff you enjoy doing? Adults should be able to spend large amounts of money on stuff that is primarily a toy if they enjoy that toy. I get it if you’re saying you literally cannot afford to eat and buy that expensive of a toy, but for most people saving their pennies for long enough warrants buying an expensive toy. It’s also fine if you prefer spending your money on experiences rather than things, but saying it’s an invalid purchase because it’s a toy is pretty silly.
but saying it’s an invalid purchase because it’s a toy is pretty silly.
It would be pretty silly to say that, wouldn’t it? Luckily it’s not something I said.
What is life if you aren’t spending some of it on stuff you enjoy doing?
Framing it as depriving myself is an interesting approach, but as much of an egotist as I am, the equation is a smidge more complicated than that. Because I don’t spend money on toys it was not a source of stress when both my wife and I needed some dental work done last month. Sure, I’d like to have fun, but I’d also prefer not to stress about money when big expenses pop up. I spend a bit on myself here and there but I remember the '90s and compared to then I am absolutely drowning in entertainment. It’s truly magical.
…but that means that if an entertainment experience of some kind is priced higher than a certain point then I’m just not that fussed passing on it. My Steam Deck has plenty of life left in it yet!
I hope I can hold off because I wasn’t planning on buying new pc hardware until 2027. But what if the steam machine is sold out and the powerful components are unattainable by that point?
Gotta get my money’s worth from the old stuff.
I’m still buying it
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.
1Oh, Pachter. People listen to him again… He used to be a lolcow in the noughties.
