30°

DOTA 2 Beta Test?

Facebook page and twitter feed of DOTA 2 channels have leaked the info

Read Full Story >>
gamersbook.com
20°

Report: New York sues Valve over loot boxes

New York attorney general Letitia James called loot boxes 'quintessential gambling.'

Read Full Story >>
gamedeveloper.com
40°

Video game giant Valve facing UK lawsuit over pricing, commissions

Video game developer and distributor Valve must face a 656 million-pound ($897.7 million) lawsuit in Britain, which alleges it charged publishers excessive commissions for its Steam online store, after a tribunal ruled on Monday the case could continue.

220°

The Price Of Steam Machine Will Not Be Subsidized, Valve Clarifies

The price of Valve Corporation's recently announced Steam Machine will not be subsidized, the company has clarified.

Read Full Story >>
twistedvoxel.com
rlow195d ago

So what are we talking about? 5,7,8 hundred dollars??? Hmmmm.

Christopher94d ago

Probably $500 to $600. So, pretty standard console pricing nowadays. And I think a lot of the costs will come from increased prices of chips and materials as it is and why they are not trying to make it compete with the PS5 Pro or the like. AI is really ruining the pricing of a lot of industries out there.

derek94d ago

It'll likely be more than $600 if it isn't subsidized at all. Valve won't be producing a high volume of these things unless the demand is there.

SimpleDad94d ago

Get ready for a 1k plus... what are you dreaming about. RAM prices doubled and tripled in some cases.
Demand for this is huge.
Valve can't ship 3 mill launch so ... increase price less demand.

You are dreaming for a $500.

And taxes also... and shipping... fragile.

Vits95d ago

Of course they would not sell it at a loss. That would be a very bad idea, because unlike consoles, this is not a closed system. People can buy the device and never spend a single dollar on Steam games. So Valve cannot count on making money later like console companies do.

The real question is if Valve is willing to make only a tiny profit, so the final price can stay low for buyers. But even that has limits. Estimatives on the parts inside it, make the device cost around 430 dollars. If we pretend those prices will not change soon, even though we already know memory is getting more expensive, and then add average shipping and handling, which is usually around 20 percent, we end up at about 520 dollars.

Now it all comes down to how much profit Valve wants to make. Currently, most estimates put that consoles hardware operate with around 20 percent profit. If Valve does the same, the price would be about 630 dollars. But if they follow the normal PC profit margins, which is around 35 percent, then we are looking at around 700 dollars.

At 630 dollars, it already becomes too expensive for people who might buy it just on impulse. At that point, it is more for fans who really want it. At 700 dollars, it would probably only appeal to the most dedicated fans.

In my opinion, the best price for something like this, if they want strong adoption, would be around 550 dollars at most. And obviously, the lower the better.

coldfire98494d ago

This is not an of course at all. The Steam Deck was sold at a loss, so of course it is logical to speculate that valve would do so again. If the price is reasonable I'll still buy one most likely, might do the unthinkable and dual boot it with windows and linux even though I prefer steam os.

Vits94d ago

Valve never claimed that they sold the Steam Deck at a loss. That was just speculation from people on the internet, and it honestly doesn’t hold up under scrutiny if you actually analyze the hardware itself. The much more likely situation is that Valve operated with razor-thin margins, particulary with the 64GB model, not that they subsidized the hardware.

And again, as I said, they could very well do something similar with the Steam Machines to bring the price down to the $500–$600 range. But subsidizing it? That makes no sense for a company like Valve to do.

DMgHalt95d ago

Regardless of the price, it would be nice to have some standardized hardware for PC gaming that people can get, which will guarantee that games can run on it without players having to constantly worry about whether their setup meets the minimum spec requirements.

1nsomniac95d ago

...Stick to console dude, PC gaming is clearly not what your looking for.

ZycoFox95d ago

Yes, the issue is that you can't always trust the minimum requirements to give good performance, even though it should if using low settings or whatever those requirements are based on.

If playing a game, you usually want to be at least between minimum and recommend or above IMO, for the ideal experience anyway.

At the budget end of the scale the console is usually going to win, and in these days where hardware is more expensive especially so.

Miraak82 94d ago

I think most modern hardware can hand most games on the market nowadays , I can't think of any modern game that would truly struggle . You might not get the full performance or graphics but same could be said about the base ps5 or S2 and they can play em just fine and especially since I believe modern hardware only renders what's on the screen with games built around ssd . Tech is just more efficient and less load baring then previous generations , it is almost to the point of plateauing and will just come down to gaming preference

Michiel198994d ago

huh thats not any different than how it now is. It will be that until games come out that exceed the specs. Devs arent gonna halt development on graphical improvements cause that thing is out and wait until the next "gen", you just want it to be a console basically.

Flenter95d ago

So less powerful than base ps5 at maybe almost twice the price. Does Valve want this thing to sell or what?🫨?

Profchaos94d ago

If they did it would be competitively priced

spicelicka94d ago

I think the free online gaming, cheaper games via better steam sales, and access to a much bigger library of games definitely bring a lot of value, but only if it's $100-$200 more. Also important consider that there might be new consoles released in the next couple of years. This thing will have to drop in price significantly to be considered.

Gamersunite88094d ago

I say it'll be $600 bucks. I could be wrong, but I think that'll be the price.

Show all comments (27)