YouTube star LinusTechTips has revealed that Valve wasn’t overly impressed with his suggestion of a $500 price tag for the dubbed Steam Console.
“I can’t tell you what the price will be, because I literally don’t know,” he said on the November 15 episode of the WAN show.
“When I said I’m disappointed it isn’t going to follow a console pricing model, where its subsided by the fact that manufacturer is going to be taking 30% of every game sold on it over the lifespan of this thing, because I feel that would be a more meaningful product, they asked what I meant by console price and I said $500. Nobody said anything, but the energy in the room wasn’t great.”
I think it’s unrealistic they’ll price it at $500. I’d be pleasantly surprised if it’s $600. Above $700 things will get difficult, though. If you can build a more powerful PC for the same money, the cube loses much of its appeal. That goes for both nerds and normies, because those will buy an Xbox instead.
It’ll be an extremely niche market - the narrow range of nerdy PC players who don’t want to buy a laptop or a regular prebuilt, and don’t want to bother building their own.
A huge chunk of the Deck’s success is in its form factor. I don’t see much ROI on the Machine in that aspect.
I think you’re wrong. It appeals to gamers who want a simple living room PC and it appeals to console people who just want to plug something in and start playing. If the price is right, this may be huge. Also, it would actually be an upgrade for a lot of Steam users so there’s another huge market.
Unfortunately “console people who just want to plug something in and start playing” is a pretty big slice of the type of people that like playing multiplayer games especially AAAs which won’t always work. Not to mention they will still be served with a PC game so there will be all of the regular options like graphics that PC players are exposed to.
I’m really hoping Valve proves me wrong but I don’t think I’d recommend this device to a console only player as their first PC.
I hope I’m wrong; market success on this could stand to break at least some of the corporate living room triumvirate (though I’m not sure how popular Xbox is anymore tbf) and further development for Linux as an “it just works” system in a more mainstream context.
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I think it’s unrealistic they’ll price it at $500. I’d be pleasantly surprised if it’s $600. Above $700 things will get difficult, though. If you can build a more powerful PC for the same money, the cube loses much of its appeal. That goes for both nerds and normies, because those will buy an Xbox instead.
It’ll be an extremely niche market - the narrow range of nerdy PC players who don’t want to buy a laptop or a regular prebuilt, and don’t want to bother building their own.
A huge chunk of the Deck’s success is in its form factor. I don’t see much ROI on the Machine in that aspect.
I have high hopes for the Frame though.
I think you’re wrong. It appeals to gamers who want a simple living room PC and it appeals to console people who just want to plug something in and start playing. If the price is right, this may be huge. Also, it would actually be an upgrade for a lot of Steam users so there’s another huge market.
Unfortunately “console people who just want to plug something in and start playing” is a pretty big slice of the type of people that like playing multiplayer games especially AAAs which won’t always work. Not to mention they will still be served with a PC game so there will be all of the regular options like graphics that PC players are exposed to.
I’m really hoping Valve proves me wrong but I don’t think I’d recommend this device to a console only player as their first PC.
I hope I’m wrong; market success on this could stand to break at least some of the corporate living room triumvirate (though I’m not sure how popular Xbox is anymore tbf) and further development for Linux as an “it just works” system in a more mainstream context.
Your guess is as good as mine. Only time will tell.