Not particularly. Steam gets 30% back on all game sales, so if they can make sure the steam machine gets only to people with established steam accounts, then they’re probably coming out ahead.
But what I am implying is that if AI hadn’t jumped prices soo much, they probably could have gotten last gen 2tb drives for much less than $200, which would make them pretty price competitive. I got mine as the next Samsung pro line was launching (I believe I saw a few new ones for $300 at the time), and while they were a good deal at the time, they were not a unicorn. And given I’m pretty sure the steam machine only supports pcie4 drives, though I might be wrong about that (besides, almost no one needs pcie5 drives outside of very specific use cases), so again, if the AI madness hadn’t occurred, a $800 steam machine with 2tb of storage would have been a possibility. Which is yet another reason to say fuck AI.
I mean, before the AI bullshit picked up, I managed to get a couple of used Samsung 4tb 990 ssds for $250 a piece. $800 for a nice console/PC with that much storage wasn’t much of a reach then, given consoles usually are sold at cost to get you invested in the ecosystem.
Yep. Genuinely would have gotten it if on steam, just want to make sure I can continue to play it if I want to in many years time.
My point is that while it’s a pc, it’s more positioned to be a console. If steam limited sales to one per customer and only for established steam accounts for the first runs (like they are already beginning to do for the steam deck and controllers), then they could force it to be more of a console. I do think it’ll still be a bad launch, as the goal of the steam machine clearly is to put them in Xbox territory for regular consumers, and the current price and any other changes probably won’t help that for new customers.