TECH NEWS – Will Gabe Newell’s company cover some of the cost of the Valve machine, or will we have to pay the full amount ourselves?

The recently announced Steam Machine has led many to conclude that Valve is directly competing with consoles and trying to lure loyal PlayStation and Xbox users. However, one important factor could prevent this: the price. Initially, it was assumed that Valve would subsidize the hardware, as Sony and Microsoft have done. This would mean taking a loss on every unit sold, expecting to make real profits from game and accessory sales.

Valve could have done the same since they also receive a 30% share of Steam sales and sell accessories and other hardware compatible with the Steam Machine, such as the new Steam Controller and Steam Frame VR headset. However, it appears that Valve does not plan to follow this strategy. When asked by SkillUp if this would be a supported device, Valve’s software engineer Pierre-Loup Griffais clearly stated that it would not be.

“No, it’s more in line with what you might expect from the current PC market. Obviously, our goal is for it to be a good deal at that level of performance. Then there are features that are actually really hard to build if you are making your own gaming PC from parts. The small form factor and the noise level we achieved are really impressive, and we are excited for people to find out how quiet this thing is. We are also excited about some integration features, like HDMI CEC. We’ve also done a lot of work with Bluetooth and wireless, and we’ve designed it with four antennas so that you can have a great experience with four Bluetooth controllers,” Griffais said.

Without subsidies and based on rumors of a planned RAM price increase by Samsung, the Steam Machine could cost between $800 and $900. At that price, it would be hard to convince most console users to buy it when they could buy a PlayStation 5 Pro for the same price.

Source: WCCFTech