The price of the Steam Machine has finally been revealed and, as expected, it’s quite costly. Set to begin shipping out next week, the Steam Machine will come in two models. The “cheapest” of the pair comes with 512GB of storage and will go for $1,049, while the 2TB edition of the Steam Machine is retailing for $1,349. And while recent component shortages are what primarily led to the final price of the Steam Machine being so expensive, Valve also revealed that it made one key decision that resulted in this pricing scheme.
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In a new write-up on the Steam website, Valve further explained its own thought process when it came to the price of the hardware. Expectedly, Valve blamed the current tech landscape as the main reason that the Steam Machine ended up soaring past $1,000. However, it also made clear that it was unwilling to sell the device at a loss, which is something that many other hardware manufacturers often do. Because of this, Valve is selling the Steam Machine for closer to the cost of manufacturing it, as it’s not trying to compete in the same way that other companies might with their products.
“We think of Steam Machine as an extension of PC gaming, not as a console. The traditional console model is to sell hardware at a loss and make up the revenue with subscription services or by selling games that are locked-in to the hardware,” Valve wrote. “We think this can make sense for a single business in the short term but that open ecosystems are better for customers over the long term. PC gaming’s history proves this: The openness of the PC gaming space has enabled it to be the primary driver of hardware and software innovation for decades.”
“The strength of PC gaming is the ability to play the games you want on the hardware you want,” Valve continued. “Steam Machine is a solution to these problems (and we think it’s a great one), but it’s not the only solution, and we don’t want it to be.”
Because of Valve’s unwillingness to sell the Steam Machine at a loss, it shouldn’t come as a shock that the cost of the hardware ended up being so high. Even though the Steam Machine has had more widespread appeal than many other Valve products have, it was always going to be a niche device for a niche audience. With this in mind, Valve certainly doesn’t want to take a monetary hit for every unit that it sells, especially since most people picking it up are surely part of the Steam ecosystem already.
Still, even if this reasoning makes sense on the part of Valve, it doesn’t make the price of the Steam Machine any more palatable for the average customer. As such, it remains to be seen if the hardware ends up finding widespread commercial success for Valve in the months and years to come.
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Image Courtesy of Sony
