A an 8GB RX 7600 is around $300. Add everything else and $700 sounds about right. May not sell high volumes but there's got to be dozens of manufacturers making minipcs. It's still a full on computer. It's be a good value workstation. My gaming PC is my photo and video editor

Michael Pachter is, was, and always will be a complete idiot. Back in the PS2 era he stated that it was no big deal if Sony sold out in North America, they could just move units over from Europe... ignoring the fact that both the video and electricity standards don't match.

$700 isn't a "death sentence", know how we know this?

ROG Xbox Ally X - $1000
PS5 Pro - $750
Xbox Series X - $650
ROG Xbox Ally - $600
PS5 - $550
Steam Deck - $550
Xbox Series S - $450

If Valve REALLY wanted to break people's brains, they would release a "Supply your own RAM and storage" version for $399.

I really don't understand the hand-wringing about the cost. I see comments all the time about how it's "DOA" at some price or another and it strikes me as someone projecting their own preferences and values, including the "analyst" quoted in the article.

As an outside observer you don't know a) Valve's goals; b) almost anyone else's preferences and values.

I say this as someone who enjoys gaming, won't ever buy a console and won't ever build a gaming rig. This product is perfect for me and I'd have to feel like Valve were purposely screwing me to not buy it. I may be a minority but I can't be alone.

I have been, since day fucking one, befuddled by how people think this thing is going to be anything less than $700, it just does not add up to me.

It's not a console, stop expecting console prices. A $1000 price point wouldn't even surprise me.

We expected it to be more than that, actually. If it's $700, that's pretty good. It's not a Switch. It's a prebuilt gaming PC in a tiny form factor. Building a gaming PC today with the same horsepower would probably set you back a lot more than that, and you'll also have a giant tower taking up space.

It's not for me, but I can think of at least 3 people in my family who would get a lot of value out of it at that price point. No PC-building headaches, no researching every bit of hardware and comparing prices and performance, no tedious planning of the cooling layout, no thermal paste, no separate warranties and RMA headaches for every individual component, no Windows bullshit, not needing an entire corner of the room just for the tower, perfect for the living room, driver and software updates that apply to and work for every customer, I could go on. I don't see any downside for the average gamer. Sure, if you're an FPS penny pincher who simply has to OC and have the best of the best and latest hardware, it'll not appeal to you. But that's a minority of gamers.

$700 is a dream. $1,000 is reasonable in the current climate I guess, but pushing it a little. $1,500 would be unfortunate, but it really depends on what extra value the system comes with from Valve. I wanna know their RMA and warranty plans. If they're anything north of "Kafkaesque", which is how it is with virtually every other hardware manufacturer/reseller, the extra money might actually be worth it, for one's mental health. If they send out a replacement unit before you have to return a defective one, for example, that would be enough to justify a little more cost, but that's coming from someone with a long and storied history of nightmarish, abusive RMA practices. I'd suck a dog's dirty dick to not have to go through that shit again.

“I think Valve was hoping for a much lower price and that the component issue would be short-term,” Cole said. “Obviously it is looking more like a long-term issue.”

I think we all knew this would be a long term issue.

It's basically a gaming laptop.

Taking out the screen, the windows license, and some of the margin since Valve will make it back with game sales, $1,000 was the minimum expectable price before RAM got pulled into the “AI” bubble.

With all the revenue from Steam, how much of a loss could they afford to go all in on with these? Do they care about profit or shifting the market from Windows to Linux (or, hell, just giving the finger to Microslop)?

Here's a way to think of it:

It's a mini-pc.

But a bit bigger.

So... yeah, even if it is expensive by console pricing standards... $600 to $1000 is actually a pretty reasonable range for comparably powerful mini-pcs.

Look up like NUCBoxes or Minisforum miniPCs.

The runor that MooresLawIsDead was initially running with was that the actual custom chip they are using was originally slated to be used in something like a new variant of a MicroSlop Surface tablet.

AMD fabbed a bunch, MicroSlop bailed on the idea, leaving AMD with a bunch of weird custom chips they don't know wtf to do with.

Valve then goes to AMD, begins to uh, think with portals, or whatever.

As long as it's comparable price or cheaper than a pre-built of similar specs or building a similar build yourself, they'll be a market for it. There's always people looking to get into PC gaming and existing PC gamers who want their Steam library in a console form factor.

They can set the asking price to whatever they want but I have zero interest in the "why" in terms of a high price, which for me is anything over about £450. Anything more than that and it simply isn't appealing to me. I don't care whether that's reasonable or not in terms of their costs. My wallet cannot in any form justify anything more on what is primarily a toy. It's one of the reasons I don't have a current gen console but have had at least one from each generation going back to the mid 1990s.

If you ask more than I'm willing to spend, no sale. Sorry, guys.

Will the steam box have slots for ram or SSD so the user can upgrade the hardware later?

I hope I can hold off because I wasn’t planning on buying new pc hardware until 2027. But what if the steam machine is sold out and the powerful components are unattainable by that point?

Gotta get my money’s worth from the old stuff.

I'm still buying it

Right now i have my steam deck in a dock hooked up to the tv along with a couple cheap bluetooth controllers. A tiny silent PC capable of true 1080p instead of upscaled 720p would be attractive. Sure I could build a SFFPC that could easily outperform the steam machine (but why? as my TV can only do 1080p/60fps), but I doubt I could build something as nice for a similar price.