To be a loss leader doesn't the need to lead to something?

The only way it could make sense that they're selling these at a loss would be - oh yeah. They're coming straight for Nintendo / Sony / Microsoft now, huh?

The day I see a steam console in wal mart is a day I will be very happy.

Honestly I was saving up money to get a PS5 and ditch PC gaming. But then I saw valve’s announcement about steam machine and decided to get a steam deck when I have enough.

It’s literally a no brainer because I can play my current library at no extra cost whereas with ps5 I gotta pay for online as well as the games.

Steam's business model does prevent it from pricing its consoles like Sony, Xbox, Nintendo, etc. since they need the console itself to be profitable, not just a means of bringing in games sales.

It's plausible that they're taking into account an uptick in overall game sales from this console - at least for me, I've been purchasing new games mostly off of steam rather than playstation/nintendo ever since I got a steamdeck - but you're right that they aren't going to sell at a loss.

Regardless of the price (and whether or not I even buy one), I think it's healthy to have another "big" player in the console market.

Cost aside. If they don't price it competitively between the Xbox and the PS5, the Steam Machine will be DOA.

The Deck is a perfect example of what they should try to replicate. If they don't do that, it will flop.

I actually think that, while it's maybe a fun topic for idle conversation...it doesn't have a huge impact in the way traditional console pricing normally does.

With a traditional console, what the console vendor chooses to do on hardware is what you get. Maybe, as with Microsoft on the Xbox Series X/Series S, you get a high and low end model, but that's as much choice as you get. All the games are made for that hardware, and whether the platform lives and dies depends on it.

But...that's not really true of the Steam Machine. It's just another PC, albeit preconfigured for Steam and HTPC-oriented. If you want to get a lower-end PC or a higher-end PC, you have the option of getting one and plugging it into a TV and running the same games on it and save some money or with a bit more visual bling. The games for PCs are already more or less written to scale up and down with hardware.

And it's not like Valve's platform is gonna live or die based on the Steam Machine the way a traditional console generation is, where success of a hardware console is high-stakes for the manufacturer and the players in successfully getting a game library going. I'd guess that it might help Valve make strategic inroads into gaming in the living room. But even if it completely bombs, Valve is gonna keep right on selling games to people to run on PCs (and the Deck) and their huge game library isn't going anywhere.

What the hell is a "loss leader"?

I agree we don't know if they're loss leaders yet. I will say that even if the hardware is priced at a loss, though, it'll sell more Steam games. Ultimately I don't know if it really matters.

Though yeah, people should get past headlines. Lol

I‘m always amazed at the amount of people believing the Steam Machine will be sold for the same or less than the most expensive version of the Steam Deck while being six times as powerful.

It can't be a loss leader.

The steam machine is, hardware-wise, just a regular Mini-PC. Valve even lets you put whatever OS you want on there. So if this was a loss leader, that would mean that non-gamers and even small businesses would buy these, would install Windows on them and use them as office PCs, with Steam probably not even installed on the PC.

With the Steam Deck, the form factor made it impractical or at least really weird to use them as office PCs. The steam machine doesn't have that issue.

“stop speculating! it doesn’t align with MY speculation” oh ok.