this post was submitted on 14 Nov 2025
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I don't think that Valve will sell the Steam Machine at a loss.
Closed-system console vendors often do, then jack up the prices of their games and make their money back as people buy games. So why not Valve?
Two reasons.
They sell an open system. If Valve sells a mini-PC below cost, then a number of people will just buy the thing and use it as a generic mini-PC, which doesn't make them anything. A Nintendo Switch, in contrast, isn't very appealing for anything than running games purchased from Nintendo.
They don't have a practical way to charge more for games for just Steam Machine users
their model is agnostic to what device you run a purchased game on. So even if they were going to do that, it'd force them to price games non-optimally for non-Steam-Machine users, charge more than would be ideal from Valve's standpoint.
Hah, this is where they get you and I’ve been dogpiled for raising this as an issue continuously. This is an illusion of an open system. Where are you going to buy games for Steam Machine? Steam obviously, there’s no competition. Then as your library grows you get more and more vendor locked. Then Valve does an Android application notarising switcheroo and you have Linux machine that’s no different from a Mac or an Android phone. Of course they can subsidise it because they can recoup it thanks to 30% cut and it’ll only accelerate the process.
Well that's certainly an...unusual position.
There's definitely competition. Is the competition great? Not really. But you can still buy and install games from Epic, Itch and GOG and run them on Steam hardware. It's just not as convenient. There's not really anything they can do about that. I hope one day soon someone makes a better frontend that supports other platforms better, and if they do, you'll be able to install it on Steam hardware, because that's what an open system means.
Closed hardware looks Like PS5, XBOX and Switch. No browser. No desktop. No access to any files. No mods. No emulation. No third party stores AT ALL. And in fact if you try to do any of those things, they will remotely brick your device.
Not sure how you get there...
What you’re saying doesn’t contradict that on Steam Machine you’re going to buy games from Valve only so it doesn’t matter that you can, in theory, buy from somewhere else. The bigger your library grows, the less likely you are to start buying games in another ecosystem. Valve doesn’t care if you „jailbreak” with a web browser for now. They’re in for a long game and there was no better time than now because in the US they can get around tariffs by selling this console as a PC.
What you're saying is just false. This is not a theory. I've owned a "Steam machine" for several years and regularly acquire and play games from other stores. Whether you buy games from Valve is entirely up to you.
No. That makes zero sense.
There is no jailbreaking. There's nothing to break. The system already allows you to do whatever you want. Just go into the menu and select "exit to desktop".
Why would you think PCs aren't impacted by tariffs?
Different rates for different products. I don’t follow US domestic politics that closely but last I’ve heard computer parts, displays and smartphones are at least temporarily exempted while toys (that’s consoles too) are subject to highest tariff rates.
Also, I’m describing how Valve plans to corner consumers, not the current state. So far they’re very much on track.
They are using a modified arch distro with KDE, yeah it defaults to steam big picture on launch but that can be changed, specially on the GabeCube. It's a computer, a literal computer with all the capabilities and support systems of arch Linux with KDE.
The amount of contributions they have done to the Linux gaming world to then use it in their consoles is insane. They didn't built it for themselves, they built it for everybody, then made it popular in their consoles so they get money back from increased sales on the games.
They did sell the deck at a loss, but that was a new concept and people were weary, price needed to be good. Now people know that the idea works, the picture changes.
I don't really care if they sell at a loss or no, I'm not buying one when I basically have the equivalent already at home, but saying that their plan is to corner consumers sounds like the other side of the lunacy spectrum as those that treat steam as religion.
Hmm. It seems you're actually correct on that one. Although I think they might have a hard time arguing that it's "just a PC" when it launches straight into a dedicated gaming environment on boot.
They import Steam Decks as PCs currently. I’m pretty sure this is also a part of consideration regarding next gen Xbox.