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The Steam Machine is actually a great prospect — we're just looking at it wrong
(www.xda-developers.com)
this post was submitted on 06 Mar 2026
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So I read this article and a lot of people are saying it's likely to be priced out of competitiveness in the console space due to the parts shortages.
I understand why they couldn't sell it at a loss. It's a general purpose computing device, and it would be too easy for a call centre somewhere to buy 100 of them, which would lead to 0 game sales for Valve...
But why couldn't they release it at the stupid $900 price point, but then offer a $100 - $200 Steam voucher along with it? It sidesteps the call centre issue because the hardware is still full price, but they recoup (some) of their costs for those that ACTUALLY want is as a games console
Then the same thing would occur—buyers not interested in using Steam would sell the vouchers or the accounts those vouchers are tied to.
The Index came with a free copy of Alyx
Beyond initial development costs, it didn't cost Valve anything to ship the Index with Alyx though. Bundling in a $200 voucher would be increasing the system price by $160 in direct cost to Valve for no reason, as consumers are likely to spend that after purchasing the system, but might be dissuaded by a high initial purchase price.
A more apt comparison in that scenario would be Valve bundling their entire software library with the Steam Machine, or developing a new game to bundle with it as a means of adding value.