i swear i read somewhere that they were shootin for around $400 for a base model
this post was submitted on 14 Nov 2025
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No. It's going to be sub PS5 in terms of performance and should be priced accordingly. You can make the argument that games are a bit cheaper on Steam so they can maybe charge a premium for that.
I am ostensibly the target market for this as I refuse to play games at my desk, only the couch. But I would love to get into the Steam ecosystem and play on my couch and PCVR titles. But I would only consider one if it could do the things my PS5 does at a similar price for both the system and VR headset.
Honestly, they could sell at a loss and still profit. Steam has the biggest selection of games bar none, they've built a culture of buying games too collect them with no intention of playing them, and they get a decent cut of every sale. If they thought of it as a 10 year plan they could sell this thing for $400, and undercut the entire rest of the condole scene, land this in the living room of every kid who wants to game world wide, and literally crush the big 3 in sales.
And then Microsoft or Sony would bulk buy 10k steam machines to use in their server rooms. They can't sell at a loss because the hardware is not locked, otherwise people could just buy these and use them for whatever and Valve wouldn't see a cent from those machines. At the very least they need to be sold at a neutral price point, but more than likely they're looking to get some profit over them.
And then Microsoft or Sony would bulk buy 10k steam machines to use in their server rooms
They'd need 10k steam accounts tho
Yes, it would be very difficult for the owners @outlook to create 10k accounts.
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At 1000 bucks you are dangerously close to a 9600 9060XT 16gb build, which would run circles around this performance wise.
There is no way its this expensive. It would be deader than a doornail on arrival.
If this thing isn't 750 or less, itll be an impossible sell.
Number of investors think you should be willing to invest in a machine that you probably don't have money for to enrich them. They think you should buy games at $70 or something instead of wait for them to be $30 like on sale. Like I wait. Not all of us want to be in debt.
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They already tried that with the original steam machines and it flopped hard. It'll be significantly better value or it'll flop again, simple. They're clearly optimizing for price based on the vram/ram specs. Yeah maybe it'll go up after launch but out of the gate it'll be sub-$500/512gb otherwise the whole exercise is pointless
Competing with the console prices is not likely. Not only will they probably sell hardware at a loss, but they step on Sony and Microsoft territory, with whom they have deals to bringing games to steam.
Selling at a loss works for consoles because games will recoup the loss. For pc there is no guarantee. If the steam box is that cheap, corporate sector will order steam machines (by the 100s or 1000s), without guarantee to recoup the loss.
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All of this is going to be based on the fluctuation of RAM prices and tariffs, as well as whether or not Valve has an existing stockpile of RAM from 6 months ago.
FWIW, Sony just announced a Japan-only PS5, sans optical drive, for about $350. Now, US prices are remaining higher, but the GabeCube is likely to have less performance than a PS5. I can't see them going much over $600 and still having a value proposition. Even that is going to be based on the gigantic library of Steam games that can be played on it that aren't on the PS5.
From the GPU specs in expecting a firmly mid range machine. Probably about the price of a PS5 Pro, but with the performance of a base PS5.
They could sell me a wrapped up bc250 and I'd still buy it before any other brand just because.