Does Valve take a cut of software sales on Steam? If so, why do we expect Sony to sell its consoles at a loss, while not holding the same expectation for Valve?
Isn’t it just a mid-range PC for ~$1,100? Why would someone buy that just to use it like a regular PC and not use Steam? That just seems strange. I’m sure there are also many PS5 owners that bought the console but only got one or two games before the console collected dust.
Piracy and alternative storefronts don't exist on PS5. I could buy a steam machine and then exclusively buy my games from EA. They're also not charging you for the multiplayer access
That article is from 8 months after it released. Notably it doesn't count the Digital Edition, but I doubt it also got sold at a loss for that much longer.
I would guess that users of the Steam machine would mostly be as locked-in to Steam purchases as PS5 users are to PS Store purchases.
I stopped PC gaming about a decade ago and my current daily driver is a Macbook. I periodically play games on my a PS5 or XBOX, but there are a ton of great games on my Steam wishlist.
I feel like I'm the exact target market for this (although I'm not going to buy at this price point at this time). I don't want to bother with Windows and would love a 'console' allowing me to play most Steam games without a lot of hassle.
And it is the first time in history where storage and RAM cost double or triple what it cost 6 months ago. So unknown if Sony makes a profit from todays sales.
Sony is selling off old stocks at old future prices. They've already started hiking the price up - it's unlikely they'll eat the loss on hardware here either.