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by benologist 4634 days ago
Valve are definitely in a position to sell machines at a loss and make it up on content and new customers ala Amazon and Kindle. I would expect if they were to subsidize the price it would be far below console levels to pursue the billion or whatever casual gamers that don't use Steam, not merely to try and carve out a piece of Microsoft and Sony's pie.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidewalt/2012/03/07/valve-gabe...
1 comments
vinkelhake 4634 days ago
Console manufacturers have been able to sell hardware at a loss knowing that any game running on the machine is going to come through them. The Steam Machines, on the other hand, are just PC's and it doesn't sound like they'll be locked down to only allow SteamOS and its games to run on it.

Look at the specs we're discussing. Even the low-end version is decidedly non-casual.

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benologist 4634 days ago
I think most of the content is going to go through Steam - alternatives (especially anything the manufacturers will shit out) aren't going to measure up where it matters with content. This would be similar to Android where the biggest store, Play, has more than an order of magnitude more of everything than the second biggest, Amazon.

Those specs are high end but that also means the device will be compatible with games for the rest of the decade.

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