this post was submitted on 24 Jun 2026
457 points (98.1% liked)
Technology
87649 readers
3891 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Valve already stated from the beginning that they didn't want to subsidize the cost like a console but they also believe that idea is infeasible which isn't true, especially in the short term.
The whole point of the hardware is to push steam software and increase the Linux marketshare which would encourage other OEMs to offer SteamOS or Linux from factory. No one is buying this to not use it for gaming under a subsidized price because there are much better options for that purpose.
The primary buyer would still be a steam user, meaning they'd make that money back on steam purchases. They could even run a launch promo to offer reduced price with a steam wallet combo. At least give it a month or two before the final price sets in stone.
Even if they had launched at the original $750 earlier this summer with a fat price increase warning, I think the average user would have been more receptive to buying at the full price in the future. It's the getting slapped with a $1k pricetag from the start that's got everyone shell shocked.
Steam Doesnt even need to push hardware to increase sales... plenty of idiots like me with a 200 game backlog, and didnt even bother to stress the valve CDN by downloading the gamr even once