Valve’s Steam Machine finally has a price: a whopping $1,049 for the 512GB configuration or $1,349 for the 2TB version. And those are without bundled controllers, which drive up the cost more.
The prices are so high in part because Valve isn’t subsidizing the hardware, and the company has already indicated that the component crisis forced it to reconsider its initial pricing plans. In an interview with the YouTube channel Gamers Nexus, Valve engineers discussed the reality of sourcing RAM in 2026, with take-it-or-leave-it prices as memory and other components remain in short supply, from only a few vendors like Samsung, Micron, and SK Hynix.
[…]
Valve, of course, isn’t the only company in a bind over memory shortages, as the crunch is forcing many hardware makers to make significant pricing changes. Even Apple CEO Tim Cook is warning of incoming price hikes for iPhones, Macs, and other devices. And the RAM crunch isn’t projected to get better anytime soon.
3 hoursI’m not sure why you are getting down votes.
The reasons fur the demand sick, but you are correct, demand is fast outstripping supply… Price rises are inevitable.
- Cocodapuf@lemmy.worldEnglish1 hour
Yeah, the cartel comment implies price fixing or a monopoly or something, which really isn’t the case. This is really clearly a case of demand going through the roof (for entirely stupid and irresponsible reasons) and supply not being able to meet it.
But that’s what I get for using critical thinking amongst a mob, this is on me.
- AliasVortex@lemmy.worldEnglish51 minutes
It can be both. The three RAM manufactures (Samsung, Micron, and SK Hynix) have a historical record of price fixing and collusion (I believe Gamers Nexus has some excellent reporting on this). It isn’t just supply and demand, it’s that three sketchy companies have the world over a barrel and may well be using the demand spike to keep prices (artificially) high with the knowledge that nobody else can enter the market and that it takes YEARS and a truly ridiculous amount of money to scale up production to increase supply.
- 87Six@lemmy.zipEnglish7 hours
Damn the verge now just quotes GN? They may as well just link their video without writing anything, lol. They added nothing to this article.
Not that I can read much of it because of the paywall.
If you click “read mode” (im on librewolf but any firefox fork will do) you can access the whole article just fine.
- teohhanhui@lemmy.worldEnglish5 hours
paywall
Probably doesn’t help in this case, but check out Bypass Paywalls Clean :)
- hirihit640@sh.itjust.worksEnglish9 hours
From 12:48 of the video:
Gamers Nexus: “Were you able to lock in contracts for memory with the suppliers directly or did you have to jump through a bunch of hoops or…”
Rep from Valve: “Look there’s no contract, there’s nothing. Those guys…they are…they give us a price every month, and they say ‘you can buy that many’, and it’s yes or no, and if we say no then they never talk to us again”.
Gamers Nexus also links another video they made specifically about the DRAM cartel.
- 10 hours
I hate micron so much now especially. They basically rug pull all consumers and only sell B2b now. So they can make more money on Ai datacenters.
Problem is there are only a few companies that even sell memory. And micron made it so much worse for the consumer market. I will not forgive, I will not forget.
- Random Dent@lemmy.mlEnglish4 hours
I really hope China or someone else can step up and just flood the entire market with cheap components eventually.
- buddascrayon@lemmy.worldEnglish3 hours
They are trying. But there is a downside to everything. Once China has full function to basically replace the manufacturing of processors and memory in Taiwan they no longer have anything holding them back from bombing Taiwan into submission. And several incentives to do so to eliminate their competition.
Yes but giving up profits is not what a company does…
And you say forgive, as if they are your friend or something. Its a corporation. They don’t give a fuck about you as a person.
Almost all corporations doesn’t. There are exceptions. Kagi, the search engine, will give your monthly subscription money back if you didn’t search during the month. How cool is that. That’s someone who actually wants to provide a product users are happy with.
- Jankatarch@lemmy.worldEnglish4 hours
Ngl relatable, I too often mention my interests out of place.
But it’s not out of context. Rather it, merely has an existence in which the distance between in-context and out-of-context disappears, and the topic exist as neither related nor unconnected. A bona fide symphrantasia if you will.
In my commenting career I often make niche, anime poetry references, and searching for them based on the few words I remember can be hard; and that’s why I use kagi, the not-google search engine, start your free trial for 100 searches per month today or upgrade to infinite searches for only $10/month from link below.
It’s fine in my opinion. I mention stuff I like and will keep doing that. :)
- boonhet@sopuli.xyzEnglish9 hours
They still sell consumer memory IIRC, just not their own brand. They’ll make DDR5 for others at inflated prices though.
- ZILtoid1991@lemmy.worldEnglish9 hours
Godawful AI generated soap opera featuring anthropomorphic fruits.
- hirihit640@sh.itjust.worksEnglish8 hours
insert veggie tales meme about the future being AI generated
- hume_lemmy@lemmy.caEnglish10 hours
And so companies can fire the people who do the work (and hire them back later to fix the damage done by the agentic AI), too. Don’t forget that part.
- GalacticRobot@lemmy.worldEnglish8 hours
Hire them back at a lower pay none the less. People will and are desperate for work, so it won’t be difficult.
- 13 hours
After reporting how much the Steam Machine costs, I could tell already. RAM manufacturers are in paradise right now!
- JcbAzPx@lemmy.worldEnglish4 hours
There’s going to be a bloodbath when the AI bubble finishes popping.
If RAM prices are so bad, couldn’t Valve give an option to order a Steam Machine with no RAM? So that people could use RAM they already have or buy some locally for a lower price.
- plyth@feddit.orgEnglish5 hours
They give away their OS for free. So add a motherboard, a CPU, a case and a graphics card to it and you can use your own RAM.
- Baggie@lemmy.zipEnglish13 hours
I get where you’re coming from. The average person doesn’t know how to build a PC, and this is marketed as a plug and play device. Probably wouldn’t be worth the support calls, returns, compatibility issues etc when people accidentally buy the wrong one.
- SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish14 hours
Probably decided not to do that. I’m curious of their reason(s).
It’s not worth it to offer it. The steam machine is going to sell out regardless of the price, just like the steam deck did even after the price hikes. Not because there’s going to be such demand, but because supply is still constrained.
A model without RAM is going to cost valve extra to support (troubleshooting and whatnot), so why bother when you can just sell the unit that comes with the RAM.
- GalacticRobot@lemmy.worldEnglish8 hours
Is it? It’s not like Valve has shut down the ‘pre-order’ page. If they already manufactured the devices, they should of had lower RAM prices, and if they haven’t completed manufacturing and have to pay elevated pricing, seems like a device that you don’t release currently. Especially since the device is mostly off the shelf parts, and SteamOS improvements have been the real selling point. I am not sure what Valve is thinking, releasing a device that underperforms a PS5 Pro, which is $200 less and comes with a 2TB drive and a controller.
Valve has zero obligation to throw gamers a bone, but the pricing on the Steam Machine seems incredibly bone headed., especially with as much competition for handhelds in that price bracket which will perform similar to the Steam Machine and have screens and controllers built in. And many of them you can install SteamOS on and have the same experience.
- InvalidName2@lemmy.zipEnglish5 hours
So here’s the thing. Right off the bat it’s hard to take you seriously when you don’t even seem to understand how the pre-order works for the Steam Machine – and that’s even with me agreeing with at least some of your overall sentiment. What compelling reason would they have to shut down the pre-order page earlier than advertised?
Honestly, none of us really know for sure 100% factually whether the Steam Machine will sell out or not, but it’s hard to take your questioning of it seriously when your understanding is so limited, and that’s the nice way of putting it.
Personally, I won’t be surprised either way. I suspect it will sell out, but like you, me, and millions (billions?) of other people, I also know that the price is laughable when appraised only by specs and anticipated performance metrics, so it also would not surprise me if they struggle with sales.
- starblursd@lemmy.zipEnglish17 hours
This really bums me out not cuz I was looking to buy one but because I wanted it to shake the market up and make every company do better for the consumer… I feel like this price takes them completely out of the console market and purely into the entry-level PC market where I think it still is a decent specs and price for that market. It’s just not what it was made to be
- doctorflynt@feddit.orgEnglish15 hours
is it really that more expensive? because unlike a console the steammachine doesnt require a subscription to play online. PS5+ is 150€ yearly just for that. granted, you get a game per month but the games you get are often games you wouldnt buy anyways. so with the current price of 900€ for a 2tb ps pro youll pay 900€. after 3 years the steam machine is cheaper.
- Lojcs@piefed.socialEnglish11 hours
Online is free with the caveat that some games might not allow it at all…
- doctorflynt@feddit.orgEnglish3 hours
you wouldnt play most of these games on a htpc though if you have to compete with keyboard and mouse on a controller. also its still possible to install windows on it, if its such a problem.
that being said the price for the performance is still too high and i wouldnt recommend it to nom tech people. (i commented before comparing the specs to the ps5 pro)
- potustheplant@feddit.nlEnglish14 hours
“After 3 years” lol. You’re also not mentioning that even the base ps5, which was released 6 years ago, performs better than a Steam Machine.
You’re also comparing against the most expensive PS+ plan. The base one is about 80 per year so you’d “break even” in what? 6 years? What a joke.
- doctorflynt@feddit.orgEnglish3 hours
I compared it to the yearly plan that showed up first. i was honestly not aware that there are different subscription tiers. when i used ps+ with the ps4 there was only one + as far as i know.
the power of the machine is dissapointing and i commented before comparing the ps5+ specs with the SM.
on the other side could it be a ok device if you want that formfactor, long softwaresupport and still have a pc that can be used for more than just playing games or watching tv. Especially if youre not into AAA-gaming and more into Indie or Emulators. There you‘ll get a bigger Library than from a regular Console.
the price is also arround 7% more if you choose the SM over a comparable DIY according to gamers nexus so it seems fair i guess?
that being said i think the current SM is more a niche product and not for the masses.
- potustheplant@feddit.nlEnglish2 hours
The form factor is slightly smaller than itx and you can buy a pre-built itx pc. Software support is ridiculous, that’s already a feature in every pc and OS.
Also, I don’t think the price is ok at all. If you’re going to take away upgradeability, it needs to be a lot cheaper than diy.
I worry that this is going to be so niche that it’ll die a very quick death.
- doctorflynt@feddit.orgEnglish55 minutes
yes. softwaresupport is a feature in every pc but not for consoles. this thing dies once its hardware dies or is so outdated you couldnt run a game anymore.
a ps5 dies once the newer console releases, because there are no games coming anymore.
but yes. i hoped that it would be more than that, but it seems like valve hoped for more too.
- greyscale@lemmy.grey.oooEnglish7 hours
What the fuck do people even play on a PS5… Ubisoft sandboxes? Pass.
- potustheplant@feddit.nlEnglish3 hours
This is such a braindead take that I really don’t even know where to start.
- Senal@programming.devEnglish14 hours
You’re also not mentioning that even the base ps5, which was released 6 years ago, performs better than a Steam Machine.
is that based on the specs or some reviews somewhere ?
edit: nvm, looked it up
6700(ish) for ps5 OG
vs
7600 for steam machine
pretty close , though ps5 probably wins due to very specific optimizations for games compiled for that platform.
I’m seeing 7700xt for ps5 pro, not sure if that’s correct but it certainly beats a 7600.
- GalacticRobot@lemmy.worldEnglish8 hours
Early reviews are saying that the Steam Machine and PS5 perform similarly, with the PS5 being a smoother experience overall due to automatic framescaling. And that’s with something that’s 6+ years ago.
- Senal@programming.devEnglish6 hours
yeah there’s a bunch f performance bumps you can get with a fixed end platform and a whole company invested in making games that run on their platform perform well.
- potustheplant@feddit.nlEnglish13 hours
Yeah, it’s close but the ps5 was released 6 years ago and it’s cheaper. The Steam Machine’s bang for buck is awful. It’s a pc with console limitations and a pc price.
- potustheplant@feddit.nlEnglish12 hours
Hardware console limitations. Everything but the SSD and RAM is proprietary and you can’t upgrade it. Heck, it doesn’t even have an audio output. The I/O sucks hard.
- 9 hours
Yeah not having an audio port is a bit shit especially if this is suppose to be a plug n play type of deal. At least the consoles allow you to use the controllers for audio.
I bought a PNY 2tb drive to upgrade my Steam Deck in August of 2025, it was $95 (USD). Today the 1tb version is $165, 2tb is $290.
- colderr@lemmy.worldEnglish7 hours
A year and a half ago, I bought a 4TB Crucial P3 for 251€ ($286 USD), and now it’s currently not even on sale in the same store, but the 2TB version currently costs 407€ ($463 USD). Looking around, I found one that costs 654€ ($745 USD). I wanted to upgrade my RAM, but didn’t have money at the time for it. Then everything happened, and at one point, I saw it go up to 1000€ ($1139 USD). Currently, it’s 560€ ($638 USD).
I do not like the world that we’re living in.
In 2021, I bought 4 4TB bad HDDs for $65 each. I decoded to buy a spare a couple weeks ago in case this shit decides not to stop and an hdd fails since most of my shit is on my NAS. It was $170 for the exact same model.
- hdsrob@lemmy.worldEnglish22 hours
We buy a decent amount of half TB SSD drives to add to desktop PCs that we sell to customers.
Samsung EVO drives have gone from $47 to $285 in the last year.
While I was looking today I noticed Samsung drives have jumped way more than PNY have.
The PNY 512gb drives were $114, while like you said, Samsung is $285!
- hdsrob@lemmy.worldEnglish21 hours
Even worse is that I used to be able to get Crucial drives for less than Samsung, and I trust them way more. The Samsung ones are fine, but we’ve never lost a single Crucial SSD in 14 years.
I’ll take a look at the PNY ones. We actually can use 256gb, since these are just backup drives that get a data dump every 5 minutes, so that may save some $.
- SkaveRat@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish23 hours
just looked up my upgrade.
1TB bought in november 2024
Paid 74€ for it.
Similarly specced ssd costs 210€ today. Fucking hell
Edit: the exact same ssd costs 165-210€
I just checked this today too. A year ago in June I bought two WD Blue 2,5" SSDs for ~165€, shipping included. Today the very same drive is 213€/each at the same store, before shipping.
- MangoCats@feddit.itEnglish19 hours
My question is: how far back in time do we have to go to get to where RAM and SSD prices were this high (for a given capacity) in the past? Like 2021?
Bought a 256GB ssd for like 320€ in around 2011 (maybe 2012) so there’s that.
- MangoCats@feddit.itEnglish8 hours
Yeah, over the years I tend to spend about $200 on storage when I buy - it’s just that the storage has been getting bigger and bigger for that price over the decades.
Totally, and cheaper, well I guess my 3TB, 4TB (under 100€ each) and finally 2TB SSD (200€?) will be the last for a long time lol!
- plyth@feddit.orgEnglish5 hours
Shouldn’t China have compatible production lines ready in two or three years?
- tiramichu@sh.itjust.worksEnglish13 hours
If we look at this on the basis of “how much does it cost to put a typical amount of RAM and storage in your computer?” then I bet we’d be going all the way back to the 90s.
Like seriously.
The last time we saw a price spike like this was when the Chinese adhesives factory caught fire and burned to the ground, those adhesives were used in all kinds of chips.
2013 - but even then it wasn’t this bad.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/sep/06/china-fire-memory-chip-prices
There were also supply chain problems during Covid.
2020-2023:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2405896322017293
Well…but @[email protected] isn’t asking about the spike, but about the absolute price.
PC Part Picker’s memory trends page unfortunately only shows the past 18 months. But we can hit archive.org’s Wayback Engine.
First of all, here’s a current level for DDR5-5200 2x16GB:
So about $500 for DDR5-5200 2x16GB.
They only started tracking this category back in early 2022-ish. It looks like it was about $380 then. Adjusted for inflation, that’s $435.14 in 2026 dollars. So it’s probably never been that expensive.
However, that was also when DDR5 was pretty new, and it looks like it started out expensive.
If we look at DDR4, which might be more interesting, since we can go back further and avoid the initial spike:
Looking at DDR4-3200 2x8GB, it’s come down a bit, but looks like it peaked at about $190.
Inflation-adjusted, that’s $144 in 2019 dollars.
It looks like that was about April 2019 when DDR4 exceeded the peak from the last few weeks.
- MangoCats@feddit.itEnglish18 hours
That’s what I was thinking: early COVID, and it’s not so much about the price spike relative to where it was, but the absolute dollars per GB pricing which has been persistently falling for decades - I doubt you have to go past 2021 to get to higher prices per GB, and that was for slower speeds too…
- tty5@lemmy.worldEnglish17 hours
Per gb price of ram is now almost 50% higher than during the peak of COVID price spike that lasted just 3 months. I’m comparing the current gen at the time - ddr4 during COVID vs ddr5 now
- tty5@lemmy.worldEnglish17 hours
Much longer than that. There was a spike in 2021 that brought high end 2x8gb ddr4 kits to about $180-200 but that’s still significantly less than what you pay for decent ddr5 now. I think you’d have to look to back to early DDR3 or even further to DDR2 prices to get higher per gb amounts.
SSD prices were this high briefly (2-3 months) mid-2021. Before that you’d have to look all the way back to times where 1tb was the largest consumer grade SSD you could buy
- MangoCats@feddit.itEnglish8 hours
On the DDR4 RAM front, it looks like pre-2019 is where RAM was higher than it is today, in (broad market measured) inflation adjusted dollars.
- melsaskca@lemmy.caEnglish8 hours
Just wait until there is a rice and wheat shortage. These negotiations are child’s play compared to mass death from starvation due to global political instability. But yeah…RAM.
The point of shitty old processors was to get them cheap. Now that RAM and storage are the biggest factors, they could have gone with newer processors and not be significantly more expensive but significantly more performant.
- 21 hours
Shitty, old processors? In which way?
Zen 4 is literally just a single generation behind current latest gen architecture. And you’re way off on the pricing too - Zen5 APUs are essentially the AI 300/400 lineup, of which the higher end models still cost well over what Valve would find affordable. Meanwhile the GPU Valve chose to be integrated into the SM is 30-40% more performant than the 890M bundled with the Ryzen AI 370 (the only affordable kinda-high-end Zen5 APU).
So no, it’s neither old nor shitty.
- corsicanguppy@lemmy.caEnglish23 hours
It’s weird how supply chains work, and how design changes are at the very start of a very long process that makes changing the design now a very costly, risky thing.
changing the design now
Not now. When RAM prices started skyrocketing. That wasn’t only today or yesterday.
Companies like Asus fart out new designs every year. It’s doable if the design pipeline if efficient enough.
- Pycorax@sh.itjust.worksEnglish19 hours
What the other responders have said aside, are you seriously comparing a hardware focused company the size of Asus to Valve who’s hardware business is more of a side thing?
- SpaceNoodle@lemmy.worldEnglish22 hours
Not starting from scratch. Those are planned out years in advance.
Not everyone wants a mediocre upgrade.
- ryper@lemmy.caEnglish22 hours
The Steam Machine uses semi-custom processors. Changing them would have required getting AMD to design new chips, not swapping out off-the-shelf parts. AMD doesn’t yet have an RDNA4 replacement for the GPU, so they would probably only go up to RDNA3.5, and that might not have been enough of a boost to even be worth the trouble.
The Steam Machine uses semi-custom processors.
Steam Machine uses old crap AMD had lying around. This is also why it’s not an APU design.
- ryper@lemmy.caEnglish21 hours
Literally on the Steam Machine page:
- CPU: Semi-custom AMD Zen 4 6C / 12T
- GPU: Semi-custom AMD RDNA3 28CUs
- hperrin@lemmy.caEnglish21 hours
Were you 100% certain this problem was going to last as long as it has? Yeah, neither was anyone else.
- 10 hours
Eh, the writing was on the wall the moment DRAM manufacturers refused to expand capacity and instead stopped consumer sales in favour of corporate batch sales.
- Goodlucksil@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish13 hours
Many people were expecting the AI bubble to last well into 2029
- someguy3@lemmy.worldEnglish22 hours
In the total project timeframe it takes to design and produce a machine, that is now.
- hperrin@lemmy.caEnglish21 hours
The entire cooling system is designed around those processors. Changing them would delay the Steam Machine by multiple years. Also, those processors may be old (or more accurately, based on an older architecture), but they’re certainly not shitty.
Sure. Fans work totally different when there’s a slightly newer processor.
- T156@lemmy.worldEnglish13 hours
Wasn’t that assumption part of why the i9 MacBooks a few generations back had massive heating issues?
The fans and heatsinks weren’t enough to cool the i9, even though they were fine with the i7, so performance would quickly go into the floor when they started throttling.
- corbs132@lemmy.worldEnglish9 hours
I used to have a near maxed out 2019 i9 mbp. The 2020 base model m1 blew it out of the water performance-wise.
Granted, a big part of that was the apple silicon, but the i9 was supposed to be a powerhouse. It just wound up spending most of its time thermally throttled.
- brachiosaurus@mander.xyzEnglish9 hours
The prices are also so high because Valve is a for profit company and the ceo owns an entire fleet of mega yachts
- Jako302@feddit.orgEnglish8 hours
With the current hardware prices there isn’t much profit to gain here.
The main difference to other consoles is that they don’t sell at a loss to keep you in their ecosystem like PlayStation and Nintendo do. Valve could afford the cheap prices of the steam deck since its a bit tricky to use as a normal PC, but the steam machine is literally just a PC, selling it at a loss would be stupid for them.
- brachiosaurus@mander.xyzEnglish3 hours
With the current hardware prices there isn’t much profit to gain here.
Valve is a for profit company, they sell their products at the highest price the can get away with.
- Addv4@lemmy.worldEnglish7 hours
Not particularly. Steam gets 30% back on all game sales, so if they can make sure the steam machine gets only to people with established steam accounts, then they’re probably coming out ahead.
- Jako302@feddit.orgEnglish6 hours
That’s… pretty much my point.
For the steam deck where 99% of people will use it with steam, selling at a loss is acceptable, so they do it.
The steam machine is just a pc, so they can’t make sure that people use steam, hence the normal market price.
- 4 hours
I’m pretty sure the person you’re responding to is referring to the fact that in order to buy the steam machine you have to have a steam account in good standing of a certain age. I guess that does not necessarily ensure that the end user will be a big gamer, but it certainly helps.
I’m not suggesting it makes sense to sell it a loss, just providing that information in case people were not aware.
- Addv4@lemmy.worldEnglish4 hours
My point is that while it’s a pc, it’s more positioned to be a console. If steam limited sales to one per customer and only for established steam accounts for the first runs (like they are already beginning to do for the steam deck and controllers), then they could force it to be more of a console. I do think it’ll still be a bad launch, as the goal of the steam machine clearly is to put them in Xbox territory for regular consumers, and the current price and any other changes probably won’t help that for new customers.
- MonkderVierte@lemmy.zipEnglish12 hours
They don’t realize that they drive away customers to upcoming competitors long-term? Only short-term grift in view?
- 11 hours
So like… genuine question: what do you propose they do? Operate at a loss indefinitely? Go into an industry they have zero experience and domain knowledge in and just “build a factory”? And industry, I should add, that is probably the single most complicated and technically - as well as capex - intensive industry that humans have thus far derived? What’s the play here? Drive themselves to bankruptcy out of altruism?
- GalacticRobot@lemmy.worldEnglish8 hours
Two realistic options. One, depends if the devices are already manufactured. If yes, you sell them at the prices when you manufactured them. That shows good will for the community, and gets devices out and people wanting to buy in to a niche product.
If they haven’t manufactured the devices, then the answer is easy, you simply won’t be making them because they are too expensive to get a large run in until prices go down.
The bigger problem though is the old off the shelf hardware being used here is going to age out incredibly fast. So a third option would be what many of the minipc companies are doing, and give an option for barebones, and let you bring your own RAM and SSD. No option is perfect, but just raising prices higher than a PS5 Pro with no controller and worse performance, you aren’t winning over new customers, and you are pushing your old customers away.
- 7 hours
At the same time, standing still and doing nothing is a recipe for someone else to eat their lunch.
My point is that Valve is fundamentally a for-profit company, not a charitable organization. Expecting them to do nothing in response to the wildest market disruptions that the consumer hardware industry has ever seen is frankly unrealistic.
At the end of the day, Valve has been successful because they have been able to balance strategic, long term profitability with providing a genuinely good service at a reasonable market price to the vast majority of their customers. Note that that is specifically not giving things away at cost (as nice as that might be in the short term for customers. In the long run, zero (or negative) profitability would mean Valve ceases to exist.
I’m not trying to suckle at the corporate teat here - I’m simply pointing out that pretending Valve isn’t a corporation is flat out delusional. Not to mention, everyone else’s prices are going to be spiking too. They’re not “the bad guys”, and they will absolutely not be the only ones doing it.
- GalacticRobot@lemmy.worldEnglish6 hours
I mean, Valve has been successful solely because they have cornered the game distribution market. Their hardware has done essentially zero for their bottom line. They could have simply never release this product (as they didn’t for the original Steam Machine) in a realistic sense, and been done with it.
- 6 hours
Their hardware (pointedly, the steam deck) has begun a diametric shift towards Linux gaming. The fact that our fuckwit Captains of Industry are pinning the throttle and driving at a wall, and in the process gutting the consumer electronics market is, ultimately, just really awful luck and timing. If it weren’t for that, I dare say Valve would be looking at becoming a Serious Player in the hardware market. As it stands, this will certainly significantly stymie the adoption of the GabeCube… but I hope that ultimately, when the market stabilized (or corrects) in time, they’ll still be on track to do that.
- eyes@lemmy.worldEnglish12 hours
It takes a minimum of about 3 years to set up chip factories and longer to ramp up production, so it’s likely they think of this as a problem for the next CEO.
- Jako302@feddit.orgEnglish8 hours
That’s not even the issue, it simply isn’t worth it for chip manufactors to ramp up production.
Chip manufacturing is so expensive that machines have to run at 100% capacity to make reasonable profit margins from consumer hardware. Investment in new factories is only worth it if the demand stays high for 10+ years, which simply doesn’t seem to be the case. Most AI companies will collapse in the next few years and while AI in itself will probably survive, the hardware craze will eventually die down a bit.
- lad@programming.devEnglish12 hours
Yes but how’s that something for Valve to solve (I am a bit lost to this thread’s train of thought)
- Akrenion@slrpnk.netEnglish12 hours
This way they can rent put computer instead of you owning the means to do so yourself. This is what happens when you price out consumers. You bind them to your terms with leverage to pay for your past Investments payed by future earnings.
- MonkderVierte@lemmy.zipEnglish12 hours
I mean, how long does a consumer CPU last? 10 years? 15? Datacenter measures don’t count, since they always push 100% load at max feasible temperature. And RAM holds even longer. And DDR3 is good enough for general computing, even with all the bloat.
- Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish11 hours
Yeah, the weakness of the “this is all a massive conspiracy to force consumers to rent all their computing power” theory is that old computers work just fine as long as you don’t try and install a newer Windows.
We’re maybe 2 decades past the point were you had to upgrade your PC every 5 years for it to be suitable for everyday computing usage. There are only two things pushing PC hardware upgrades nowadays:
- OS support time limits and the ever expanding bloat of newer OS versions (which is nowhere as much a problem if your OS is Linux)
- Games
Now, for Games, all attempts at getting gamers to have their games hosted in servers and playing on light PCs - most notably Stadia - failed miserably.
As for OS, how successful has Microsoft been at getting people to actually upgrade to Windows 11, especially since hardware prices shot up?
I think it’s far more likely that people just keep on using their aged hardware more often than not with no longer updated OS versions, than it is for them to actually start paying subscriptions to use remote computing power to browse the web and read their e-mails, especially since that still needs some form of local hardware so doesn’t totally solve their problem with expensive hardware.
- Akrenion@slrpnk.netEnglish11 hours
I am gaming on ddr4 RAM and an rtx2070 from 2015. However CPU loads are high running a lot of games. I got a few friends who want to upgrade their motherboard but can not reasonably afford ddr5. Most of my non-gaming acquaintances do not own anything more than a phone or tablet anymore.
