Well, and you pay 120$/year for the privilege to play games online on that PS5. That is one of the reasons SONY can subsidize the PS5 unit price and sell under cost. Valve is not in that position, because people would buy it as office PC replacement.

Also a PS5 only runs PS5 games which Sony gets a cut of whenever you purchase one.

With this thing you could buy it and then install your favorite Linux distro on it and never give Valve another dime. If they ate the cost, businesses would buy them up as the best value for the compute and they're not buying Steam games.

> That is one of the reasons SONY can subsidize the PS5 unit price and sell under cost.

PS5 hardware sales started generating profit in the first year. Only for the first few month the sales were "subsidised".

Valve very much is in the position to subsidize the costs; they charge 30% royalty per game sold.

Valve often boasts that they have a very high Rev / Employee number.

This more a dig at Sony than a reason Valve can’t also sell their hardware as a loss leader. They are massively profitable from their cut of Steam sales anyway. And part of PS Plus is a catalog of games and monthly games, similar to Gamepass. Valve could easily have a profitable subscription model for games or services if they wanted to.

Playstation plus essential is $80 per year