PS5 sells at a loss & makes up the difference collecting rent on a closed system. With Steam you're buying an open system.

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smith7018 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

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?

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Narishma 2 days ago | parent [-]

Valve cannot do that because they can't guarantee that people buying the Steam Machine will even use it for gaming.

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smith7018 2 days ago | parent [-]

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.

	▲	Narishma 6 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Well, it would be cheaper if it was subsidized and would become more interesting for uses other than gaming.
	▲	Zetaphor 2 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		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

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Telaneo 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

https://www.pcmag.com/news/sony-says-499-ps5-no-longer-sells...

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.

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njovin 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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.

	▲	Telaneo 2 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> 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. [pirate flag emoji]. Games from sources other than Steam are a bit more fiddly to get going, but it's far from impossible. Like Valve says, it's your computer.
	▲	mwkaufma 2 days ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		Steam machine is not locked into the steam client. You can install whatever you want.
	▲	sensanaty 2 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		The steam machine is just a regular Linux PC, you can install anything you want on it. I have the Deck and I mostly use it to emulate Switch & PS2 games.

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izacus 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

PS5 NEVER in it's lifecycle sold at a loss. That hasn't happened for generations now.

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mwkaufma 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

All caps doesn't make it true.

	▲	izacus 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Sure, the reality makes it true. The BOM for PS5 is very low.

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littlecranky67 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

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.

	▲	margalabargala 2 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		It's happened before. Storage more than doubled after the thailand floods back in 2011. There have been RAM disruptions as well.
	▲	izacus 2 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		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.