It can be said that the increase in memory prices almost destroyed the initial popularity of Steam Machine. The 1TB version of this living room PC launched by Valve ended up selling for $1,050, hundreds of dollars more than originally planned. The reason is that memory manufacturers are simply unwilling to negotiate prices with Valve. In the end, Valve could only raise the price of Steam Machine to more than $1,000. At the same time, it did not rely on subsidizing hardware to lower the price like Sony and Microsoft did.
However, from Valve's own perspective, Steam Machine did not fail, but was considered a successful product.
In the latest YouTube show, Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier said that the reason why Valve believes that Steam Machine is successful is because its goal has never been to compete with PlayStation and Xbox to compete with the market.
"For Valve, this product has proven successful because their goal is not to sell millions of units of hardware to compete with PlayStation and Xbox."
Schreier explained that what Valve really wants to do is promote SteamOS and make it available to more devices, rather than letting the PC gaming platform continue to rely on Microsoft's Windows.
Although the Steam Machine sells for as high as $1,050, it continues to be sold out, which shows that Valve is achieving its goals step by step.
He also revealed that Valve does not intend to rely solely on Steam Machine to dominate. On the contrary, they hope that other manufacturers will also launch living room PCs equipped with Linux versions of SteamOS.
In other words, Valve sells hardware not to tie players to its own devices, but to hope that more and more manufacturers will adopt SteamOS and strengthen the ecosystem of the Steam platform in the long run.
Considering that even though Steam Machine sells for $1,050, demand still exceeds supply in Japan and other regions, Valve is obviously very satisfied with its current performance.
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Steam Machine sales show strong performance, average weekly sales estimated at 12,000 to 15,000 units