• x00z@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    They shouldn’t subsidize it but they should at least sell it without profit.

    The increase in price from 512GB to 2TB is more than what consumers would pay which shows they are profiting. It’s even cheaper to get the 512GB version and buy a 2TB SSD yourself, plus you’d still have the 512GB drive for other things.

      • x00z@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        That’s true, but I’m also hoping for them to destroy the current console monopolies.

    • Diurnambule@jlai.lu
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      1 month ago

      Employee need to be paid to build it, ship it. You are asking them to sell at loss. But okey.

      • x00z@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        You misunderstood. No profit does not equal loss.

        The employee builds a Steam Machine with either a €100 or €250 drive. All costs are the same except for that drive. However, the difference in price the end consumer pays is not a €150 difference but a €320 one.

        This implies Valve takes their costs and just adds a percentage margin over it for profit. And I’m saying they shouldn’t do that. Pay what must be paid and let us pay the same.

        • BigDiction@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          Margin helps account for support, returns, and short term cost increases. You think anything beyond zero is unfair?

        • Diurnambule@jlai.lu
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          1 month ago

          Can’t be the exact cost of a drive, you have to market research to buy the best for the system. Then marketing etc. Cost are never just hardware for a corpo, but yeah in a dream world corpo should not be evil. If it is the same producer of disk I may be wrong, though one the part you pay for research of the best sdd.

    • Dead_or_Alive@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      Valve can make a profit from their products just as you can make a profit from your labor. They aren’t a charity.

      But market right now can only support so much. If it goes up much more I doubt it will sell well

      • nathanjent@programming.dev
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        1 month ago

        Valve probably wants consumers to have a machine in their home that is dedicated to running their marketplace. They don’t care if it’s hardware they sold. They want the same accessiblity to their store front that consoles have.

        • fruitycoder@sh.itjust.works
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          1 month ago

          I mean for sure. They have a solid revenue stream in a world with an open platform they can sell on. Hence the Linux development to hedge where windows is going.

      • x00z@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        You can easily separate Proton development costs from the Steam Machine.

        I have been buying Proton supported games on Steam and they know it.

          • x00z@lemmy.world
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            1 month ago

            I have no idea, but Valve does because they have the analytics for it. They can see what games are bought, played and ran on Proton.

            And it seems profitable.

            • fruitycoder@sh.itjust.works
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              1 month ago

              It could be a loss leader or just a hedge at the moment 🤷

              They could have been loosing money on it until they started selling hardware. Though they could still be losing money on hardware even. No idea rbh