I actually think that, while it’s maybe a fun topic for idle conversation…it doesn’t have a huge impact in the way traditional console pricing.

With a traditional console, what the console vendor chooses to do is what you get. Maybe, as with Microsoft on the Series X/Series S, you get a high and low end model. All the games are made for that hardware, and whether the platform lives and dies depends on it.

But…that’s not really true of the Steam Machine. It’s just another PC, albeit preconfigured for Steam and HTPC-oriented. If you want to get a lower-end PC or a higher-end PC, you have the option of getting one and running the same games on it and save some money or with a bit more visual bling. The games for PCs are already more or less written to scale up and down with hardware.

And it’s not like Valve’s platform is gonna live or die based on the Steam Machine the way a traditional console generation is, where success of a hardware console is high-stakes for the manufacturer and the players in successfully getting a game library going. I’d guess that it might help them make strategic inroads into gaming in the living room. But even if it completely bombs, Valve is gonna keep right on going selling to people to run on PCs (and the Deck) and their game library isn’t going anywhere.