Yes, but my whole point was that PCs have other uses, so Valve selling a PC at a loss can’t recover the money with games because people won’t necessarily play games on that machine. Saying “if you’re playing games” to that point is like someone explaining to you why seatbelts are needed in cars and you replying with “if you never crash they’re useless”, like OF COURSE that if we enter your hypothetical example everything works, the whole point is about the disaster that would happen if that wasn’t the case.
IzzyJ@lemmy.world 1 week ago
I find it highly unlikely that those purchasing a steam machine aren’t doing so with gaming in mind
Nibodhika@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Re-read my answer, if they were sold at a loss like you suggested it would be beneficial for companies to purchase them to be office, servers or anything, costing Valve money without bringing them any profit afterwards because those machines would be purchased without gaming in mind, only because they were the cheapest available option (since all of the others have some profit margin and steam machines would be sold at a loss).
IzzyJ@lemmy.world 1 week ago
They could do what many early tech companies did and offer a seperate price for business use if that becomes an problem
Nibodhika@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Yeah, because business can’t simply ask employees or random people to buy the machines, rebuy from them and still get them cheaper. Hell, they can even advertise they will be buying machines for 10% higher price and let random people offer it to them. It’s an open platform, you can’t prevent people from getting it. Selling the machines at a loss is a sure way to have Valve bleed money, just like it happened with the PlayStation 3 until they closed the system. I would rather the hardware costs a bit more so that the platform can remain open.