u/doublah

People have already been streaming VR from Steam Machine to Quest devices, so something doesn't add up.

It's not overpriced if that's what components and comparable hardware costs now and in the future, it's just the new normal.

It might be outdated, but it won't be overpriced. Meta made it clear their next headset will not be subsidised. And Pico are saying their next headset will be a Apple Vision Pro competitor.

Other companies do the exact same though, Nintendo controllers don't support non-Nintendo devices (although they've been reverse-engineered for Steam and Linux).

You don't have to play every game through Steam, switch to the controller action set in desktop mode and and it'll work as a basic controller for any game.

All of the Steam Controller's actually distinguishing features wouldn't work with XInput though. If you're not interested in that stuff you'd save money going for a basic Xbox controller or third party one.

I imagine it's like the Deck where desktop mode has 2 modes so you can switch to use it for non-Steam games.

Ultimately the EGS has shown 12% is not profitable, a lower cut would be nice for smaller devs but I don't see why Valve would when every other platform of Steam's size also takes 30%.

The problem with a price war is Valve is "just" a multi-billion dollar company, very impressive for their size but a $100bn company like Sony and especially a $3 trillion company like Microsoft could squeeze them out of the market.

And they would have to subsidise the cost by far more than Sony/Microsoft do due to the smaller scale of production and more expensive newer contracts.

As long as it's comparable price or cheaper than a pre-built of similar specs or building a similar build yourself, they'll be a market for it. There's always people looking to get into PC gaming and existing PC gamers who want their Steam library in a console form factor.

Problem is there's been reports about memory providers cancelling contracts, as the premium AI companies will pay is far higher than breaking the current contracts.