The title is a bit misleading, as the article lists diverging analysts’ opinions, ranging from Valve willing to sell at a loss or low margins, to high prices due to RAM and SSD price volatility.
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.blackeco.com/post/2330473
This isn’t why it failed. It failed because the software, user experience, and compatibility was immature. That is no longer the case, as proven by the steamdeck, and offering a mature ecosystem with VR, controller, and console/PC that all interact seamlessly will be the major selling point.
I’m expecting $799.99 for the low storage model, and if it performs as well as a typical $1000-$1200 PC, I think they’ll enjoy the same level of adoption seen by the Steamdeck. The target will be people looking for an entry level to PC gaming, and current PC enthusiasts on lower end hardware looking for an upgrade that’s simple and reasonably positioned price wise against traditional PCs.
Also some of those old steam machines were comically expensive, in part because all the different vendors wanted a cut, in part because some of them made new cases
edit: found a spec sheet for the cheapest version of Bolt II, for almost $1800 you got a gtx 760 and i5 4590, 16 gigs of ddr3, 120gb ssd + 1tb hdd. All of it air cooled. I don’t remember new hardware prices back then but it seems steep. And it’s far from the most expensive one.
edit2: on the other end of the spectrum, for $400 (without an OS) you could get ibuypower’s SBX with an athlon x4 840, 4 gigs of ram and an r5 250X
It failed for multiple reasons, but a big reason was that they tried to outsource the hardware and basically just got reskins of existing gaming-PC prebuilds, which didn’t actually make PCs any less confusing. And they didn’t actually save money (and some were overpriced scams) so buyers were basically forced to do as much research as buying an actual gaming PC.
All of that will be solved, and the software/UX/other stuff you mentioned are far more mature, like you say.