Can everyone please stop claiming and speculating that Valve’s new hardware will be loss leaders? If you watch LTT and Gamers Nexus’s first videos on the announcement, they actually spoke with Valve’s engineers. And the Valve representatives already said that the new hardware WILL NOT BE LOSS LEADERS.

There isn’t even evidence that the Steam Deck was a loss leader. All GabeN said was that the lowest cost launch model was priced “painfully”, which doesn’t necessarily mean it was sold at a loss, it could easily have been sold at a very tight margin.

And no, low margins does not meet the definition of a loss leader. A loss leader is a product sold below cost, in that every unit sold actually costs the seller money.

I get the desire to speculate on new hardware. It’s fun and it helps pass the time until we hear more info from Valve. But there’s limits to what is reasonable. Valve has already stated that the new hardware won’t be loss leaders, so hoping and/or claiming they are isn’t reasonable.

Sorry for the rant, but all of the comments that seem to have only skimmed headlines are quickly getting to me

  • pilferjinx@piefed.social
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    17 hours ago

    Is the machine competing with consoles? I thought it was just packaging an adorable sized pre built PC.

    • ag10n@lemmy.world
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      13 hours ago

      I think this is the goal that it would be priced competitively with the Pro or higher end consoles

      They’ve built an ecosystem that gives you that console experience and if you really want to use it as a PC then you can.

      The whole thing screams high quality experience for those that want it to just work or those that want to tinker

      They really know their audience