They don’t have the means to produce at scale, which has resulted in wild price fluctuations on their end. (even though to steamdeck OLED did sell out at the much higher price.) To me at most they will continue with the controller, but that’s about it.
They price hiked the steam deck by a lot and it still sold out in one day. With that kind of demand why would they stop?
No, they’re not hurting for cash and everyone is dealing with crazy hardware pricing right now.
Windows is something like 93% of the Steam market the last survey. Valves survival depends on Microsoft not fucking them over. Doing something that may strictly be costing them some money for reducing the threat makes economic sense.
Pushing the Linux number higher will make it more attractive to make a native Linux version of games.
This is a rational long term business plan. As long as their board, investors, and CEO can avoid the chronic “line need go up now!” motivation that pretty much every public company succumbs to we’ll be alright.
Valve is not public, Gabe owns more than 50% of the shares so he has de facto 100% of the power.
Even if they were public, don’t you think that shareholders, CEOs, board would realise the same thing and adapt a similar strategy? Ubisoft, EA and the likes have all pushed their own Steam competitor because they were under the thumb of Valve dominating the market on PC. Which one of the platforms is the one that regularly handed out free games? They don’t have the same urgency to do hardware because they have consoles if Windows locks down.
Yeah, they still have investors, a board, and CEO per my comment, as long as they don’t lose their mind like a public company would, we’ll be good.
Ubisoft is public and EA was public until recently.
Do you mean they lost their mind when they developed their steam competitors?
They could easily have given up on VR hardware after the Index, but I’m glad they didn’t. We need someone to compete with Meta.
Considering Meta has their entire empire built on the pilfered goods stolen from Valve and then sold to Facebook (at the time) by Palmer Luckey, I’m glad but also surprised Valve didn’t say fuck it and throw in the towel. But then again, Steam exists because Gabe was unhappy with how Microsoft was treating him, so maybe success from spite is a hidden part of their core DNA
Indeed, fuck Palmer Luckey, I like to think Gabe thinks he’s a cunt too.
I’d say no. Small production scale, highly niche target audience, moderately-to-significantly higher than average pricing for Steam/ Valve hardware has pretty much always been their thing.
Basically, Steam / Valve hardware (and the company in general) have a strong “for gamers, by gamers” reputation. One of their methods of maintaining that reputation is by incorporating, for lack of a better term, “premium quirks” into their things (Steam Link was relatively novel at its release (and kinda sucked), the OG Steam controller with the dual touchpads and gyroscope, finger tracking and grip strength monitoring on the Valve Index controllers). They know that the Average Joe gamer will probably just pick up a Quest headset or an Xbox controller, so rather than try to fight for market share that has a built-in customer base (for example, most people that already own a console will just use the controller they already have rather than buy a new one for their PC), they maintain their “gamers first” reputation by offering a more niche, “premium” option.
Edit: Also, I’ve never not seen the Deck being touted as a massive success. Like you said, even at higher than normal prices people will buy them. It would be silly for them not to keep that money printer going, they don’t even necessarily need to increase production, people will practically buy them at whatever speed they come off the line.
The Steam Deck was instrumental in getting Linux gaming to be taken seriously. If Valve backs out, things will go back to windows being the default again.
They wanted the success they got from the steam deck for a decade before it happened
It’s going to be at least another decade before they even consider the possibility of bowing out again
I have never gotten a Steam Hardware product directly from steam, always used. Even now I can get a used OLED Steam Deck 512GB for about 450€ in very good condition in my area. That’s the thing about their Hardware is, that they are usually novelty products that people will always have a good reason to keep or resell. The fact that they can’t keep up with production doesn’t mean you can’t have their products. Steam sells them and gets their share of profits anyway, so it doesn’t really matter how you get yours, as long as they keep cleaning out their stock.
