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

  • 4am@lemmy.zipEnglish
    5·
    11 hours ago

    Why would anyone who’s in the market for a by-itself motherboard ever want something you can get as a modular piece as a built-in to another expensive piece?

    Besides, if you want everything soldered on you can just buy a laptop motherboard.

    Or a Mac

    • Echo Dot@feddit.ukEnglish
      1·
      3 hours ago

      For the same reason that people are interested in the steam machine. It’s nice to be able to just throw some money at people and get a complete product. I can see businesses getting these things if they need a moderately powerful GPU for business reasons. Unless valve go utterly mad on the pricing here, it’s going to be much better value for money than a Mac mini, and it’ll have better compatibility with existing software as well.

    • rafoix@lemmy.zipEnglish
      1·
      9 hours ago

      For the same reason there’s other options. Having options alone is more than enough reason.

      A motherboard with a built-in GPU has obvious price, cooling design and size advantages.

      The only things I suggest to be soldered are the GPU and the VRAM since GPUs are extremely sensitive to their memory setup. CPUs can use off-the-shelf stuff without issue.