In the world of gaming, the exclusivity battle between Xbox and PlayStation has been quite legendary. With the Steam Machine’s arrival, everyone around the world expected Valve to take a similar approach.
The price of the Steam Machine is quite high, and Valve has a rather unique justification for it, which also suggests the route they’ll be taking with respect to console exclusives. Over the years, Valve has emerged as a company that tends to put customers first. This approach of theirs seems to be reflected in their handling of the Steam Machine, too.
Valve Won’t Be Making Any Steam Machine Exclusives
The Steam Machine is priced quite high, way higher than the Xbox Series X or the PlayStation 5, and that is the exact reason why the device won’t be receiving any exclusives.
In the post on Steam where they announced the launch, Valve clarified that, “The traditional console model is to sell hardware at a loss and make up the revenue with subscription services or by selling games that are locked-in to the hardware. We think this can make sense for a single business in the short term, but that open ecosystems are better for customers over the long term. PC gaming’s history proves this: The openness of the PC gaming space has made it the primary driver of hardware and software innovation for decades.
The strength of PC gaming is the ability to play the games you want on the hardware you want. Steam Machine is *a* solution to these problems (and we think it’s a great one), but it’s not the only solution, and we don’t want it to be.”
So, while both Xbox and PlayStation keep charging a premium price for the games on their platform, the Steam Machine isn’t looking to do something like that.
The Steam Machine is expected to support the same games that are available on the PC storefront. This should effectively circumvent the exclusivity bit, which PlayStation usually relies on, but it’s difficult to say how that’s going to work out at this point.
The entire idea behind the Steam Machine is to complement the open nature of PC Gaming. Since the components are so expensive right now, it’s being effectively reflected in the device’s price. The device’s availability is yet another aspect that will be affected by the global hardware scenario. In the same post referenced above, Valve mentioned, “the prices we’re sharing today reflect the state of the world for manufacturing; or, more accurately, it reflects the price of the components as we’ve secured them over the past 6 months.
Price wasn’t the only thing impacted by all of this: availability was as well. There were periods where we found we couldn’t source some of our components at all, at any price. More than anything else, this has impacted the number of units we’ve been able to produce for launch.”
To start things off, deliveries will be slow due to a global crunch in components like RAM and storage devices. But Valve has implemented a reservation system and a waitlist. At this point, there’s no clarity about the release timeline, but there’s a high chance that it might drop ahead of GTA VI’s release, so that players can enjoy Rockstar’s long-awaited release on Valve’s console.
Although there’s some speculation that the Steam Machine might be dead on arrival, primarily because of its price, the release might have a different story altogether if the hardware performs well. It is definitely a pricey device, but if it doesn’t come with any additional subscriptions or inflated video game prices, it just might survive the fight against the PlayStation 5 and the Xbox Series X.
