Valve, in a statement to The Verge, explaining why it doesn’t sell its handheld Steam Deck or new Steam Machine gaming devices at a loss (gift link):
While this might seem like an easy solution, it doesn’t align with
our beliefs about how healthy ecosystems are built. If there’s
anything we’re religious about at Valve, it’s our belief that open
systems are better in the long run, for ourselves and customers.
The openness of the PC ecosystem in particular has enabled it to
be the primary driver of hardware and software innovation, because
anyone with an idea for a way to do something better was able to
take a shot at it. When companies sell their hardware under cost
for competitive advantage, or buy exclusive content for it,
they’re doing that to build a more closed system, one where you
don’t get to choose what software you want to use.We don’t want that for PC hardware, and we don’t think you should
want it either. You shouldn’t feel like you have to buy Valve
hardware; you should be able to view it as just one option
alongside all the devices for playing games, and select the one
that makes sense for you. This means you get to decide which
device fits your personal tradeoffs around things like price,
performance, form factor, peripheral support, and everything else
you care about. That’s the strength of the open PC platform, and
subsidizing hardware runs counter to it.
Valve published a shorter version of this on their own Steam Machine launch post, but the statement to The Verge articulates their stance more fully.
I’ve long been frustrated by the arguments that subsidized hardware is definitional to gaming console platforms. Microsoft, in particular, has leaned on it as a whiny excuse ever since they launched the first Xbox. Just last week they emphasized the point again when announcing another increase in Xbox prices. It’s a strategic choice, that’s all, and a rather obviously predatory choice at that. So I say kudos to Valve for refusing to play the game, and selling their devices at honest prices. (They just raised the prices for Steam Deck by $250 to $300, due to the rising costs of RAM and storage.)
I’ve long described the iPhone and iPad as consoles — app consoles, or computing consoles. Whenever I make that argument, one objection is that they can’t be consoles because iPhones and iPad are general purpose computers. But PlayStation and Xbox and Switch are general purpose computers too. They’re all just computers with limits imposed through policy, not technical capability, by the companies that make them. The fact that iPhones and iPads are less limited by policy and thus more capable computing devices than Xboxes, PlayStations, or Switches is a good thing, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t all consoles, conceptually, and general purpose computers, technically. It’s just that iOS and the App Store has a far more liberal policy of what sorts of software are permitted on that console.
