I believe that Valve can afford to sell hardware at cost or even a little in the red. Getting people in the steam store ecosystem makes it back and then some in the long term.
Normally that only works if you have DRM that locks the games to your platform, so that people don’t get the hardware at a discount then use it to run someone else’s software.
But, in Valve’s case, it really has no competitors in the PC gaming space. That might not last forever, but it almost certainly will last as long as this PC / console is around.
I believe that Valve can afford to sell hardware at cost or even a little in the red. Getting people in the steam store ecosystem makes it back and then some in the long term.
Normally that only works if you have DRM that locks the games to your platform, so that people don’t get the hardware at a discount then use it to run someone else’s software.
But, in Valve’s case, it really has no competitors in the PC gaming space. That might not last forever, but it almost certainly will last as long as this PC / console is around.