Prisen på Valves Steam Machine er "skyrocketed" internt

For nylig afslørede Valve prisen, de vigtigste funktioner og udgivelsesdatoen for den første af tre nye hardware-enheder, der efter planen skal udgives i løbet af første halvdel af i år. Den nye Steam Controller lander den 4. maj, men vi mangler stadig udgivelsesdatoer for den nye Steam Frame og den længe ventede Steam Machine.

Ifølge Valve-lækkeren Brad Lynch har de stigende omkostninger og den globale mangel på RAM ført til, at prisen på Steam Machine internt er skudt i vejret. Steam Frame er mindre påvirket, men vil stadig opleve en prisstigning.

Problemet er, at vi ikke ved, hvilket prispunkt der oprindeligt var fastsat, før AI-datacentre besluttede, at de havde brug for alverdens RAM for at fungere. Derfor er det svært at sige, hvor stor en prisforskel vi vil se i forhold til Valves oprindelige, interne forventninger.

Det eneste, vi ved med sikkerhed, er, at Steam Controller udkommer snart. I en samtale med Polygon forklarede hardware-ingeniør hos Valve, Steve Cardinali, hvorfor tilbehøret bliver udgivet først:

"This doesn't have RAM in it, and it's not as complicated to start getting out the door for us. We're ready for it. We wanted to build up quantity so that we could try to address everybody who wants one at launch, but it's possible that the demand for it far exceeds our expectations...We had always thought, obviously we want them to work together well — especially the Steam Machine and the Steam Controller, they're in a lot of ways a pair made in heaven — but we saw no need to ship the Controller at the same time as the Machine. The really only hard deadline is we didn't want to ship the Steam Machine before the Steam Controller. We want to have that out for the Steam Machine... It wasn't really ever the plan to ship them together unless it landed nicely that way"