t’s certainly been a journey for Valve. A week prior to the Steam Frame’s launch, we spoke with two engineers at Valve about the project: Joy Lyons, hardware engineer, and Jeremy Selan, software engineer. The memory crisis and the price were a big part of that conversation. From that chat, we can confirm that Valve had aimed for a lower price point than the one it’s launching the Frame for today.
Here’s Lyons on the memory crisis:
“We set out to design this hardware with one particular price in mind, but we’ve made choices to make sure that we’re making a product that is choiceful, that people can purchase, they can upgrade with different features later. But we wanted to make sure we had a base product with really great performance. Then that price target shifted due to the ongoing RAM crisis around the world.”
Lyons also said that forecasting for the cost of certain components used in the Steam Frame is an ongoing challenge.
Not exactly boding well of the Steam Deck 2.
Ok you defend it on “Hardware got expensive”? Why is it so expensive? How much wealth do you think Jensen Huang needs? How much wealth do you think the upper Management at Samsung, TSMC or SK Hynix really needs? We don’t have to stick to hardware. Do you think the people at the top of PepsiCo need more wealth? Because food prices are really up atm… pharmaceuticals? And just think of all the shareholders who also have to profit from the sales revenue. You could lower the price of a million pairs of glasses by $100 and still have brought in only one-fifth of the cost of Gabe’s yacht less in revenue. Just think about it: the top 10% had to get their hands on 70% of the total wealth somehow. The fact that everything is just ridiculously expensive is a great mechanism for that.
Fuck all the AI bullshit and thr RAM companies. And fuck Gabe and all billionaires.
But Valve isn’t going to sell hardware at a loss, and it’s not reasonable to expect them to. You aren’t owed cheap VR.
Again, who is talking about prices below cost? Are you guys bots?