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this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2026
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Steam Hardware
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A place to discuss and support all Steam Hardware, including Steam Deck, Steam Machine, Steam Frame, and SteamOS in general.
As Lemmy doesn't have flairs yet, you can use these prefixes to indicate what type of post you have made, eg:
[Flair] My post title
The following is a list of suggested flairs:
[Deck] - Steam Deck related.
[Controller] - Steam Controller related.
[Machine] - Steam Machine related.
[Frame] - Steam Frame related.
[Discussion] - General discussion.
[Help] - A request for help or support.
[News] - News about the deck.
[PSA] - Sharing important information.
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If your post is only relevant to one hardware device (Deck/Machine/Frame/etc) please specify which one as part of the title or by using a device flair.
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Rules:
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- Posts must be related to Steam Hardware or Steam OS in an obvious way.
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- Have fun.
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"Behind"
100% what this actually means is valve is only making them in limited to supply to lengthening the time they take losses.
Valve ain't making money on decks, they ain't going to make money on the controllers, and they are going to take a bloody red bath on the machines.
Y'all need to read between the lines. It's a controller. It ain't hard to make.
They increased the price of the steam deck quite a bit. Doubt they're not making money off of it.
You clearly haven't watched the other billionaires run at losses for years.
Steam is very happy to lose money on consoles to keep their 30% cut and monopoly.
You're forgetting that it's just a computer, and can it can be reformatted, and you can install any OS on it to do anything with it. It's not locked to the Steam Store in any way. It's not like a console where they can sell it at a loss and make money on games later because console companies make it impossible for you to use it as a normal computer. Steam does not.
And yet someone who buys a steam branded computer is specifically highly likely to buy more games from steam. Yes, feel free to buy a cheaper computer with the same specs and never buy from steam ever. You're not the target of this product.
It doesn't matter who they're "targeting". If they sell it at a loss because it's more powerful than it costs, people who don't care at all about Steam will purchase it as a computer to run emulators or normal software. They are not going to do this.
That has nothing to do with my point. I'm saying that, given the current price (and age), of the steam deck, I doubt that they're losing money on it.
I disagree. They already had thin margins, they started it themselves. Then prices went up and they sold at a loss. The recent increase was because they couldn't take more of a bath. This excludes the tens of millions of dollars they have had to pump in you Linux.
I have no doubt until I see data otherwise they are breaking even at best.
What they "pumped" into linux (proton, actually) is a general investment for the future, not something that should be taken into account when discussing the Steam Deck hardware cost, specifically.
You're also assuming that they hadn't already purchased the steam deck components at a lower cost, before everything started to get more expensive. Once that inventory ran out, they increased the prices.
Basically you're making up a relatively plausible but nevertheless imaginary scenario with 0 proof/sources.
Are they making loss with each sales? I'd imagine the $100 price point mean they earn quite a bit.
I doubt they are earning as much as you think.
They jam packed it full of shit that nobody needs like capacitive Joysticks, and capacitive touchpads on the bottom.
I...don't know how much they earn, but they probably doesn't sell this as loss.
I think people are forgetting that the steam machine is going to ship with a controller as well. I think they have to split their controller production between people buying just the controller and the amount of steam machines they are producing as they get ready to launch that.