Uploaded July 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
One unfortunate victim of gaming being more expensive thanks to AI companies hoarding hardware for themselves is the Steam Machine that had to be sold for a staggering $1,050 just for the base model alone without the controller. How absolutely insane is that? As much as I don't like the price, this criticism is really stupid.
// It's an open ecosystem instead of closed.
Wait, how is that a problem again?
// An open ecosystem means that people can sideload different launchers.
I'm sorry. How is that a problem?
// If Steam were to close the ecosystem, they could have made that much extra money on game sales and would have been able to subsidize the Steam Machine and make extra money on the user via simply game sales.
So, what you're saying is that Steam Machine should restrict all the gaming just on Steam games alone instead of games from other launchers so that they can make more money from them and make the machine cheaper in the process. That makes no sense. A vast majority of PC games are already on Steam. Even if external launchers also have incredibly popular games, restricting the system only to Steam isn't going to make enough extra money to justify losing other external launchers. Closing the system will not earn you the benefits that you think it earns.
One unfortunate victim of gaming being more expensive thanks to AI companies hoarding hardware for themselves is the Steam Machine that had to be sold for a staggering $1,050 just for the base model alone without the controller. How absolutely insane is that? As much as I don't like the price, this criticism is really stupid.
// It's an open ecosystem instead of closed.
Wait, how is that a problem again?
// An open ecosystem means that people can sideload different launchers.
I'm sorry. How is that a problem?
// If Steam were to close the ecosystem, they could have made that much extra money on game sales and would have been able to subsidize the Steam Machine and make extra money on the user via simply game sales.
So, what you're saying is that Steam Machine should restrict all the gaming just on Steam games alone instead of games from other launchers so that they can make more money from them and make the machine cheaper in the process. That makes no sense. A vast majority of PC games are already on Steam. Even if external launchers also have incredibly popular games, restricting the system only to Steam isn't going to make enough extra money to justify losing other external launchers. Closing the system will not earn you the benefits that you think it earns.
