Valve have confirmed the Steam Machine's price will be comparable to a custom-built PC with similar performance, rather than subsidised like a console.
Unfortunately, during the pandemic we discovered what happens when things are underpriced. Effectively, if you don’t have the original company pricing their products according to the market, the scalpers all swoop in and buy up all the stock and resell it at market rates.
The difference here is you can only buy them directly from Valve, they’ll probably have some sort of limit, and you’ll probably need an account to be a certain age, at least in the early days.
Nintendo had a similar implementation and I don’t recall mass scalping of those devices either. Obviously anyone could purchase a single one and scalp it but that doesn’t create a mass shortage.
Unfortunately, during the pandemic we discovered what happens when things are underpriced. Effectively, if you don’t have the original company pricing their products according to the market, the scalpers all swoop in and buy up all the stock and resell it at market rates.
The difference here is you can only buy them directly from Valve, they’ll probably have some sort of limit, and you’ll probably need an account to be a certain age, at least in the early days.
They had the exact limits you described back when the Deck was released and that didn’t stop scalpers.
However, the Deck was a much more hyped product, so there was more incentive for scalpers to jump through the hoops.
I don’t remember hearing anything about Deck scalpers
Me neither. I’m sure it happened, but it didn’t seem to be a major issue
Nintendo had a similar implementation and I don’t recall mass scalping of those devices either. Obviously anyone could purchase a single one and scalp it but that doesn’t create a mass shortage.