I cannot see how they will be making any money at this but, next year, iBuyPower will launch their first Steam Machine. At the price of $499, the same as an Xbox One, you will get an AMD CPU bundled with a discrete Radeon R9 270 graphics card.
Image Credit: The Verge
Oh, and Valve's controller will be included in that price.
Sure, they can save money on the free operating system, but that still looks pretty awesome. In terms of actual dimensions, the case is said to be between the size of the PS4 and the Xbox one. Frankly, if you like the look of home theater appliances, this could be a nice twist on that aesthetic. It will also come with a 500GB hard drive. Don't worry, though: it is a PC. If there is a USB 3.0 port anywhere on it, you can attach a giant drive for your games.
And the power supply is internal, too!
iBuyPower is expected to ship this device at some point in 2014 along with a wave of other Steam Machines. Prepare for many of these innovations to come out of CES.
might be subsidized by Gabe?
might be subsidized by Gabe? I’m not a fan of white/silver cases. but, that is sweet.
No it is subsidized by the
No it is subsidized by the hardware OEMs/ODMs, so retail pricing, and also the old wholesale pricing, does not figure into these devices’ OEM costs. The indenpendent hardware manufacturers, especially the ones that do not benifit from XBONE and PS4 sales, have negotiated special deals with iBuyPower. So along with this OEM steam box maker, and others to come, These indenpendent hardware manufacturers are offering special OEM pricing, to compete against the latest console offerings, via better performing hardware and the Steam gaming ecosystem. These hardware manufacturers will take a hit on their usual profit margins in order to make it up with higher sales volumes.
I’m not sure you understand
I’m not sure you understand what subsidize means. Subsidized means you take a loss on hardware and make it up else wear in the case of cell carriers for instance you make your money back in the price of service. Lower margins isn’t a subsidy. Any guesses on the cpu? My money is on a variant of the 760K.
They are not taking a loss on
They are not taking a loss on the hardware, the hardware makers are lowering their profit margins by offering ibuypower better than OEM pricing, they are in business to make money, these suppliers that are missing out on the sales contracts that went to other companies in the competition for XBONE, and PS4 business, as well as others that were never in the game to begin with! Hardware suppliers have different price points for retail and OEM sales, and there is a reserve profit margin/price point that hardware makers only use for special high volume sales opportunities, such as the SteamBox open hardware and SteamOS/Steamclient market. IbuyPower has negotiated special high volume OEM pricing, and its hardware suppliers, who lost out on the XBONE/PS4 contracts have sold IbuyPower a large volume of specially discounted OEM hardware, that ibuypower will make a profit on, and ibuypowers suppliers will take a profit hit, above and beyond the usual OEM pricing. Ibuypower does not have to spend money developing an OS, SteamOS will be the free distro, ibuypower will probably take off the shelf components to massproduce a product, and why not assemble a ready to run TurnKey gaming PC, and use the free steamOS and preinstall the free steamclient and make 25 or 40 Bucks a unit profit on the hardware, if M$ and Sony are loosing money on their units, it is beacuse they had engineering hardware/software costs to absorbe, that M$/Sony will have to makup with using their closed ecosystem fees! IbuyPower has no hardware/software development cost, other than the case design, and a few incidentals! What does iBuyPower have to worry about creating a gaming/OS ecosystem, Valve will offer that along with the Steam Linux distro, Ibuypower will only have to worry mostely about their sales volume, everything has been done for them, but to assemble the product, and that was done under a third party contract, probably in china or somewhere in Asia!
As far as an APU/CPU, well who is the low price x86 leader, and what GPU maker has the lower price on surplus stock! The motherboards were probably some low cost variant/s, what ever was in greater supply, for the special low price!
There will be plenty of these lowend SteamBoxes made from parts taken from the Island of misfit components, and assembled by SomeThingCON into TurnKey SteamBoxes for the subgenius, just look at all the XBONE and PS4 sales. there’s gold in them TurnKey gameBoxes, and the dealers/makers of pickaxes and shovels, and other sundries, made way more money than any motherload finding 49er ever did!
Large system builders, and
Large system builders, and many online stores, get their hardware significantly cheaper than those of us paying retail. They may very well be making a decent profit on the systems.
Furthermore, system builders are able to get even deeper discounts on their hardware if they choose with warranty free parts.
For example you may buy a pre built system, and if the hard drive fails after 1 year and you head to the hard hard drive manufacturer website and check the warranty status of the drive, they will tell you that it is not covered, and that you should contact who ever made the system.
Warranty free components are significantly cheaper, that is how you can see a desktop PC with windows, and okay specs for web use, for $300, many companies use components like this ( dell, HP, Toshiba, and many other companies selling pre built system ) many gaming PC’s that are pre built also suffer from this which makes it even more annoying when these companies charge a $500 markup above retail if you were to build the system yourself.