Just last November, Valve revealed three latest products to players without warning – Steam Machine, Steam Frame and the new Steam Controller. So far, the new Steam Controller has been officially launched for sale earlier this month at a price of $99, triggering a rush to buy around the world. However, this also includes a lot of resale scalpers, which also makes many players worry that when it is the turn of the Steam Machine to officially go on sale, the situation may be more serious. However, Valve It seems that countermeasures have already been prepared.
Just after the first wave of Steam controller stocks were sold out around the world, Valve officially launched a reservation queuing system. In the Steam update officially launched by Vavle to implement the queuing system, Valve officials quietly hinted that this protection mechanism will also be applied to the Steam Machine and Steam Frame distribution methods.
According to the latest discovery by users through the Steam Tracker analysis system, in addition to items related to Steam Controller and Steam Deck, there is also information related to four Steam Machine packages and two Steam Frame packages in the background code. Not only does it imply that Valve will launch four different package solutions for Steam Machine, but also that there are two versions of the VR headset Steam Frame that will use the same queuing mechanism of the Steam Controller.
So far, Valve has confirmed that the Steam Machine will be launched in two versions with 512GB and 2TB capacities. The two additional versions are still unknown, but considering that the new Steam Controller has been released in advance, Valve may launch a bundle containing the controller.
But another speculation is that Valve later decided to launch other models between 512GB and 2TB for the Steam Machine to bring more diverse choices to players. After all, in this era where AAA game capacity is often 100GB, the native hardware is only 512GB, which can hardly install too many games, let alone part of the space that must be allocated to the operating system. However, 2TB It seems a bit too high, so releasing a 1TB version seems to be a quite reasonable choice.
Although this “queuing system” may have the opportunity to curb scalping behavior to a certain extent, the biggest unknown for players is still the price of Steam Machine. Since earlier this year, global memory shortages have occurred due to large-scale purchases by AI technology companies such as OpenAI. Even the three giants Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo have successively announced increases in the prices of their consoles. Therefore, before disclosing the price of this PC console, Valve seems to want to spend a little more time observing market dynamics.
Source: KOCPC Chinese