This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Seeing the LTT video where they build their own PC with similar parts (but slightly better) for the same price was really the nail in the coffin for this one. The performance of the SMachine makes the value proposition… lackluster.
The only redeeming quality is the form factor. Would definitely fit very well in a living room. Would it make a good couch party game machine ?
The form factor is a big factor though. Some people don't want or can't afford the space a giant metal box takes up.
I feel sorry for them for the team that designed this. They had all this shit ready to go and then the RAM and SSD prices went through the roof, and tbh if you're speccing a machine for mass production, those seem like the bits that were always gonna be cheaper by the time it comes to actually building it. Why would they ever go up? They never have before.
It was a nice idea, but the timing had completely fucked it. I don't think it was ever going to compete with the PS5 on price, but right now it's barely even competing with PC on price...
Even the Steam Deck isn't competitive any more.
This is what shows in Steam when you search for it.
This is all you can buy.
That's why I buy used, much easier to negotiate. I'm not really a Dodge guy though, and I don't need a big truck anyway.
Har har. It’s not dodge anymore
Not only that but they're dealing with another legal headache claiming they're a monopoly which is part of why they aren't subsidizing it. One of the staff members did say they're considering selling them with RAM/SSDs which if they do will significantly reduce the price.
And the RAM crunch isn’t projected to get better anytime soon.
Projections by whom? What timeframe does "soon" cover?
With increasing objections, blocking, and cancellations of data centers, and some big-name AI companies going public soonish, and the recent OpenAPI finance press… it could be "soon", within a few months, that it could get better. It's certainly not a certainty, maybe even unlikely, and can't be "projected" from the current RAM market alone, but if you want to hope…
From 12:48 of the video:
Gamers Nexus: "Were you able to lock in contracts for memory with the suppliers directly or did you have to jump through a bunch of hoops or..."
Rep from Valve: "Look there's no contract, there's nothing. Those guys...they are...they give us a price every month, and they say 'you can buy that many', and it's yes or no, and if we say no then they never talk to us again".
Gamers Nexus also links another video they made specifically about the DRAM cartel.
Actual fucking cartel.
Yes, the current tech industry has made computer hardware into drugs. It's a sellers market and the buyers that are ordering the largest amounts at the highest prices are AI and data center companies, everyone else gets the left overs at even higher prices.
Its always rough when you are dealing with a cartel..
I love how many people are really trying to suck the cartel's toes in the comments here.
The "UMM ACTUALLYS" are off the charts and stupid.
They must be Nintendo fans too.
Damn the verge now just quotes GN? They may as well just link their video without writing anything, lol. They added nothing to this article.
Not that I can read much of it because of the paywall.
The video is quite long. If they wrote about the video specifically, and GN has no text article, there's value in that in my eyes. For a different format and significant condensation or highlighting.
If you click "read mode" (im on librewolf but any firefox fork will do) you can access the whole article just fine.
I hate micron so much now especially. They basically rug pull all consumers and only sell B2b now. So they can make more money on Ai datacenters.
Problem is there are only a few companies that even sell memory. And micron made it so much worse for the consumer market. I will not forgive, I will not forget.
I really hope China or someone else can step up and just flood the entire market with cheap components eventually.
They are trying. But there is a downside to everything. Once China has full function to basically replace the manufacturing of processors and memory in Taiwan they no longer have anything holding them back from bombing Taiwan into submission. And several incentives to do so to eliminate their competition.
Luckily processors and microchips are a whole other story. They are not near ASML today.
This all so people can rot their brains out to fruit videos...
And so companies can fire the people who do the work (and hire them back later to fix the damage done by the agentic AI), too. Don't forget that part.
So we thought we'd just kick it to the customers
This really bums me out not cuz I was looking to buy one but because I wanted it to shake the market up and make every company do better for the consumer... I feel like this price takes them completely out of the console market and purely into the entry-level PC market where I think it still is a decent specs and price for that market. It's just not what it was made to be
