“I can’t tell you what the price will be, because I literally don’t know,” he said on the November 15 episode of the WAN show.
“When I said I’m disappointed it isn’t going to follow a console pricing model, where its subsided by the fact that manufacturer is going to be taking 30% of every game sold on it over the lifespan of this thing, because I feel that would be a more meaningful product, they asked what I meant by console price and I said $500. Nobody said anything, but the energy in the room wasn’t great.”
Unfortunately “console people who just want to plug something in and start playing” is a pretty big slice of the type of people that like playing multiplayer games especially AAAs which won’t always work. Not to mention they will still be served with a PC game so there will be all of the regular options like graphics that PC players are exposed to.
I’m really hoping Valve proves me wrong but I don’t think I’d recommend this device to a console only player as their first PC.