Summary
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1) Valve sells about 12-15K Steam Machines per week despite the steep selling price.
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2) It’s a niche, hobbyist device that’s unlikely to topple consoles like Nintendo or PlayStation.
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3) SteamOS can outlive hardware; vendors are already selling computers preloaded with it.
When the price of the Steam Machine was announced, the gaming scene let out a collective groan as everyone’s fears that it would break the four-figure mark came true. However, that didn’t seem to stop people from buying, as Boiling Steam estimated that around 12,000 to 15,000 units were sold per week.
Boiling Steam claims that Valve sells between 12,000 and 15,000 Steam Machines per week.
If correct, a good demonstration
Boiling Steam published an article Estimates of how many Steam Machines Valve has sold. Valve has never officially confirmed how many units it swapped, but Boiling Steam used some quantifiable metrics to come up with a rough estimate. He calculated this bounding box by looking at where Steam Machine sits in the Best Sellers spot and based on how the games above and below are performing.
After doing some napkin math, Boiling Steam concluded that Valve sells between 12,000 and 15,000 Steam Machines per week. Boiling Steam points out that the Steam Machine won’t displace big names like Nintendo or PlayStation, but it fits the bill very well as a hobbyist device:
Right now, it’s not shaping up to be a market failure, but rather a niche device. Realistically, demand will probably slow down naturally – it wouldn’t be surprising to see 20% or 30% less volume shipped per week after the initial release period.
Fortunately, even if Steam Machine doesn’t prove to be a huge hit, it doesn’t have to be all bad news. SteamOS, the software that keeps the console running, has one very good chance to outlive the hardware Become a revolutionary gaming PC operating system. Actually there are people PCs preloaded with SteamOS are now on sale.
