The Steam Machine licensees don’t expect to make money, and Valve isn’t helping

Hey guys, do you remember Steam Machines? No? Well, that’s a problem.

Since announcing their partners for Steam Machines last January, Valve has been oddly silent about their entry into the hardware space. Too silent, it turns out.

In an interview with WSJ, four of the fourteen partners revealed that they do not expect to make money off of the devices at all. Alienware’s Frank Azor goes as much to say that this will be their least profitable device ever.

These manufactures did assert they decided to sign up for Steam Machines in their faith that Valve can pull it off. However, they also have other concerns, namely the fragmentation that Valve has itself allowed in their partner’s machines.

I did my own snooping around, and criminally, Valve has not updated their site with links to their partners’ sites, although Dell (Alienware) has already gone so far as to set up their own Steam Machines landing page. Valve has simply not done enough to keep Steam Machines in people’s heads, and with all the news breaking out from the main console makers, they risk getting lost in the mix. I should not have to explain to you how fatalist this is.

You can read more details in Gamasutra here.