Whether you consider it a living room PC or a "console that refuses to admit it's a console," there's no doubt that Valve's new Steam Machine is going to be a big deal when it launches early next year, but just how highly it sells will probably depend on its price – something Valve hasn't yet announced. We asked a number of games industry analysts how much they expect the hardware to cost, and while estimations vary, it sounds like "it will not be cheap."
An analyst with a slightly more favorable prediction for our bank balances is Joost van Dreunen, an NYU Stern School of Business professor and the former CEO of SuperData Research, a games market research firm, who reckons that "the Steam Machine is priced to sit right between a console and a PC." As far as the actual price tag goes, he expects that it could "cost around the mid-five hundreds, rising to the high-seven hundreds for more storage."
