The title is a bit misleading, as the article lists diverging analysts’ opinions, ranging from Valve willing to sell at a loss or low margins, to high prices due to RAM and SSD price volatility.

  • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    17 hours ago

    Moore’s Law Is Dead thinks that Valve basically got a bargain bin deal from AMD, who had a bunch of chips they thought were going to be used in a MSFT tablet, but that tablet got cancelled.

    So, Valve did some scrapyard engineering, and got a discount on these things that were otherwise never going to be used for anything.

    He estimates a total cost to produce of $425, estimates MSRP between $450 to $600, depending on just how hard Valve wants to fuck MSFT with their own leftovers.

    https://youtube.com/watch?v=sJI3qTb2ze8

    If this ends up being remotely accurate, it would be basically a corporate demolition of Shakespearian quality.

    Gabe… Gabe was once a MSFT employee, you see.

    A disgruntled former MSFT employee, you might say.

    • Natanael@infosec.pub
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      13 hours ago

      Rumors is that the original Zen CPU SoC in the Steam Deck was also the leftovers from another canceled project by “a major OEM”, so it’s plausible. Sounds like Microsoft planned a handheld Xbox much earlier, which years after the Deck turned into the ROG collaboration, could have been related

      • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        12 hours ago

        I had not heard that before, but uh, extremely funny if true.

        Its like MacroHard just keeps punching themself in the face.

      • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        15 hours ago

        Yes.

        Sorry, its either/both their stock ticker, a fairly common way they refer to themselves internally.

        I too used to work for Microsoft.

        Wooo boy, being one of two people trying to make the multi hundred, maybe over a thousand node, call center / support tree node system work correctly, for the 360, during the ‘red ring of death’ (3RR was the code we used for ‘you are absolutely fucked’)… yeah that was fun.

        • bitMasque@lemmy.world
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          9 hours ago

          That sounds interesting. Would you mind sharing a bit more of your experience, if you’re not bound by an NDA?

          • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            9 hours ago

            I have before in other comments in other threads… but I am about to pass out, and being on mobile with a shit tier phone makes searching my own comment history somewhat cumbersome.

            Uh… reply to this in 10 hrs and I will probably be awake and find those old comments?

            (Also, its been a while since I worked for them, but even if I was bound by an NDA, I wouldn’t give a fuck, I didn’t do anything that important, really. Just another V Dash amongst many.)

            • bitMasque@lemmy.world
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              9 hours ago

              Thank you for taking the time to reply despite your situation. I’ll try to remember to ping you tomorrow, but don’t feel obligated.