This is taking me back to Kim Stanley Robinson's "Red Mars", "Green Mars", "Blue Mars" trilogy.

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Quoting: sub

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: gradyvuckovicRe: Price
IMO, sell it at a loss.

Hear me out.

What would absolutely kill this product is a high price tag.

VR headsets are expensive to make, and VR headsets that push boundaries with hardware are usually even more expensive. Couple that with the fact VR is effectively just an add-on rather than a platform, and the still very small market for high quality VR games (due to the small number of users - sound familiar?), the expensive hardware requirements and the unusual requirements for using VR in general (eg: room space) and you have a product with a high price tag and high entry barrier.

Valve needs to move as many of these headsets as possible to seed a market for VR and for this headset.

Selling the headset at below manufacturing cost is not entirely crazy for a few reasons.

1. This product will become cheaper to mass produce in large numbers eventually. Making a lot of something is always cheaper than making a small quantity of it. In order to achieve higher sales quantities, the price will need to start lower.
2. It's also a great way for Valve to secure their future as the home of PC gaming since I can't think of any real competitor to Steam that has VR games or Steam's level of VR support. But as long as VR represents only 1% of the market, that isn't enough of an edge. (sound familiar?)
3. With 3 Valve VR games incoming they can at least partially or perhaps even fully make back the loss on the headset by selling the games. But they won't sell those games if no one buys the headset. Plus, Valve will make back even more of that loss on extra sales of other VR games on Steam as one of the first things a new VR gamer does after getting a headset is buying a whole bunch of VR games to try it out with. Valve will get 30% of every VR game sold on their platform, so getting as many headsets out there as possible is very important.

Selling at a loss is not uncommon for hardware, Sony has done it before with Playstations, after a couple of years of manufacturing the same thing in large numbers the cost of manufacturing goes down and the money is recovered by selling games.

How far below cost is another matter but this headset needs to be very affordable and high value for money to be a winner, while also being high quality. That combination would put a VR headset in the hands of many gamers, and rocket the VR gaming industry forward.

I find the logic here good. I'm not convinced VR will take off even if they do that, but it's probably their best shot and if it works they will make back the subsidy and be well positioned to dominate. Even if VR doesn't take off, the people who buy the ones they do sell will probably pay back the subsidy with their VR game purchases, so it isn't a huge risk.

Let me quote myself.
I really don't think subsidized hardware is an option in this particular case.

Quoting: subI don't know the SONY VR set, but I guess even at the time of its release it hasn't been the most advanced one. That might already reduce the price.

Could it be it is/was even subsidized by SONY?

This is an interesting point imho.

I think this is no option for Valve.
SONY can consider subsidized hardware as an investment to strengthen their platform.
You can only use the headset with a PS4, right?
So it only runs software licensed by SONY

But that Valve headset will surely not be restricted for Steam use and support Open APIs for VR as we know Valve.
This leads me to think it's very unlikely that Valve will subsidize (or even think about a dumping price) the headset in order to make it more affordable, since you can use with other platforms as well.

Yeah, but the thing is that although there's no actual restriction on Valve's part, this thing would be used mainly for PC gaming, right? Consoles restrict outside hardware. And the thing about PC gaming is, while Steam doesn't by any means have a monopoly on PC game sales, it sure as hell has a majority of them, and that majority would be all the stronger for high end stuff, running on Valve hardware. People aren't going to be buying a ton of VR games to play on the Steam headset, at GOG or Itch.
Plus, if it does well Valve would inevitably start to do what Valve does, add features to the platform that make things nicer/more useful/more interesting for users of the headset, which they would miss if they were operating outside Steam.
So for practical purposes it doesn't matter much if they restrict it as such, they'll still get the majority of game sales related to it. Yeah, other people would get some benefits from their subsidy, but most of the games sold would be giving them that 30% (or 25%). They would be very likely to recoup a modest to medium subsidy, and higher sales of the VR thing would help them keep the platform differentiated in a time of rising competition.

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Quoting: gradyvuckovicRe: Price
IMO, sell it at a loss.

Hear me out.

What would absolutely kill this product is a high price tag.

VR headsets are expensive to make, and VR headsets that push boundaries with hardware are usually even more expensive. Couple that with the fact VR is effectively just an add-on rather than a platform, and the still very small market for high quality VR games (due to the small number of users - sound familiar?), the expensive hardware requirements and the unusual requirements for using VR in general (eg: room space) and you have a product with a high price tag and high entry barrier.

Valve needs to move as many of these headsets as possible to seed a market for VR and for this headset.

Selling the headset at below manufacturing cost is not entirely crazy for a few reasons.

1. This product will become cheaper to mass produce in large numbers eventually. Making a lot of something is always cheaper than making a small quantity of it. In order to achieve higher sales quantities, the price will need to start lower.
2. It's also a great way for Valve to secure their future as the home of PC gaming since I can't think of any real competitor to Steam that has VR games or Steam's level of VR support. But as long as VR represents only 1% of the market, that isn't enough of an edge. (sound familiar?)
3. With 3 Valve VR games incoming they can at least partially or perhaps even fully make back the loss on the headset by selling the games. But they won't sell those games if no one buys the headset. Plus, Valve will make back even more of that loss on extra sales of other VR games on Steam as one of the first things a new VR gamer does after getting a headset is buying a whole bunch of VR games to try it out with. Valve will get 30% of every VR game sold on their platform, so getting as many headsets out there as possible is very important.

Selling at a loss is not uncommon for hardware, Sony has done it before with Playstations, after a couple of years of manufacturing the same thing in large numbers the cost of manufacturing goes down and the money is recovered by selling games.

How far below cost is another matter but this headset needs to be very affordable and high value for money to be a winner, while also being high quality. That combination would put a VR headset in the hands of many gamers, and rocket the VR gaming industry forward.

I find the logic here good. I'm not convinced VR will take off even if they do that, but it's probably their best shot and if it works they will make back the subsidy and be well positioned to dominate. Even if VR doesn't take off, the people who buy the ones they do sell will probably pay back the subsidy with their VR game purchases, so it isn't a huge risk.

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Quoting: kuhpunkt

Quoting: Comandante Ñoñardo

Quoting: kuhpunkt

Quoting: Comandante Ñoñardo

Quoting: kuhpunkt

Quoting: devnullNext question is shipping from where. I don't know of any distributor with stock yet.

From the USA. They build that stuff in their own factory.

If Valve don't licence their hardware to third party manufacturers from around the world, it will be a complete commercial failure... It seems that nobody learned nothing from the VIDEOCASSETTE war.

Why? Seems to work fine for the Steam Controller.

Maybe if you live in the USA or another country with an strong currency...
But for the rest of the world, specially countries like Argentina, is impossible...
You won't find an Steam controller at retail stores...And if you do, it will be more expensive than an Xbox controller.

Here in Argentina, you will find an Steam controller for about 100 and 150 U$D at digital store Mercadolibre..
meanwhile, an Xbox 360 wireless is about 70USD.

I repeat. If they don't learn from the mistakes of the past, they will do it again...

But what does that have to do with licensing this out to third party manufactures? Who does this? Apple produces their own iPhones.

Well, sort of. At least, they pay directly for subcontractors to do it rather than letting it be done on the side by people outside their control.

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Quoting: devnullOn one hand this is an outright fishing expedition :

The Commission will carry out a first evaluation of the Regulation by 23 March 2020.

...

There is no legal deadline for the Commission to complete antitrust inquiries into anticompetitive conduct.

And perhaps the most wtf of them all (staight up extortion):

If, after the parties have exercised their rights of defence, the Commission concludes that there is sufficient evidence of an infringement, it can adopt a decision prohibiting the conduct and imposing a fine of up to 10% of a company's annual worldwide turnover.

.. on the other, I'm a bit confused about Valve's reply as it does still apply to gifting. I was blocked from buying a game in Canada for a freind in the US. That is with paying in USD.

Straight up extortion? It's the government. It gets to impose penalties on individuals and corporations if they break the law, such as jail, fines and so on. It gets to investigate to find out if they've done so. It does not have time limits after which it has to agree to illegal behaviour if it didn't notice or figure it out soon enough. What about any of this is supposed to be news?

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Quoting: F.Ultra

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: F.Ultra

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: F.UltraWhat's the confusing part? You cannot have a single market if players can segment said market into sections of their own making. Either you sell to the whole EU as a single market or you don't sell at all.

The thing is I don't care how thorough the EU single market is, since I don't have an ideological preference for such things. Sure, the EU is a single market as a matter of fact, and sure, that status is important to many EU bureaucrats. But that isn't a statement about what policy is good for people in the EU. You could perfectly well have policies which violated or attenuated that status but were good policies.
And even if the EU were an actual country that wouldn't preclude the possibility of trade barriers between sub-units; there are trade barriers and "buy local" policies in Canadian provinces and even municipalities. They're not huge, but they're there.

The single market is not important to "many EU bureaucrats", it's one of the fundamental blocks of the whole EU. If the single market is deemed bad policy then this have to be changed through the normal political chain (elections and so forth) but as it stands now the "law is the law" so it's not like the people enforcing the regulation can look the other way just because they feel personally that the outcome might be bad for the people in the EU, that is for the voters and then the politicians to decide.

Just googled around for your interprovincial trade barriers in Canada and I must say that the vast majority of results where from people and organisations that talked about how much problem they cause. Now I know nothing about the state of this in Canada but it sure sounds crazy.

The reality is that most people don't give a damn or really notice them. They are small, and mainly exist for fairly limited local goals. However, right wing politicians have to have something to call out. We've already got free trade with practically everybody, and they've already killed most of the social programs that don't have massive public support. So there have been some cases of provincial pols getting a bee in their bonnet about the horrors of provincial trade barriers so they can have something to campaign on.
But the reality is that there has never been such a thing as completely barrier-free trade; there probably never will be. The argument basically can't be over whether there will be barriers, but about how big and what the barriers will be.
So I don't find the claim persuasive that somehow if any barrier exists the status of the EU as a common market will implode in a puff of logic. There are surely barriers now, some more formal than others. There will be barriers next year and ten years from now, no matter what decisions get made about this particular one.

Okey I can buy that. On top of that, if you somehow can use those barriers to keep Jordan Peterson locked inside Canada then I will unconditionally endorse your interprovincial trade barriers any day of the week!

I would certainly endorse performing that international service!

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Quoting: F.Ultra

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: F.UltraWhat's the confusing part? You cannot have a single market if players can segment said market into sections of their own making. Either you sell to the whole EU as a single market or you don't sell at all.

The thing is I don't care how thorough the EU single market is, since I don't have an ideological preference for such things. Sure, the EU is a single market as a matter of fact, and sure, that status is important to many EU bureaucrats. But that isn't a statement about what policy is good for people in the EU. You could perfectly well have policies which violated or attenuated that status but were good policies.
And even if the EU were an actual country that wouldn't preclude the possibility of trade barriers between sub-units; there are trade barriers and "buy local" policies in Canadian provinces and even municipalities. They're not huge, but they're there.

The single market is not important to "many EU bureaucrats", it's one of the fundamental blocks of the whole EU. If the single market is deemed bad policy then this have to be changed through the normal political chain (elections and so forth) but as it stands now the "law is the law" so it's not like the people enforcing the regulation can look the other way just because they feel personally that the outcome might be bad for the people in the EU, that is for the voters and then the politicians to decide.

Just googled around for your interprovincial trade barriers in Canada and I must say that the vast majority of results where from people and organisations that talked about how much problem they cause. Now I know nothing about the state of this in Canada but it sure sounds crazy.

The reality is that most people don't give a damn or really notice them. They are small, and mainly exist for fairly limited local goals. However, right wing politicians have to have something to call out. We've already got free trade with practically everybody, and they've already killed most of the social programs that don't have massive public support. So there have been some cases of provincial pols getting a bee in their bonnet about the horrors of provincial trade barriers so they can have something to campaign on. Nobody else said anything because, like, whatever, eh?
But the reality is that there has never been such a thing as completely barrier-free trade; there probably never will be. The argument basically can't be over whether there will be barriers, but about how big and what the barriers will be.
So I don't find the claim persuasive that somehow if any barrier exists the status of the EU as a common market will implode in a puff of logic. There are surely barriers now, some more formal than others. There will be barriers next year and ten years from now, no matter what decisions get made about this particular one.

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Quoting: Kimyrielle

Quoting: Purple Library Guy[snip]

The EU acts pretty much like a nation already in the sense that it certainly caters only to the interest of its ruling elite. You know...like any other nation. There is not one single nation on Earth not like that. They ALL care only for the 1%. That's really not an argument against the EU. It's an argument for reform and change, and for going to elections and vote these people out.

I'm not completely in disagreement, but I think we do have very concrete examples of nations in the EU attempting to do people-friendly policies and the EU blocking them, the most obvious one being the crushing of Greece when Syriza caved to massive blackmail.
I would want to argue that there are degrees, and on average the farther the decision-makers are from those affected by their decisions, the harder it is to get them to take people's interests into account. EU decision-makers have a ton of distance, whether geographical or more importantly institutional.

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Quoting: F.UltraWhat's the confusing part? You cannot have a single market if players can segment said market into sections of their own making. Either you sell to the whole EU as a single market or you don't sell at all.

The thing is I don't care how thorough the EU single market is, since I don't have an ideological preference for such things. Sure, the EU is a single market as a matter of fact, and sure, that status is important to many EU bureaucrats. But that isn't a statement about what policy is good for people in the EU. You could perfectly well have policies which violated or attenuated that status but were good policies.
And even if the EU were an actual country that wouldn't preclude the possibility of trade barriers between sub-units; there are trade barriers and "buy local" policies in Canadian provinces and even municipalities. They're not huge, but they're there.

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Quoting: F.Ultra

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: KithopGeo-blocking is BS, so for once the EU is in the right of it with their demands.

In Canada, the price for a game is the same across the country, whether you're in Ontario or the Yukon (barring GST/PST/HST differences, similar to VAT).

In the US, same deal - it doesn't matter what state you're in, the price of a game is the price of that game.

The article lists some EU member states in the Eurozone and some that aren't - sure, the requirement for currency exchange tends to mean there are winners and losers on the price difference... but isn't the point of the EU the whole 'single market' thing? So set the price of a game in Euro, let non-Eurozone-but-still-EU members buy it for whatever that converts to in their local currency, and otherwise treat the EU as a single 'country'.

But the EU isn't a single country. It does not act fiscally, budgetarily, or in terms of many regulations, like a single country. It does not have EU-wide public pension plans paying the same amount across the region, it does not have EU-wide minimum wage laws, it does not have EU-wide unemployment insurance, it does not have payments moving between wealthier and poorer states to try to equalize their economic situation (if anything the reverse--it has EU-mandated rules redistributing the wealth of poorer states to the banks of richer ones). In the absence of these sorts of fiscal provisions to pull the economy of the region together, the Euro actually tends to broaden economic disparities in the Eurozone by worsening the economies of the poorer states, because it deprives them of a lot of fiscal tools needed more by the poorer states that go with control over one's own currency. Like devaluation to encourage exports, and stuff.

I'm not sure of my position on this, but using actual countries as an analogy to the EU is a poor argument for whichever side and as a side effect leads to a misunderstanding of the nature of the EU.

The EU is not a single country but the whole idea behind the EU is to create a single market, and that is the whole crux here. If you sell items in one EU country then you cannot deny the purchaser from reselling that item in another EU country since the whole of EU is one large single market.

This is not about prohibiting Valve from having different prices in different EU countries, this is to prevent geo-locking on cross-border resells, nothing more, nothing less.

That's the kind of reason denying the EU is, or is very much like, a country did not lead me to certainty about what policy is right for this situation.

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