Ground-breaking research. It’s odd that literally no other company has ever produced their product in different colours before, might have saved them having to ‘experiment’.
The experiment is about Valve, who is still relatively green in the hardware market, trying to diversify their supply chain, which was so far kept intentionally simple.
Limited, not enough for everyone. You obviously don’t understand the term.
I’m confused how nobody understands this. It’s not just a shell. There is a whole pc inside that shell. Yes, the shell may not cost anything extra to make, but if no one buys it, it’s a whole entire system sitting on the shelves. Obviously people will buy it, but what is it? 1 in every 10 owners? Or 1 in every 1000? The shells sell but it’s to a fraction of deck owners, mainly because of the complexity of the install.
Ideally they’d make new IPs first
Yea a portal/half life themed deck is cool and all but they need new material
Funny how every comment so far has completely missed the point. The “experiment” isn’t whether people want different colorways. Indeed, that’s already known from other products on the market and the third party market for the Steam Deck. The experiment is in seeing how sustainable it is for Valve to produce them. Right now, every Deck is virtually the same. There are three models, but they’re positioned rather intentionally to sell roughly in the same or at least predictable quantities.
That all changes with something completely aesthetic, like a colorway. There’s no way to know how many people will want a clear vs solid black shell. When you introduce actual colors, things get even more complicated. How many people want blue vs green vs purple vs red, etc. Add in the X factor of choice of model, and it becomes a nightmare. Maybe a purple LCD sells well, but no one wants a purple 1TB OLED.
Valve is being smart here. They want to start offering options for people to get a look they really want for their Decks, but they’re starting small with one limited colorway, to see how it is to manufacture, manage stock, etc. They’ll likely start to slowly introduce more options, getting an feel for it as they expand. Eventually, you may be able to get a Deck in every color of the rainbow, but they’d be absolutely insane to do that overnight. THAT is the experiment.
I wish that I could buy it and show that there is demand for it but I simply cannot justify going from LCD to OLED for $649 when I’d rather put that money away, sit on it in a bank account for another 2-3 years (it’s not like I’m gonna be playing games deck can’t handle until then), and then when the actual steam deck 2 comes out I’ll get it ASAP.
I think they mean the act itself of doing limited editions is an experiment for now. If it goes well, they will explore doing more limited editions in the future.
No one wants to buy a limited edition only for that edition to suddenly become easily available for everyone else. Whether you like the practice or not, it defeats the entire purpose of calling it a limited edition in the first place. People would be pissed.
This company is learning how to manage their logistics. Sure, other companies are doing it already with tons of options and configurations but Valve isn’t one of those companies. Taking their time and at their own pace is their way to learn and adapt.
I’m all for special edition decks like what Nintendo does
Their actual text in your screenshot doesn’t back up your interpretation. The actual experiment, is how fast they sell out of the LE vs sales of generic OLED models, along with the rate of people double dipping for each.