If they do a print to order thing, I could see it maybe working out as a cool side business. Or it could be a chance for them to go really harder into the vintage games market if they can get some publishers on board or get the rights to some older stuff. Doesn’t seem like a winning market though on a mass market front, more just a form of advertising or a specialty service for physical collectors.
Unless you’re worried that Steam Machine actually going to be a viable competitor to Xbox and Sony now that they’ve both also raised prices and dropped physical distribution. They lost two more big draws to their ecosystems and neither Sony or Microsoft have nearly as good a reputation for managing online stores.
Helps to push the angle that steam machines are “unreliable”. We’ll see if more of them turn up or not though. Difference between random hardware failure that happens everywhere and systemic production issue ala the 360 Ring of Death.
It’s the ultimate push to turn everything into the perfect Capitalist (not market-oriented) business solution: Getting paid for nothing
If your goal is to accumulate capital, and there are not outside forces regulating your worst impulses, you ultimately will create a class of legal-protected thieves, since the absolutely best and most risk free way to accumulate capital is to be given it in exchange for quite literally nothing.
Gambling is about as close to the platonic ideal as you can, but conquest by military force of political capture is also a very, viable route. Use the law to force people to buy your nothing and be protected for it, rather than being lynched when you steal someone’s products.
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