In one of the interviews that came out when the Steam Machine embargo ended, someone from Valve said that, unlike with Steam Deck, they can't afford to sell at a loss because the form factor and the OS of the Machine make it possible to buy it just for general compute, which would be devastating with negative margins. So, unfortunately, I guess it will be 800-1000$ in the end
That is still cheaper than the index when it came out, and it sounds like a general improvement in all areas. Flagship vr for less than the cost of the latest smartphone seems pretty reasonable given how low adoption is.
