That's a commendable wish. And even when many great projects started with wishes and dreams, to realize them a solid project planning and product development based on solid "tedious boring" engineering is mandatory. Otherwise it just stays a dream, perhaps with money lost. To realize things reality must be faced.
Low prices come from four points:
- Most reduced bare minimum hardware just sufficient enough to deliver the needed performance as tightly as possible. For that you first need to know exactly what the software needs you wanna run on it, and what can spared. Anything not really needed cost money, so increases the price. Rule of thumb: 1€ production cost comes to 10€ selling price. In negotiations about mass production they haggle not about single cents, but about tenths of a cent, since for each 100k pieces every cent more cost 1k€. Having a cent here, another one there, while dealing with margins around 2...6% those quickly add up to signifcant sums. On the other hand everything needed not contained drops the performance, which results in unsatisfied customers, which means bad rewiews, which means massive drop of sales. So it doesn't matter if you use AI. You need to optimize the software - the system that your game console is in its core - anyway, to reduce hardware requirements to the max. I already also told you, particulary with games you need best performance always. Players do not tolerate laggy gaming. Vibe coding does not deliver optimized software. So you have to do a lot of work on the software on your own anyway. Unless you have this, it makes no sense to look for hardware - because you don't know what exactly you need, until you get your software finished. AI can help you on producing parts of it, but it cannot do it all. It can neither prevent you from optimizing, nor to do it in the right order, and above all it's no guarentee you can completely neglect the software in a project that's 99% software and rely on it will deliver the best solution possible fitting the hardware you've chosen. You first have to make games run on FreeBSD. Then see how to optimize that. Then see what hardware is sufficient enough. Then see what it cost. And be ready to face the fact, you cannot beat Steam's price. I don't know if it's possible at all, but it's always a possibility one must always keep in account with every project to eventually realize the original set target cannot be reached. That's exactly why in every real project there always is a lot of analysing and evaluation before even planning starts, and above all before any money is spent. Of course a Ferrari is expensive, and it would be nice to get one for half the price. But is it possible to realise the same for half the price? You may get a car as fast, but not so luxurious. or you can get the luxury, but a much slower car then. Looking for the hardware first is like trying to bake a cake by filling the dough into the baking mold after you removed it from the oven. Saying, 'I don't need to care about the recipe, I'm using an instant baking mix' does not change the fact you're doing it in the wrong order. Creating a computer cost less than Steam's one ain't no art. Creating a computer cost less and providing the same performance is. Imagine you create some hardware that's cheaper as Steam's but not provides even remotely the performance. Then you tell your customers, 'Well, you cannot play the recent 3D open world on it, but Tetris and Pac-Man just run fine.' Guess how many are frantic to get one of your gaming consoles then? That's right: None.
- Low production cost. Which means production in countries with low wages, which means China, or India. They always want to be payed in full in advance for the whole lot charge ordered. As long as the money ain't full on their bank account, they don't start any production at all. This was exactly the point somebody always knowing it all better than the rest of the world underestimated when he promised a smartphone to buy for 100$ each produced in homeland. First finding out producing it at home will make his thing cost thousands of dollars, and then after broken his promise and eventually produced in China anyway like all the others he before accused for betrayal, still the promised price cannot be kept. Ideas, wishes, intensions, believes, and hopes are by far not enough. In business good connections, experience, and negotiating skills, which means exemplary social skills are the most important deciding factors. Ignorance, arrogance, mouthbreathing and threatening are neither of that, nor helping the case at all.
- Low margin. The more margin, the higher the price. If you wanna sell a lot - and you have to (see point below) you have to reduce your margin to a very low percentage (think one-digit) - you have to deal with shops and supermarkets. Those are going to receive the most margin, if they even include your product into their assortment and sell it for you. Even Amazon wants his share, and selling on Amazon alone ain't enough if nobody knows you have a product to sell.
- Large production numbers per lot charge is the most important factor to lower the price. Not thousands, think at least hundred thousands - in a single lot charge ordered each. If you are no millionaire willing to risk your fortune, you need to convince an investor. Convincing an investor takes a ready for market developed product, and a market analysis showing enough numbers can be sold for sure. Having an investor then means you are not the boss anymore. Investors don't waste money. They wanna get their money back sooner as you thought with as much revenue as possible. The investor will tell you how things are going to work from now on, what to do when, which schedules to meet etc. (Things like gaming consoles must be placed into shops before christmas sale starts, better on Black Friday - don't you think this means production can start in late October then.) Don't be surprised if the investor brings some other guys first helping than replacing you, and telling you, this will not become a FreeBSD based gaming console anymore, but from now on you're going to build a Windows based plant watering device. Of course, you can go to one of those crowd funding platforms. But even there unless you don't already have a product mature for series production and market release, but just some tinkered prototype or some fancy idea, only, you will not gather the money needed to get into series production, but need to deal even more with impatient buyers instead of working on it, since only morons invest their money into dreams. Additionally yours were neither the first, nor the last crowdfunding project which hopelessly underestimated the cost to start a real series production, and completely overseen and forgotten all the approvals, admissions, licenses, according procedures and tests needed, to be allowed to sell legally products on consumer markets in Europe, Northamerica, Southamerica, Asia, Africa...not respected the differences in laws individual countries, or in the USA even single states have...
I don't want to disencourage you.
But it's always better to check first, if a target is realistic to be reached, before one starts running blindly into an endless desert and getting lost.
And the larger and unkown the desert, the better on checks more carefully before and plan ahead.
