Eight months after first revealing the compact console-like Steam Machine gaming PC to the world last year, its architect Valve has finally announced the device's price and details about its release. If you were holding out hope that it would be fairly affordable and widely available, well...I have bad news.
The cheapest model of the living room-friendly gaming PC — one that doesn't come with Valve's new Steam Controller and only has 512GB of storage instead of 2TB — is a whopping $1,049, with more expensive options climbing to $1,128, $1,349, and $1,428 price points.
Cost isn't the only debilitating complication to contend with if you're interested in a Steam Machine, however. Supply is also a huge issue, as Valve has been forced to implement signups for a reservation queue due to very limited stock. And with Steam Controller reservations extending into 2027, it's hard to imagine fresh batches of Steam Machines will come much faster, if at all.
What's going on here — why is the Steam Machine so prohibitively expensive, and why does Valve have such a limited stock of the systems? If you've followed tech even loosely in recent months, I'm sure your assumption is that ongoing AI-driven RAM shortages are to blame. And you're right.
Valve addressed the situation in the blog post it revealed the Steam Machine's pricing and availability in, explaining that "The price at which we sell our hardware is a direct result of the cost of" the components it needs to make it, and that "our original goal for the price of Steam Machine is no longer viable" due to the scarcity and skyrocketing cost of memory and storage.
"We felt like we had a good understanding of how those costs might change over time when we first started sourcing them for Steam Machine back in 2023. That understanding was born from the many years of data we all have about the evolution of PC hardware prices — primarily, that it tends to get cheaper over time as new technology arrives," the manufacturer wrote.
"Over the past year or so, that has changed quickly and significantly, most visibly for RAM and storage components," it continued. "The overall effect is that our original goal for the price of Steam Machine is no longer viable. So the prices we're sharing today reflect the state of the world for manufacturing; or, more accurately, it reflects the price of the components as we've secured them over the past 6 months."
Valve added that "Price wasn't the only thing impacted by all of this: availability was as well. There were periods where we found we couldn't source some of our components at all, at any price." This, it says, "has impacted the number of units we've been able to produce for launch."
In the end, I feel that both Valve and customers are in a total no-win situation here, as the former can't afford to lower prices without making selling the Steam Machine untenable, and many of the latter are unable to afford the device due to its heightened cost. I hate to say it, but the Steam Machine just seems like an awesome device that came out at the worst time possible.
Are you considering getting a Steam Machine despite how expensive it is and how hard it will be to secure an order for one? I'm curious to hear from you, so let me know in the comments and vote in our poll.
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