The Steam Machine's launch schedule has been turned upside down by inflation in the DRAM and NAND sectors.
You can be a video game giant, run the number one video game platform on the PC, have had success with a nice portable console and still not know when/how to launch your new products. This is the situation in which Valve, owner of the Steam service and originator of the Steam Deck, finds itself today. Late last year - with timing that some found surprising - Valve announced not one, but three new products. To support the Steam Deck, gamers would soon be able to get their hands on the new version of the Steam Controller, the Steam Frame VR headset and, above all, the Steam Machine mini-PC designed to take pride of place in the living room.
When Valve presented its line of products to the press, the company pulled out all the stops, revealing almost everything. Or "almost ", because two important pieces of information were left out by Valve and its key players: the release date for all these products and the price. As for the price, new information was to be released shortly, while the release date had yet to be precisely defined, but there was already talk of " early 2026 ". Alas, you probably already know part of the rest: the double crisis of DRAM and NAND has come and gone, and Valve finds itself in difficulty. The prices of these two key components have soared, making planning complex, especially for a new product.
The Steam Machine must be accompanied by the Steam Controller and Steam Frame © PC Gamer
For Valve, the crux of the problem is not so much the availability of the components as their price. As we've said, the Steam Machine is designed to take pride of place in the living room, but to have any chance of establishing itself, it has to be affordable. While Valve has always said there'd be no question of selling it off, the Steam Machine is taking the full brunt of DRAM and NAND inflation: two models had been mooted with 16GB DDR5 + 8GB GDDR6 plus a 512GB or 2TB SSD. Even the "small" configuration has to make do with DDR5, the price of which has sometimes risen by 300%. It's hard to see how Valve can solve this equation!
No doubt Valve is also struggling, as the Steam Machine's launch window becomes more uncertain by the day. The " beginning of 2026 " was quickly replaced by a " first quarter 2026 ", which then may have had nothing to do with the double DRAM/NAND crisis. However, Valve has since changed this date to " current 2026 ", possibly postponing the release by 8 to 9 months. Worse still, an update on Steam's English-language website revealed a different formula: " We hope to ship in 2026, but as we shared recently, memory and storage shortages have created challenges for us. We'll share updates publicly when we finalize our plans ".
This formula has since been replaced by " We shared recently that there have been challenges with memory and storage shortages, but we will be shipping all three products this year", which is more in line with previous statements. The first formula marked Valve's uncertainty, with a not very reassuring " we hope to market in 2026 ", which is no longer visible online. Valve retains the phrase " we will distribute all three products this year ", but this communication blunder is the perfect illustration of the vagueness that currently reigns, and not only at Valve.
