At over 1,000 euros for the base model, the Steam Machine will likely have a hard time gaining a foothold.
Last November, Valve made headlines by announcing no fewer than three new devices, even though the company—famous for its PC gaming platform, Steam—had only one such product in its lineup: the Steam Deck. On the agenda, then, was a new game controller to succeed its 2015 model, the Steam Controller, as well as a virtual reality headset, the Steam Frame, and, most notably, a mini-PC designed for the living room: the Steam Machine. Right off the bat, this last product is intriguing: Valve has enjoyed some success with its Steam Deck, but whether it can actually compete with the game consoles from Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony is another story!
More troubling for Valve is that its machine, announced in November, isn’t expected to arrive until the first half of next year—all while the DRAM and NAND crisis is already the talk of the town. Unsurprisingly, Valve has been dragging its feet when it comes to announcing the exact release date for its Steam Machine and, perhaps most importantly, has remained very vague about its retail price. Clearly, month after month, Valve couldn’t find a way out of this rut: it was impossible to negotiate attractive prices while artificial intelligence was hogging all the DRAM and NAND resources.
Between 1,039 and 1,428 euros: the Steam Machine’s prices are daunting © Valve
It wasn’t until the final days of the launch window initially mentioned by Valve—the first half of 2026—that the company finally launched its Steam Machine. The launch took the form of a sort of lottery—Valve likely produced only a limited number of units—and, more importantly, revealed the prices: 1,039 euros for the version with a 512 GB SSD and 1,359 euros for the one with a 2 TB SSD. Two bundles including Valve’s Steam Controller are also available, priced at 1,108 euros and 1,428 euros, respectively. Yes, that’s steep, even though the machine features decent components—though not cutting-edge ones: a 6-core Zen 4 CPU and an RDNA 3 GPU with 28 compute units. It remains to be seen exactly how many units will be available and how gamers will receive this Steam Machine.
