Valve has officially revealed the price of its long-awaited Steam Machine, and it’s higher than most people anticipated. The entry-level model with 512GB of storage starts at $1,049 USD, while the larger 2TB version comes in at $1,349 USD. Both models are also available in bundles that include the new Steam Controller.
Why Is It So Expensive?
Valve openly admits this wasn’t the plan. The company originally aimed for a much more affordable price with estimates putting the original target around $749 USD. BUT a global hardware crisis forced their hand.
The culprit? RAM and storage costs have skyrocketed, largely because AI companies have been buying up massive amounts of memory components, leaving less supply for everyone else. Valve says that component prices and availability shifted dramatically during development, and in some cases they couldn’t source certain parts at all, no matter what they were willing to pay.
As Valve put it:
“Our original goal for the price of Steam Machine is no longer viable. The prices we’re sharing today reflect the state of the world for manufacturing — or more accurately, the price of the components as we’ve secured them over the past six months.”
What Do You Get for the Price?
All Steam Machine models share the same internal hardware:
- CPU: Semi-custom AMD Zen 4 with 6 cores / 12 threads
- GPU: RDNA 3 with 28 compute units
- RAM: 16GB DDR5
- VRAM: 8GB GDDR6
- Storage: 512GB or 2TB NVMe SSD (expandable via microSD)
The machine runs SteamOS, Valve’s Linux-based operating system, giving users access to over 20 years’ worth of Steam games, all from the comfort of a living room couch.
Why Won’t Valve Sell It at a Loss?
Unlike Sony and Microsoft, who typically sell consoles at a loss to recoup money through game sales and subscriptions, Valve has chosen not to subsidize the Steam Machine. Their reasoning is philosophical: they believe in keeping PC gaming open.
Valve explained:
“When companies sell their hardware under cost for competitive advantage, or buy exclusive content for it, they’re doing that to build a more closed system — one where you don’t get to choose what software you want to use.”
How Do You Buy One?
Getting a Steam Machine won’t be as simple as walking into a store. Valve is using a randomized reservation queue to manage limited supply and discourage scalpers.
Here’s how it works:
- Registration is open now and closes on June 25 at 10am Pacific
- After the deadline, Valve will randomly assign spots in the purchase queue
- First purchase emails go out starting June 29
- Valve hopes to work through the entire queue by the end of 2026
This lottery-style approach is a clear sign that supply is limited.
The Bigger Picture
Despite the high price, the Steam Machine represents something meaningful for PC gaming. It’s a small, quiet, console-like box that brings PC gaming into the living room without the usual setup headaches, and it does so on Linux, which is a significant milestone for open-source gaming.
Valve isn’t alone in facing these cost pressures either. Both PlayStation and Xbox recently raised their hardware prices for the same reasons, and the situation is unlikely to improve quickly.
For now, the Steam Machine is a capable and well-designed machine for those who can afford it, just not the affordable console-killer many had hoped for.
Is the Steam Machine too costly for what it is?
The Gamicle 
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