Valve on the $99 Steam Controller: 'I do know price has gone up from where we originally wanted it to be'

It was always going to be like this. Pricing was conspicuous by its absence when we first got a taste of the new Valve hardware in Bellevue back in November last year, and as soon as all the RAMpocalypse stuff started we knew that whatever we wanted them to be, the Steam Machine and Steam Frame were always going to cost more than if they’d been launched in 2025.

But, without a ton of expensive RAM inside them, I was still hopeful that the Steam Controller wouldn’t be a victim of the PC pricing catastrophe that has been 2026 so far. When I first got my hands on the pad and started it up plumbed into my home PC, I was thinking ‘yeah, at $60 I’d be happy, and I could probably go for $80.’

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Though maybe not really that naive because it sounds like Valve itself was aiming for pricing more along those lines, too. But events outside of its control have contrived to make it more expensive than planned.

“I’m not the expert on this,” Valve designer, Lawrence Yang tells me during a chat ahead of launch, “I do know price has gone up from where we originally wanted it to be.

“Also, you may have noticed in the price list that we sent you, there are some variants across regions. So depending on where a customer is going to buy it—because of imports and tariffs and duties, etc.—the price is going to vary depending on where you’re purchasing it. That is something that has changed a bit over time, too.”

With the Steam Controller now launching at $99 next week, with add-to-basket availability kicking off on May 4, the price has been one of the very few things we’ve not been so enamoured with about the new Valve pad. To be clear, that pricing is not punitive, and does mean it sits kinda in the middle of the premium and budget PC pads. But when you can get Hall effect sticks in a wireless pad with a charging dock that costs less than $30 you’ve got to really want the extras the Steam Controller offers.

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The Steam Controller on a desk during a teardown, with various parts removed. — (Image credit: Future)

But it does offer a hell of a lot of PC functionality even if the pad itself isn’t necessarily what you would call a premium offering. There isn’t a controller out there that can offer what the Steam Controller does, and while maybe the majority of PC gamers aren’t always going to need that level of utility in a pad, there are still going to be a lot of folk who want to take a look.

And in taking a look they might well fall down the rabbit hole of nested settings screens that really offer up all the power Valve’s new pad has built inside it. I know I wouldn’t have thought about using gyro control on my PC if it hadn’t been for having a Steam Controller.

I’m also going to say I don’t think that pricing is going to have any appreciable effect on the volume of Steam Controllers that fly off Valve’s digital shelves. I’m expecting to see this thing topping Steam’s Top Sellers list for a long time to come, especially if it is able to turn those factory knobs it’s promising to keep stock rolling.