The new hardware lineup revealed by Valve in 2025—the Steam Controller, Steam Frame VR headset, and Steam Machine—made quite a first impression. The Steam Machine in particular came off as streamlined, simple, and very capable: A significant evolution over Valve’s early Steam Machines that has the potential to finally bring livingroom PC gaming to the mainstream. Just two big questions remained: How much, and when?
That question is muddled by one big thing: The RAMpocalypse wrought by the headlong pursuit of AI, which has caused supply shortages and skyrocketing prices on memory, SSDs, and GPUs.
Even if Valve is able to source the components it needs to build Steam Machines in quantities sufficient to meet demand—and that’s a very big if—the costs are a real issue. Steam Machines will be more expensive than the consoles, because Valve has previously said that it won’t subsidize the price like Sony and Microsoft do with the PlayStation and Xbox, but it at least needs them to be in the same ballpark if it wants a shot at widespread adoption.
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