Steam Machine is 'more expensive' than even Valve wanted it to be

Now that the Steam Machine’s price has been revealed and reservations have opened up, the marketing blitz for Valve’s hardware is officially underway. Developers who worked on the Steam Machine have answered all sorts of questions about Valve’s console recently, but nearly every interview had to contend with the elephant in the room: pricing.

There are several Steam Machine models up for preorder, and they’re all expensive (or at least more expensive than current-generation consoles). This isn’t Valve’s fault — the company clearly spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to source components at a reasonable cost. Sometimes, Valve claims, component costs didn’t matter: There simply weren’t components available to buy. Back in 2025, a developer said that Valve hoped the system would be as “affordable.”

The shortage brought about by the AI boom has been harsh, however. Nearly every console has seen a price hike recently, as have PC gaming components.

“It’s definitely more expensive than we hoped,” Valve engineer Yazan Aldehayyat told Rock Paper Shotgun. Aldehayyat went on to say that Valve considered Steam Machine to be a good value compared to market prices for PC gaming parts. But there was no getting around the fact that the Steam Machine isn’t cheap. In that same interview, Valve sounded hesitant to suggest that the price might ever drop.

“We understand that it’s probably not as affordable as… like, some people are going to be priced out,” Aldehayyat added.

According to IGN, Valve originally wanted Steam Machine to be within a price range comparable to that of the Steam Deck. After a recent price hike, the cheapest Steam Deck option costs $789.99. Steam Machine’s actual price is over 30% higher than Valve wanted.

So why doesn’t Valve do what many console makers do, and subsidize some amount of the Steam Machine’s cost? Valve says that eating some of the costs “doesn’t align with our beliefs.” In a statement provided to The Verge, Valve said:

If there’s anything we’re religious about at Valve, it’s our belief that open systems are better in the long run, for ourselves and customers. The openness of the PC ecosystem in particular has enabled it to be the primary driver of hardware and software innovation, because anyone with an idea for a way to do something better was able to take a shot at it. 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.

Image of Valve's PC/console Steam Machine.

Valve reiterated that in an FAQ, where it said it thinks of the Steam Machine as “an extension of PC gaming, not as a console.”

The traditional console model is to sell hardware at a loss and make up the revenue with subscription services or by selling games that are locked-in to the hardware. We think this can make sense for a single business in the short term but that open ecosystems are better for customers over the long term. PC gaming’s history proves this: The openness of the PC gaming space has enabled it to be the primary driver of hardware and software innovation for decades.

The strength of PC gaming is the ability to play the games you want on the hardware you want. Steam Machine is *a* solution to these problems (and we think it’s a great one), but it’s not the only solution, and we don’t want it to be.

While you could ostensibly put together a comparable PC for slightly cheaper than Steam Machine, what the system offers is convenience and form factor. In that sense, Steam Machine’s price isn’t unreasonable. Depending on the cost of the next PlayStation or Xbox, Steam Machine might indeed feel like it offers strong long-term value for gamers who don’t want to build a PC.

With different timing, before the RAMpocalypse put every industry in a choke hold, Valve’s new hardware might’ve been met with excitement. But if the Steam Machine is expensive, it’s because everything is expensive.