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It sounds like bad news for those who want to get their hands on Valve\u2019s upcoming new hardware. The company suggested Steam Machine, Steam Controller, and Steam Frame could all be delayed even further, potentially into 2027.<\/p>\n
Valve announced all three products late last year, with the aim of releasing them at some point in the first quarter of 2026. In February, Valve signalled a delay was coming as a result of AI shortages that are causing PC hardware to spike in price<\/u>. This had made it difficult for Valve to pin down a price and release date for the Steam Machine and Steam Frame. But at the time (early February), Valve still planned to release its hardware in the first half of this year.<\/p>\n
Now, in a just published \u2018Steam Year In Review 2025\u2019 blog post, Valve said \u201cwe hope to ship in 2026,\u201d which suggests we may have to wait until next year<\/em> for the Steam Machine to come out. \u201cAs we shared recently, memory and storage shortages have created challenges for us,\u201d Valve said. \u201cWe\u2019ll share updates publicly when we finalize our plans!\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\nThe Steam Machine is a mid-level gaming-focused PC designed to be more accessible than a standard desktop PC, with a sleek, cube-like design and SteamOS on-board. We here at IGN have offered our thoughts on how much the Steam Machine will cost<\/u>, suggesting it\u2019ll probably be higher than people think. Chatter about pricing ramped up last year when Linus Sebastian of Linus Tech Tips<\/u> suggested it wouldn\u2019t follow a \u201cconsole pricing model\u201d of $500<\/u>, after he mentioned the figure in a meeting with Valve staff.<\/p>\n
In an interview with Skill Up<\/u> from last year, Valve’s Lawrence Yang and Pierre-Loup Griffais discussed the price of Steam Machine without actually confirming what it would be. The conversation began with software engineer Pierre-Loup Griffais confirming that Steam Machine is more powerful than 70% of gaming PCs that Valve registers on its hardware survey, in terms of general GPU level, saying: \u201cWe have looked at that number as part of speccing the machine, so it\u2019s possible it\u2019s evolved a little bit over time, but I think ballpark, it\u2019s about there.\u201d<\/p>\n
He then said that fans should expect the Steam Machine price to be around the same as if you were to build a PC from parts to get \u201cbasically the same level of performance.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that if you build a PC from parts and get to basically the same level of performance, that’s the general price window that we aim to be at,\u201d he said. \u201cIdeally we’d be pretty competitive with that and have a pretty good deal, but we’re working on refining that as we speak. Right now is just a hard time to have a really good idea of what the price is going to be because there’s a lot of different things\u2026 a lot of external things.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Steam Machine Preview \u2013 Photos<\/h3>\n<\/span><\/output><\/p>\n
In that context, Valve\u2019s Steam Machine will likely cost above $750. We\u2019ve suggested Steam Machine will cost $700-$800. To put that into perspective, the base PS5 with a disc drive currently costs $549.99, while the PS5 Digital Edition costs $499.99. The PS5 Pro, meanwhile, costs $749.99.<\/p>\n
Skill Up then asked Valve to rule out the Steam Machine being subsidized hardware, saying: \u201clike Valve is not going into this thinking we’re going to eat a big loss on this so that we can grow market share or category or anything like that, correct?”<\/p>\n
Pierre-Loup Griffais\u2019 answer here was unequivocal: \u201cNo. It’s more in-line with what you might expect from the current PC market. Obviously, our goal is for it to be a good deal at that level of performance.\u201d<\/p>\n
He then went on to make the case for Steam Machine at that sort of price, pointing to the value you get from the various features it includes that simply wouldn\u2019t be easy to replicate if you were to build your own PC from similar parts.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd then you have features that are actually really hard to build if you’re making your own gaming PC from parts, right?\u201d he continued. \u201cLike things like, obviously the small form factor and I think the noise level that we achieved \u2014 or lack thereof \u2014 is really impressive, and we’re excited that the people are going to find out how quiet this thing is. But also some integration features like HDMI CEC, right? Like being able to turn on your TV, turn off your TV, control it with your TV remote, change the volume, all that kind of stuff.<\/p>\n
\u201cLike the Bluetooth and wireless work that we’ve done, the four antennas, the very deliberate design to make sure that you can have a great experience with four Bluetooth controllers from any manufacturer, plus our Steam Controller receiver integrated as well \u2014 that\u2019s all hard to do. But more importantly, you can turn on the machine from your controller, which is not something that is actually straightforward depending on the type of PC you have or the main chipset and all that.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo being able to sit down on your couch, press one button on your controller, and the whole thing lights up like you’d expect for a thing that’s in your living room, I think that’s really valuable. And there’s not really a price point to that because it’s not really something that exists in the PC market right now.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere’s people that are going to be perfectly happy building their PC at whatever level of spec, and that’s going to be a great experience for them. We’re building Steam OS so that if they want to use it for that they can and they can have essentially the same experience. And if they’re happy with that, that’s perfectly good with us. But we expect the machine is a nice baseline offering that lets you have some features that are really hard to get to otherwise.\u201d<\/p>\n
Valve designer Lawrence Yang then chimed in with his own thought: “for me one of the benefits of Steam Machine is, I’m someone who used to build my PC in college and I am too old and tired to do that now!\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n<\/span><\/p>\nSome have questioned Valve\u2019s refusal to subsidize the Steam Machine and thus theoretically at least miss out on having a greater number of people buying games through Steam. Larian publishing director Michael Douse, who is in charge of business development regarding the likes of Steam megahit Baldur\u2019s Gate 3, took to social media<\/u> to suggest Valve will lose \u201cfar more\u201d than the approx. $200 difference by not having more users on the Steam storefront, \u201cwhich is essentially a money printing machine.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat said it isn’t stupid to not sell things at a loss, just peculiar in this case,\u201d Douse continued.<\/p>\n
We\u2019ve got plenty more on all Valve\u2019s recent hardware announcements, and have a handy roundup<\/u>. We went hands-on with Steam Machine<\/u> and Steam Controller<\/u>, and if you\u2019re wondering about Steam Deck 2, we asked Valve about that as well<\/u>.<\/p>\n
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\nRead Full Article At Source <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It sounds like bad news for those who want to get their hands on Valve\u2019s upcoming new hardware. The company suggested Steam Machine, Steam Controller,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":34250,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[17377,1429,2410,4034,15250,3418,4468,10370,9264],"class_list":["post-34249","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tech-gadgets-reviews","tag-blames","tag-delayed","tag-machine","tag-memory","tag-shortages","tag-steam","tag-storage","tag-suggests","tag-valve","wpcat-32-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34249","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34249"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34249\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/34250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}