Right now, community speculation is pegging the Steam Machine at around $700. This price can very well go up by the time it's ready for launch since the industry is expected to be navigating a significant component crisis in 2026. Even if everything was fine and dandy, we would possibly be looking at a ~$550-600 price tag at best. For context, you can get a PS5 Pro on Black Friday for just $650.
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Hassam Nasir Social Links Navigation Contributing Writer Hassam Nasir is a die-hard hardware enthusiast with years of experience as a tech editor and writer, focusing on detailed CPU comparisons and general hardware news. When he’s not working, you’ll find him bending tubes for his ever-evolving custom water-loop gaming rig or benchmarking the latest CPUs and GPUs just for fun.
hotaru251 its likely going to be around 700-800$ as the GPU alone will be 300-400$ (especially as tiem goes on and price of memory makes gpu cost more), then you got the cpu's, ram (which is ofc skyrocketing), the custom case/machining, & their desired profit per machine (the valve brand tax) and as cant replace the gpu (i forgot if can repalce arm cpus?) its MASSIVELY handicapped by the 8GB vram going forward. Reply
runelynx Valve won't subsidize it so they can fully recoup costs and still eat 30% of game developer revenue on the platform. Criminal. Greed at its finest. Reply
SirStephenH runelynx said: Valve won't subsidize it so they can fully recoup costs and still eat 30% of game developer revenue on the platform. Criminal. Greed at its finest. I just read how Valve is one of the most efficient companies in the world, making about $50 million per employee per year. That's insane. Would it really hurt them to hire more employees, decrease their cut of software sales, and/or eat some of the cost of the Steam Machine? Reply
thestryker Word is that the CPU is Hawk Point so that means APU with half the cache of a regular CCD. The GPU is a 7600M which makes it ~12.5% less powerful than the desktop 7600. Using AMD's lowest price CPU/GPU and today's insane memory costs and you're looking at around $850 to build something that will be minimum 15% faster than the Steam Machine. You can buy prebuilts for about that price now which will be even faster (memory prices haven't affected these yet), but next year I doubt that will be as likely. I've been betting on $700 minimum price of entry and you can't ever upgrade the CPU/GPU. I think it's likely to be a bad value and since it doesn't have much of a selling point won't be a big seller. Valve doesn't seem to be worried about selling volume of the Steam Machine though. Reply
RockLoi You can't subsidise a PC. Anyone who buys it for non-gaming purposes will lose you money – this is why PS3 dropped Linux support. They subsidised the Deck to because it let them undercut handhelds. Reply
runelynx SirStephenH said: I just read how Valve is one of the most efficient companies in the world, making about $50 million per employee per year. That's insane. Would it really hurt them to hire more employees, decrease their cut of software sales, and/or eat some of the cost of the Steam Machine? Because they take 30% of all the money from games they did nothing to create 😎 Reply
tommyhardware RockLoi said: You can't subsidise a PC. Anyone who buys it for non-gaming purposes will lose you money – this is why PS3 dropped Linux support. They subsidised the Deck to because it let them undercut handhelds. So, why can't they undercut other mini PCs on the market? Why did they care so much about undercutting handhelds? And this isn't just a PC. It's designed and manufactured by Valve. The SteamOS uses the Steam marketplace. Even though you have the option to use another OS, I bet a vast majority will stick with SteamOS and that storefront. Reply
tommyhardware runelynx said: Because they take 30% of all the money from games they did nothing to create 😎 I think 30% is ridiculous, but no one's stopping developers from using other storefronts to sell their games. Reply
LordVile tommyhardware said: I think 30% is ridiculous, but no one's stopping developers from using other storefronts to sell their games. Such as? They all tried and none of them succeeded. EA games are back on steam, Battle.net games are on steam, and Ubisoft came back within a few years and they are large publishers. The second biggest store is the EGS and that doesn’t even make a profit for Epic because the user base is so small and the majority are there for the free games. Rockstar also tried their hand but none actually buys anything on the rockstar launcher. Steam also doesn’t even attempt to integrate other platforms which makes it a pain to own games on other platforms if you want to use the steam launcher. They have 80% market share in game distribution on PC. Reply
ezst036 hotaru251 said: and as cant replace the gpu (i forgot if can repalce arm cpus?) its MASSIVELY handicapped by the 8GB vram going forward. From what I have read Valve basically looked at their hardware surveys and produced a hardware target that's above what 70% of all of their users use. Making a machine for the every man was a wise/shrewd decision on part of Valve. Besides with the coming memory spikes that are being predicted to be around for a long time due to the continued AI onslaught, 8gb seems like an accidentally-but now-also wise choice. Reply
Key considerations
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Reference reading
- https://www.tomshardware.com/video-games/pc-gaming/SPONSORED_LINK_URL
- https://www.tomshardware.com/video-games/pc-gaming/the-upcoming-steam-machine-wont-be-subsidized-like-consoles-to-hit-a-more-attractive-price-target-suggesting-high-relative-pricing-valve-engineer-confirms-the-device-competes-with-only-the-pc-market#main
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