Here we go, folks. After months of waiting, rumors, and plenty of speculation, Valve has officially revealed the pricing for its upcoming Steam Machine. And if you are not sitting down, you might want to be, because this thing is not cheap.
The Steam Machine will start at $1,049 for the 512GB model, while the 512GB model bundled with the new Steam Controller will cost $1,128. If you want more storage, the 2TB model will run $1,349, and the 2TB version bundled with the Steam Controller will set you back $1,428. So yeah, anyone who was expecting console pricing for this thing was setting themselves up for disappointment.
As for what you’re getting, the Steam Machine features a semi-custom AMD Zen 4 6-core / 12-thread CPU, a semi-custom AMD RDNA 3 GPU with 28 compute units, 16GB of DDR5 memory, 8GB of GDDR6 VRAM, NVMe storage, microSD support, Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.3, Gigabit Ethernet, and SteamOS 3. In other words, this is Valve taking another shot at bringing PC gaming into the living room, only this time it has the Steam Deck’s momentum behind it.
Sadly, thanks to the ongoing RAM apocalypse, whatever chance Valve had of making the Steam Machine pricing truly competitive likely went out the window. Valve had previously mentioned wanting the Steam Machine to be priced competitively, but with memory costs being what they are right now, that was always going to be harder to pull off.
So instead of this being a SteamOS-powered box that could go toe-to-toe with console pricing, the Steam Machine is now sitting firmly in premium PC territory. That may make sense from a hardware standpoint, but it also makes this a much harder sell for anyone who was hoping Valve would somehow keep this thing closer to a PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, or even the PS5 Pro.
Currently, you can’t just buy the Steam Machine outright. Valve is letting people join a wait list, and I’m assuming the company learned from the absolute mess that was trying to buy the Steam Controller and will do a better job of handling things this time around.
Though, given how expensive these are, I don’t know how many people will be rushing to buy one. There is definitely an audience for a small SteamOS-powered gaming PC, especially after how successful the Steam Deck has been, but this is not exactly impulse-buy territory.
Content creators and outlets are also starting to get their hands on the device, and so far, I’ve seen coverage from Linus Tech Tips, IGN, Digital Foundry, Eurogamer and a few others. From what has been shown, I’m impressed with the hardware, the size, and how clean the overall package looks, but that price is still going to be the sticking point.
- IGN – Steam Machine Review
- Eurogamer Steam Machine Q&A
- Rockpapershotgun – Steam Machine Review
- The Verge – Steam Machine Review (Paywall)
But at $1,049 to $1,428, this is not going to be for everyone. The Steam Machine looks impressive, Valve clearly learned from the Steam Deck, and I still want to mess around with one, but this is a premium PC box with premium PC pricing.
That does not mean the Steam Machine is dead on arrival. For people who already have a massive Steam library, want something that works on a TV, and don’t want to build a small-form-factor gaming PC, this could be exactly what they’ve been waiting for. We’ll have to wait and see how this goes once consumers are able to get the Steam Machine into their hands and provide their own impressions of the device.
