Pricing the Steam Machine at $1,000 would kill it before it even arrived

The Steam Machine, announced in late 2025, is yet to make a proper price announcement, with Valve eluding that information since first mentioning the thing. Amid rising RAM costs, it’s understandable that waters have been muddled, but recent leaks indicate the company is planning to sell the device at a ludicrous price, even with the current situation.

As per a Jan. 9 Reddit post, which showed a Czech retailer’s listing for the Steam Machine, Valve’s latest and greatest hardware release is allegedly going to cost between $950 and $1070 for the 512GB and 2TB models, respectively.

Even considering that this figure likely includes VAT (21 percent, indicating a $785 or $885 pre-tax price), this would put it leagues above the base PlayStation 5, which it rivals in terms of raw power, despite its advantages as a PC rather than a specialized console. At this stage, you can get yourself a used PS5 for around $300 in the second-hand market with no extra tax on top, making it more than twice as cheap as the Steam Machine, which can in no way compete even at the usual $499 retail price point.

The increased price is likely due to the steep jump in undiced DRAM prices lately that have affected not only proper RAM, but every single hardware module that uses memory, including storage, motherboards, graphics cards, and everything in between. It’s an unprecedented market situation at the moment, worse than even those COVID years when Bitcoin mining ate through the entirety of the global GPU supply.

However, at this price, it’s basically dead on arrival. No one who has any other options would settle for purchasing a frankly low-range machine for over a thousand bucks when that same money could be funneled into consoles or even a much better PC in the used (or on-sale retail) market.

The Steam Controller is starting to look like the best of the newly announced Valve hardware. Image via Steam

You could literally buy a PS5 with two controllers, a 4K OLED, and probably a game to play on them for the same price as just the Steam Machine itself, which is a Linux-based, Steam-oriented PC coming with its own fair share of base limitations.

It just does not make sense to release the Steam Machine at this price, at least not if it’s aimed at the average Joe and not corporations and their use cases, where Valve can’t expect to make up for a loss leader strategy through game sales. However, as Valve usually sells its hardware through Steam and not retailers, it’s safe to say that the price above also includes their cut, somewhat increasing the official listing. Even so, I don’t believe it’s a big factor, given how large the base price probably is. Soon, we will know for sure.

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