Valve officially launched pre-orders for its new Steam Machine system on Monday, with listings also revealing the hardware’s long-contested retail values. Pricing and pre-orders come just weeks after Valve’s announcement that its PC-console hybrid Steam Machine will be available for purchase sometime “this summer,” though the company has not teased a tentative date.
The Steam Machine, a console-like PC “[w]ith over six times the horsepower of Steam Deck,” will launch in two storage sizes, 512GB and 2TB, both offerings available to pre-order separately or bundled with a Steam Controller. Take an antacid before scrolling:
- Steam Machine 512GB: $1,049 USD
- Steam Machine 512GB + Steam Controller: $1,128 USD
- Steam Machine 2TB: $1,349 USD
- Steam Machine 2TB + Steam Controller: $1,428 USD
Ouch.
Valve: High RAM, storage costs influenced Steam Machine retail price
Valve acknowledges the impact rising RAM and component costs have had on hardware pricing in its news release. “Steam Machine, like our other hardware products, is made up of many components that we source from manufacturers around the world,” Valve’s announcement reads. “The price at which we sell our hardware is a direct result of the cost of these components. We felt like we had a good understanding of how those costs might change over time when we first started sourcing them for Steam Machine back in 2023. That understanding was born from the many years of data we all have about the evolution of PC hardware prices – primarily, that it tends to get cheaper over time as new technology arrives.
“Over the past year or so, that has changed quickly and significantly, most visibly for RAM and storage components. There are a variety of reasons, all of which are affecting hardware products everywhere. The overall effect is that our original goal for the price of Steam Machine is no longer viable. So the prices we’re sharing today reflect the state of the world for manufacturing; or, more accurately, it reflects the price of the components as we’ve secured them over the past 6 months.
“Price wasn’t the only thing impacted by all of this: availability was as well. There were periods where we found we couldn’t source some of our components at all, at any price. More than anything else, this has impacted the number of units we’ve been able to produce for launch.”
Valve engineer Pierre-Loup Griffais was the first to share cost information. In a November 2025 appearance on the Skill Up podcast “Friends Per Second,” Griffais said the hardware’s price would more closely resemble that of a gaming PC rather than a traditional home console. When asked whether Valve would subsidize its Steam Machine to lower its price, Griffais said, “No, it’s more in line with what you might expect from the current PC market.”
“I 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,” elaborated Griffais. “Obviously, our goal is for it to be a good deal at that level of performance, and then you have features that are actually really hard to build if you’re making your own gaming PC from parts.”
How to sign up for Valve’s randomized Steam Machine reservations
Hoping to get ahold of Valve’s Steam Machine? Choose your preferred model and join the official waitlist “any time before June 25th at 10 a.m. PT. On that date, the list will be closed and randomized, and you will receive an email with your results shortly after.” This randomization, Valve says, means those in the reservation queue will not receive emails based on the time of their reservation, but the results of an internal “one-time randomization.”
Valve hopes this method will stave off scalpers and resellers. ” […] we wanted to create a system that would be less frustrating and more fair for everyone. A launch that starts at a specific day and time tends to reward bots, people with fast internet connections, talented gaming fingers for quick F5/refresh reactions, and those who can schedule their life around that moment. By accepting reservation signups over the course of a few days, without any incentive to be first, we’re hoping to take away some of that friction. The longer timeframe also allows us to do some extra validation on the signups to make sure they’re real accounts, with only one per household.”
Check out Valve’s Steam Machine FAQ for additional reservation details.
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