After a long week of player and industry speculation, gaming giant Valve confirms its new Steam Machine home console will not be priced like a console, a carefully-worded disclosure that all but confesses the new hardware will cost players more than they’d hoped. In an appearance on the Skill Up podcast, “Friends Per Second” over the weekend, Valve software engineer Pierre-Loup Griffais called the Steam Machine a “good deal,” but said the company has not yet settled on a product price point.
Steam Machine a ‘good deal’
In Griffais’ November 22 podcast appearance, the Valve developer said the Steam Machine pricing will likely mirror that of contemporary PC offerings rather than traditional home gaming consoles. When asked whether the company would, like other major console manufacturers, subsidize its Steam Machine to lower its potential retail value, Griffais said, “No, it’s more in line with what you might expect from the current PC market.”
Because market conditions continue to fluctuate, Griffais explained, the company hasn’t set a price point just yet. “Ideally, we’d be pretty competitive with that and have a pretty good deal, but we’re working on refining that as we speak, and 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 that are fluctuating.” The developer, when further pressed about pricing, said “a lot of external things” are complicating internal pricing decisions.
“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,” Griffais explained. “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.”
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Steam Machine Pricing Concerns
On November 12, Valve announced the upcoming launch of three new products — the Steam Machine, a modernized Steam Controller, and the Steam Frame for VR fans — all expected to launch sometime in 2026. Of the three new reveals, Valve’s Steam Machine has piqued the most interest. But as global consumer tech costs climb and players clutch pearls at near-triple-digit sticker prices on software, fans anticipated Valve’s new home console would compete with the likes of the Big 3 — Nintendo, Xbox, and PlayStation — rather than the higher retail values of high-end PC rigs.
The cube-shaped hardware serves as a mid-tier gaming system, one that Valve is increasingly reluctant to call a “console.” Despite the company’s hesitancy, the new device looks and sounds more like a game console than a luxury PC. The boxy unit more closely resembles a Nintendo GameCube than any gaming PC and runs Linux-based SteamOS, the same operating system found on Valve’s popular handheld, the Steam Deck.
During Griffais’s podcast appearance, the engineer touted some hardware aspects the company believes set it apart from consoles. “But also, some integration features like HDMI CC, being able to turn on your TV, turn off your TV… that’s all hard to do, but more importantly you can turn on the machine from your controller, which is not something that’s straightforward depending on the kind of PC you have… so, being able to sit down on your couch, press one button on your controller and the whole thing lights up like you would expect for a thing that’s in your living room, I think that’s very valuable.”
“There’s not really a price point to that, because it’s not something that exists in the PC market right now.”
Early Estimates
Not long after Valve’s hardware reveal last week, fans and industry leaders shared their expectations. Because the company is pitching the product as a gaming PC competitor rather than living room gaming hardware, guesses ran the gamut. Many estimates hovered around $500, the same price as the Nintendo Switch 2 Mario Kart World bundle; others suggested the Trump administration’s tariffs, tough-to-come-by parts, and inflated consumer goods prices worldwide could push the price up to four figures.
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