Valve launched the Steam Machine, a compact gaming PC optimized for living room use, with prices starting at $1,049 for the 512GB model and $1,349 for the 2TB version. Bundles including a Steam Controller cost $79 more than the base device, beginning at $1,128 for the 512GB bundle. Shipment to customers started June 29, 2026, with orders allocated through a randomized reservation system limiting one unit per household [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6].
The Steam Machine runs SteamOS, a Linux-based operating system tailored for gaming outside the typical console form. It uses a semi-custom AMD Zen 4 APU featuring 6 cores and 12 threads, RDNA3 graphics with 28 compute units, 16GB DDR5 RAM, and 8GB GDDR6 VRAM, delivering performance roughly comparable to current-generation consoles such as the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X [1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 6, 9]. Valve engineer Yazan Aldehayyat acknowledged the difficulty in pricing, stating, "It's definitely more expensive than we hoped... some people are going to be priced out," attributing cost increases to a global memory chip shortage driven by AI data center demand [10, 11].
Prices for memory chips have more than tripled over 2025 and early 2026. Valve originally aimed to price the Steam Machine closer to the Steam Deck handheld gaming device but said that goal became unfeasible due to component inflation. Valve confirmed, "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." Their original price target "is no longer viable" [1, 10, 4, 11, 9].
While Valve argues the Steam Machine is not a console but an open, customizable PC, its form factor and gaming power cause most consumers and reviewers to compare it directly to consoles. It offers PC features many consoles lack, such as web browsing, modding, and a desktop mode. However, some popular games with anti-cheat software currently do not work on SteamOS due to compatibility issues [12, 5, 7, 8, 6].
Valve started sourcing Steam Machine components in 2023, before the chip shortage escalated. Pre-order sign-ups closed on June 25, 2026, ahead of initial shipments[k1,s2,s3,s4,s11].
