There are people making all kinds of theories to know the price of the Steam Machine. And no one is very optimistic

The Valve’s Steam Machine has been received as a manna for the somewhat disastrous hardware landscape of the industry, with Switch 2 turned into a completely isolated system and aimed at its circle of consumers and Sony and Microsoft giving the impression of being somewhat lost in a scenario that is little or nothing exciting. In these comes Valve, which has already turned the concept of the portable PC upside down with its Steam Deckand now proposes a consolidated PC, completely oriented to work with Steam and ready to steal space from traditional consoles. Of course, there is a question that no one dares to answer completely: and the price? There are more and more theories.

Not at losses. Valve has discarded compete in price with traditional consoles. The company confirmed that its new Steam Machine, scheduled for early 2026, will not follow the subsidized pricing model that characterizes PlayStation and Xbox. This means, as explained by one of the engineers responsible for the design of the machine, Pierre-Loup Griffais, that the device will align with “what would be expected from the current PC market”, explicitly rejecting the idea of ​​selling at a loss to expand market share and be more attractive to the general public.

Frustrated expectations. The gaming community did its calculations: one of the most widespread bets said that Valve would take advantage of its 30% commission for each game sold on Steam to offer affordable hardware. These illusions have had to be qualified: youtuber Linus Sebastian revealed on his WAN Show that when he was in a meeting with Valve itself and suggested a price of $500, “no one confirmed anything, but the energy in the room completely changed.” That is, the youtuber thinks that Valve’s intentions point to a higher price.

The current projections They place the Steam Machine between $750 and $900, very far from the $549 for the standard PlayStation 5 or the $599 for the Xbox Series X. Even the base model, cheaper and with 512GB, could exceed $600.

Disappointing precedents. The original Steam Machines, launched in November 2015 after two years of delay, They barely reached 400,000 units sold throughout its commercial existence. The concept shipwrecked for multiple reasons: SteamOS ran on Linux, drastically limiting the catalog of compatible games; the product lacked a defined identity (it was, at the same time, too rigid for PC users and excessively complex for console consumers); and the proliferation of manufacturers led to a chaotic range of prices, from $499 to $1,500. In 2018, Valve quietly deleted any mention of the product from its store.

How the subsidized price works… Yes, Valve has already said that it will not apply. But an approach is useful to understand what options Valve has on the table. The console industry traditionally operates through a model of hardware sold at a loss, which is recovered through the console business ecosystem. For exampleMicrosoft sold the Xbox 360 with a deficit of $125 per unit, while Sony absorbed losses of $240 to $300 with each PlayStation 3.

The economic recovery It is obtained later, from commissions usually of 30% on each game sold, from subscription services and from official accessories. Microsoft publicly acknowledged in 2021 that each Xbox was still trading at a loss.

The component crisis. But there is another reason to expect a high price for the Steam Machine, and that is that the rise of artificial intelligence has unleashed an unprecedented crisis in the memory market. There is data which speak of year-on-year increases of 171.8% in DRAM prices. Samsung and SK Hynix satisfy only 70% of orders, prioritizing HBM memories for AI data centers. AND are predicted serious shortfalls in DRAM, NAND Flash and hard drives during 2026, in a crisis which can last until 2029.

The conspiracy of prices. The combination of unsubsidized hardware and expensive components puts the Steam Machine in an ambiguous position. Valve now has unthinkable advantages in 2015yes: in-house manufacturing, SteamOS refined thanks to the commercial success of Steam Deck, and a much broader compatible library. However, some analysts They warn that success will depend largely on the final price. Without the possibility of competing economically with traditional consoles, the device could remain half-hearted in commercial terms.