Valve announced the Steam Machine a little over a week ago, but there have already been countless analysis pieces breaking down the hardware and specs, and plenty of speculation about whether this will be a major player in the console space, or even a potential ‘console killer’.
Analysis pieces, such as those at Digital Foundry, confirm the machine will have less power than a base PS5 and be more akin to a more powerful Xbox Series S. The CPU is more advanced, the GPU is a bit behind, and the machine’s hard 8Gb VRAM limit is being seen as an immediate non-starter for some.
That VRAM limit means various AAA games potentially won’t run (or not run well). Certain games like “Fortnite,” “Call of Duty” and “Battlefield 6” also won’t run on SteamOS due to those games requiring anti-cheat software.
But without question, there’s only one thing that is seen as the most important factor in all of this – the price. Valve has yet to announce the pricing, but plenty have been speculating about how much it will cost.
More specifically, people want to know if Valve will be subsidising the upfront hardware purchase, much like console manufacturers do. If so, that could see it competitively priced akin to a console (ie. around or under $500).
That’s not the case with this, it seems. Popular YouTuber Linus Tech Tips has said in several videos after talking with Valve:
“They said that while they expect it to be very competitively priced with a PC, that it will be priced like a PC rather than like a console with games subsidising the upfront hardware purchase.
When I said I’m disappointed it isn’t going to follow a console pricing model, where its subsided by the fact that the manufacturer is going to be taking 30% of every game sold on it over the lifespan of this thing, because I feel that would be a more meaningful product, they asked what I meant by console price and I said $500. Nobody said anything, but the energy in the room wasn’t great.”
That would fit in from comments by Valve engineer Yazan Aldehayyat to STGShmups the other day where he indicated the main audience isn’t necessarily console players considering the switch but the majority of Steam players who are on hardware inferior to the current console generation: “The steam machine is equal or better than 70% of what people have at home.”
That’s proven out in the Steam hardware survey, where top-tier hardware is generally only used by select groups and enthusiasts in first-world countries. Just 11% of PCs use more than 12Gb VRAM, and less than 5% use 4K primary display resolution, with only 20% at 1440p and 53% still at 1080p.
The discussion has sparked memes, from ones with characters saying “PC is better than PS5” with a second character then saying “But is your PC better than a PS5?” and the first character silently weeping, to jokes about bundling the machine with “Half-Life 3” to make it a real system seller.
But it has also stirred more talk of just how much the Steam Machine will cost, especially with AI-driven shortages skyrocketing the price for memory along with factors like tariffs, and supply chain volatility. Price analysis account PriceMpire, which routinely looks at gaming-related costs, says “Valve likely to price the Steam Machine above $750.”
That’s considerably above the $400 for a base PS5 and the $650 for a PS5 Pro currently being sold in Black Friday deals. DFC Intelligence’s David Cole tells Ars Technica that Valve will look to establish “very low margins” or even a break-even price-point for the system and suggests pricing starting at $800 for the 512Gb model and scaling up to $1,000 for a 2TB model.
All this is adding up to less a mass market play from Valve and more a niche device at its core like the handheld Steam Deck which took three years to sell 6 million units – a number that Nintendo’s Switch 2 handheld surpassed in just over one week.
