Steam Machine Faces Rising Prices as the Memory Crisis Drags On

Valve engineer Yazan Aldehayyat told PC Gamer that the memory shortage squeezing PC hardware has not peaked, and that buyers should expect prices to keep climbing in the short to medium term. The stock on retail shelves now trails what Valve sees in bulk supply by at least three to six months, so the increases already moving through the supply chain have not fully reached shoppers.

"Honestly, it's still getting worse."

— Yazan Aldehayyat

The timing lines up with outside forecasts. Jefferies Equity Research expects memory prices to rise 40 to 50 percent in the third quarter of 2026, another 30 to 40 percent in the fourth, and 40 to 45 percent year on year through 2027, with only a modest recovery in 2028 as production catches up. AI data centres are buying the available stock, and cheaper Chinese memory has not materialised. Apple has already raised iPad and MacBook prices by hundreds of dollars for the same reason.

The Steam Machine shows the damage plainly. It launched this summer at $1,050 for the base model, later and dearer than Valve wanted, and the company has sold out every unit it built while failing to make as many as it planned. Griffais said the studio is producing everything it can and is limited by memory capacity. Per Bloomberg's report, Valve saw the supply problem barely a week after announcing the Steam Machine in November 2025, and the shortfall ran deeper than anyone there expected.

The price was supposed to be lower. Valve aimed for the Steam Machine to cost 30 to 35 percent less, which would have put the base model near $750 before component costs forced it up. Griffais has said that tallying the parts individually lands close to the retail price, so Valve is not padding the sticker. The company also declined to subsidise the box the way Sony and Microsoft absorb losses on consoles, partly to keep the door open for other makers building SteamOS hardware.

Image: Steam Machine and Steam Controllers/PC Gamer

Most of the engineering was already in place. By Valve's account, the Steam Deck had already handled nearly all of the work, leaving the discrete GPU, VRAM management, and ray tracing as the new desktop-class problems. That lineage is also why Valve is in no rush on a follow-up, and it has signalled no Steam Machine sequel on a fixed schedule, treating the box as a PC that ages like a PC rather than a device on the Steam Deck's refresh cadence.

I have been waiting for PC parts to fall to a point where upgrading my laptop makes sense, and a 2028 timeline is not the answer I wanted. For the open-world games I cover, the one feature that would pull me to a Steam Machine over a PS5 is mod support, the community configs consoles never allow, and at this price, that is a narrow reason to jump. I read Valve's line that success is not measured in units as an honest account of how people keep this hardware for years, not a dodge.

Valve says the Steam Machine's success rides on whether it solves a real problem, open-source PC gaming in the living room, that it set out to address more than a decade ago, rather than on how many units sell. Aldehayyat expects the pricing to settle one way or another: either it comes down, or this level becomes normal if the crisis never eases. Griffais said the shortage has not changed the roadmap and that support will run for years.

Valve also skipped the obvious move of pairing the launch with an exclusive game. Griffais said restricting where people can play is not a model Valve likes, and that the whole PC catalogue is the machine's launch exclusive. That openness is the clearest look at what the Steam Machine does that a PS5 won't: running the full Steam library, desktop apps, mods, and PC-only titles, even while the PS5 stays the stronger performer for the money.

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