TL;DR: Valve’s upcoming Steam Machine, set for release in 2026, aims to combine affordability and ease of use. Recent leaks suggest prices around $950 for a 512GB model and $1,070 for 2TB, comparable to high-end devices, though official pricing remains unconfirmed amid memory supply challenges.
I love all the articles going “It’s going to cost more than you expect!!!” and I’m like “Really? Because I ‘expected’ around $1,000…”
It’s like people haven’t been watching pricing in the last year or so…
I find it quite interesting that people just put a 500 dollar price tag on it since the first leaks. And now everyone thinks it’s too expensive no matter what, because there is no way it’s 500 dollars.
Seriously, how was anyone expecting less than $1,000 (plus VAT) before the RAM bubble?
Given the current RAM prices anything less than $2,000 would almost certainly be selling it at a loss, or as a kit without RAM, so I expect Valve will just have to cancel it.
Shit’s fucked.
I was hoping for a 700/800 euros TBH. 1k is kinda pushed since this is going to be marketed as a console, a kinda underpowered one at that.
800 Euros is $930 US which is probably close to reality, but the problem is gaming pricing as a rule looks at the number as being comparable without conversion.
So you get sillyness like the PS5 Pro launching at $699 US but £699 and €799. Even though that conversion comes out to be $699 $937 and $930.
I could see them launching at $1,000 US and then trying to go “Well, that’s the same as £1,000 or €1,000” when it’s not.
I expect the €799 to include vat, while the $699 will be without. $930 /1.25 = $744, which is a lot more reasonable. Sony using the same sale price for the whole eu when each country has different vat rates, is probably because of profit maximization. Too many people only look at the first digit in 799.99, so no matter if after currency conversion + vat the price is €720 (20%) or €762 (27% in Hungary), they’ll just slap on the sale price of €799.99.
Yeah. I’ve paid $1,000.00 for a solid gaming PC before, and got much worse results than I expect from “A SteamDeck that knows it is plugged in.”
Kind of a non-news item, to me.
I’m not buying a new model every year at that price, but if I expect it to last 5-10 years, I’ll probably end up buying one.
A bunch of this is going to come down to Valve’s build quality, warranty support, and whether these Steam Machine are repairable or not.