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 $1,070 for 2TB, comparable to high-end devices, though official pricing remains unconfirmed amid memory supply challenges.
I was expecting PS5 performance at PS5 Pro prices.
The recent leaks will be including 21% VAT in Czech Republic too. It’s about the same as the PS5 Pro in the UK.
It’s not a great value proposition, but depends how much you value open source.
That’s a few hundred dollars more than I hoped, but because of the slop-manufactured memory situation, I’m not surprised.
I’d expect at least the first wave to not be affected by slopocalypse pricing. To target a 1Q26 release date they had to have contracts well in advance.
Micron is altering the contract, pray they don’t alter it any further.
Heads-up, the leak was from a non authorized retailer. So this has been confirmed to be more or less a retailers price speculation with added middle man mark-up. Take this leak for what it is, guesswork
ALSO: they include a 21% VAT
ALSO ALSO: They have said online that it was just a guess and that Reddit sucks
Especially when this specific retailers has the hight margin of them all, adding like 200$ to their steam deck prices…
“An iPhone” is such a weird comparison to make.
In my region I can buy new iPhones from €119 (iPhone SE 32GB) to €2400 (iPhone 17 Pro Max 2TB).
I hope the steam machine is somewhere in between this range.
An unconfirmed leak of an estimation puts the price somewhere between 100 and 2500.
I’m tired boss.
It’s just a way to clickbait.
Yeah, I read the title and had no idea what number to expect. My first thought was 1.5-2k.
Also, that’s an easy wish right there. It will 100% be somewhere in between those numbers, don’t worry.
Also, that’s an easy wish right there. It will 100% be somewhere in between those numbers, don’t worry.
That was my joke.
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.
“Cost as much as an iPhone”, I’m not sure if you’re complaining about how expensive the iPhone is or the Steam Machine.
According to the site, the SM will be around $1,100 for the upgraded storage and the cheapest iPhone is around $1,000, so I fail to see the comparison.
Assuming it is around $1,000 that’s not a deal breaker. I heard that the leak came from a store in Europe so I would expect the price to be much lower because we won’t be spending retail.
In the US a Steam Deck is about $200-$300 more retail than if you buy it direct. So if they says $1,100 then I would expect the SM to be closer to $800, which would be closer to a lowerend gaming PC
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Woof. That’s going to be a no for me dog.
Whether it’s true or not, I’ve heard a lot of people complaining about the possibility of a price point like this and it really blows my mind how twisted people’s expectations are about these price points. Like people line up overnight for a chance to buy iPhones, the same as the one already in their pocket but with a new function in the camera app or something, and then you get something that is almost an entirely new class of product and far more capable for the same price at a time when we’re facing unprecedented shortages, and people are pissed off about it? Double standards much?
I wish it was $200 too, but like, we don’t live in that world anymore. I’m sorry, but that world died from Covid and any medicine that could’ve cured it was lost in trade wars and its corpse was blown up in real wars. It’s not coming back.
People are accustomed to consoles being unnaturally cheap, and even as manufacturing costs sky-rocket manufacturers are still eating a lot of that increase because they don’t want to lose sales to the competition, and expect they can make money back later on game sales and online service subscriptions.
Valve meanwhile doesn’t have that approach, and will be selling the the Steam Box for at least what it costs.
It will be exactly the same story with the Steam Frame - everyone is hoping it will be price-competitive with the Meta Quest but I can almost guarantee it won’t. It will be FAR more expensive.
Why? Because Meta are making money back later with advertising, and selling your data, while Valve are just providing a device.
If you want a little privacy, Linux support, and hardware you control, you’ll have to be prepared to pay a premium for it.
For real! And you see all those comments about “Why isn’t it priced like a console?” and I’m like “My brother in Christ, have you SEEN console prices lately?” $600, $650, $700, $750, $800?
Handhelds are even worse.
Is this Valve’s way of gauging the market? Cause it sure feels like it
Well likely their cost for memory has gone up by a few hundred in the last month or 2
No it has not
It is speculation from an unauthorized reseller who is guessing.
As expected. It’s an expected price. It’s a pc for playing in a small cube form. I have no idea why anyone thought it would be cheaper. So many phones already are above that price point.
Not too surprising, subtract around $400 and that’s what the price probably would have been without ram prices exploding.
I’ve been anticipating $800+, and with storage and ram now, I honestly doubt less than $900. Look at current gaming handheld and console pricing. 1k isn’t an insane prediction with current markets.
I paid about $450 for mid-range Mini PC and another $450 for a smallish egpu that should match the performance of what’s going in the Steam Machine. That was before the Rampocalypse, and I would still expect valve company to have contracted with manufacturers and component packages upstream from the public announcement so I’m still crossing my fingers people can buy these things for sub $1000.
Hot take: I think they should only allow any one Steam account to purchase one or two units total and require at least one paid game purchase in the account history, thus frustrating the efforts of scalpers and office businesses trying to get at productivity machines for cheap.
That works out to a $1 USD fee and an extra 3 minutes of effort, if they’re going to be cheap about it.
800-900 is what they can ask for it I guess. If it’s more it’s gonna get slow sales, which could be okay as Valve doesn’t really need it the way Sony needs a Playstation to sell.
I don’t think I’ll buy it on release as my Steam Deck is good enough for me alongside my Playstation. I might buy it after its first price drop (if it doesn’t increase instead).
This is all assuming that the dollar is worth anything in the future. The way things are going, uh maybe not
