Steam Machine May Be Delayed Due to RAM, Storage Shortages and Price Hikes

Steam Machine, the PC/console hybrid from Valve, seems to be facing a delay amidst the ongoing RAM and storage shortages. The company has not explicitly pushed the release of its console, but the wording around Steam Machine's launch window has changed from “early 2026” to “first half of the year”. Valve has said that it planned on sharing pricing and launch dates from the device by now, but the rising hardware prices forced it to “revisit” those details.

In a blog post published Thursday, Valve said it was yet to finalise pricing and launch date details for its upcoming family of Steam devices: the Steam Machine, the Steam Frame VR headset, and the next-gen Steam controller. The company cited the ongoing memory and storage shortages and price hikes as the reason behind the delay.

“When we announced these products in November, we planned on being able to share specific pricing and launch dates by now,” Valve said in its update. “But the memory and storage shortages you've likely heard about across the industry have rapidly increased since then. The limited availability and growing prices of these critical components mean we must revisit our exact shipping schedule and pricing (especially around Steam Machine and Steam Frame).”

Steam Machine is a PC/console hybrid
Photo Credit: Valve

Steam Hardware May Be Delayed

Valve did not specifically mention that the release of new Steam hardware had been delayed, but a slight change of wording for the release window suggests the devices may have been pushed beyond the company's initial launch plans. When Valve revealed the Steam Machine, the headset and the controller in November, it said all three new devices would be available in “early 2026”. Now, the company says it intends to launch them in the “first half of the year”.

“Our goal of shipping all three products in the first half of the year has not changed. But we have work to do to land on concrete pricing and launch dates that we can confidently announce, being mindful of how quickly the circumstances around both of those things can change. We will keep you updated as much as we can as we finalize those plans as soon as possible,” Valve said.

Valve's update on Steam Machine comes a day after AMD CEO Lisa Su suggested the device was on track to launch in “early 2026”. The Steam Machine runs on a custom AMD CPU and GPU.

Steam Machine Pricing

Back in November, Valve had said that the Steam Machine would be priced like a PC with the “same level of performance”.

“I think that if you build a PC from parts and get to basically the same level of performance, that's the general price window that we aim to be at,” Valve programmer Pierre-Loup Griffais said at the time. “Ideally, we'd be pretty competitive with that and have a pretty good deal, but we're working on refining that as we speak, and right now is just a hard time to have a really good idea of what the price is going to be because there's a lot of different things that are fluctuating.”

It seems Valve has had a hard time settling on a price for the Steam Machine. With RAM and storage price hikes and shortages sparked by AI demand, cost of PC hardware has skyrocketed in the recent months. Steam Machine will be competing with PS5 and Xbox Series S/X, both of which start around the $500 price point in the US. Releasing a PC/console hybrid priced considerably higher than that could pose a high barrier to entry for potential customers.

The Steam Machine, Steam Frame headset, and the next-gen Steam controller were revealed in November. Valve's new console is essentially a PC that runs on SteamOS, but allows users to install an operating system of their choice — you could run Windows on it, too, if you wanted (but why would you?). The device supports gaming at 4K, 60fps, and packs up to 2TB of SSD storage.

In its latest update, Valve also confirmed that the Steam Machine's SSD storage and memory will be upgradeable.