Valve leaker hints at Steam Machine Pricing – It isn’t going to be good…
Don’t expect Steam Machine pricing to be good; the AI boom killed that idea
Yesterday, Valve increased the price of its Steam Deck handheld, a long-delayed (but necessary) response to rising DRAM and NAND storage prices. The greed of Venture Capitalists and the Private Equity firms that see easy money in AI datacenters has killed the very idea of affordable consumer computing hardware. With things as they are, Valve’s Steam Machine and Steam Frame will not launch with reasonable pricing. The AI boom has guaranteed that.
Brad Lynch, a prominent leaker, has stated that Valve’s internal price estimate for the Steam Deck was “still higher than today’s Steam Deck prices”. What’s worse is that those estimates were from “2 months ago”. While these alleged internal estimates are to be taken with a grain of salt, they highlight the realities of building anything with a reasonable amount of DRAM and NAND in 2026.
The Steam Machine will ship with 16GB of DDR5 memory, 8GB of GDDR6 VRAM, and either 512GB or 2TB of NVMe SSD storage. That’s a lot of memory and storage. Today, most 2TB SSDs cost over £200. To put it simply, DRAM and NAND prices make it impossible for Valve to release its Steam Machine with a price tag that represents good value for money. In today’s market, no one can achieve this and still make a profit. That’s the nature of today’s market. High memory prices raise the price of anything that uses it.
Take this with a grain of salt, because it was just whispers in my ear
But back when I was told a figure for what Valve’s estimated price they’d have to set the starting price of Steam Machine, it was still higher than today’s Steam Deck prices..
And that was 2 months ago.. https://t.co/5NFhACz9NV
— Brad Lynch (@SadlyItsBradley) May 27, 2026
Valve’s Steam Frame is less affected, but it’s still bad
With just 16GB of LPDDR5X memory and either 256GB or 1TB of storage, Valve’s Steam Frame is less affected by memory price hikes. Using less memory will do that. Regardless, the Steam Frame will still be much more expensive than it should be. Memory is already a major contributor to the price of any computational device. Having the price of that memory skyrocket immediately destroys its value proposition.
It’s a fact that the price of Valve’s Steam Machine won’t be what gamers originally expected. Those kinds of prices are no longer achievable. Valve’s Steam Deck price increases have given us a glimpse at how expensive the Steam Machine and Steam Frame will be. If you were expecting good value for money, I’m afraid you won’t find it. Unless DRAM and NAND prices drop dramatically, delivering electronics like this at “good” prices isn’t possible.
You can join the discussion on Valve’s Steam Machine pricing challenge on the OC3D Forums.
