Valve admits RAM and SSD prices are affecting the Steam Machine launch and price

Valve has posted an update about the upcoming release of the Steam Machine, Steam Frame and new Steam Controller, but it’s not exactly the best of news.

Since announcing the three products on 12th November last year, we’ve been waiting for Valve to confirm a release date and pricing, but they are still unable to do so. “When we announced these products in November, we planned on being able to share specific pricing and launch dates by now,” they say, “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).

“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.”

To be clear, this does not mean that the launches themselves have been delayed – we have no details on what their plans were outside of the broad first half of 2026 window – but Valve’s ability to make such announcements definitely has.

In November, there was broad speculation about how Valve might price the Steam Machine, in particular. The company did make statements to the effect that they would not be subsidising the hardware in the manner of a games console, and so many had expectations that the price could be around $700 or even higher. However, that was just before the PC hardware market went completely haywire with companies like OpenAI pre-booking massive amounts of memory, storage and more to feed their intention to build lots of new server farms to feed the AI bubble even further. RAM is now massively more expensive, as production lines are now being adapted to create the more intensive types of memory that helps AI models run quicker, Micron has retired their consumer-facing Crucial brand, and even older generation DDR4 RAM is seeing increased demand as people hunt for any kind of decent pricing at all.

The immediate impact has been felt with PC components and companies without stockpiled parts like Raspberry Pi, but this can and likely will affect everything else, from current gen console pricing through 2026-27, to next-gen console launch plans and pricing, to smart phones, even cars and washing machines. Everything needs RAM, CPUs and storage these days, and it’s all being gobbled up.

Speaking of components, Valve did also confirm in an attached FAQ that they are supporting the use of NVMe SSDs in the 2230 or 2280 form factor, memory that is DDR5 SODIMMs (though not the speed they intend to use), and that both of these areas will be accessible for upgrades.

Additionally, Valve’s own testing says that the “majority” of Steam games are able to play at 4K and 60FPS with the use of FSR upscaling. However, given the Radeon RX 7600 chip that the system features, ” there are some titles that currently require more upscaling than others, and it may be preferable to play at a lower framerate with VRR to maintain a 1080p internal resolution.”

Source: Steam

Tags: Steam controller, Steam Frame, Steam Machine, valve