The Steam Machine is the beginning of a more affordable future for gaming consoles

It’s no secret In almost every aspect of video games It became more expensive. Gaming consoles see regular price hikes, The cost of PC components is risingand The golden age of affordable mobile devices is overIt’s all largely due to Global shortage of RAMwhich has had a similar costly impact on computer games, Including portable devices like Steam Deck. All of this has led to some trepidation around the Steam Machine, Valve’s latest attempt to bring the breadth and openness of PC gaming to a form factor designed for your living room. The truth of that The device was postponed in February This is precisely due to the memory crisis which exacerbates this feeling. Now, Valve has finally revealed the price of the Steam Machine. And while it may not be quite as expensive as some fear, it’s certainly not cheap, suggesting an increasingly expensive future for the console space.

First, here are the details. The base Steam machine, which has 512GB of memory, costs $1,049, and its price with a Steam controller jumps to $1,128. If you want the 2TB version, it’ll cost you $1,349, or $1,428 with the console. That’s not necessarily egregious by PC gaming standards, but the Steam Machine doesn’t just compete with other gaming PCs. It’s a device specifically designed to create a console-like experience, and even in the increasingly expensive world of gaming consoles, the Steam Machine costs quite a bit more than its closest competitors, even with its high-end options. A The 2TB Xbox Serieswhile The PS5 Pro is $899.99. The cheapest of the group, Switch 2, It will be $499.99 starting in September.

Of course, there are benefits to purchasing a Steam Machine across consoles from Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo, not least because it includes access to Steam’s absolutely massive library of games. This is a big bonus. But some of the other advantages over a traditional controller aren’t quite as obvious, especially if you’re looking for a pick-and-roll experience. In fact, in terms of performance, the Steam Machine is very similar to the PS5. As my colleague Sean Hollister pointed out Review his steam machine: “You’re not getting a huge performance boost compared to the 5.5-year-old Sony PS5 you can still buy today.” This, despite being nearly twice as expensive.

It’s hard to fault Valve for their pricing stance around the Steam machine. Even Apple, a multi-trillion dollar company, is planning to raise prices Because of the “unsustainable” situation. About RAM prices. In a blog post, Valve explained that one reason for the current price is that it doesn’t use a typical console pricing model. “We think of Steam Machine as an extension of PC gaming, not as a console,” the company says. “The traditional console model is to sell hardware at a loss and make up the revenue through subscription services or by selling hardware-restricted games. We think this can make sense for one company in the short term, but open ecosystems are better for customers in the long term.”

But even if Valve says it doesn’t view the Steam Machine as a console, the price is another sign that the future of video game consoles looks increasingly niche. Already, price increases for current generation devices have had a significant impact. in May, Sony announced that PS5 sales fell by 46 percent year over yearafter the price of the base PS5 jumped to $649.99, making it $150 more than it was at launch in 2020. Now imagine what things could look like if the PS6 launched at $1,000 or more. This appears to be where we are headed, as the cost of replacement parts continues to rise, and platform owners appear less willing or able to support those prices.

The big question is what happens next – and the answer is increasingly unclear. middle The chaos that is currently consuming the Xboxthe company has been slowly teasing details of its next Xbox console, codenamed “Project Helix.” But even though It was initially launched as a “premium” device. Which falls somewhere between console and PC, it now appears that plans have changed due largely to pricing concerns. “I think we’ve reached a point where it’s going to be difficult to imagine that audiences can afford to spend thousands of dollars on a console generation, and so I think we’ll start to see radically different business models that we never expected start to emerge later this year.” Xbox CEO Asha Sharma said recently. Meanwhile, Sony hasn’t said much about the PS6 Since some new GPU technology was hinted at last yearwhich should now be very expensive to implement.

If you had asked me a year ago what the next generation of gaming consoles would look like, I probably would have said something like the Steam Machine: hardware that straddles the line between PC and home console. But now I’m not so sure – it’s entirely up to the price. The Steam Deck is a much-loved device, but it also remains a relatively niche device, even if it was relatively reasonably priced at launch (now, Not much). I imagine the Steam Machine will find a similar path. But historically, the biggest gaming consoles haven’t been specialized in the same way; Switch, for example, It has sold more than 150 million unitswhile PS5 exceeded 90 million. But if “radically different business models” can’t get the price down to something reasonable, it’s hard to imagine the next generation of consoles reaching an audience like this.