Valve’s Steam Machine has been delayed, and the RAM crunch will impact pricing

When Valve first announced its impressive appearance Steam machine, Steam frameand Steam controller devices in November, and the company said the products will start shipping in early 2026. some Journalists It said “first quarter of 2026” specifically. But because of the ongoing Memory and storage crisisThat launch has been pushed back to sometime in the first half of this year, and Valve says it will reset expectations about cost “as soon as possible.”

“We plan to be able to share specific pricing and launch dates by now.” Valve says in a new post. “But the memory and storage shortages you’ve likely heard about across the industry have increased rapidly since then. The limited availability of these critical components and their increasing prices mean we have to reconsider our shipping schedule and careful pricing (particularly around Steam Machine and Steam Frame).”

Valve says its goal of “shipping all three products in the first half of the year remains unchanged. But we have work to do to arrive at specific prices and launch dates that we can announce with confidence, given how quickly the circumstances surrounding both are changing.”

when Edge While other outlets sat down with Valve to preview the new hardware, the company remained mostly vague about pricing at the time — one of the biggest questions. If these devices were to compete with gaming consoles rather than PCs. From the start, Valve told us that the Steam Machine, its ambitious new console, would be “positioned near the entry level to the PC space.” For the Frame, the company said it aims to have a lower price than its previous headset, the Index, which cost $999. For the Steam controller, Valve said it is targeting a price that will be competitive with other consoles with “advanced inputs.”

But within days of Valve’s hardware announcements last November, it became clear that Valve would have difficulty offering competitive pricing as the cost of RAM rose. He – she He said Tom’s devices That it was difficult to price the console because “the market is kind of weird” and “memory prices are absolutely going up as we speak.” As of early 2026, PC gamers have seen the price of RAM triple, or even quadruple Memory makers are pouring out their supplies To the world of the most profitable AI server.

Yesterday, AMD CEO Lisa Su he said on the earnings call “From a product standpoint, Valve is on track to start shipping an AMD-powered Steam Machine as early as this year.” It seems that the phrase “from a product standpoint” carried a lot more weight than we thought.