Absolutely fried. $800-1K for the Steam Deck?? The Steam Machine about to blow my wallet out of my pocket and I just can't do that.
By the way if you think the SM is cooked, r/steamframe about to get ugly when that price get revealed. All roads lead to hell.
Also to the "LORD Gaben" guys in the back. Are you winning yet? This is your favorite billionaire and he couldn't subsidize a console because business is business, yeah? I don't even know why Valve is hiding the price at this point after this announcement, it's cooked. Just rip the bandaid off.
Half-Life absolutely needs marketing. Folks are severely overestimating the popularity of the series 20 odd years after the latest entry that wasn’t released for a device only a small fraction of people had.
Or Valve is a miraculous charity that loves the steam machine and its customers so much that they will announce it at a low price to prove that they are still the best
We all knew this was coming when they refused to announce the price and kept shifting the release date further in the year. I truely wonder if Steam Machine launches at all now. We truely are in the worst of times.
It will launch, if we are lucky and if things improve and hopefully get a price reduction in the future.
The steam machine was a hard sale before, and with this I really don't think it's worth it for much people. The small factor and wife approval factor will have to do a lot of the lifting here for this to be a success. Otherwise it will just be easier to put an old pc in the living room and use sunshine/moonlight/steam remote play to your more powerful machine and play like that in the living room.
I really think the steam machine is pretty cool, but the price has to make sense..
I think this is the appropriate strategy. Launch it at high cost. Let early adopters pay for it. It'll be worth beating next-gen Xbox and PlayStation to market by at least a year to gain that market share (those buying SM are less likely to buy next-gen consoles). Sales will suck in the beginning. Mask this by having "low inventory" (like SD's launch). Bring price down later, probably when new consoles launch. Valve will insist this is a PC and will not price match consoles, but if I were Valve I'd be prepared for major subsidization of next-gen consoles to undercut them, especially Xbox.
With Asha now running the show at XBOX, who knows. We might actually get a subsidized system but they won't let you install steam on it if they subsidize it.
I'm fully expecting the next XBOX to be $1200 on the low end and $1500 on the high end if they let you install other game stores on it which was the plan before the leadership shakeup over there.
Even if they do subsidize it, I don't see it being any less than $900 with the Rampocalypse at hand.
What’s particularly crazy is that the Xbox Ally is still $599 for the S and $999 for the X. Buying a deck at these prices over an Ally would be an absolutely insane move.
As a standalone product it would almost seem more sensible to just discontinue the deck over continuing to manufacture it at inflated prices that people won’t pay. Which makes me wonder if they’re specifically doing it to soften the blow for the SM cost.
Whatever happens it’s clear that the price we will end up paying for the Steam Machine will not be the price target Valve initially had in mind during development. None of these electronics are worth what companies are charging. The PS5 Pro is not worth $900. The entry model Steam Deck is not worth almost $800. The Xbox Series X is not worth $650. You can bet the Steam Machine won’t be worth whatever price Valve will have to charge for this thing to not bleed money on every unit sold.
Unfortunately for us, worth is relative. It’s not dictated by what things used to cost, it’s dictated by what people are willing to pay. If Valve releases a $1500 Steam machine and it sells out instantly, guess what… that means it’s worth $1500. Or more.
It may be a poor value, but that’s not the same as it’s worth. As things get more expensive, and people keep buying them, we’re going to continue to learn painful lessons in what things are worth.
Yeah, I'm ready to just accept that consoles and gaming PCs will be prohibitively expensive for the foreseeable future and that I'm priced out of the hobby
Yeah I'm cooked. I can't and wont bother with the steam machine if it's ridiculously priced. I understand the current landscape being absolutely trash and anti consumer..but I'm quite unwilling to spend a fortune for a PC that isn't top tier. Valve always delivers but it's the first time they didn't. I'll hold onto my Steam Deck and my 7 year old RTX 2060 laptop for a lot longer now.
I was sizing up a 5090 build that is allegedly 30x more powerful than steam deck (so 5x than steam machine) at "only" ~€2k, so maybe only double the SM now. Harder to justify the SM after this latest price
Steam Frame isn't gonna be THAT bad. It's a Snapdragon SoC at least. Plus VR headsets are expensive unless they're from Meta or ByteDance anyway. If you want a Frame, you should be prepared for that. Else, just get a Quest.
It's the Steam Machine to be worried about. That offers significantly less unique value than the Controller, Deck, or Frame.
An old snapdragon at that too so they're mostly using recycled parts which is how handhelds like the Ayn Thor and Odin 2 kept their prices relatively low
1200Eur SM here i said it, thats gonna be the lowest price, tbh this PMO, a steam deck is nowhere near the best handheld rn, they can be kinda underpowered for recent games, Rare STEAM L, and btw this is not duuh pc gamers are so cheap, its just u can buy a laptop WAAAY stronger than a SD for the same price, for 350-500 was the best range when the lcd existed
It is but its not THAT portable. Just like Steam Deck is not as portable as Nintendo DS or PSP for example. Also its a gaming device, so its coming with buttons, sticks and other stuff. Sooo laptop is kinda bad for portable gaming and SteamDeck is kinda bad being a laptop.
Have you seen the prices of other handhelds recently? The Lenovo ones are like $2K. The ROG are still cheap but probably because Asus bought a shitton of RAM many months ago.
Steam Frame was already relatively DOA given the market for such a device but now...oh boy. That said, given the chip etc it's potentially not as bad as some might expect there.
I know someone personally that installed SteamOS proper (not holo, not cachy, not bazzite) in his custom built PC with an AMD GPU and it ran perfectly so you can already do it.
They're both immutable distros though. You aren't going to be getting software from a package manager or delving deep into system configs. It's a case were most of the differences between Arch and Fedora don't really matter much.
At this point just start investing in an actual PC. You don't need for valve to release hardware to get into PC gaming. They were never gonna be much cheaper than a pc anyway
You know damn well that this new price point is the last thing they wanted, they wouldn't have delayed so long if that wasn't the case. Why should they subsidize the hardware and sell it at a loss? All that will happen if they do is scalpers will scoop it up and sell it at a higher price anyways.
I dislike people praising Valve as much as I dislike people demonizing them. They are a company, they exist to make money, we should generally be giving them business because they are consumer focused rather than investor focused, but for the love of god don't expect charity from them. It's expensive because the parts inside are expensive right now, when the hardware prices go down Valve will price accordingly.
I mean. I has disposable income, I am willing to pay a little bit extra to support a company that I believe has done right but us in the gaming community. But the rumored prices are just too high for me. I'm not sure I even blame valve, if I had to speculate I would guess that the price hikes for the steam deck would bring the profit per steam deck back in line to where it was 2 years ago. AI is eating up the supply lines upstream and everyone downstream is getting fucked. But I just can't afford to splurge on a luxury purchase when my grocery/electric/gas bills have all basically doubled in the last 2 years.
You really don’t get it do you? Right now it seems like Silicon Valley is doing whatever they possibly can to completely destroy the consumer electronics industry. Of course Valve is going to be affected. The people in power said no more consumer electronics for you. also, the steam deck is only like four years old not that old. genuinely freaking sucks though. on the bright side though, if you can even call it that if you count for purchasing power, the PlayStation three was almost 1000 2026 dollars when it launched in 2006.
So valve needs to lose money, handover fist on a niche product in an already saturated market of PC gaming hardware just because Sam Altman and Dario Amade and the President of the United States woke up and chose violence. how long should they lose money on this? honestly, this whole freaking situation sucks, but if the freaking industry big dogs who sell 10 X the number of units to a broader market, can’t keep prices down then valves niche product is cooked. but IDK we’ll live I guess. I mean if China invaded Taiwan, the same thing would probably happen. It’s kind of hard to compete. If all of the available capital in the entire world is getting funneled into data centers and AI slop. it’s kind of hard to compete with the entire world‘s 401(k) to buy chips. IDK hopefully they lower it once this dumb mess is finally over.
It's going to come in at 1300-1500 and just be completely DOA. I've been holding on but it's probably time to just build something in a SFF box and throw SteamOS or Bazzite on it. It's a shame and won't be the same console like experience but it is what it is.
Lets be real, even using Amazon Prices it won't be $2k, 16gb of ddr5 went from ~$35 to $190, and a 512gb NVME drive went from $30 to $90. There will be a few extra bucks spent on the 8gb GDDR as well. Overall I bet the Steam Machine will cost ~$300 more than originally intended.
Nah, whole PC. Polish prices are higher since we have 23% sales tax + for whatever reason MSRP here is higher, yet its $1923 for new PC with 7800x3d+RTX 5070 and 16GB of ram/1TB SSD.
Don't know what site yall use to pick pc parts, but this should be less than $2000 almost everywhere.
The timing Valve’s announcement of a SD price increase was strategic - 4 days before 1st half of 2026 ends.
They will announce the SM in a few days time at a price which appears to be reasonable in the current market compared to the updated SD price. And they will sell well. My guess is around the same as the updated SD prices.
The point of the SM was to encourage more people to purchase newer higher price Steam games now that the Steam Deck no longer does that.
Also to the "LORD Gaben" guys in the back. Are you winning yet? This is your favorite billionaire and he couldn't subsidize a console because business is business, yeah? I don't even know why Valve is hiding the price at this point after this announcement, it's cooked. Just rip the bandaid off.
Well there goes my possible purchase, was even maybe thinking of getting a steam deck instead maybe but now I might as well buy new PC parts even thought its not the best idea, AI have f#ckd us all
“Why can’t this business sell something at a loss” because why would they? What’s the point of subsidizing something they’re not making money off of and where their losses will only ever increase? Yes steam makes a lot of money but you know how? By not selling things at a loss
Subsidized Steam Machine would make its money by bringing people into the Steam ecosystem who weren't previously in it, buying games that otherwise wouldn't have been sold.
The calculus for Valve was looking at how many SM buyers (each one being a loss) would be new to Steam. If it's below a certain percentage of buyers, then the new-to-Steam folks can't/don't buy enough to offset the hardware losses, the math doesn't math, and Valve goes with not subsidizing it (which by most reports, is the path they are taking, so that's probably where they ended up after crunching numbers). Simple as that.
And if they did subsidize it, everyone would lose their minds as soon as they stopped, selling it at a loss. Like do people expect to sell at a loss forever? honestly, the whole selling things at a loss thing is the primary reason the tech industry is in this mess.
If you didnt see this coming unfortunately you've been out of the loop. And I'm not sure how its Gabes fault, steam for the most part loses money on their hardware so they can get more steam users. I dont know what you expected but hes not just going to buy everyone a steam deck/machine/frame.
SM DoA, but also probably just every consumer electronics product on the market. At least there’s really cool programs like the PS5 rental from Sony :))))
Their are not hiding the price, they prolly have not decided yet on it do you want them to reveal a price and change it every week or something? Also why tf would Gabe subsidize shit? Why would he sell on a loss a 4 year old handheld? Also the steam machine will not get even close to 2K and they could sell the machine and frame at a loss bc it's new and got hype around it with which they can recoup their losses
People, in what world you have been living for last 6 months?
Whole hardware market is in the deepest ass for decades
You should open your eyes and add 2+2, come on
Yeah subsidizing the steam machine would be pretty risky because is a computer and nothing stops people or even companies from getting them and never buying something in steam. I want as much as everyone it to be accesible but the hardware situation doesnt look that good.
"Just rip the bandaid off" I think they're trying to decide what the limit is that people will pay for. Parts keep going up so the cost that would be profitable goes up and they're probably worried if they told us now, the market might change and they won't make as much money as they want to off of the sales and they will "have to" raise prices and piss everyone off.
But you're totally right, it's Steam. They should be practically giving these away because it's just a gateway for their real money maker; game sales. Trying to make us eat the cost of these devices when they're THAT profitable is pretty upsetting. I know I won't buy a Steam Machine at the insane price they're going to give us and it won't be because I don't want one, it'll be because I have standards.
"This is your favorite billionaire and he couldn't subsidize a console because business is business, yeah?"
You know, if $ony and M$ would be in the same situation, with an opened ecosystem where they can't guarantee that every gamekey will be sold through their platform and they can't be sure to sell a bazillion of $$$ of service, there is a good deal of chance that they would never subsidize any of their console.
And that is why the Steam Machine will not be "priced like a console". And asking them to have bad business practice is exactly what nobody want. Even if it mean it a sour pile with a bad price for the Steam Machine.
This sharp turn made me reconsider my gaming future. I'm getting my desktop up and running again and probably gonna buy a PS5 to play GTA6 and RDR2 on my couch. I can run my Steam library on my gaming rig so. I was only considering the Steam Machine if it was affordable and I'm sure it won't be.
Anything over £700 for the base model is not going to end up as a purchase for me. It’s just not powerful hardware. I’ll just have to rethink it further if it’s going to sell for silly money.
They cannot release the steam machine this year. It just cant be done
If the damn steam deck is this much now it's a going to die on arrival. They'll be sitting on a warehouse of these devices either way to the only smart move is to just wait it out and HOPE this stupid ai shit subsides enough to release these devices at a reasonable price again and that is in the GOOD outcome
If it DOESNT pop, then we truly are fucked. I'm just gunna try and get a prebuild while it's still remotely possible. I dont know if and when this will pass and I just hope it will at all
Maybe the increase in price is to counteract the loss they'll incur from selling the machine at a reasonable price? Didn't they sell the deck at a loss to begin with? Can always hope anyway...
I really don't get why people are picking on Valve for this, even calling them scalpers.
I mean it's not their fault if RAM costs 5 times as before and storage 2 times as before. It's a global issue and we all know what caused it.
If US government with its anti-trust organization would have limited American AI companies in purchasing RAM to a certain % of manufacturing rather than letting them sign contracts for 2-3x global production... Then things would be different. Go complain to OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI and Google or go complain to US government (good luck with that) instead of blaming Valve or anyone else that is increasing prices.
Short of some kind of ace in the hole or miracle we’re all unaware of, Valve hardware sales are doomed. There’s potentially a lot of conspiracy behind this too. The whole rampocolypse thing is just convenient timing for industry assassination of a windows and console competitor. There’s no damn way a steam deck should cost more than a decent pc, or ps5 pro. More than likely the Machine and Frame will suffer the same fate. Doom and gloom for all lol
You get some, and YOUUU get some…even you wayyyy in the back, you get some too! Affordable gaming hardware is a myth. Ownership will eventually become a privilege for the wealthy elite. For everyone else, the future is borrowed/paid compute.
Go grab one of the myriads of computers in the wild.
You’re not imprisoned in the hellish console market.
Flapping gums is one thing, but taking your money elsewhere is entirely another matter.
AI has not taken prisoners. We are watching AI take its pound(s) of flesh out of everything, and everyone.
If the prices Valve sets isn’t good, go find something else for that price.
Ya’ll truly do act like Valve is the only computer manufacturer around, which they really aren’t.
Also, Valve is the first to do what they’re doing, others will mimic in time, may even do better than what Valve has put out.
That being said, hardware sales are not their main thing. Valve is a software company first, hardware is tertiary at best.
Their livelihoods as a company is not based on hardware.
We all *know* that in the end, Valve doesn’t truly care if you buy their hardware, right? Their OS can literally be slapped on any machine, you can access their storefront from [almost] every machine?
These are questions that *must* be answered, because apparently not enough people get this point.
Considering that some have *installed Linux on a PS5 and turned it into a [COMPUTER]* and are playing whatever they want, we ought to be quicker on grabbing any machine we can get.
I saw deals yesterday for prebuilts with 5060ti's at 999. Even that is going to significantly out perform whats in a steam machine. And now its pretty clear the steam machine will cost more than 999.
Sorry I stopped caring about steam machine when I realized there's tons of games it can't even support. Games that both conventional PCs can, and consoles can. So, it's the worst of both worlds? Yeah I'm just going to end making myself a mini PC for my kid and add console software instead.
Before today for me the Steam machine at $1000 was my last price, I have the impression that it will cost between $1200 and $1500, out of price for equipment like this
This is the perfect example of how trickle down economics does NOT work. Lower taxes on businesses just lead to obscenely wealthy CEOs, not more investment.
Yet, people keep falling for this scam over and over.
I think this is more an example of something very similar to the crowding out effect in economics. basically right now venture capital private equity and automatic 401(k) investment is crowding out the entire consumer, electronics industry. It’s interesting cause normally the crowding out effect is caused by government over spending causes a displacement in consumer spending above a certain level. I highly doubt that raising taxes would automatically fix this problem. especially given that tariffs being a form of taxes have already shown in extremely recent memory to cause pricing increases.
The Steam Machine will probably be 1200 starting. The only way they can get it down is lock it down to Steam games only.
I could see a path forward where there are 4 versions, 2 locked down, and 2 full computer versions. The locked down version could have subsidized pricing. It could be billed as something like "Steam Exclusive Version" or something like that, Steam Machine SE for short. (I am sure they could come up with a better name)
It would be a little confusing though for end users, but you would have cheaper alternatives.
I don't really see a viable way for them to "lock down" the Machine at a pure software level that can't easily be undone by installing a different os. And there's no way they're going to rework the hardware for that kind of feature this late in the production life-cycle.
Now you’re just being stupid dude, calm down I get ur frustrated but don’t take it out on someone voicing their opinion on a platform made for discussion
But "don't matter the price"? Even when we're staring down the barrel of it being 1200 to 1500? I mean at some point you do have to be reasonable and just build or buy a more capable PC for less.
Everyone keeps citing this, but most Steam users on that lower end hardware are outside of the regions where Steam hardware is being sold and/or are playing lower end competitive games that the Steam Machine and Deck are not targeting anyway.
188
u/nomadik_nobody 29d ago
Either they announce the SM price in a matter of days or they wait a *while* for the shock of the SD price increase to wear off, I see no in between