Valve has launched the Steam Machine gaming computer at a higher price than it previously expected, in what it has attributed to soaring component costs.
The gaming giant said in a blog post, external on Monday that its new gaming PC, which also doubles as a console, would retail at £879 in the UK and $1,049 in the US – a price tag it said reflects hardware costs rising in recent years.
“The overall effect is that our original goal for the price of Steam Machine is no longer viable,” Valve added.
The price also comes amid a broader pattern of device manufacturers hiking prices up – not down – to swallow rising memory and storage costs.
Valve announced earlier in 2026 that it was raising prices of its handheld device Steam Deck by 40% due to similar expenses.
Prior to that, it had said its new Steam Controller would cost £85 – raising eyebrows among some gamers.
The developer said on Monday the controller would be available alongside a 512GB edition of the Steam Machine in a bundle for £938.
Meanwhile, a 2TB Steam Machine will cost £1,149, and £1,208 with a controller.
The device was unveiled in November as a PC “optimised for gaming” that can also be used as a console.
It is a spiritual sequel to the 2014 device of the same name, which failed to break into a market dominated by the three big gaming giants of Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft.
Valve told gamers on Monday that when it first began sourcing components for the Steam Machine in 2023, “we felt like we had a good understanding of how those costs might change over time”.
“That understanding was born from the many years of data we all have about the evolution of PC hardware prices – primarily, that it tends to get cheaper over time as new technology arrives,” it said.
“Over the past year or so, that has changed quickly and significantly, most visibly for RAM [random access memory] and storage components.”
Piers Harding-Rolls of Ampere Analysis said the market research firm had estimated a starting price between $700-$800 for the Steam Machine.
But he said rising costs meant “Valve has been unable to deliver a more accessible price point to consumers”.
Its pricing at 75% more than a PS5 console would also cement it as a “niche offering,” Harding-Rolls added.
High-end gaming PCs are generally more expensive than consoles, though the games themselves can often be cheaper than those on Xbox, PlayStation or Nintendo machines.
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Valve’s Steam Machine pricing also follows a wave of device makers hiking prices up to swallow rising memory and storage costs.
One of the cheaper computer components, Ram, has shot up in price due to soaring demand – especially from the data centres which power AI.
Phone maker Nothing recently cancelled its plans to release a new handset in September, external, citing Ram costs, while Apple has said it will raise some product prices due to the rising expense of memory chips.
Gaming consoles such as the PS5 and Nintendo Switch 2 have also seen price hikes.
Market research firm IDC said in February, external it expected memory supply challenges to “persist throughout 2026 and likely well into 2027”.
Some are speculating about possible knock-on effects for the next wave of consoles.
“I think we all expected the Steam Machine to be over $1K, but now seeing it, it sets a new hard truth of how much the next gen consoles are going to cost,” wrote Tom Henderson of independent outlet Insider Gaming, in a post on X, external.
But Harding-Rolls said that may not necessarily be the case because console makers “have different levers that can be pulled to offset hardware costs, which can support cheaper pricing”.
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