Just a few weeks ago, Valve surprised everyone with a hardware announcement, unveiling three pieces of its new Steam Hardware lineup. This consisted of the Steam Frame, Steam Controller, and Steam Machine. which are the company"s next-generation VR headset, wireless controller with trackpads, and the plug-and-play SteamOS-based gaming PC, respectively.
Unfortunately, none of the announcements were paired with prices. Recently though, there have been some hints at what PC gamers can expect to pay for the Steam Machine.
The recent episode of the Friends Per Second podcast from the Skill Up YouTube channel brought in Valve"s Pierre-Loup Griffais and Lawrence Yang. Here, the pricing strategy for the Steam Machine was discussed.
When asked if the Steam Machine will be a subsidized device like most gaming consoles, where the hardware is sold at a loss at the beginning of its life to make up for it in software sales later, Griffais confirmed that this will not be the case with its hardware.
"I think that if you build a PC from parts and get to basically the same level of performance, that is the general price window that we aim to be at," said Griffais.
He went on to say that the company is still finalizing the pricing for its PC, adding that "right now is just a hard time to have a really good idea of what the price is going to be because there are a lot of different things that are fluctuating."
The company is also pointing out that a similar PC that a user can make themselves won"t have the same comforts that it is building into the Steam Machine.
"Things like the small form factor and the noise level that we achieved, or lack thereof, are really impressive, and we are excited that people are going to find out how quiet this thing is," adds Griffais, describing the features. "But also some integration features like HDMI CEC. The Bluetooth and wireless work that we"ve done, the four antennas, the very deliberate design so that you can have a great experience with four Bluetooth controllers from any manufacturer."
Touting a semi-custom AMD Zen 4 6-core/12-thread CPU and RDNA3 GPU with 28 CUs, 16GB of DDR5 RAM and 8GB of GDDR6 VRAM, the Steam Machine is said to be about six times more powerful than the Steam Deck. According to Valve, the machine will be able to reach 4K 60FPS levels of gameplay using AMD"s FSR technology.
A release date for the new Steam Hardware lineup hasn"t been announced yet, but the three announced products are slated to land sometime in early 2026.