- The Steam Controller will officially release on May 4 for $99
- Valve hardware engineer Steve Cardinali says controller will be released first because ‘there’s no RAM in it’
- The Steam controller, machine and frame were delayed earlier this year
Valve has announced that it will release the Steam Controller next month, before the Steam Machine, amid the ongoing RAM shortage crisis.
Earlier this week, Valve confirmed that the Steam Controller would launch on May 4, 2026, for $99 / £85 / AUD$149.
The news follows a blog post published in February, in which the company delayed its plans to release the Steam machine, frame, and controller to early 2026, citing “memory and storage shortages.”
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“When we announced these products in November, we anticipated being able to share pricing and specific launch dates now,” Valve said at the time.
“But the memory and storage shortages you’ve probably heard about across the industry have rapidly increased since then. Limited availability and rising prices for these critical components mean we need to review our shipping schedule and exact pricing.”
Valve noted, however, that its goal of shipping all three products in the first half of the year has not changed, but that the Steam controller will now arrive first.
Speaking in a new interview with Polygon, Valve hardware engineer Steve Cardinali explained that because the controller has no RAM, he would be able to launch it soon.
“It doesn’t have RAM in it and it’s not as complicated to start releasing for us,” Cardinali said. “We’re ready. We wanted to increase the quantity so we could try to accommodate everyone who wants one at launch, but it’s possible that demand will far exceed our expectations.”
However, despite recent RAM shortages and the Steam Controller being the first to release, the hardware engineer says there were never plans to release all three pieces of hardware together.
“From the beginning, they were different products. We always felt that we obviously wanted them to work well together – especially the Steam Machine and the Steam Controller, they are in many ways a match made in heaven – but we didn’t see the need to ship the controller at the same time as the machine,” Cardinali said.
“The only really tough deadline is that we didn’t want to ship the Steam Engine before the Steam Controller. We want that to be available for the Steam Engine… It was never really the plan to ship them together unless they landed nicely that way. So there’s no point in holding it back while we work on the other things.”
TechRadar’s Core Tech editor Matt Hanson reviewed the Steam controller, calling it “a massive improvement over the flawed original, offering big innovations while boasting a more conventional, user-friendly design.”
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