- A Valve engineer confirmed the company won’t subsidize the Steam Machine
- Hopes of a $500 prize were dashed
- It’s likely the device will cost upwards of $800, but Valve will look to add value in different ways compared to an equivalent gaming PC.
A Valve engineer has confirmed that the Steam Machine’s price won’t be subsidized like that of a console, which throws cold water on the hope of many that we might be looking at a $500 living room PC.
Wccftech reported on an interview YouTuber Skill Up conducted with Valve software engineer Pierre-Loup Griffais on the Friends Per Second podcast in which the subject of the Steam Machine’s price came up, and specifically the possibility of a Valve grant for the device.
The YouTuber asked: “But it’s not going to be some sort of subsidized device, like, Valve’s not going into this thinking we’re going to take a big loss on this so we can grow our market share or our category or anything like that, right?”
Griffais replied: “No, it’s more in line with what you would expect in today’s PC market. Obviously our goal is for it to be a good deal at this level of performance.
“And then you have features that are actually very difficult to build if you’re making your own gaming PC from parts. Things like the small form factor, the noise level that we’ve achieved, or lack thereof, is really impressive and we’re excited for people to experience how quiet this thing is.
“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 you can have a great experience with four Bluetooth controllers.”
So it’s a clear “no” in terms of subsidy to limit the price of the steam engine, and it confirms other discussions we’ve heard recently.
As mentioned at the start, the hope for many was the possibility of a $500 price tag, and Wccftech observes that this figure was mentioned by Linus Tech Tips in a room with Valve employees and that “the energy wasn’t great”, meaning it was apparently pretty clear that this figure was too low.
The claim that pricing will be “in line with what you can expect in today’s PC market” also echoes previous statements that the Steam Machine was “very competitive with a PC you could build yourself from parts” (as Griffais said in a previous conversation with The Verge).
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Analysis: complex pricing equations and value added elsewhere
So what is the result here? Gamers now believe that Valve is considering more of the $800 mark for the Steam Machine. And indeed, that was The Verge’s estimate of what a comparable self-built PC might cost to deliver the same kind of gaming performance as the Steam Machine’s AMD chips (which will have a semi-custom GPU from Team Red, it’s worth noting).
Remember, the Steam Machine is under development, so it will be better than (or equal to) 70% of the gaming PCs available on Steam (based on Valve’s hardware survey). In other words, it won’t be a slouch, but it’s clear that expectations need to be managed around the Zen 4 chip and RDNA 3 GPU, which some say seems rather underpowered. (Some of the heavy lifting will be done on the software side, mind you, with custom tuning of that GPU and AMD’s FSR).
Either way, the intention now seems to be to firmly discourage any idea of a cheap price somewhere at the $500 level – and the idea that Valve might take a loss on the hardware because it would make money on the software. (Possibly big money on Steam game sales – of which Valve gets a 30% cut, for most games except the best sellers – if many Steam machines make it into living rooms around the world).
What Valve’s engineer seems to be saying here is that you’ll get a mini PC that costs the same as a larger, equally capable desktop gaming PC, but you’ll get a lot more benefit with the Steam Machine’s form factor and design.
The steam machine will be quiet, compact and discreet (without a power supply) – it will fit perfectly into the living room. The device will boot up immediately, with an easy-to-use interface for your big-screen TV, and you’ll be able to resume a gaming session in the blink of an eye. You only have 15 minutes to play? No problem, you can jump straight into a quick game in the brief window of time you have before leaving the house.
Griffais also mentions HDMI CEC which allows you to control the volume with your remote control, for example, and to automatically turn on (or turn off) the TV with the Steam Machine (as we already see on the Steam Deck). And also designing Bluetooth functionality to enable four wireless controllers.
These are the elements that will constitute the “added value” of the Steam Machine compared to a traditional gaming PC. We just need to be sure that the end result will be as smooth as Valve talks about here; but to be fair, the company has achieved something special with the Steam Deck, and at a competitive price too, so I hope the Steam Machine ends up impressing in the same vein.
That said, there was a lot of hope surrounding this dream of a $500 living room PC (some even talked about $400, which never seemed realistic, mind you), and there’s a lot of feeling of disappointment now. Another potential stumbling block is the price of memory, meaning RAM and storage could cost significantly more when the Steam Machine releases at some point in 2026.
That said, a comparable PC will also cost a lot more (and console prices will no doubt increase to some extent), so Valve’s device should stay roughly in the same place, price-wise, in the gaming device landscape.
But these concerns over the rising price of memory make it even harder to guess where the Steam Machine price might be, meaning the new estimate of $800 – and remember, this is just speculation – could get closer to the $1,000 mark.
Unfortunately, I fear the worst when it comes to this potential memory shortage and the attendant price-gouging complications, and it impacts not only pre-built PCs and consoles, but graphics cards as well. There are even rumors that some budget models of graphics cards could become endangered species as next year progresses.
There are dire predictions afoot right now, and we can only hope that these worries are overblown – but somehow, I doubt it.
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