Valve warns: Steam Machine delayed and memory crisis will affect price
The company maintains its goal of launching its new wave of hardware in the first half of 2026, but cannot yet confirm dates or prices.
In a post on its newly launched Steam Hardware Blog, the company confirms that it is not yet able to announce the price or exact launch date for the Steam Controller, Steam Machine, and Steam Frame, pointing directly to memory and storage shortages as the factors disrupting the schedule and stretching the budget.
An idea that remains, but with questions
On the one hand, Valve assures that its goal is to get the three devices on the market during the first half of the year (which pushes back the “first quarter” of 2026 that they slipped to some media outlets, without making it official). And it acknowledges that the original idea was to have solid prices and launch plans by now. But on the other hand, it admits that limited availability and rising costs for these critical components are forcing them to “review” both their shipping plan and pricing policy, with a particular impact on Steam Machine and Steam Frame.
This caution is not simply a delay, but rather a precautionary measure in response to a volatile market. Valve insists that it needs to arrive at dates and prices that it can communicate “confidently,” aware of how quickly circumstances can change. It promises regular updates as it finalizes these plans, using its blog as a channel for technical breakdowns, videos, and regular information.
The company also took advantage of the blog post to comment on some aspects of the hardware and its performance, another of the big questions up in the air alongside the price. Valve claims that, in its tests, most of the Steam catalog works “great” at 4K and 60 fps using FSR, although it admits that some games will require more scaling or compromises, and suggests an alternative approach: lowering the frame rate and relying on VRR to maintain an internal resolution of 1080p. At the same time, it says it is working on VRR over HDMI, scaling improvements, and ray tracing optimization at the driver level.
In terms of industrial approach, Valve will open access to CAD files and technical data for the front panel, with the idea that external manufacturers can create their own, and also reaffirms one of the basic principles of the PC ecosystem by allowing the replacement and expansion of both storage and memory (NVMe 2230/2280 and DDR5 SODIMM). For its part, the Steam Controller articulates its compatibility through Steam Overlay, making it possible to use it in titles that are not on Steam as long as they go through that layer.
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We’ll have to keep waiting for the key data, although the idea of a “pleasant surprise” with the price seems increasingly unlikely given the crazy memory price context we find ourselves in. Not even Gabe Newell can do that much.
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