The Steam Machine priced, and higher than hoped

Valve’s Steam Machine gaming PC lineup finally has some price tags. If you were looking for them to skew lower though, think again.

A new round of hardware

It wasn’t too long ago, that Valve made a few key announcements. A new VR headset was in with those, as well as the recently released Steam Controller, and a new mini-PC. Yes, we had heard all of that before, but this new round of offerings from the company sounded and looked particularly good. In specific, the mini-PC caused a bit of a clamor on social media.

One of the reasons for that was a push, at the time, from both Microsoft and Sony to raise prices on their consoles. And with the next-gen right around the corner for both of those gaming giants, it’s easy to imagine prices going up even more. On the flip side, Valve’s reveal had many thinking that this would be the time for PC gaming to run wild.

If this fresh stab at a “Steam Machine” could be competitive, or maybe even hit with relative parity in terms of PlayStation and Xbox pricing, well… that’d really be something to see. Now though, that structure is out there officially. And yeah, it’s higher than you were probably hoping.

Steam Machine pricing

Valve revealed the prices on a quartet of Steam Machine tiers today, with the base model clocking in at $1049 USD. That version of the cube-like computer will net buyers a “512GB NVMe SSD”. According to Valve’s listings though, all versions of the Steam Machine will otherwise have the same specs. That’s to mean that they’ll all run SteamOS 3, and feature an “AMD Zen 4 6C / 12T” CPU, an “AMD RDNA3 28CUs” in terms of GPU, a microSD card slot, and “16GB DDR5 + 8GB GDDR6 VRAM”.

But wait, because there are levels to this big reveal. And for those who want a more complete console experience right out of the box, the second rung on the ladder adds in a Steam Controller. Prospective players can look for a $1,128 USD tag to be associated there. Those 512GB Machines aren’t the limit however, as the upper two tires add much chunkier storage.

A 2TB Steam Machine, which also comes with a pair of interchangeable faceplates, will cost you $1349 USD. And finally, the last pricing level will include the 2TB unit, complete with faceplates, and a Steam Controller. The cost for that? Expect $1428 USD.

If you’re thinking about grabbing one of the little PC’s, you might want to head over to the official site. While pre-orders aren’t live yet, you can add your email address to get notified as soon as they post. You can find that here.