Here’s What The Steam Machine Might Have Cost If AI Hadn’t Screwed Everything Up

Damn, okay. The Steam Machine is expensive. Over $1000 for just the base model, and even more if you want more storage or a Steam controller. And if that price has your eyes popping out of your head, cartoon-style, you can blame the current RAM crisis brought about by the AI rush, without which it probably would have been about $250 cheaper.

This comes from a mix of reviews and interviews that went live alongside Valve announcing the price of the Steam Machine and opening it up for pre-orders. In a few of those interviews conducted around this unveiling, Valve gave away exactly how much more expensive this already-pricey piece of tech has become thanks to the ongoing RAM crisis. Specifically, both IGN and Aftermath were told that the price increase seen by the Steam Machine was “probably similar” to the price increase recently undergone by the Steam Deck, which recently went from $550 to $790, or from $650 to $950 for the 1TB model. Doing the math on that and applying it to the Steam Machine works out to about a $750 pre-hike Steam Machine, give or take some dollars.

Yikes! Okay! This is, I remind you, the fault of AI. The rush to build more, bigger AI data centers has eaten up the vast majority of the memory supply for several years to come, pumping up the price on what’s left and forcing everyone else, gaming hardware manufacturers included, to pay a pretty penny just to build their own machines. That price then gets passed onto consumers, as we’ve seen with price increases across not just Valve’s hardware, but that of all three console makers as well. And there’s no end in sight, as analysts expect we’ll see further price hikes in the next few years before manufacturing space for chips frees up.

Over $1000 is simultaneously far more than anyone should have to pay for a definitely not a video game console PC, but also, considering how expensive gaming PCs and components are for consumers nowadays, not the worst deal if you’re in the market for one. Reservation sign-ups for the Steam Machine will be open through Thursday morning. You’re damned if you buy it now (at an absurdly high price), sure, but you’re also damned if you wait and buy it later (at which point it will surely have increased in price even further).