Gamers hoping that Valve’s upcoming Steam Machine will compete with current-generation consoles are probably going to be disappointed. Valve has made it clear that its miniature PC is going to be priced to compete with PCs, because that’s what it is: a PC. Valve can’t subsidize hardware sales with future game sales if people don’t buy games, which they may well not do. That means upfront hardware sales must drive profit, which in turn requires higher prices.
“[Valve] said that while they expect it to be very competitively priced with a PC, that it will be priced like a PC. Rather than like a console with games subsidizing the upfront hardware price,” said Linus Sebastian of LinusTechTips in a recent video showcasing the system.
With rising hardware prices for PC components, such as GPUs, memory, and storage, the Steam Machine could be notably more expensive than current-generation consoles.
For now, Valve is probably being cagey about the Steam Machine’s pricing so that it can assess the hardware situation in 2026, when the product launches. It wouldn’t be worth announcing a $700 price tag now, only for it to need to rise to $800 or more in the new year. But that’s probably what we’re looking at for a baseline. Valve won’t be able to sell this thing for under $500. It might even struggle to sell it for less than $1,000.
That might not be as devastating for Valve’s business plan as it sounds, though. While a higher price would make the Steam Machine very unattractive for existing console owners (or those considering getting an Xbox or PlayStation in the near future), it might set it up well to compete with what’s coming next. Microsoft’s next-generation Xbox is rumored to be more of a PC-hybrid system, kind of like the Xbox Ally X, which is already a $1,000+ system.
So, could we see a $1,000 Xbox going up against a $1,000 Steam Machine in 2026? It wouldn’t surprise me. How gamers react to that, though, is another thing entirely.
