The Steam Machine, Valve’s formidable new enterprise into lounge console gaming, was supposed to start delivery in “early” 2026. That’s not the case. The corporate introduced on Wednesday that its unique launch plans have been pushed again to later within the 12 months because of reminiscence and storage shortages as corporations race to pivot to AI.
“After we introduced these merchandise in November, we deliberate on having the ability to share particular pricing and launch dates by now,” Valve wrote in a brand new February 4 blog post. “However the reminiscence and storage shortages you’ve probably heard about throughout the trade have quickly elevated since then. The restricted availability and rising costs of those essential parts imply we should revisit our precise delivery schedule and pricing (particularly round Steam Machine and Steam Body).”
The plan remains to be to ship the Steam Machine, a brand new Steam controller, and the brand new Steam Body VR headset throughout the first half of 2026. That implies the primary models ought to nonetheless arrive in gamers’ arms someday earlier than June 30. However Valve provides that market situations are at the moment shifting too rapidly to substantiate “concrete pricing and launch dates” firstly of 2026 as beforehand deliberate.
First revealed again in November, the Steam Machine is a small cube-shaped console with PC gaming specs someplace between a PlayStation 5 and a PS5 Professional. The gadget is focusing on the commonest specs of the common Steam person with the objective of taking part in most video games at 4K 60FPS with FSR enabled. This has led to plenty of hypothesis about how a lot the gadget would possibly truly value, with Valve confirming it’s not planning to promote Steam Machines at a loss and declining to say whether or not will probably be near the present common console value of $500.
And that was earlier than PC parts from RAM to graphics playing cards began considerably growing in value as half provides are monopolized by corporations investing in AI datacenters. Staff at retailers like GameStop and Goal have confirmed SSDs for PS5s and different upgrades spiking in value in a single day, and a few corporations have shifted out of the buyer market altogether. Whereas Valve appears to be ready to see if issues settle down in any respect, there’s no indication but that this isn’t simply the brand new regular.
