Steam Machine finally goes on sale at an expectedly eye-watering price

Valve has finally decided to put a launch date and sale price on its Steam Machine gaming PC.

The 512GB version is priced at $1049, and the 2TB version is $1349. However, those are the prices without a controller. If you want Valve’s Steam Controller, you will have to opt for the bundle, which is $1128 for the 512GB model, and $1428 for the 2TB model. You don’t have to get the Steam Controller though, as you can use your other existing controllers with the Steam Machine. Finally, regardless of which model you pick, you get two additional faceplates, red fabric, and solid walnut.

As for availability, you can sign up on the Steam store page if you’re interested, and you can do this till June 25th 10:00AM Pacific. Once the time ends, a one-time randomization will happen and determine who gets to purchase. Those who are picked will be informed to place their orders starting June 29th, and failing to do so within 72 hours will cause it to go to the next person on the waitlist. Also, you need to have a Steam account in good standing with a purchase made prior to April 27, 2026.

The Steam Machine runs on a 6-core, 12-thread AMD Zen 4 CPU that can clock up to 4.8GHz, and an AMD RDNA3 GPU with 28 compute units, that can clock up to 2.45GHz. You get 16GB DDR5 system memory, which reviewers have pointed out is a single 16GB 5600 SO-DIMM unit in single-channel. However, there are two slots available, so the user can choose to populate both at a later date, presumably without taking a mortgage on the house. There’s also 8GB GDDR6 memory available for the GPU. There is a built-in power supply unit.

As mentioned before, you can choose from either 512GB or 2TB storage configurations. And since the machine uses standard M.2 drives, you can always choose to upgrade it later, presumably without taking a second mortgage on the house. There is also a microSD card slot available, and you can swap cards between the Steam Machine and the Steam Deck.

On the software front, you get Valve’s excellent SteamOS 3, which the company has also released for installation on other devices on its websites.

The company first announced the Steam Machine back in November of last year, and very quickly it became apparent that the launch was going to be put on hold indefinitely due to the ongoing memory crisis (thanks, Sam Altman!). While Valve never announced a price, it became clear that whatever the original launch price was supposed to be was no longer going to happen.

Valve recently announced a massive 44% increase to the Steam Deck pricing, taking the 1TB model to $949, an atrocious number for what is now a boiled potato with a screen. The Steam Machine price, while still patently ridiculous, doesn’t seem as bad in comparison.

Still, it is vastly more expensive than the $900 PlayStation 5 Pro, not to mention the $600 standard PlayStation 5, while being roughly on par with the latter in terms of performance. Yes, it is essentially a Linux PC, and is thus much more flexible, but if PC is all you want then you’re probably better off building one yourself, and you can get a more powerful one still for less money. It just won’t be as small.