Way back in November of 2025, Valve made several hardware announcements that seemed to build on its previous releases. A new Steam Controller which took a lot of notes from the popular but still niche Steam Deck; a new VR headset called the Steam Frame that could connect to your PC wirelessly; and their second attempt at cracking the home theater PC/console market called the Steam Machine.
Unfortunately, the timing could not have been worse. Soon after that announcement, computer component prices skyrocketed as people realized that the hyperscalers and AI companies were buying out all of the production capacity for components like memory for the next year or two. Suddenly, the Steam Deck had a major question mark looming over its head - how much is this going to cost, and will it even make sense anymore?
The Verge sized up the Steam Machine to a Nintendo Gamecube, one of my favorite consoles ever
Today, they finally revealed the price, and it’s not pretty - the base system with 512 GB of storage is a whopping $1,049. You can upgrade to the 2 TB variant for $1,349. Both variants have options to bundle a controller it for $79 more.
I knew this was going to be pricey, especially after they recently raised the price for the Steam Deck a month ago. But it’s still disappointing to see, because I originally had high hopes that this would solve a particular problem for me. I enjoy PC gaming, but I increasingly want to sit and play those games on a couch at the end of my work day - not at my desk. I currently have my desktop hooked up to a TV in my basement, but the situation is not ideal. It has no suspend and resume mode like other consoles have, it can’t download driver updates or anything else while its turned off (or even in a low power state), and its difficult to navigate the UI from the couch, even with a couch friendly keyboard and mouse setup.
More often than not, I’m comfortable with trading bleeding edge power and customization for convenience, which always gradually pulls me towards consoles again. But every time, my interest is rapidly killed by the idea of maintaining subscriptions just to play a few games online. I no longer have the time (or energy, or skill) to play competitive multiplayer all the time, but I do enjoy hopping on for cooperative games or campaigns from time to time. That infrequency makes it very hard to justify shelling out $80 a year for PlayStation Plus, or even more for XBox Game Pass. (Nintendo with its $20 a year for Switch Online is something I can consider reasonable, especially because you get access to some retro games with it).
What’s most troubling about this news, however, is what it implies for the next generation of consoles, scheduled to arrive as early as next year. Sony already has raised the price of its PS5 Pro to a whopping $900 - it is no longer unreasonable to think a PS6 could come in at $999 or more. I remember saving up allowance and birthday money to buy an N64, a Game Boy Advance, and a GameCube, especially since their prices dropped over time after release. I’m not sure how an industry survives when it prices out new consumers and disillusions existing ones.