The Steam Machine, Valve’s formidable new enterprise into front room console gaming, was supposed to start delivery in “early” 2026. That’s now not the case. The corporate introduced on Wednesday that its unique launch plans have been pushed again to later within the yr attributable to reminiscence and storage shortages as firms race to pivot to AI.
“When we announced these products in November, we planned on being able to share specific pricing and launch dates by now,” Valve wrote in a brand new February 4 blog post. “But the memory and storage shortages you’ve likely heard about across the industry have rapidly increased since then. The limited availability and growing prices of these critical components mean we must revisit our exact shipping schedule and pricing (especially around Steam Machine and Steam Frame).”
The plan remains to be to ship the Steam Machine, a brand new Steam controller, and the brand new Steam Body VR headset inside the first half of 2026. That implies the primary items ought to nonetheless arrive in gamers’ fingers someday earlier than June 30. However Valve provides that market situations are at present shifting too rapidly to verify “concrete pricing and launch dates” firstly of 2026 as beforehand deliberate.
First revealed back 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 most typical specs of the typical Steam consumer with the aim of taking part in most video games at 4K 60FPS with FSR enabled. This has led to a number of hypothesis about how a lot the gadget may really price, with Valve confirming it’s not planning to promote Steam Machines at a loss and declining to say whether or not it is going to be near the present common console worth of $500.
And that was earlier than PC elements from RAM to graphics playing cards began considerably growing in worth as half provides are monopolized by firms investing in AI datacenters. Workers at retailers like GameStop and Target have confirmed SSDs for PS5s and different upgrades spiking in worth in a single day, and a few firms have shifted out of the buyer market altogether. Whereas Valve appears to be ready to see if issues relax in any respect, there’s no indication but that this isn’t simply the brand new regular.
