For all the hullabaloo about Valve being unable to count to “3,” the company made us all look like fools a few weeks ago when it announced three pieces of hardware: the Steam Machine, a portable PC that can plug into a TV like a console; the Steam Frame, Valve’s entry to the VR market; and a new Steam Controller.
Of that trio, the Steam Machine is perhaps the most fascinating reveal. After all, one of the biggest things console gaming has going for it is the ability to plug the piece of hardware into your TV and begin playing.
Even more fascinating than the premise of being able to take your Steam library and play it on your big screen TV is just how much the whole thing will cost. PCs, at least good ones, aren’t cheap, and the Steam Machine is apparently 70 percent more powerful than anything current Steam users are currently using.
If The Steam Machine Doesn’t Launch With A New Half-Life I’ll Eat My Hat
Valve has the perfect opportunity to launch a new Half-Life game with the upcoming Steam Machine.
In a new interview, Valve echoed as much, intimating you’ll have to pull out your wallet and cough up a bit of cash to get a Steam Machine whenever pre-orders do open up.
Shut Up And Take My Money… Maybe
In a new episode of The Friends Per Second Podcast with Jake Baldino and SkillUp, Valve’s Lawrence Yang and Pierre-Loup Griffais were asked directly about the pricing strategy behind Valve’s shiny new piece of tech, to which Griffais offered some insight on what to expect.
“I think that if you build a PC from parts and get to basically the same level of performance, that’s the general price window we aim to be at,” he said. “Ideally, we’d be pretty competitive with that and have a pretty good deal, but we’re working on refining that as we speak. And right now is just a hard time to have a really good idea of what the price is going to be because there’s a lot of different things. A lot of external things.”
In other words, it doesn’t sound like Valve will be taking a loss on the hardware, similar to what Sony is doing with its new Japan-only PlayStation 5, or what console manufacturers have historically undertaken in order to get people in the door.
“No, it’s more in line with what you might expect from the current PC market,” Griffais said when asked if Valve would potentially take a loss on the machine.
Those words echo what Linus Tech Tips shared in a separate video about the Steam Machine being more expensive than what we’ve come to expect from consoles, only these words come officially from Valve themselves. All that is to say: prepare your wallet, folks.
- Brand
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Valve
- Operating System
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SteamOS 3 (Arch-based)
- Processor
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Semi-custom AMD Zen 4 6C / 12T up to 4.8 GHz, 30W TDP
- Resolution
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Up to 4K @ 240Hz or 8K@60Hz
- HDR Support
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Yes
- Original Release Date
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2026
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