A price hike on the product we can buy is not encouraging for the product we can’t
Valve has raised the price of the Steam Deck OLED. A substantial increase. The 512GB model jumped from $549 to $789. The 1TB went from $649 to $949. That is a $300 increase on the top OLED, close to 50%.
Valve points at rising memory and storage costs, which is the same memory and chip story we keep coming back to. Blame AI and all that.
The timing of this news is uncomfortable. We still don’t know when the Steam Machine releases, nor its price. And now, our only data point is where Valve is positioning their older OLED handheld.
Why did Valve raise the Steam Deck’s price?
A few months back, the Steam Deck OLED was out of stock. Now it is back, with a premium price. Why? Well, that is due to the global shortage of chips driven by massive AI datacenter development around the world.
The Steam Deck OLED, the handheld that just got pricier. / Credit: Valve
As all PC gamers know, this is impacting hardware prices. Valve cannot sell the Steam Deck at a massive loss, so they normalize the prices to our current pricing environment.
Understandable from a business perspective, but it really sucks from a consumer point of view.
What does it mean for Steam Machine?
We don’t know its price, but now we know it will be expensive. Considering the specs, “6 times more powerful” than a Steam Deck, my bet is the pricing lands somewhere around $1,300.
Valve is not in a great position right now. They announced the Steam Machine, Steam Frame, and Steam Controller back in November 2025. Now, close to mid 2026, we still have no launch date and no price for the Machine or Frame.
We know why. The RAM shortage, inflated by AI datacenter demand, has forced Valve to revisit both their shipping schedule and pricing. I wrote about this back in February.
The Steam Deck price hike adds another layer. If Valve is raising prices on existing hardware, it suggests component costs are not coming down. The Steam Machine’s unknown price just got more expensive.
Consider DIY
As a consequence of SteamOS releasing, we luckily have other options, like creating your own “Steam Machine”… machine. You can salvage old computer parts, look for good buys second hand. Bazzite Linux supposedly works very well (with Radeon GPUs), so it is an ideal time to test out creating your own living room friendly machine.
I did the mental gymnastics of creating my own, and these were my requirements:
- Sexy ITX case, bought 2nd hand
- New ITX motherboard
- AM5 platform (AM4 is hard to get here in Norway now)
- AMD Radeon GPU, bought 2nd hand
- A small PSU for the ITX case
I can also salvage half the RAM and my Ryzen 7600X from my main rig, and buy a new CPU (X3D maybe?) for that main gaming rig, thus leaving me with something decent for the living room. Having two machines in my possession on AM5 would also make future proofing easier. After all, AMD tends to support these sockets for a loooooong time.
Doing all this mental gymnastics and clever bookkeeping still left me with a budget around $800. And that is without CPU and RAM factored in.
I actually have a powerful Plex server running at home, with 64 GB RAM and a 10th-gen Intel i9. However, I am not able to find an ITX board for this LGA 1200 socket. So my best bet is to sell this, and then use that money for a new machine.
If the Steam Machine launches at a price that feels wrong, and my bet is that it will, the obvious alternative is to build your own. Historically, DIY has at least offered the promise of better value, but honestly, in May 2026 you have to be really smart and frugal to succeed.
I am still unsure of where I will end up, but I most definitely will be updating this site with whatever I choose.
Valve is stuck, so are we
Valve has been lucky with their timing in the past, now they bonked it. They are launching a product during the worst possible time.
Valve needs to find a price that makes sense for the consumers, in this elevated component costs market. The timing was originally good, the PS5 and Xbox are aging, but then came the RAMpocalypse. If the Steam Machine launches at a high cost, and it takes too long for that cost to come down. Well, it wouldn’t be pretty.
Then again, Valve does have a huge following and a good standing in the PC gaming community. Something we already saw in early May when they launched, and sold out, the Steam Controller. And there are a huge amount of people out there with disposable income, that have no issues paying $1,300 to $1,400 for a Steam Machine.
I’ll continue to follow this space.
