Steam Machine Could Have Launched at Just $750, If Not for the RAM Crisis

The price point Valve originally planned for its Steam Machine was reportedly almost 30% lower before the global RAM crisis pushed memory costs to the next level.

In an interview with our IGN colleagues last week, Valve engineers Pierre-Loup Griffais and Yazan Aldehayyat said that the difference between the Steam Machine‘s pre- and post-memory crisis prices was “probably similar” to the proportional difference between the Steam Deck‘s launch and updated prices. The 512GB Steam Deck model rose from $549 to $789 due to RAM costs just last month.

Though Griffais and Aldehayyat wouldn’t give IGN a hard number, the outlet calculated that the Steam Machine’s initial target price was likely somewhere between $700 to $750, which would have been about 25% to 35% cheaper than its final launch price of $1,049.

The Steam Machine is now described as one of the biggest casualties of the memory crunch because it landed just above the $1,000 mark rather than under it.