The Steam Machine was announced 2 weeks ago, but Valve hasn't revealed the price yet. The company's engineers wouldn't say it, but have hinted that it will be priced like a PC.
In case you missed it, last week a couple of engineers from Valve revealed that the Steam Machine is equal to, or more powerful than 70% of PCs according to Steam's Hardware Survey.
Skill Up interviewed Valve's engineers, Lawrence Yang and Pierre-Loup Griffais, you can watch the video on YouTube (from around the 1 hour 23 minute mark). The video is nearly 3 hours long, and touches on various topics, including one that many people are anxious to know. What will the Steam Machine cost?
When he was asked about this, Griffais reiterated that the Steam Machine is like a mid-level PC. He mentioned that it is similar to building a PC from parts, that offers similar performance to the device. For reference, the Steam Machine is powered by a 6-core AMD Zen 4 CPU, an AMD RDNA3 GPU, 8GB GDDR6 VRAM and 16GB DDR5 RAM.
It makes sense, though the news might disappoint some people, because as soon after Valve had announced the device, gamers on social media were buzzing, and expected the device to be priced aggressively. That would be great, but it doesn't make sense for Valve's strategy. Consoles like the PS5, Xbox or Switch are usually sold at a lower price point to attract buyers. The companies make up for the device's price tag by selling games and subscriptions, and these are sold exclusively through the console's store. But, Valve has Steam, so the same theory should apply here, right? Not necessarily.
Linus Tech Tips released a video a couple of weeks ago, where he mentioned Valve had told him the Steam Machine would cost as much as a PC does. Linus explained that the Steam Machine is basically a computer, you could buy it and use it like one. If Valve priced it very affordably, it could attract corporations who may order it in bulk. This scenario isn't ideal for Valve, as it wouldn't bring in revenue from game sales. He's right. Valve itself had mentioned that users can install whatever operating system they want on the Steam Machine.
Later, on a WAN show episode (around 38:28) Linus stated that Valve wasn't happy when he asked if the Steam Machine would cost $500. Based on that, I guess we could be looking at a $700 to $800 price tag for the Steam Machine. That's not too bad, mid-range gaming laptops cost more than that, and many of them don't have an 8GB graphics card.
What do you think the Steam Machine's price will be?
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