- 7 weeks ago
Skyrocketing prices for RAM and SSDs, driven by AI demand, have thrown a wrench in Valve's plans for its new hardware lineup. The Steam Machine, Steam Frame, and Steam Controller are now in limbo. We dive into the details of the memory crisis and discuss whether Valve's dream of an affordable living room PC is still alive.
Category
🎈
FunTranscript
00:00I'm still not entirely convinced it's going to come out now.
00:02We're talking about these new estimated prices, but would you buy one at that price?
00:06Yeah, I think that's the key question, isn't it?
00:08They can't just price it what it needs to be priced to sell it.
00:11It needs to be kind of sellable.
00:13People need to want to buy the thing.
00:15The really tragic thing about this is that this isn't too far removed from what happened with the original Steam
00:22machines.
00:23Hello, this is Dave from PC Gamer.
00:24And I'm Jacob.
00:25We're here because obviously something pretty major happened last week with Valve.
00:29Time to start talking about the really disappointing news.
00:37Something didn't happen, I guess, which is they haven't announced pricing or a firm release date for the Steam machine
00:43and the Steam frame.
00:45And to some extent, the Steam controller as well.
00:47I can read out their message.
00:49I'm sure people are interested in this stuff, have read this because it went up on Steam.
00:52When we announced these products in November, we planned on being able to share specific pricing and launch dates by
00:57now.
00:57So that would have been good.
00:58But the memory and storage shortages you've likely heard about across the industry have rapidly increased since then.
01:03The limited availability and growing prices of these critical components mean we must revisit our exact shipping schedule and pricing,
01:11especially around the Steam machine and Steam frame.
01:13Our goal of shipping all three products in the first half of the year has not changed, but we have
01:17work to do to land on concrete pricing and launch dates that we can confidently announce, being mindful of how
01:23quickly the circumstances around both of these things can change.
01:27We will keep you updated as much as we can as we finalize those plans as soon as possible.
01:30The key thing around the launch that you were at in Bellevue in November, that was the key thing.
01:36It was like, how much is it going to cost?
01:38Yeah.
01:38And it's the question that everyone asks about the Steam machine, way more than I've barely seen anyone talk about
01:42the Steam frame.
01:43We'll get to that.
01:44But this mostly Steam machine, this is the one big question that everyone seemed to want to know.
01:47Because it really lives or dies by the price.
01:50I think it was something we've said before as well.
01:52The price has to be good for a tiny little PC running SteamOS to be a viable purchase.
01:57I guess that's the thing.
01:58We should just quickly talk about what it is.
02:00The Steam machine is a little gaming PC, somewhere between an AMD RX 7400, RX 7600 graphics card, an RDNA
02:103 card, a Zen 4 CPU in there, 16GB of RAM,
02:13and two potential configurations, 512GB or 2TB SSDs.
02:19And the key thing there is, this is last-gen as well.
02:21So that kind of does factor into the pricing thing.
02:23This isn't cutting-edge, but it's also not really that old.
02:26You're not going to notice that it's last-gen necessarily.
02:29But since we kind of made some estimates that we'll get to of pricing back, I think it was November,
02:34late November,
02:35Valve did say that it intends to price the Steam machine like a PC, not a console,
02:39which I think we both agreed was quite loose terminology.
02:42I mean, essentially what they're talking about is, like, we're not going to suck up the pricing.
02:45Like, we're going to price it normally, we're not going to subsidize it.
02:49Like, we're not going to try and make money out of the Steam store by having more people buying a
02:54Steam machine,
02:54because that's just not going to work.
02:56This is slightly more accurate.
02:57They said that they were aiming for price parity with a similarly performing PC.
03:01And so I think that's where a lot of our estimations kind of came from,
03:05is using that sort of, you know, how much would you have to pay to get something like this?
03:09That has changed a lot since last November to now.
03:11Now, but quickly on the context of why this has happened, why they're in this situation,
03:17as they alluded to in that statement, is the memory crisis.
03:20AI demand, thanks AI, is causing prices to spiral.
03:25I've noted down here, I literally just looked on Amazon just now.
03:28Crucial Pro 32GB DDR5 CL36, which is like, good but not amazing latency.
03:34Was $80 last year, is now $325, which is so depressing.
03:40Yeah, I mean, that tells the story straight away.
03:42And if you're talking about that in terms of, like, trying to manufacture the stuff,
03:47like, your manufacturing costs going up by that sort of level is going to have a massive impact on, like,
03:56how your releases go.
03:57This is one analyst firm recently noted that memory costs surged up to 90% so far this year.
04:03That's 2026. We're only at the start of February.
04:07So, you know...
04:08We've had five weeks to do that.
04:09Yeah, and that's the actual prices that essentially people are paying to get the memory chips.
04:13That's not sort of adding on every single bit of packaging, everything else that you need to get.
04:18SoDIMS, which is the laptop form factor memory that the Steam machine is using,
04:22or LPDDR5, which is the memory on the Steam frame.
04:25But we're also not expecting that to change as well.
04:27Like, this is, like, we're locked into the RAM issue for, well, the memory issue for a good while.
04:33We're expecting that to go through 27 as well.
04:35Yeah, I mean, 2027 at the earliest is when some, you know, SK Hynix, Samsung, Micron,
04:40I think Micron sort of expecting some stuff in 2027.
04:43In terms of expanding their production.
04:45Yeah, getting new facilities online.
04:47But also that can only, you know, AI demand is growing.
04:50So you might only be meeting the demand as it stands.
04:53You know, you might not necessarily be increasing the demand so much that consumers and stuff like this are getting
04:58the benefit.
05:00And the other thing is SSDs have gone up.
05:01Valve know that in their statement.
05:04It's not just memory.
05:05Yeah, they're talking about storage too.
05:06And I think the price of, like, a 2TB driver, like, can be upwards of $200 now.
05:10They were way cheaper than that towards the end of last year.
05:13Black Friday and before that last year.
05:15Yeah.
05:15Definitely way cheaper.
05:17It just all comes into a really sad state of affairs for Valve.
05:20Because, personally, we probably weren't super excited.
05:23Of all the three products that they announced, the Steam frame, the Steam machine, the Steam controller.
05:27The Steam machine probably wasn't top of our list.
05:29But it was the thing that grabbed most people's attention.
05:32And the fact that we're not even close to a stage where they can announce a price for it, let
05:38alone a release date, is pretty tragic.
05:40Yeah, to do all that work, get the plans finalized, stuff like that.
05:44And then to kind of be hit by something really late stage as well, based on what they kind of
05:48indicated when we were out there.
05:50You know, the headquarters, like, when they were kind of aiming, like, early 2026.
05:53Now it's sort of first half, which still kind of could be early 2026.
05:57I can see there's a little bit of leeway there.
05:58But, yeah.
06:00Do we want to talk about our incredibly optimistic previous guesses for this?
06:03We have another video where we made guesses last November.
06:11Let's start with your one.
06:12So, I...
06:12That's pretty similar, actually.
06:13Yeah, I initially thought I'd top and tail it.
06:15I thought, because they were doing two options, 512GB and 2TB, I thought they'd go, because of the Steam Deck,
06:21you know, the pricing of everything, it's last-gen tech.
06:24I thought 529 for the 512GB one.
06:26And then they'd kind of go 649 for the 2TB one.
06:29Yeah, I kind of, I went the same.
06:30But I was a little bit lower, and I was like, 499, because that's a nice price.
06:34Like, if you can get under $500 on that, like, it'd be a really nice thing to do.
06:39649 for the 2TB.
06:41Yeah, and it would be a great way into PC gaming at 499, right?
06:45Or even 529.
06:46But it's good.
06:47Like, those are now, like, gone.
06:49They seem unbelievably optimistic in hindsight.
06:53But what we didn't know at the time, I mean, so one of the things I based my price on
06:56was you can get an RTX 5060 PC,
06:58which is a more modern GPU than what you're getting in the Steam machine, with DDR5 for around $750, $800.
07:05Those PCs now are at least $900, and even that is a rarity.
07:10I mean, I actually had a look a couple days ago across Newegg, and I sorted it by price for
07:14all gaming PCs.
07:15And I was in, I don't know, something like eight or nine pages in before I even got to anything
07:20with relatively modern specs.
07:22And what I mean by relatively modern is maybe two generations old GPU and CPU, like, still using DDR4, not
07:29DDR5 memory.
07:30So even $900 is a really good deal right now for a PC, and I've only found one that was
07:35like that,
07:36which I actually don't know if it's still live right at this moment.
07:38So where are you landing now?
07:39What I put down was 512GB, I put 899, because of the price of another PC that's sort of similar,
07:47and based on what they said before, they want to kind of have that price parity with the PC.
07:51I think you could go a bit lower than that, if I'm being optimistic,
07:54but I did feel like after really thinking about it for a long time, 899 might be optimistic.
07:58And then for the 2TB, I just said kill it, because the price of the drives is in excess of
08:03$200 sometimes.
08:03I know Valve can get a bit of a benefit by being a fairly big company, but they're not that
08:09big.
08:10And compared to the companies like Dell or HP and who are making laptop,
08:14they are nothing compared to them for manufacturing hardware and putting this stuff together, right?
08:19So I don't think they're going to get like a massive benefit by being Valve for that.
08:23They can be smart about it.
08:24I think with the memory, they could go single stick, which makes it less appealing, don't get me wrong.
08:28But it's a lot cheaper to get single stick SODIMM than it is to get a dual channel, you know,
08:34two SODIMMs and sticking them in there.
08:36So maybe there's a way of saving some costs there.
08:38What's your estimation?
08:40Mine was just all born of despair.
08:43So I just ended up with like, wow, it's going to be like 999 for the 512GB version,
08:46and they'll subsidize that with a $1,500 2TB one.
08:50But that was also like caveated by like, I'm still not entirely convinced it's going to come out now.
08:56We're talking about these new estimated prices, but would you buy one at that price?
09:00Yeah, I think that's the key question, isn't it?
09:02They can't just price it what it needs to be priced to sell it.
09:05It needs to be kind of sellable.
09:07Like people need to want to buy the thing.
09:09They'll have had all of their initial manufacturing kind of either laid out or in process.
09:15So right now there are going to be steam machines that have been built at the original manufacturing costs.
09:23And that will be their sort of like launch suite of them.
09:30But do you sell those at the original price and then just assume that there's going to be a massive
09:36delay until the next lot come out?
09:38And then you go, well, we've launched it.
09:40Like we only had limited stock and there it is.
09:43Or do you massively spike the price and run the risk of just not selling many?
09:49I think like the issue for Valve, and it is tragic because to have this thing that people are excited
09:53about, like people are super excited about these launches.
09:56We saw loads of interest in it.
09:57You know, obviously it's great.
09:59It's interesting.
10:00It's new.
10:01It's not necessarily a good time to buy a whole PC.
10:042026, just as a year.
10:05As so far, things might change, but things might also get worse.
10:08And I think that's what Valve's kind of hedging their bets here, which is they want concrete.
10:12They want to be able to set a price and stick to a price.
10:15The problem is they don't know what a price is going to be by the time this comes out.
10:18If it comes out July, like the latest point really in their timeline, is that going to be the price
10:25for memory?
10:25It might be even worse than it is now.
10:28And they still may not be able to be confident about a concrete price.
10:33I think as well, the other thing we haven't really touched on here is the caught in the Crossfire, the
10:38Steam frame.
10:39The thing that we're probably most interested from those launches anyway, comes with 16 gigabytes of LPDDR5.
10:46So soldered on memory, 256 gigabyte or one terabyte.
10:49So slightly smaller options for SSD, but it does have double, you know, this is a standalone VR headset.
10:55It comes with double the VRAM than the Quest 3.
10:58You know, and we've already seen like consoles and stuff spiking their prices because of this.
11:03So that also doesn't spell, you know, positivity ahead for that.
11:08It's soldered in as well.
11:09So they're going to be even more limited on where they can get the LPDDR5 from.
11:15Do you still think they'll be launched together?
11:17And do you think that we'll see them as late as possible?
11:20You know, when's the best time to have launched the Steam machine?
11:23In 2025?
11:24Yeah.
11:25Wow.
11:25Yeah.
11:26I say go out there with that.
11:27Thanks.
11:28When was the best time?
11:29Yeah.
11:30But that's the thing.
11:31It's just like the longer they waited, the worse it was going to get.
11:34And like at this point, like, are they going to get anywhere by launching the Steam machine?
11:41Like I could see a world where the Steam machine doesn't get launched.
11:45The Steam frame and Steam controller still come out.
11:47Like Steam controller can come out now.
11:49Yeah.
11:49No memory in that thing apart from these little bits.
11:51Yeah.
11:52I think that's what I was going to like say.
11:53Like we want to be positive about something.
11:55The thing that we genuinely agree that we'd probably buy ourselves straight away if it came out was a Steam
12:00controller.
12:01And in theory, that should maybe come out separately and just be a thing that's happening.
12:06That would be a nice thing.
12:07And like that would be like, you know, hey, these things aren't happening for a while, but here's the Steam
12:12controller.
12:12I know they probably want it to be, well, if that came out of the Steam machine, it makes perfect
12:16sense, right?
12:17It has antenna dedicated for it.
12:19Everything in their ecosystem, and I think we spoke about this before, they're creating an ecosystem and all of it
12:24works together really well.
12:25The micro SDs, you can move your library across.
12:28The controller works, you know, across everything.
12:30You can use the Steam frame, play with the controller.
12:32You know, it all worked really nicely together.
12:34And so splitting them up, I can see is kind of not something they're going to want to do.
12:38Yeah, absolutely.
12:39They will want to resist that as long as possible.
12:43But at what point do you just call time on it?
12:47Because if prices keep going up, you can't sell a $1,500 Steam machine that's 500 gig of SSD space
12:56in there.
12:57Like you say, if you have a $999 512 thing, it's not going to seem good by today's pricing, right?
13:04But is there a world in which gaming PC pricing goes so wild in the next few months that that
13:11actually does seem like a good price?
13:12Are people going to buy it then, or are they just going to wait?
13:15I think one of the things that inspired my pricing thinking was the Xbox R-O-G-L-I-X
13:25-Box-X-L-I-X.
13:27Because that came out at $999, like a ridiculous price, absolutely ridiculous.
13:34It's not exactly cutting-edge hardware in there now.
13:37Like it's a couple of generations old with a Strix Point chip in there.
13:40And yet that's a $1,000 device, got sold out real quick.
13:44So I can kind of like, and that's because of the form factor.
13:47And I can see where that's the Steam machines kind of thing.
13:52You kind of want Valve not to do that.
13:55But then it feels like they're being forced into doing something a lot more drastic.
13:59And whatever pricing we were hopeful of, even if we were being optimistic at the time,
14:02which, you know, we want it to be good.
14:04We want it to be a success.
14:05We want to like play on a Steam machine in a living room.
14:08So you want it to be cheap, right?
14:10We want PC gamers to be able to have a cheap option.
14:12The thing we were excited about with the Steam machine,
14:14that this was going to be a great entry point into PC gaming for people.
14:17Like a real simple device, not beholden to Windows with a clean UI,
14:25get you into your games really quickly, really easily.
14:28That's gone.
14:28It just feels like the wind's thought about the sails.
14:30And it is tough to feel quite...
14:32I can't feel positive about the Steam machine,
14:35knowing that it's going to come out with either a ludicrous price or not at all.
14:40And it feels like it's a binary option right now.
14:44Or Valve does the most heroic thing ever.
14:46They cash in one of Gabe's yachts and they launch it for free.
14:51No, we probably won't see that.
14:52But hopefully we will see a Steam controller as a little...
14:55I mean, that'd be a nice fill-up.
14:56But I mean, the really tragic thing about this
15:01is that this isn't too far removed from what happened with the original Steam machines.
15:07Big launch, early doors.
15:10This is coming.
15:11Get everybody excited about it.
15:12Huge amount of hype about this.
15:14It's like, what, 2014, 2015.
15:16Huge amount of hype about the Steam machines.
15:18And like, this is going to be a big thing, massive thing for PC gaming.
15:23Got a lot of different manufacturers on board as well.
15:26Got seeded out machines to people.
15:29And then it just kind of fizzled out.
15:31It's like it never really happened.
15:33But that relied a lot on third parties.
15:35When, if that was the case here, it would 100% be fizzling out.
15:38Because nobody's going to jump on a whole new platform and take the risk on something when the price is
15:42going to be wild.
15:43At least now Valve has that backing themselves.
15:46Like, they can...
15:47If they want to go for it, they ultimately decide the price.
15:50Sure.
15:50And they decide whether it's going to make them lots of money, make them no money, or make them a
15:55small amount of money, you know.
15:56So, I guess that's the only thing that gives me a glimmer of hope, is at least Valve is controlling
16:00what's happening with this launch.
16:01And the Steam controller.
16:04I do want to use it.
16:05It's not affected.
16:06It should be fun.
16:07So, let's be hopeful for the Steam controller.
16:10And generally, I think be hopeful that PC gaming does get out of this hole.
16:14But it's in there right now, because it's, yeah, it's grim.
16:18That feels like a nice point to end on.
16:19Yeah.
16:20Jacob's feeling really positive.
16:21I'm full of doom.
16:23Yeah, perfect.
16:23As usual.
16:24I mean, that's a great snapshot, yeah.
16:27We'll see you next time.
16:28Cool.
16:28Take care.