Steam Machine to launch summer 2026 but it’s going to be very expensive

Valve insists the Steam Machine and Steam Frame will launch this summer, as an insider claims the price will dwarf its original starting point. 

While the revamp of Valve’s Steam Machine seemed like an enticing proposition when it was announced in November, the PC console’s prospects have been soured by the ongoing RAM shortage. 

Valve’s plan was to launch the device, along with the Steam Frame VR headset, in early 2026. However, the memory shortage led to a delay, as the company revisited its ‘exact shipping schedule and pricing’. 

At the time, Valve said it was going to launch the Steam Machine and Steam Frame ‘in the first half of the year’, although this was later changed to a broader ‘2026’ window. The company has now narrowed this down to summer 2026. 

In a recent blog post about the expansion of its Verified program, which will include both devices, Valve wrote: ‘Today we are expanding the Verified program to include Steam Machine and Steam Frame, both of which are shipping this summer. 

‘As with Steam Deck Verified, the goal is to help customers understand the out-of-box experience for a given title on these new devices, and how smoothly a game will run with no user work or configuration required.’

There are no specifics on how Valve defines ‘summer’ exactly, but this presumably means it could launch anytime between now and the end of August. 

Elsewhere in the post, Valve explains that any games which run well on the Steam Deck will similarly run well on the Steam Machine. 

‘Long story short: If your game already runs well on Deck, it will also run well on Machine with no extra work required from you. And if it doesn’t run great on Deck because of CPU or GPU performance, it may still run great on Machine. 

‘If you have games like this, you don’t have to take any action: We’re already testing every title on Machine that fell below our performance requirements on Deck.’

The big question around the Steam Machine, in light of the memory shortages, is how much it will cost. Valve cautioned that it will be more expensive than a console and closer to the price of a PC in November, so it was already going to be pretty expensive to begin with. Now, in light of the recent £200 Steam Deck price hikes, there’s an expectation it could be somewhere close to £1,000. 

Mike Straw, executive editor at Insider Gaming, has claimed on X he’s ‘heard rumblings’ that the Steam Machine’s final price is ‘nowhere near where it was originally planned’, although he didn’t say any more than that.

The other big question is whether it’ll be tied, in some fashion, to the long rumoured Half-Life 3. The sequel was heavily rumoured prior to the Steam Machine’s announcement, but there’s been hardly any talk about it since – possibly because of the delay. 

Valve’s Steam Machine, much like the Steam Deck, perhaps never had aspirations to be a big mainstream hit, but if it does cost close to £1,000, it’s hard not to feel like it might meet the same fate as the company’s first PC console in 2014, which was quietly discontinued. 

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