Expect Steam Machine price hikes soon as Valve admits RAMageddon is only “getting worse”

Valve’s Steam Machine is already wildly expensive for a console-like machine. As Valve isn’t subsidising the cost of its tiny living room gaming PC, the new hardware release costs an arm and a leg, and it will probably cost even more in the future.

All of this is due to the ongoing memory crisis or its more fun nickname, RAMageddon. As the ongoing memory crisis is expected to continue until at least 2028 due to the egregious demands of AI datacenters, Valve has explained that the issue with sourcing components for tis Steam Machine is only getting worse.

“Honestly, it’s still getting worse,” hardware engineer Yazan Aldehayyat said in an interview with Bloomberg. The massive RAM sourcing issue led to Steam Machine launching with single-channel 16GB memory instead of dual-channel. It’s also led to the price hike to the Steam Deck which has led to a disastrous drop in sales.

Those prices are only set to climb as memory prices have skyrocketed once again. “Just in case people are not aware, what people are seeing on retail shelves right now, from our observations, is lagging what we’re seeing from a bulk supply by at least three to six months,” the hardware engineer explained.

Aldehayyat explained that the team “knew there was going to be an issue with sourcing” when building the Steam Machine, but the sheer scale of issues was a surprise. “The extent was beyond anything we actually expected,” he continued.

Steam Machine lead engineer Pierre-Loup Griffais explained that Valve is currently “building everything we can get our hands on”, but the sheer scale of the memory crisis is hindering the number of units that can be made.

Valve is far from alone in its struggle to find memory. Right now, everyone is struggling with massive price hikes to the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series machines. Right now, the Xbox Series S costs the same as the Xbox Series X did during its 2020 launch. The memory crisis is decimating consumer electronics.

The same is true of smaller companies, smaller even than Valve’s niche releases. Blaze Entertainment, the team behind the Evercade handheld, have also been forced to increase prices as even its low-end hardware has been impacted, forcing them to buy all of their cartridge chips for 2027 in bulk.

While Valve hasn’t officially announced a price hike for the Steam Machine, it seems obvious that the console-like PC is going to jump in price just like its handheld predecessor. With the Steam Machine already sold at a similar price to its cost of production, there’s no way it can continue to be sold for its already worrisome price.