Valve describes just how brutal RAM negotiations are in 2026
Valve’s Steam Machine finally has a price: a whopping $1,049 for the 512GB configuration or $1,349 for the 2TB version. And those are without bundled controllers, which drive up the cost more.
The prices are so high in part because Valve isn’t subsidizing the hardware, and the company has already indicated that the component crisis forced it to reconsider its initial pricing plans. In an interview with the YouTube channel Gamers Nexus, Valve engineers discussed the reality of sourcing RAM in 2026, with take-it-or-leave-it prices as memory and other components remain in short supply, from only a few vendors like Samsung, Micron, and SK Hynix.
Gamers Nexus: Were you able to lock in contracts for memory with the suppliers directly or did you have to jump through a bunch of hoops?
Valve’s Pierre-Loup Griffais: Look, there’s no contracts. There’s nothing. Those guys… they give us a...
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