Valve today announced that Steam Machine is now available for pre-orders, starting at $1,050, and will officially launch on June 29th. While the announcement doesn’t include any direct details about Steam Frame availability, it offers clear hints about what to expect, including a randomized pre-order process.
The News
Valve today announced availability of Steam Machine; the console-like gaming PC will begin shipping next week, on June 29th. Steam Machine is available for pre-order starting today:
- Steam Machine (512GB): $1,050
- Steam Machine (512GB) + Steam Controller bundle: $1,130
- Steam Machine (2TB): $1,350
- Steam Machine (2TB) + Steam Controller bundle: $1,430
At launch, Steam Machine is available in the US, Canada, UK, EU, and Australia. In Japan, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, Steam Machine will be available via KOMODO, a regional distributor.
In an effort to “improve the purchase experience and limit resellers,” Valve is using a randomized pre-order process. Basically, anyone that pre-orders between now and June 25th will be placed into a bucket, then Valve will generate a randomly ordered reservation queue from the bucket. Valve has an FAQ with more details here.
Valve also added some commentary about the pricing and availability of Steam Machine:
Since this has proven to be a weird time to launch hardware, we thought this would be a good opportunity to share more about how we got here.
Steam Machine, like our other hardware products, is made up of many components that we source from manufacturers around the world. The price at which we sell our hardware is a direct result of the cost of these components. We felt like we had a good understanding of how those costs might change over time when we first started sourcing them for Steam Machine back in 2023. That understanding was born from the many years of data we all have about the evolution of PC hardware prices – primarily, that it tends to get cheaper over time as new technology arrives.
Over the past year or so, that has changed quickly and significantly, most visibly for RAM and storage components. There are a variety of reasons, all of which are affecting hardware products everywhere. The overall effect is that our original goal for the price of Steam Machine is no longer viable. So the prices we’re sharing today reflect the state of the world for manufacturing; or, more accurately, it reflects the price of the components as we’ve secured them over the past 6 months.
Price wasn’t the only thing impacted by all of this: availability was as well. There were periods where we found we couldn’t source some of our components at all, at any price. More than anything else, this has impacted the number of units we’ve been able to produce for launch.
My Take
We finally have firm launch details on Steam Machine. While Valve hasn’t said anything further about Steam Frame, it’s almost certain that its launch will follow the same blueprint, including a higher-than-anticipated price and randomized pre-order.
In Valve’s explanation above, the company said of the increasing cost of computer components: “the overall effect is that our original goal for the price of Steam Machine is no longer viable.” While Steam Machine and Steam Frame are two very different products, they both rely on PC components like a processor, RAM, and storage. Steam Frame is thus not insulated from increases in component costs, and is almost certainly going to be more expensive than Valve originally hoped for.
The randomized pre-order process is an interesting development which feels more fair to me. Lots of people are excited to get their hands on new hardware, but favoring those who can be glued to their screen and put in a pre-order within minutes of availability—or worse, bots and resellers who have a profit motive to be first in line—doesn’t seem ideal. But I’m curious to hear what everyone else thinks; is this a good system? Drop a line in the comments below.
We still don’t know the actual release date of Steam Frame, but Valve will probably follow the same formula as above: meaning a very short period between pre-order and availability. And I don’t expect to be waiting too long for the Steam Frame launch announcement, considering we already saw stock flowing into US warehouses starting earlier this month.