Valve warns over Steam Machine price issues as initial sales numbers reported

Valve has warned users that the memory crisis is “still getting worse”, which will affect the prices of hardware such as the Steam Machine and Steam Deck.

With gamers already facing high hardware prices brought on by the global RAM shortages, Valve engineers Yazan Aldehayyat and Pierre-Loup Griffais have offered some perspective on what this means for the future of Steam hardware.

In an interview with Bloomberg, Aldehayyat and Griffais spoke about the ongoing issues that video game hardware is currently facing, and warned that it won’t be getting better any time soon.

“Honestly, it’s still getting worse,” Aldehayyat told Bloomberg. “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.”

“We’re basically building everything we can get our hands on,” Griffais added. “We’re limited by memory capacity, for sure.”

Valve had previously confirmed that the shortage in memory chips has limited its supply of Steam Machines, opting to put users onto a random-order waitlist in order to meet demand.

The idea behind this is that instead of a first come, first serve basis, users are sorted into random groups on a waiting list, with a fresh batch of users able to place an order for the Steam Machine as and when they become available.

It’s also due to this shortage that prices for the Steam Deck have been so high, coming in at 879 GBP for the 512GB model, and 1,149 GBP for the 2TB edition.

Read More: Steam Machine users warned to do this one thing before upgrading the unit

Will the cost of RAM and storage ever come down?

Aldehayyat adds that the pricing will eventually fix itself, with the cost either coming down as more RAM and storage becomes available, or a new norm is established if the AI bubble doesn’t burst.

However, experts have already stated that the price of RAM is expected to double by the end of 2026, and may double again in 2027.

BoilingSteam reports that the Steam Machine is potentially selling between 12k and 15k units per week, using some maths with the top sellers category on Steam to work this out.

At the time of reporting, the Steam Machine had appeared in the number two spot on Steam’s global top sellers list, meaning that the number 1 and 3 slots in the list can act as a ceiling and floor to estimating just how many Steam Machine units have been sold.

Counter-Strike 2, the game in the number one spot, is estimated to earn around 20 million USD, while historical data shows that the third spot (at the time of reporting, Palworld), earns around 7–9 million USD.

This puts the Steam Machine somewhere in the 10–20 million USD range. If we were to estimate that the hardware were to sell somewhere in the middle, earning around 15 million USD per week, that would mean around 12,000 to 15,000 units are selling each week.

Of course, be aware that this is just an estimation right now, as Valve has not officially confirmed sales numbers for the Steam Machine just yet (and likely won’t for a while).