{"id":655016,"date":"2026-06-24T01:44:10","date_gmt":"2026-06-24T01:44:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/655016\/"},"modified":"2026-06-24T01:44:10","modified_gmt":"2026-06-24T01:44:10","slug":"pre-rampocalypse-steam-machine-pricing-was-30-cheaper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/655016\/","title":{"rendered":"Pre-RAMpocalypse Steam Machine Pricing was ~30% Cheaper"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s no secret that Valve&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.techpowerup.com\/350188\/valve-finally-reveals-steam-machine-pricing-and-starts-accepting-pre-orders?cp=8\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Steam Machine is launching at possibly the worst moment<\/a> for both PC and console gaming hardware, given the ongoing DRAM crisis, but Valve engineer, Pierre-Loup Griffais, has recently shed light on the pre-RAM crisis pricing of the Steam Machine, revealing that it was never going to be a cheap device. According Griffais in an <a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ign.com\/articles\/the-steam-machine-was-originally-meant-to-cost-about-750\" target=\"_blank\">interview with IGN<\/a>, the price difference between the actual Steam Machine at launch and the price if it had launched without the influence of the DRAM crisis was &#8220;probably similar&#8221; to the price increase <a href=\"https:\/\/www.techpowerup.com\/349412\/steam-deck-oled-prices-rise-by-up-to-usd-300-amid-component-shortages\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Valve was all but forced to apply to the Steam Deck in May<\/a>. That means that the Steam Machine could have cost as little as $730-750, based on the 30% difference between the current entry-level Steam Deck pricing and its original MSRP. <\/p>\n<p>This pricing would have put the Steam Machine within spitting distance of the Sony PlayStation 5 and below the $899.99 price of the PS5 Pro after the recent Sony price hikes. Given that the Steam Machine is a hybrid device and can easily serve as both a console and a desktop computer, it&#8217;s easy to see how the original price would have been more palatable, even if more expensive than a base PS5. Part of the high pricing can no doubt be attributed to the Steam Machine&#8217;s openness. Where consoles like the Xbox and PS5 are subsidized by game sales, there&#8217;s nothing stopping anyone from installing Windows on it and leaving Valve&#8217;s ecosystem, removing the incentive to subsidize hardware entirely\u2014you wouldn&#8217;t even need to remove SteamOS to play games outside of Steam on the Steam Machine.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.techpowerup.com\/img\/0uCj6WYG9S41FaEq.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" data-width=\"1185\" data-height=\"850\" data-fancybox=\"g350224\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/0uCj6WYG9S41FaEq_thm.jpg\" width=\"181\" height=\"130\" alt=\"\"\/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It&#8217;s no secret that Valve&#8217;s Steam Machine is launching at possibly the worst moment for both PC and&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":655017,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[59,86,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-655016","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-gb","tag-technology","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/655016","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=655016"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/655016\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/655017"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=655016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=655016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=655016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}