Regardless, the volatility in RAM and storage costs these days makes it hard to know exactly where the Steam Machine’s total costs and asking price will end up by the time we hit the early 2026 launch window. Griffais gestured toward this to Skill Up, noting that “right now is just a hard time to have a really good idea of what the price is going to be because there’s a lot of different things… a lot of external things.”
If the Steam Machine won’t cost significantly less than a similarly powerful gaming PC, some gamers may decide to just create their own Steam Machine alternative by installing SteamOS on a custom PC build, of course. Going that route also gives players the flexibility to future-proof against some potential Steam Machine deficiencies, like the relatively paltry 8GB of VRAM.
But Griffais told Skill Up that the official Steam Machine would still set itself apart from similar gaming PCs via features like its small form factor, ultra-quiet fan design, HDMI-CEC support, and strong integration with the Steam Controller and other Bluetooth controls.
“There’s people that are going to be perfectly happy building their PC at whatever level of spec, and that’s going to be a great experience for them,” Griffais said. “But we expect the machine is a nice baseline offering that lets you have some features that are really hard to get to otherwise.”