When Valve announced the Steam Machine just over a week ago, several gamers were eager to know what the price would be. In a recent interview, a Valve developer has set the expectations by declaring the Steam Machine will be priced like a PC of comparable specs, and will not be subsidized like console makers normally do.
The Steam Machine is a cube with “over six times the horsepower of Steam Deck” that will let PC gamers have a more flexible playing experience by hooking it to their TVs, rather than being restricted to their computer monitors.
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Valve’s Steam Machine is scheduled to release next year, but there are no official words on the price yet. A video from Linus Tech Tips published close to the reveal said the Steam Machine will be priced “like a PC, rather than like a console”. A Valve developer, Pierre-Loup Griffais, has now confirmed that claim.
Griffais confirmed the claim while speaking on the Friends Per Second podcast. Griffais said the price of the Steam Machine has not been decided internally, but that Valve hopes to offer a “good deal” that would be at par with equivalent powered PCs.
“I think that if you build a PC from parts and get to basically the same level of performance, that’s the general price window that we aim to be at,” Griffais said.
“Ideally, we’d be pretty competitive with that and have a pretty good deal, but we’re working on refining that as we speak, and 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 that are fluctuating.”
Valve doesn’t plan to subsidize Steam Machine
During the podcast, Griffais was asked if there was a possibility that Valve would subsidize the Steam Machine to make the price more competitive like consoles, and he claimed it would not.
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“No, it’s more in line with what you might expect from the current PC market,” he said. “Obviously, our goal is for it to be a good deal at that level of performance. And then you have features that are actually really hard to build if you’re making your own gaming PC from parts. Things like the small form factor and I think the noise level that we achieved or lack thereof is really impressive, and we’re excited that the people are going to find out how quiet this thing is.”
Following the reveal, Ampere Analysis said the success of the device will mostly depend on its price point. Adding that “The specification of the Steam Machine is relatively low-powered compared to high-end gaming PCs, so ideally it should be priced in line with these expectations”.
Would you spend over $1,000 for the Steam Machine, or would you pick a console alternative for between $500 and $750? Share your thoughts in the comment box below.
