Valve, the company behind the Steam ecosystem, has announced it will revisit the shipping schedule and pricing for its upcoming hardware lineup — including the Steam Frame VR headset, the Steam Machine console, and its new Steam Controller. This is a significant shift from the original plan to ship these devices in early 2026 at competitive prices.
The change comes amid a global shortage and rapid price increase of key components, particularly high-bandwidth memory (RAM) and storage chips. As demand for memory has surged (driven largely by the AI data-centre boom), contract prices for DRAM have reportedly more than doubled. This has pressured manufacturers worldwide and made it difficult for companies like Valve to lock in the pricing they initially intended when they revealed the hardware late last year.
Earlier announcements positioned the Steam Machine as a compact, living-room gaming PC alternative — combining console simplicity with PC flexibility — and Valve had aimed to price it “like a PC with similar hardware” rather than at a traditional console loss-leader cost. That figure was thought to be around the $500–$700 range, although the climb in component costs now makes that target uncertain.
The Steam Frame VR headset, powered by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset with onboard storage and eye-tracking, was expected to debut at a price below Valve’s own Index headset, itself typically around $999. However, rising memory and SSD costs mean Valve must reconsider pricing if it still plans to launch the device in the first half of 2026.
In updated posts and Q&As with the community, Valve stressed that while specific pricing and launch dates are not yet set, it remains committed to releasing its hardware lineup later this year, even if delays and higher tags are inevitable.