Steam Machine With Wood Faceplate On Desk With PC, Currency Symbols Superimposed

It's as we feared. The Steam Machine may be a beautifully-designed and potent entry-level mini PC, but it is not going to match the consoles in terms of price. In fact, it's considerably more expensive than even the $899 PS5 Pro, with a $1049 / £879 / €1039 starting price for the 512GB box alone. Adding on a Steam Controller brings the price to $1128 / £938 / €1108 - a $79 increase, or a $21 discount versus buying the Machine and Controller separately.

If you're hankering for more storage, the 2TB model costs a mighty $1349 / £1208 / €1428 for the box alone, or $1428 / £1208 / €1359 for the 2TB + controller bundle. However, both 2TB models do come with two additional faceplates, in red fabric and solid walnut.

Valve points to the admittedly unprecedented component price situation that has struck the world since the Steam Machine was first announced in early November last year, with RAM and SSD prices in particular rising meteorically in response to huge demand from AI companies - quite the opposite of prior Valve expectations that these things "tend to get cheaper over time". The new pricing reflects "the price of the components as we've secured them over the past six months", as well as the unavailability of "some components at all, at any price". Valve also devotes considerable verbiage to voicing its opposition to the idea of subsidising the price of the Machine, as it "runs counter" to its belief in the supremacy of open ecosystems; according to Valve, a subsidised Steam Machine would artificially limit consumer options.

Are you going to pre-order the Steam Machine?

So: $1049 minimum. For context, we mooted a $349 price point in our original Steam Machine preview, while I predicted a range of £400 to £700 in my reporting for Eurogamer. We asked Digital Foundry readers via a later update in May how much they'd be willing to pay, and only four percent of respondents said they would consider the Steam Machine at $1000 plus. Well, that's come to pass, so are 96 percent of you sticking to your guns, or are you still tempted by the Valve mini PC no matter the cost?

For those of you that are interested in picking up a cute living room PC, Valve is running a variation of the reservation system it debuted for the Steam Controller in response to the relatively limited number of Steam Machine units that it has ready to ship.

Specifically, potential buyers can register their interest in a specific model any time from now until Thursday 25th June at 6PM UK time (10AM Pacific, 1PM Eastern). Sign-ups will close at that time, and the reservation order will be randomised. That should remove the need for people to use bots, rely on fast internet connections, take time off work and/or spam F5, as someone that signs up on the last day has the same chance of getting a unit allocated to them as someone that signs up as soon as the system goes live. Everyone that signs up by the closing date will receive an email later on the 25th to let them know whether they have a unit reserved or whether they have been added to the waitlist. After the initial sign-up period, new sign-ups will be added to the back of the waitlist, as you'd expect.

Steam Controller used with Steam Machine
Want a Steam Controller? You'll get a small discount by ordering it with a Steam Machine, which has a Puck for wireless connectivity built-in.

Some other understandable restrictions apply. Only one Steam Machine can be ordered per household, and while you're free to register interest for multiple models, if you luck into the reservation queues for more than one model, you'll be only offered the chance to buy the highest-end model and removed from all other queues. There are different lists for each region (NA, UK, EU, Australia), and you have 72 hours to make a final decision and pay for your Steam Machine once you're given the option to buy one.

Valve has a blog post that goes into many more permutations of how the system works and why the Steam Machine costs as much as it does. The post also recommends investigating how to build your own Steam Machine with SteamOS 3.8 - pretty nifty, even if it only supports AMD GPUs at present. We've already explored how home-made Steam Machines measure up to the real deal, and for many people - especially those with components already in hand - it's likely that you can get much better value that way.

For now, let us know your thoughts on the Steam Machine pricing below, and be sure to check out our full Steam Machine review.