Valve’s upcoming hardware lineup has hit an unexpected obstacle. The company’s Steam Machine desktop PC and Steam Frame VR headset, first introduced in mid-November last year, are now facing delays — and the reason points to a wider crisis in the tech industry.
At the time of the announcement, Valve avoided revealing prices or release dates. The decision was linked to rising memory and storage costs, driven largely by demand from artificial intelligence companies. Since then, the situation has worsened, with shortages affecting not only RAM but also GPUs and other hardware components that rely heavily on memory chips.
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This week, Valve confirmed that it still cannot commit to a final launch timeline or pricing for either device.
According to the company, both the Steam Machine and Steam Frame are still planned for release in the first half of the year. However, unpredictable fluctuations in component availability and costs are forcing the company to reconsider its rollout strategy.
In an official update, Valve acknowledged that it initially expected to share concrete details by now. Instead, the rapid increase in memory and storage prices has made planning difficult. Limited supply and rising production costs mean the company must carefully reassess shipping schedules and pricing before making any announcements.
Valve has consistently positioned the Steam Machine as a gaming PC alternative priced similarly to systems with comparable specifications. But with hardware costs shifting almost weekly, final pricing may remain unstable until closer to launch.
Meanwhile, enthusiasts experimenting with homemade SteamOS setups built from AMD hardware — similar to what powers the Steam Deck — have reported mixed results. Some users experienced lower performance compared to Windows systems, particularly when using dedicated GPUs with 8GB of VRAM.
Valve says it is actively working on improvements to memory management to address these performance concerns. The company is also exploring better upscaling technologies and driver optimizations for ray tracing to enhance gaming performance on the Steam Machine. These upgrades could benefit not only official devices but also community-built systems using similar hardware.
For now, Valve’s hardware ambitions remain intact — but like much of the tech industry, its timeline depends heavily on when the global memory supply stabilizes.
