At what price will the steam car probably enter the market?

Over the weekend, Valve unveiled its gaming PC, the Steam Machine. This computer was made in parallel with another successful attempt of Valve in manufacturing and selling a computer, namely “Steam Deck”. All the mentality that Valve had in mind for Steam Deck, from a single and optimized operating system to balanced hardware and a reasonable price, will be fully implemented on Steam Deck. As a result, although the official price of the steam machine has not been announced, it will not be difficult to predict its possible price.

Before we want to talk about the possible price of the Steam Deck, it is not bad to talk about the ideas that Valve has in mind for this computer.

Valve sees its gaming PC as essentially a home console. More than anything else, this PC is built to sit in the living room under the TV and be the easiest and fastest way to experience Steam’s massive game archive.

The fact that Valve has decided to put this console on the same level as game consoles means that it should be able to compete with them in terms of price range and have a price close to them. The price of game consoles in the world currently starts from 450 dollars and reaches a maximum of 800 dollars.

Basically, the prices of today’s consoles, from low to high, are as follows:

• Xbox Series S 512GB: $400
• Xbox Series S 1 TB: $450
• Nintendo Switch 2: $450
• PlayStation 5 Digital: $500
• PlayStation 5 disc drive: $550
• Xbox Series X: $600
• PlayStation 5 Pro (with 2 TB of memory): $700
• Xbox Series X 2TB: $800

Well, now that I’ve listed all the game consoles, let’s take a look at the Steam Machine in terms of hardware and see where this computer ranks on the list.

Steam machine hardware is designed based on a six-core AMD Zen 4 main processor and an AMD graphics card with RDNA 3 architecture and 28 processing units. Here is the important point: Valve has decided to consider 8 GB of memory for this graphics card, which is at the lowest possible point. The Steam Machine has 16 GB of RAM memory, and although RAM has become more expensive by 200% in the last two or three years, 16 GB is still not a lot of memory and it is the same size as the current generation consoles.

Specialists of the technical publication Digital Foundry had clearly asked Valve engineers why they allocated 8 GB of memory for the graphics card, because it is very little and makes it difficult for this computer, and Valve engineers had also answered because they want the Steam Machine to not have a high final price.

We will leave the comparison with Nintendo Switch 2 at the beginning, because this handheld console should be compared with the computer with Steam Deck. Of course, in that comparison, it comes out proud again and again, because if we put the handles and dock, 256 GB of internal memory, two hours of battery life, and hardware that has ray tracing and is many times more powerful than Steam Deck, against a dry and empty 64 GB Steam Deck, its price of $400 seems even expensive.

In terms of hardware, the Steam Machine is more powerful than the Xbox Series S, but much weaker than the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X; It means that the steam machine should be in the same price range of 400 to 500 dollars and anything higher than that does not seem logical for this device.

Keep in mind that unlike consoles that come with at least one controller, the Steam Machine will be sold alone and without a controller, and the Steam controller will be sold separately.

Another issue should be considered, and that is the increase in the price of everything, including primary parts and the import customs of goods from China, which affects not only America but the whole world. If the base price of a console or anything else increases in America, this price increase will be applied to the rest of the world sooner or later.

Although it has been three years since the release of the Steam handheld, Valve has yet to touch the $400 base price of the Steam Deck.

Valve itself knows that it should not sell this computer for more than 500 dollars and its best price is 400 dollars. This is quite clear from choosing an 8 GB graphics card and considering a 512 GB model.

A Steam Machine can have the same basic price as a Steam Deck, because even though its hardware is more powerful, it doesn’t have a powerful and expensive display and batteries and handles and things like that; That is, the higher costs of its more powerful hardware are easily balanced by removing the screen and battery, and the handle and multiple sensors.

Now the question is whether or not Valve, in order to be forward-looking and want to prevent the impact of future price increases and Trump’s tariffs, and at the same time make more profit on its computer, sets the price of this device higher than it is or not.

With all these words, we generally believe that this device with the hardware it has should be priced at 400 dollars, and in order to get more profit, Valve should focus on selling the bundle next to this computer and make every buyer buy a Steam bundle with it, so that their shopping basket reaches, for example, 500 dollars.