2026-01-18

So a couple of weeks ago, someone on X found that Alza, one of the largest retailers in the Czech Republic, had some placeholder prices for the Steam Machine on their website. The price in there, VAT included, was indicated to be 29 990 Czech Koruna, which is equivalent to 1430 USD at the time of writing. Of course, this price is purely speculative, and short of an announcement from Valve we have no idea if this is fantasy or close to the real pricing of the Steam Machine. But it now gives us an anchor to work with. And it may not be as strange as it sounds in a computer market where all components are getting more and more expensive all of a sudden.

What if the Steam Machine ends up being priced at 1000 USD and more? That was the perfect time to do a new poll with our followers on the Fediverse (Mastodon).

Steam Machine: Price-sensitivity

First let’s look at the results.

There are rumors (based on a reseller leak) that the Steam Machine from Valve may cost more than a thousands dollars. Are you interested if that’s the case?

142 Answers - Poll closed on 2026-01-18

Yes, works for me at this price

11.3%

Not sure, makes me think twice

14.1%

Nope, that’s above what I can consider

42.2%

I was not interested in the first place

32.4%

As you can see, only a small minority would still be interested at this pricing above 1000 USD. Only 11%. Back in November when we did a survey at the time of Valve’s announcement, the poercentage of folks who were interested no matter what were 16%. At that time, 49.6% were interested while waiting for the pricing to have a final opinion. Now that we have a 1000 USD pricepoint to work with, the result is very negative: most of them are actually not interested at this price point.

This is also my opinion. If it’s priced that high, it will certainly flop - not that it would be bad value per se (all things considered, probably in an acceptable range specs wise), but it’s too much for something that is kind of positioned as a console. It’s a computer, but it’s clearly made for gaming first and foremost, so it will end up being compared with existing gaming systems sold on the market, be it the Switch 2, the Xbox or the Playstation 5. And in that category, you have to me more or less around 500 USD to be competitive. At twice that price, this is a totally different category we are talking about.

Even in the gaming PC category, there are many options out there even on PC to build something yourself (or simply upgrade your existing configuration) instead of buying something with a fixed hardware configuration.

What to expect next

Since Valve is planning to start selling such hardware in 2026, we will probably be hearing soon about the planned pricing. My guess is that they will try to make it competitive, but it will still be much more than what you would pay for a regular console. The fact that they also got rid of the cheapest Steam Deck (LCD one), and did not decrease the pricing on the Steam Deck OLED version means they don’t mind going for premium pricing either.

We will keep following this story regarding availability and pricing as more info comes in.