[STEAM] Opinion: With A $949 Steam Deck, The Steam Machine Will Probably Be Very Expensive

[Steam 0]

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In the six months since Valve announced the

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,

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, and now that the

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, anyone hoping to get a

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for less than a thousand bucks is probably going to be disappointed.

When I visited Valve to

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last year, I was told that the price would be competitive with a comparable

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. My gut feeling at the time was that would mean a $1,200 sticker price, which I walked back on once I started doing the math, figuring it would settle at around $800. But I wasn't taking a months-long RAM crisis into consideration.

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Welcome to The Desert of the RAM

In the months since this all started, there have been these momentary glimpses of lower prices. I've been using this

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as a sort of barometer for the memory market, and right now it's 'on *****' for $404. That's a high price to be sure, but it is about 10% lower than it's been for months. But, like all the other dips that have happened recently, that price will probably bounce back up in a few days.

Even back in January, I was told by

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that this RAM crisis would be a long-term affair, and that just continues to be the case. But at least for the first few months, DIY PC builders were facing most of the pain. For a while at least, prebuilt gaming PCs and laptops were eating the price while the manufacturers had inventory to spare. But it seems like those days are drawing to an end.

Sony,

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and Nintendo have all raised prices on their consoles, and now the Steam Deck has finally followed suit. In the short term, if you're in the market for a

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you're probably best off trying to find something more affordable. For instance, the lower-tier Xbox Ally is still available at Best Buy for $599. You can even install SteamOS if you want a Steam-Deck like experience.

But I have to imagine it's only a matter of time before the Xbox Ally goes up in price, too. After all, it also has RAM in there. It pains me to say it, but we're probably heading into an era where most gaming devices start at around $1,000. It wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if the PS5 and Xbox Series X get another price bump up to that point, either.

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Steam Machine In the Age of AI

In the few posts Valve has made about the delayed Steam Deck, it has referenced the rising costs of hardware as the one thing holding its console back. At face value, it seems like the company is just holding the mini gaming PC back,

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. There will come a time, and probably soon, where everything is more expensive, and suddenly a $1,200 Steam Machine feels much more reasonable, especially if the consoles get another price bump.

Because, sure, a $1,200 gaming PC with the equivalent of an AMD Radeon RX 7600 or Nvidia RTX 4060 is a hard sell when the PS5 costs $599. But that math is going to look a lot different if Sony's console goes up to $699 or $799 for the digital version.

We still don't know when the Steam Machine is actually going to come out, but with each passing day, it becomes less likely that it's going to squeeze in under $1,000. I'd love to be wrong, but when Valve finally turns that order button on, don't be surprised if it's accompanied by a four-digit number.

Jackie Thomas is the Hardware and Buying Guides Editor at IGN and the PC components queen. You can follow her

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