SAN FRANCISCO, June 28 -- Valve wanted to sell you a $750 gaming PC that could replace your living room console. What it is selling instead, starting June 29, is a $1,049 box that benchmarks like a computer from 2019 and is already being flipped on eBay for nearly three times the asking price.

The gap between those two numbers tells the story of the Steam Machine better than any spec sheet. Valve's original internal price target, according to multiple reports throughout the device's development, sat around $750. Then the global memory crisis intervened. DRAM contract prices rose more than 170 percent year-over-year between Valve's November 2025 announcement and the final pricing reveal on June 23, driven by Samsung and SK Hynix shifting ...