Why $700 could be a "death sentence" for the Steam Machine (arstechnica.com)

submitted 1 week ago by Fubarberry@sopuli.xyz to c/steamdeck@sopuli.xyz

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Article discusses the effect of rising hardware prices on the deck.

Some highlights:

How much worse has the pricing situation gotten for Valve since November? Superdata Research founder and SuperJoost newsletter author Joost van Dreunen suggested that the 512GB Steam Machine model would probably run $50 to $75 more than he expected when the Steam Machine was announced, and to expect a price “potentially $100+ above target” for the high-end 2TB model. That would mean a $599 to $629 price at the low-end and $849 to $899 for the high-end model, in his estimation.

Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter agreed that, even with the additional component costs, Valve would likely “try to get it out at $599 or so for the 512GB version,” A starting price higher than that would mean “abysmal” sales, he added. “I think $700 is a death sentence and $1,000 is unsellable.”

I'd recommend reading the article though, it has a lot more of value than just those quotes. It goes on to talk about how the price increases will likely hurt valve more than traditional console makers, and how these increases will affect sales.

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[-] melfie@lemy.lol 6 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Back in November, the SM announcement inspired me to get an off-brand mini gaming PC with a 8745HS and 16GB DDR5 / 512GB SSD for a little less than $400. That machine today is now $500. Its 780M is about double the graphical power of the Deck, so assuming pricing is proportional to the GPU, the SM would’ve been like $499 in November and $599 at today’s prices.

Small sample size and perhaps invalid assumptions, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s correct. Then again, the RTX 5080 I was also looking at the time for $1000 is now $1500.

this post was submitted on 06 Feb 2026

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