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Valve describes just how brutal RAM negotiations are in 2026 (www.theverge.com)
submitted 2 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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Valve’s Steam Machine finally has a price: a whopping $1,049 for the 512GB configuration or $1,349 for the 2TB version. And those are without bundled controllers, which drive up the cost more.

The prices are so high in part because Valve isn’t subsidizing the hardware, and the company has already indicated that the component crisis forced it to reconsider its initial pricing plans. In an interview with the YouTube channel Gamers Nexus, Valve engineers discussed the reality of sourcing RAM in 2026, with take-it-or-leave-it prices as memory and other components remain in short supply, from only a few vendors like Samsung, Micron, and SK Hynix.

[...]

Valve, of course, isn’t the only company in a bind over memory shortages, as the crunch is forcing many hardware makers to make significant pricing changes. Even Apple CEO Tim Cook is warning of incoming price hikes for iPhones, Macs, and other devices. And the RAM crunch isn’t projected to get better anytime soon.

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[–] 18 points 2 months ago*

It can be both. The three RAM manufactures (Samsung, Micron, and SK Hynix) have a historical record of price fixing and collusion (I believe Gamers Nexus has some excellent reporting on this). It isn't just supply and demand, it's that three sketchy companies have the world over a barrel and may well be using the demand spike to keep prices (artificially) high with the knowledge that nobody else can enter the market and that it takes YEARS and a truly ridiculous amount of money to scale up production to increase supply.

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