Is the Steam Machine/Frame SCREWED..?

Added: 2026-05-30

[00:00:00]Today feels like the culmination of two of my previous videos. One of which covering how much I love my Steam Deck.

[00:00:06]I bought it about 2 years ago now. I've been using it ever since, and it's [music] fantastic. It's such a great piece of kit that allows you to play games on the go, and it was at a very affordable price for the PC handheld market. The other video that I made not too long ago was how AI was encroaching on gaming because of its use of CPU chips and RAM and other storage options.

[00:00:27]that has pushed up the price of those components drastically, increasing the prices of our consoles and our parts if you're a PC builder and player. These two videos have now intersected [music] to end up with Valve, one of gaming's most beloved companies, having to raise their prices by a massive margin and leaving us in a place where the Steam Deck is no longer something I can really recommend at its current price. So, let's thank our patrons and members. You feel free to like and subscribe and let's talk about it, shall we? So, the Steam Deck originally launched back in 2022, so we're talking about 4-year-old hardware here. It came out with the OLED refresh just under 2 years later, but the components inside are mostly the same. There are some slight performance improvements, though, but handhelds have come a long way since then. Despite that though, Steam Deck retained a price of around £500 or £500 here in the UK for kind of the middling tier of device. You could go a bit lower down to about 300 for the LCD, 500 for the OLED, which is what I opted for. And I love this device. Every time I go abroad on holiday, I'm away from my PC, I take it with me, and it allows me to play all of the games that are compatible with it, which is most of my library, on the go at any time. Brilliant stuff. However, the price hike of this device has pushed its retail price up by $300, making the 1 TB variant of the OLED version of the device almost a grand.

[00:01:45]While other companies like Nintendo, who can subsidize and make a lot of profit off their storefront, have only raised their devices by about $50. The Switch 2, for example, Steam Deckia, has received a price hike of 46%. With Valve stating, this reflects the current state of component costs and logistical challenges across the industry as a whole, and they'll keep us updated if anything changes. Despite this increase, the Steam Deck has sold out. People are most likely worrying that this is only going to get worse in the future as some suppliers of components such as CPUs, RAM, and SSDs are sold out of their 2026 and 2027 component inventory ahead of time. So, there will be no more available. Now, while I would have recommended you before this price site to go and pick up a Steam Deck cuz it was one of the best value for money purchases in gaming cuz you could run some pretty decent games on this thing for half of the price of most other PC handhelds. There's absolutely no point in buying a Steam Deck now in terms of price to power ratio compared to say the Xbox Liix X which is far superior in terms of what it can run and is only about $50 more now. It is utterly baffling. That's what's happening now though. But the main worry for the future is the price towards the Steam frame and the machine. These are Valve's two new devices that are upcoming this year hopefully. One of them is a console equivalent. You put it in your home.

[00:03:07]It's a little box. You turn it on and you play games on your TV or you could use it as a normal PC as well for sure.

[00:03:13]I was initially massively excited for this. I have multiple people in my life who are not into PC gaming, but something like the Steam Machine, which is as approachable as the Steam Deck, but as a home console would be the perfect thing for them. And hitting that console price target of around $400 to $700 would have been brilliant. But now with a price that is seemingly going to hit around the $1,000 plus mark, it's quite hard to justify. Steam Machine isn't going to be the most powerful console on the market. And forking out that amount of money to justify that purchase compared to a PS5 or an Xbox. I just don't know if that's going to move the needle very much. The same can be said for the Steam Frame, something that I'm less excited for, which is weird because this is a VR focused channel for the most part, but I just don't really have a need for the Steam Frame personally. I understand why people are excited for it, but it was never going to be something that I'd pick up at launch. However, I was slightly tempted before this price hike to the deck happened because previously Valve claimed that the Steam Frame would be priced lower than the Valve Index, which was around a grand. But now, who knows?

[00:04:15]For people hoping that Steam Frame will arrive and really shift the narrative for virtual reality in the mainstream, get more people to buy, more developers to create, I just don't know if I'd see that happening in terms of mass adoption on a big scale like some are expecting, especially at this price range. I think it will still be a great value for money purchase for Steam VR and I believe the enthusiasts like myself and a lot of other people in the virtuality space would enjoy using this device and a lot of people will buy it. But in terms of offering an entryway into virtual reality for some people who maybe didn't have one before or didn't consider it, it's going to be hard to justify something that maybe is reaching around that grand price mark. It's all a bit uncertain in terms of price targets and release timing. One thing is for sure, though. Gone of the days of cheap [music] entry-level VR devices that can be used standalone. If you need actual chips and RAM and storage inside your headset, it's going to cost you dearly.

[00:05:11]Now, this is going to sound like an advert. I promise you it's not. But for example, let's take the PSVR2, the headset that I cover mostly on this channel, although for full transparency, I play on PC as well. I'm a big PC VR player. So, despite the majority of the content here on the channel, I do spend about half my time on PC VR, half my time on PlayStation VR, but the PSVR2 doesn't have any of these components, and it hasn't gone up in price because of that. In fact, it's come down. That permanent price slash that we got a little while back has not been reversed because of these component changes and issues. It doesn't need to. Even still, it's much cheaper in Days of Play now.

[00:05:46]You can pick it up for about £300. Of course, you do need a PS5 to go along with that. Let's not forget that point.

[00:05:52]But if you're looking for a PCVR headset, something like that might be more up your street, and it's just the way that the world is going in terms of components and manufacturing. Now, if you're still looking to pick up a Steam Deck, I would say go down to your local used game store. It's unclear whether or not some stores like CEX would have put their prices up just yet. I think the last time I checked yesterday, which was a day after the announcement of this, they hadn't in my local CX, they were still around 300 or 250 for an LCD model, which is about normal. So, if you really want to get a Steam Deck and are afraid you missed the boat, that'll probably be your last chance to go and pick one up at a reasonable price because Lord knows people reselling online now will know exactly what equity they have in their device. Anyway, thank you all so much for watching. This has been a bit of a rant about the state of components in the PC and VR space, where we're headed, and where we are now.

[00:06:42]Thank you so much for watching, and I'll see you all in the next one. Bye-bye.