The AI-Fueled PC Gaming Shortage Just Delayed Valve’s Steam Machine

The Steam Machine, Valve’s ambitious new venture into living room console gaming, was supposed to begin shipping in “early” 2026. That’s no longer the case. The company announced on Wednesday that its original launch plans have been pushed back to later in the year due to memory and storage shortages as companies race to pivot to AI.

“When we announced these products in November, we planned on being able to share specific pricing and launch dates by now,” Valve wrote in a new February 4 blog post. “But the memory and storage shortages you’ve likely heard about across the industry have rapidly increased since then. The limited availability and growing prices of these critical components mean we must revisit our exact shipping schedule and pricing (especially around Steam Machine and Steam Frame).”

The plan is still to ship the Steam Machine, a new Steam controller, and the new Steam Frame VR headset within the first half of 2026. That suggests the first units should still arrive in players’ hands sometime before June 30. But Valve adds that market conditions are currently shifting too quickly to confirm “concrete pricing and launch dates” at the start of 2026 as previously planned.

First revealed back in November, the Steam Machine is a small cube-shaped console with PC gaming specs somewhere between a PlayStation 5 and a PS5 Pro. The device is targeting the most common specs of the average Steam user with the goal of playing most games at 4K 60FPS with FSR enabled. This has led to lots of speculation about how much the device might actually cost, with Valve confirming it’s not planning to sell Steam Machines at a loss and declining to say whether it will be close the the current average console price of $500.

And that was before PC components from RAM to graphics cards started spiking in prices as part supplies are monopolized by companies investing in AI datacenters. Employees at retailers like GameStop and Target have showed SSDs for PS5s and other upgrades spiking in price overnight and some companies have shifted out of the consumer market altogether. While Valve seems to be waiting to see if things calm down at all there’s no indication yet that this isn’t just the new normal.