It’s undeniable that Valve’s investment in their SteamOS & Proton project has been transformative for the fate of gaming on Linux. Linux gaming’s market share increased from 2% to 3.2% between November 2024 and November 2025, but conversation about it has become far more commonplace than a 1.2% increase would suggest.
The Steam Deck has been an undeniable success for Valve, firmly making gamers’ favourite company into a bonafide console manufacturer, a status held by precious few in today’s world. Valve is the first company since Sega left the console market in 2001 to enter a club previously exclusively run by Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo.1
You would think, therefore, that a living room console from Valve would be a slam dunk that gamers everywhere would clamour for. Enter the Steam Machine (not a new idea but its original iteration was little more than a curio) a home console running SteamOS on PC hardware roughly on par with the 9th Generation of consoles.2 Guaranteed success.
Or it would have been, if it didn’t cost £879, and that doesn’t even include a controller.
It’s a real shame. What could have been a system that took customers away from Sony or Microsoft will instead be a very niche product for enthusiasts. In all respects, the Steam Machine is a PC that you or I could build, with the only noteworthy differences being its ease of setup and the magic of HDMI CEC.3 Valve can’t afford to subsidise sales with Steam’s platform cut because it’s open hardware, so unlike a PS5, there’s nothing stopping you removing SteamOS and installing Windows to use it as a dedicated Game Pass machine (please don’t do this if you buy one).
If the Steam Machine had been even £750, it might have attracted real sales, and even then you could have a PS5 Pro for less. If it had been £500, it’d probably have been a colossal success.
Sadly, due to the excessive demand for memory to support AI compute, we’ve seen a dramatic surge in PC hardware pricing, pushing down demand and driving up prices for hardware manufacturers like Value.
Make no mistake, Valve is as aware as the rest of us that the Steam Machine is too expensive, and they’re probably just as upset about it as we are too, but their hands are tied. While some have suggested Valve is scraping a huge profit margin here, it’s far more likely they were gouged by hardware suppliers.
Conclusion? Pray that the 21st century dot com bubble bursts and demand for memory plummets, with the prices alongside it. Don’t be mad at Valve, be mad at AI-blind investors thinking that AI will be as revolutionary as the printing press.
- I am drawing distinction here between Valve and companies like Ayaneo because while they are a hardware manufacturer, their devices run Windows, rather than their own software. In my mind a true console requires the platform, not just the hardware. I’m also excluding retro consoles like Evercade, as they don’t compete directly with mainline consoles. ↩︎
- PS5, XBOX Series X etc. ↩︎
- HDMI CEC is the tech that allows your TV remote to change the volume on your HDMI connected soundbar, or your PS5 to turn on your TV. It’s impossible to add CEC to a PC currently, and Valve used custom hardware to enable this feature. ↩︎
Oliver Douglas 