Steam Machine price and pre-order system: Valve explains everything
Hopefully, it's easier to get a Steam Machine than a Steam Controller
🤔 Valve has explained why the Steam Machine costs so much and why it’s opted for a random reservation pre-order system
🤷♂️ The device is essentially being sold at cost, and its high price is because of the volatility of component pricing in the last few months
🙏 A random reservation system is designed to keep things as fair as possible and get hardware into the right hands
💻 Valve’s post also explains that you can use SteamOS 3.8 on your own living room PC to make a Steam Machine of your own if you prefer
Valve’s Steam Machine is finally available for pre-order and has already been getting some interesting reviews from critics.
The price is admittedly higher than we were expecting, and a new Steam Community post explains some reasons why Valve has priced the console as it has, plus the decision to go for a reservation-based queue system, similar to the way it has managed the Steam Controller restock, and how it works.
When it comes to the Steam Machine’s price, Valve has said it is essentially supplying the device at cost, and admitted that the $1,049 starting price is higher than it would have liked.
The reason the price is so high is that costs changed on certain components over the last six months, and the pricing Valve has opted for reflects the higher-than-anticipated costs.
Valve’s post mentions that the component issues have also affected the availability of the device, and means it’s produced a smaller number of units than it would have initially liked, hence the decision to opt for a random reservation queue system.
Beating the bots
It says that this random system is fairer than a system where things go live on a specific time of day, as that tends to reward “bots, people with fast internet connections, talented gaming fingers for quick F5/refresh reactions, and those who can schedule their life around that moment.” By implementing a random system, Valve is aiming to take away some of the “friction”.
Valve also says you can reserve any model of the four available you like, with each model having its own list of sign-ups. If you’re signed up for one or more models, and are allocated a space, you’ll automatically get it for the high-end model you signed up for and will be automatically removed from the others.
Conversely, if you didn’t get a reservation spot for any of the models you signed up for, you’ll be placed on the waitlist for the model that you were closest to the front of, based on the randomized results.
Likewise, if you choose a specific model and you’ve received either a confirmation or waitlist email, you can’t change the Steam Machine variant you’d like. Cancelling a reservation or leaving the waitlist will relinquish your place in line.
If you don’t get a specific reservation and are placed on the waitlist, Valve states that this means they had more registered interest than the number of Steam Machines in the initial production run.
It says that if people cancel their reservations, then you may be moved up the queue. If they don’t, any future production runs for the device will be offered to customers in the order they’re on the waitlist.
Don’t call the Steam Machine a console
The FAQs also ask whether the Steam Machine is the “Valve console”, to which Valve responds that it’s “an extension of PC gaming, not as a console”. By this, it means that it’s designed as a more open solution to the problem of console gaming being a closed ecosystem with subscriptions.
It also provides an interesting tidbit about recommendations if you don’t get a Steam Machine right away, stating that with the latest SteamOS 3.8 update, users can “run the same code and operating system as Steam Machine on your own living-room PC using whatever PC parts you want”.
The only caveat is that it has to be with an AMD GPU, but Valve says it’s “working on expanding support for the future”.
Up next: Steam Frame price: where Valve’s next VR headset is likely to land
Reece Bithrey is a journalist with bylines for Trusted Reviews, Digital Foundry, PC Gamer, TechRadar and more. He also has his own blog, UNTITLED, and graduated from the University of Leeds with a degree in International History and Politics in 2023.