The Steam Machine's price tag is already scarily expensive and downright unaffordable for your everyday player - starting at $1,049 for the cheapest 512GB model without a controller - but that eye-watering price is unlikely to come down anytime soon. Valve and, seemingly, the rest of the industry are bracing for the worst.
As AI data centres continue to swallow up memory chips and storage and a bunch of other components used in consumer devices, prices for PC gamers and hardware manufacturers have skyrocketed. Hence, the RAMageddon we're living through now. On the console side, prices have boomed and Xbox CEO Asha Sharma recently said she expects memory costs to double again before the fall of 2027. Lenovo also predicted we're in a new normal for RAM costs.
