Valve’s $1,049 Steam Machine Wins Praise as Buyers Face Indefinite Waitlist
Updated
Updated · The Verge · Jul 8
Valve’s $1,049 Steam Machine Wins Praise as Buyers Face Indefinite Waitlist
2 articles · Updated · The Verge · Jul 8
Summary
$1,049 is a price the author says they would pay immediately for Valve’s Steam Machine after two weeks using it, despite its high cost, fixed GPU and competition with aging consoles.
A tiny 6-inch cube, the device is praised for fitting easily into TV and desk setups, running nearly silently and tying into a Steam library, cloud saves, mods and Valve’s controller.
The enthusiasm is tempered by access: the author joined Valve’s reservation system but was not selected, and says there is no timeline for clearing the purchase waitlist.
That delay is pushing alternatives into view, including building a small PC with a gifted RTX 3070 Ti and 1TB SSD, though SteamOS support on Nvidia hardware remains limited.
A Steam Deck hooked to a TV still covers about 90% of the experience for the author, leaving Valve’s waitlist—not performance—as the main barrier to buying the Steam Machine.