Are you ready for a $1,000 Steam Machine? Some analysts think you should be.
If you ask random gamers what price they think Valve will charge for its newly announced Steam Machine hardware, you'll get a wide range of guesses. But if you ask the analysts who follow the game industry for a living the same question... well, you'll actually get the same wide range of (somewhat better-informed) guesses.
At the high end of those guessesare analysts like F-Squareds Michael Futter, who expects a starting price of $799 to $899 for the entry-level 512GB Steam Machine and a whopping $1,000 to $1,100 for the 2TB version. With internal specs that Futter says will rival a PS5 and maybe even hit PS5 Pro performance," we can expect a hefty price tag" from Valve's new console-like effort. At the same time, since Valve is positioning this as a dedicated, powerful gaming PC... I suspect that the price will be below a similarly capable traditional desktop," Futter said.
DFC Intelligence analyst David Cole similarly expects the Steam Machine to start at a price around $800" and go up to around $1,000" for the 2TB model. Cole said he expects Valve will seek very low margins" or even break-even pricing on the hardware itself, which he said would probably lead to pricing below a gaming PC but slightly above a high-end console."