Steam Machine is on Track for Launch “Early This Year”, Says AMD CEO

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Okay, so Valve hasn’t said much about when the Steam Machine is finally coming out, but AMD’s CEO, Lisa Su, just let slip that it’s looking like “early this year”! She was talking about AMD’s earnings, and things are actually looking really good – gaming revenue is up 50% compared to last year. However, she also hinted that their custom chip business might take a bit of a hit, potentially dropping by a double-digit percentage in the future. Still, a Steam Machine this year? That’s awesome news!

AMD’s gaming revenue jumped 50% to $843 million compared to last year. Sales of their semi-custom chips also increased year-over-year, although they dipped slightly from the previous quarter, as anticipated. Looking ahead to 2026, AMD expects revenue from these semi-custom chips to fall by a substantial double-digit percentage as the current generation of gaming consoles nears the end of its lifecycle. Additionally, Valve is scheduled to start delivering its AMD-powered Steam Machine early this year, according to Dr. Su (via IGN).

Valve’s Steam Machines were expected to shake up the gaming market, but several factors have caused delays. Building a new gaming PC is now costly because of a shortage of memory (RAM), specifically the newer, more expensive DDR5 type. Additionally, the Steam Machine runs on SteamOS, a Linux-based operating system, which some see as a benefit given recent issues with Windows 11. Rumors suggested the Steam Machine would launch with Half-Life 3 as a key game, initially planned for Spring 2026. However, rising RAM prices appear to have pushed those plans back.

Although there’s a lot of buzz around the Steam Machine, it’s not likely to be as affordable as the PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X/S. Valve hasn’t revealed the price, causing people to guess about what it will offer in terms of hardware and performance. Linus Sebastian from Linus Media Group reports that when he suggested a price of $500 to Valve’s engineers, the room fell silent.

So, I was listening to the WAN Show, and Sebastian was talking about the Steam Deck price. He said he genuinely has no idea what the final cost will be. He’d previously mentioned he was hoping for a more console-like pricing strategy – you know, where the hardware cost is lower because the company makes money from game sales. He actually suggested $500 as a target price, and apparently, nobody said anything after that! He said you could just feel the awkwardness in the room after he said it.

Valve recently introduced the Steam Machine, along with its new VR headset, Steam Frame, and an updated Steam Controller. The machine is powered by an AMD Zen 4 processor with six cores running at 4.8 GHz, a customized AMD RDNA3 graphics card with 28 compute units and 8 GB of GDDR6 memory, and 16 GB of DDR5 RAM. Valve says this hardware allows the Steam Machine to play games in 4K resolution at 60 frames per second, utilizing AMD’s FSR technology.

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2026-02-04 18:12