Top News

Valve has finally broken its silence on the Steam Machine release date, although gamers still appear no closer to getting their hands on one as the anticipated hardware slips past its target.

The Steam Machine was initially supposed to ship in 'early 2026', but the ongoing global shortage of PC components scuppered those plans at the start of the year. At the time, Valve insisted that it was still targeting the 'first half' of 2026, even going so far as to release the Steam Controller without a dedicated machine to use it with in May.

We're now in June, and with just four weeks left in the first half of 2026, Valve's window to hit its 'first half' target is quickly slipping away - and the PC giant has now confirmed that gamers won't be seeing the hardware until July at the earliest.

In a blog post on the official Steam website, Valve published more details about its Steam Machine and Steam Frame verification system. At the bottom, there's a key piece of information that hints at the new release date Valve is aiming for.

"We're excited for players to try your titles on the new Steam hardware once they launch this summer," the post concludes.

With astronomical summer dates running from June 21 to September 22, this finally gives us a three-month window of when Valve is looking to actually get its hardware into the hands of players.

However, the blog post still doesn't give gamers any sense of how much the thing will actually cost. Given the recent hefty price hikes to the Steam Deck, we're not hopeful it's going to be quite as affordable as we were once hoping.

For reference, the cheapest Steam Deck OLED model now starts at £649 with the 1TB device jumping up to £779. Given the Steam Machine contains hardware that's roughly 4.5x as powerful as the Steam Deck, we can expect the device to come in at least a bit above the handheld device, teetering close to the edge of that slightly scary £1,000 mark.

Still, this blog post is at least confirmation that a release date for the Steam Machine can't be far off now, especially as Valve continues to update SteamOS with the welcome tour assets for the new hardware.

We'll report back as soon as we have concrete information on the Steam Machine release date, as well as how much it will cost and how to pre-order.