Valve’s Steam Machine may not launch this year

A blog post from Valve on Friday initially seemed to throw cold water on the idea that the Steam Machine, Steam Frame, and Steam Controller would arrive in 2026 at all. But Valve tells The Verge it did not mean to suggest that — and that all three pieces of hardware will indeed ship this year, despite challenges from the ongoing memory shortage. Earlier today, Valve wrote that “we hope to ship in 2026,” which sounded like a downgrade from Valve’s earlier promises. As recently as last month, the company explicitly said it had not changed its plans to ship all three new hardware products “in the first half of the year,” even though that itself was a change from its original goal of “early 2026” or “Q1 2026.” Today, it seemed like the company was quietly delaying the product yet again, and Valve didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. But after we initially published this article about Valve’s post, Valve PR representative Kaci Aitchison Boyle told The Verge that “nothing has actually changed on our end.” Valve has also updated the blog post to state that “we will be shipping all three products this year.” Right around its original November reveal, it became clear that memory costs were starting to skyrocket as AI companies started buying up as many chips as they could. Hardware makers of all sizes are having to grapple with what that means for their products, and many of the biggest hardware players aren’t immune; even Apple is reportedly being forced to pay higher prices for memory. Last month, Valve also said that the RAM crisis would affect stock of the Steam Deck OLED, which has been mostly out of stock since mid-February. Correction, March 6th: Based on a blog post from Valve, an earlier version of this story stated that Valve’s new hardware products may not launch this year. Valve has now stated they will.