The PC giant is non-commital on whether the console's price will come down in the future if hardware costs reduce

Image credit: Valve

Games giant Valve has admitted that its Steam Machine hardware has a higher cost than it would have liked.

Speaking to Rock Paper Shotgun, engineer Yazan Aldehayyat said the company had hoped its console-slash-mini-PC would have an entry level price tag, but the number of costs involved meant that this was not possible.

The base version of the Steam Machine starts at $1,049.

"The big, number one factor in cost is the components that make up the device, and you know, the cost of making it and shipping it and distributing it, etc. etc.," Aldehayyat said. "I mean, as we said before, I think we really wanted the Steam Machine to be a good entry-level PC. I think we mentioned that in November, and we want it to be affordable for as many people as possible. It's definitely more expensive than we hoped."

Asked whether the price on Steam Machine could come down when component pricing reduces, Valve is non-committal.

"It's too dangerous for us to speculate right now," Aldehayyat said.

"I would say, like, anything we say now is probably gonna be unfortunate statements in the future, but I think we just have to wait and see what the market does, because I don't think anybody right now is able to predict what's going to happen in the future, so we'd like to refrain from trying to make predictions that are difficult to make right now."

Designer Lawrence Yang added: "Suffice to say, at least at this moment, component prices are too high, and components themselves are too rare, to make what we want, at the price that we want, when we want to. And I think it's something that's shared by everyone in this industry right now."

Analysts speaking to GamesIndustry.biz say that Steam Machine will be a "niche device", due to a combination of its price and form factor.

Mentioned in this article