this post was submitted on 22 Jun 2026
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Valve describes just how brutal RAM negotiations are in 2026 (www.theverge.com)
submitted 3 days ago by tonytins@pawb.social to c/technology@lemmy.world
164 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Valve’s Steam Machine finally has a price: a whopping $1,049 for the 512GB configuration or $1,349 for the 2TB version. And those are without bundled controllers, which drive up the cost more.

The prices are so high in part because Valve isn’t subsidizing the hardware, and the company has already indicated that the component crisis forced it to reconsider its initial pricing plans. In an interview with the YouTube channel Gamers Nexus, Valve engineers discussed the reality of sourcing RAM in 2026, with take-it-or-leave-it prices as memory and other components remain in short supply, from only a few vendors like Samsung, Micron, and SK Hynix.

[...]

Valve, of course, isn’t the only company in a bind over memory shortages, as the crunch is forcing many hardware makers to make significant pricing changes. Even Apple CEO Tim Cook is warning of incoming price hikes for iPhones, Macs, and other devices. And the RAM crunch isn’t projected to get better anytime soon.

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[–] eyes@lemmy.world 18 points 3 days ago (2 children)

It takes a minimum of about 3 years to set up chip factories and longer to ramp up production, so it's likely they think of this as a problem for the next CEO.

[–] MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip 10 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Holy moly, we've raised a generation of idiot leaders.

[–] sukhmel@programming.dev 5 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Yes but how's that something for Valve to solve (I am a bit lost to this thread's train of thought)

[–] Jako302@feddit.org 4 points 2 days ago

That's not even the issue, it simply isn't worth it for chip manufactors to ramp up production.

Chip manufacturing is so expensive that machines have to run at 100% capacity to make reasonable profit margins from consumer hardware. Investment in new factories is only worth it if the demand stays high for 10+ years, which simply doesn't seem to be the case. Most AI companies will collapse in the next few years and while AI in itself will probably survive, the hardware craze will eventually die down a bit.