The much-awaited Steam Frame launched earlier this week (and today’s the day its pre-order reservation invites will be sent out). The “streaming-first” VR headset costs $1,059 USD for its 256GB model, and upping the storage space to 1TB will set you back $1,299. It’s safe to say that the four-figure price tag wasn’t Valve’s original plan, but inflated RAM costs have forced its hand.

Valve has already admitted the device should have been “much more affordable,” which makes a lot of sense when we look back at early predictions, which seemed confident it would be cheaper than the $999 Valve Index. Steam Frame was originally announced in November last year, alongside the Steam Controller and Steam Machine, but the market has changed since then.

How much would the Steam Frame & Machine cost without RAM price hikes?

Unlike the Valve Index, which doesn’t feature internal RAM or storage, the Steam Frame is designed to work well as a standalone device, fitted with an ARM-based Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor, 16GB of Unified LPDDR5X memory, and up to 1TB of storage; there’s also a microSD card slot on top of that. However, as AI firms ate up memory for their data centers, supply dropped, and prices skyrocketed.

In an interview with IGN, Valve developer Pierre-Loup Griffais says the RAM crisis caused “kind of a similar price difference” in line with hikes suffered by the Steam Machine and Steam Deck. The former launched with an inflated price, also with a four-figure price tag, but we can take a look at the popular Deck handheld price changes to try and estimate ‘original’ prices. All three devices feature 16GB DDR5 RAM (LPDDR5, DDR5 SO-DIMM, and LPDDR5X, for the Deck, Machine, and Frame, respectively).

Valve has given no actual numbers regarding the originally planned Steam Frame and Steam Machine prices – these are just estimates. Even so, it demonstrates just how much cheaper they could have been if it launched a year ago, before the RAM crisis really took hold of the market. A month after the hardware was originally announced, a PC Guide poll found that most customers were hoping to pay $600-699 for the Steam Machine, but that was just a pipe dream in hindsight.

After changes to the Steam Deck’s price, sales of the handheld tanked, and it seems they haven’t recovered to the same level. We used to see the Deck topping Valve’s top sellers chart, but right now (at the time of writing), it occupies the 25th spot, just ahead of the Steam Machine, according to SteamDB’s global sales chart.

About the Author

Jack Goodall

At PC Guide, Jack is mostly responsible for reporting on hardware deals. He also specializes in monitors, TVs, and headsets and can be found putting his findings together in a review or best-of guide.