Steam Machine and Steam Frame delays are the newest product of the RAM disaster

When Valve introduced its Steam Machine desktop PC and Steam Frame VR headset in mid-November of final 12 months, it declined to announce pricing or availability data for both machine. That was partly as a result of RAM and storage costs had already begun to climb because of shortages attributable to the AI trade’s insatiable want for reminiscence. Those worth spikes have solely gotten worse since then, they usually’re starting to trickle right down to GPUs and different units that use reminiscence chips.

This week, Valve has formally announced that it’s nonetheless not able to make an official announcement about when the Machine or Frame can be out there or what they’ll value.

Valve says it nonetheless plans to launch each units (in addition to the brand new Steam Controller) “in the first half of the year,” however that uncertainty round RAM and storage costs imply that Valve “[has] work to do to land on concrete pricing and launch dates we can confidently announce, being mindful of how quickly the circumstances around both of these things can change.”

“When we announced these products in November, we planned on being able to share specific pricing and launch dates by now,” Valve’s weblog publish reads. “But the memory and storage shortages you’ve likely heard about across the industry have rapidly increased since then. The limited availability and growing prices of these critical components mean we must revisit our exact shipping schedule and pricing (especially around Steam Machine and Steam Frame).”