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Last week PC Gamer’s Andy Edser highlighted an article tracing a seeming large drop in Steam Deck gross sales. I’m not totally satisfied by the maths concerned—which was performed by Boiling Steam—however whether or not the numbers are correct or not, it does seize among the anxiousness round Valve’s {hardware} and what sort of future it might need.
When Gabe Newell donated a smidge over $20 million to OpenAI again in 2018, he in all probability did not anticipate that the trade arising from its tech would put an enormous dampener on his firm’s future {hardware} plans. The Steam Deck OLED copped a dramatic value improve in May, with the 1TB mannequin rising from $649 to $949 and the 512GB going from $549 to $789.
“These new prices reflect the current state of component costs and other global logistical challenges across the industry as a whole,” Valve wrote on the time, alluding to the best way AI datacentres are gobbling up the majority of elements wanted for a lot of the {hardware} used to play videogames. In one fell swoop, the Steam Deck OLED—which turns three in November—morphed from an awesome entry degree answer for budding PC players, into one thing solely rich folks can afford.
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When Valve launched that assertion in May we did not but understand how a lot the Steam Machine would value, however anybody who hoped they may someway hack the elements disaster to ship an actually-affordable front room PC had been, sadly, dreaming. As we now know, the Steam Machine is pricey and anyway, in extremely short supply.
As Andy Edser wrote in June just after publishing his 62 / 100 review of the box, the Steam Machine is “the biggest victim of the RAMpocalypse to date”. What was predicted to cost around $600 in November 2025 comes bearing a minimum $1,049 price tag. I was with utmost certainty going to buy one if the price was closer to the former. But at the current going rate, there’s just no way, and I’m sure there are droves who are in my position.
So I guess it’s not surprising that the Steam Machine’s “launch”—which was more of a waitlist launch—has been a bit muted. Even Valve’s own compatibility module hasn’t been updated to reflect the Steam Machine’s existence: to see if something is compatible with the device you have to click on the Steam Deck Compatibility box, which then shows a nested result for the Steam Machine. That’s the case in both desktop and Big Picture modes.
Browsing Steam, most of the time you wouldn’t know the Steam Machine exists. Devs aren’t talking about their games being compatible with Steam Machine either, like they increasingly do the Steam Deck. External forces seem to have demolished the viability of these things. It’s sad, but true.
And yet! The Steam Deck consistently appears in Valve’s list of Steam’s top products by revenue: last week it hit 14, and the week before that, 9. That result is influenced by the fact that Steam Deck is much more expensive than your average game, but it still proves that people are buying them.
But I had hoped the Steam Deck and Steam Machine might mark a rapid shift in how PC gaming is perceived. Gaming on a PC is immeasurably easier in 2026 than it was even in 2016, but consoles are still considered the easier route by millions of people. With the Steam Machine and Steam Deck, Valve had a chance to prove everyone wrong.
From the vantage point of November 2025 the timing seemed immaculate, given the existential crises facing both Xbox and PlayStation. It’s amazing how much difference three months makes. Steam Machine having any longterm effect on the industry seems hugely unlikely right now.
Top Steam games by revenue (July 21 – July 28)
Steam releases its top sellers charts on Wednesdays, so the chart below doesn’t account for the sudden popularity of Mistfall Hunter, which launched on Thursday. The “dark fantasy extraction ARPG” is at the moment third on the stay concurrents record.
|
Rank |
Game |
|---|---|
|
1 |
Counter-Strike 2 |
|
2 |
Dota 2 |
|
3 |
Palworld |
|
4 |
Halo: Campaign Evolved |
|
5 |
Apex Legends |
|
6 |
DragonSword: Awakening |
|
7 |
Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced |
|
8 |
Battlefield 6 |
|
9 |
Shift at Midnight |
|
10 |
PUBG Battlegrounds |
Counter-Strike 2 holds tight to primary regardless of the discharge of a brand new (albeit really previous) Halo sport and the 1.0 launch of Palworld.
DragonSword: Awakening is principally a non-gacha tackle Genshin Impact, so its reputation is to be anticipated. Shift at Midnight is yet one more a kind of indies that blends retail sim trappings with horror, although this time with on-line cooperative play.
And whereas Meccha Chameleon is way from “a dead game” (it seems at 13 this week) final week was the primary time it did not seem within the prime ten since launch.
Last week’s Steam deep cuts
Steam evaluate of the week
“I now understand why people push people in front of trains. It’s super funny.”
Alien Kink VR, taking the mistaken learnings from Machine Party.
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