Valve engineers Pierre-Loup Griffais and Yazan Aldehayyat have again expressed pessimism regarding Steam Machine pricing.

They stated that hardware pricing "is lagging what we're seeing from a bulk supply by at least three to six months." This means current prices reflect the market from February, before the mid-July RAM crisis. Griffais and Aldehayyat anticipate that pricing will worsen over the next three to six months.

Aldehayyat noted, "honestly, it's still getting worse," though he expects prices to eventually stabilize or decrease. Valve appears to be pricing the Steam Machine based on long-term projections, potentially explaining its uncompetitive launch price. This aligns with Lenovo's prediction that memory price hikes may become the norm.

Regarding exclusives, Griffais believes restricting game access "is not a great model." Valve prefers to offer its "whole PC catalog as our launch exclusive."