The Steam Machine is still "on track" for its original release window, according to Valve’s chosen chipmakers

Valve’s upcoming Steam Machine reboot might not be as troubled by ongoing memory shortages as previously feared. Or, at least, not as delayed.

As spotted by VideoCardz, AMD – who provide the custom processor nestled within the Steam Machine’s matte black walls – recently held a quarterly earnings call, in which CEO Dr. Lisa Su declared Valve to be “on track to begin shipping its AMD-powered Steam Machine early this year.” While still vague, that’s in line with Valve’s originally announced “early 2026” release window, suggesting that soaring RAM and SSD prices haven’t pushed the new Machine back by much, if at all.

Now, a pessimistic mind might not be entirely reassured. Earnings calls can be helpful for illustrating a company’s past fortunes, but when predicting the future, the audience being full of shareholders can incentivise optimism over hard realism. And as one of the tech industry’s leading AI peddlers, AMD are also partly responsible for the memory shortage – in which rich firms are hoarding RAM, storage, and GPU products to build gigantic AI data centres – that caused delay concerns in the first place.

Still, it’s also in AMD’s interest to get the Steam Machine into as many waiting hands as possible, and since component shortages are widely expected to continue all the way into 2027 and beyond… well, if I were Valve, I probably would prefer to start selling at a higher-than-preferred price instead of leaving an untouched mountain of GabeCubes stacked in some warehouse, making a profit of precisely zero. Unless I could build a fort out of them, obviously.

Anyhoo, the Steam Machine itself remains an intriguing piece of kit: a little bit customisable PC, a little bit lounge-dwelling console, with a Steam Deck-inspired compatibility programme and a redesigned Steam Controller to make besties with. I’m looking forward to playing it some more, whenever it ends up escaping RAM purgatory.