Steam Machine possibly delayed by RAMpocalypse, Valve says 'we hope to ship in 2026'

UPDATE: Valve now says that it will ship all three devices in 2026:

"We shared recently that there have been challenges with memory and storage shortages, but we will be shipping all three products this year. More updates will be shared as we finalize our plans."

Original article is as follows.

Valve may be forced to delay its Steam Machine as well as the Steam Frame VR headset and new Steam Controller--all of which may not actually release in 2026 as planned.

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Valve has delivered a quick update on its new devices, including its all-in-one Steam Machine console PC. Previously, Valve hoped to ship the devices in "early 2026," indicating a potential Q1 release. Valve has today issued a more dour update, now saying that they aren't sure if the Steam Machine, Frame, and Controller will even launch this year at all.

"We hope to ship in 2026, but as we shared recently, memory and storage shortages have created challenges for us. We'll share updates publicly when we finalize our plans!" Valve wrote in a recent Steam year in review 2025 post.

On this same note, Valve recently updated the unpublished backend store pages for all three of its new devices, listing each of them with a release date of "coming soon". Some users had guessed that this meant the Steam hardware trio had been delayed or pushed back, which may be the case, however it's worth noting that each of the listings did not previously have any launch information provided.

The so-called RAMpocalypse was driven by hungry AI datacenters greedily eating up key components like storage and memory needed for practically all computer gaming devices. The demand and shortages have driven up prices for vendors like Valve, who now likely have to pay more money to secure less chips for a mass-market product launch.

In the post, Valve also said this about its new hardware:

"These three new entries into the Steam Hardware family are making PC gaming even more enjoyable and accessible, and solving interesting problems for game developers-even for games that don't ship via Steam.

"Hardware at Valve has come a very long way since our early efforts more than a decade ago, and the new generation of hardware will open up even more opportunities for PC developers to reach and delight their players."