Steam Frame price blamed on memory crisis but Steam Deck 2 plans unaffected

| Games News Reporter Published September 15, 2026 3:52pm Updated September 15, 2026 3:52pm Valve had a lower price point in mind for the Steam Frame (Valve/YouTube) You can put your name down to buy a Steam Frame this week, which comes with a free game but is no cheaper than the Steam Machine. Valve’s plans to expand its hardware range couldn’t have come at a worse time as the ongoing memory shortages have made any and all gaming hardware, from consoles to PCs, far more expensive. This unsurprisingly included Valve’s second crack at the Steam Machine, a PC/home console hybrid. It launched earlier this year for £879, which Valve acknowledged was an incredibly steep asking price. Valve has since announced a release date and pricing for its new VR headset, the Steam Frame, and while the good news is that it’s out very soon, the bad news is that it’s as obscenely expensive as the Steam Machine. How much is the Steam Frame? According to Valve’s website, two versions of Steam Frame will be available for purchase – one with 256GB of storage space for £889 and one with 1TB of storage space for £1,089. Expert, exclusive gaming analysis Sign up to the GameCentral newsletter for a unique take on the week in gaming, alongside the latest reviews and more. Delivered to your inbox every Saturday morning. Aside from the headset, purchases come with a pair of controllers and a copy of 2020’s VR exclusive Half-Life: Alyx. If you are interested in getting one, you’ll also need to sign up for a lottery before this Thursday, September 17 at 4pm BST and hope your name is picked before you can put any money down. This was exactly how Valve handled pre-orders for the Steam Machine and there’s every chance it will exhaust however much stock it has. While the Steam Frame was never going to be cheap, especially as VR gaming remains a niche hobby, hardware engineer Joy Lyons has admitted that Valve originally had a lower price point in mind. ‘We wanted to make sure we had a base product with really great performance. Then that price target shifted due to the ongoing RAM crisis around the world,’ Lyons told PC Gamer. ‘We’re happy to have our customers be able to have hardware during this RAM crisis, and we think it’s important to launch new hardware out there and have new experiences available. But, yeah, I think everyone’s disappointed by the RAM crisis.’ Valve’s Steam Deck handheld has also been impacted, resulting in a shocking £200 price increase back in May. Yet the company is still interested in making a successor and has even stated that the memory shortages haven’t changed its plans. ‘We’ve talked before about how we want to make sure there’s a very delineated performance improvement for something like a future Steam Deck, and I think we’re still looking at it in the same way,’ software developer Pierre-Loup Griffais told IGN when asked about a Steam Deck 2. ‘It’s just a matter of looking at the current conditions and seeing how and when we can deliver something like that. But from what we’re working on as far as the user experience goes and what the product that we’re trying to build goes, it’s very similar goals.’ Considering the Steam Deck was already a niche product to begin with and its sales are estimated to have tanked following the price rise, it’s hard to imagine there’d be any significant interest in a Steam Deck 2, especially when it’d likely be more expensive than the Steam Deck’s current £669 price tag. Are you interested in buying a Steam Frame? (Valve/YouTube) Email gamecentral@metro.co.uk, leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter. To submit Inbox letters and Reader’s Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here. For more stories like this, check our Gaming page. Arrow MORE: Wolverine dev is ‘cooking hard’ on fixes after viral fart gas complaints Arrow MORE: Injustice 3 rumours resurface with leaked 2D fighting game playtest Arrow MORE: 007 First Light on Switch 2 delayed less than a week after 2026 confirmation GameCentral Sign up for exclusive analysis, latest releases, and bonus community content.