this post was submitted on 22 Jun 2026
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510
Valve describes just how brutal RAM negotiations are in 2026 (www.theverge.com)
submitted 1 day ago by tonytins@pawb.social to c/technology@lemmy.world
136 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Valve’s Steam Machine finally has a price: a whopping $1,049 for the 512GB configuration or $1,349 for the 2TB version. And those are without bundled controllers, which drive up the cost more.

The prices are so high in part because Valve isn’t subsidizing the hardware, and the company has already indicated that the component crisis forced it to reconsider its initial pricing plans. In an interview with the YouTube channel Gamers Nexus, Valve engineers discussed the reality of sourcing RAM in 2026, with take-it-or-leave-it prices as memory and other components remain in short supply, from only a few vendors like Samsung, Micron, and SK Hynix.

[...]

Valve, of course, isn’t the only company in a bind over memory shortages, as the crunch is forcing many hardware makers to make significant pricing changes. Even Apple CEO Tim Cook is warning of incoming price hikes for iPhones, Macs, and other devices. And the RAM crunch isn’t projected to get better anytime soon.

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[–] nuko147@lemmy.world 4 points 9 hours ago

Demand going the roof would be normal.

One company (openAI) to prepurchase all of the next years ram before even produced and you double the prices only from that is a cartel move.

And maybe is the worst to this date, with prices 4x or 5x, but in the past the cartel had other ways to raise prices 2x (2016 was last time for who remember).