Valve Confirms Staggered Hardware Launch Due to DRAM Crisis: “This Doesn’t Have RAM in It”

Valve confirmed not too long ago that it had delayed announcing the pricing of the Steam Machine, Steam Frame, and Steam Controller because of the ongoing DRAM shortage and price volatility crisis that has plagued the PC hardware industry in recent months. Eventually, the gaming giant caved and announced the Steam Controller ahead of the rest of the hardware that was meant to ship alongside it, and in a recent interview with Polygon, Valve confirmed what we all suspected: The Steam Machine and Steam Frame are still being held back by the DRAM crisis. As Valve hardware engineer, Steve Cardinali, explained about the early launch of the controller: “This doesn’t have RAM in it, and it’s not as complicated to start getting out the door for us. We’re ready for it. We wanted to build up quantity so that we could try to address everybody who wants one at launch, but it’s possible that the demand for it far exceeds our expectations.”

He goes on to explain that there was never a hard-and-fast rule that the Controller, Frame, and Machine had to launch together, although he confirmed that Valve would not launch the Machine ahead of the Controller. It’s safe to assume, then, that the Steam Machine and Steam Frame were originally meant to launch around May as well—Cardinali says that the Controller and Machine are “a pair made in heaven,” so it only makes sense to try to launch them around the same time, even if “there’s no point in holding it back while we work through the other stuff.” According to VR industry insider, Brad Lynch on X, the Steam Machine is more severely affected by the memory supply issues than the Steam Frame, since it relies on on-package RAM and on mobile RAM, which doesn’t appear to be as severely impacted by the shortages. Reading between the lines, it seems entirely possible that the Steam Frame may launch ahead of the Steam Machine as long as RAM prices remain elevated and unstable.