Valve Appears To Be Preparing for Steam Machine Launch With Warehouse Restocks

Brad Lynch, the same VR industry insider who revealed that Valve was preparing for the Steam Controller launch just two weeks before the controller actually launched, has just revealed in a post on X that Valve may be preparing to launch the Steam Machine in the coming weeks. Like last time with the Steam Controller, it seems as though Valve has been receiving “a ton of ‘Game Consoles'” in the US in recent weeks, according to recent shipping manifests. According to Lynch, Valve is stocking its US distribution warehouses, indicating that it is preparing whatever it is importing for an imminent batch of orders.

Admittedly, the shipping manifests simply list the imported hardware as “Game Consoles,” so it could also be referring to something like the Steam Deck. However, there are no upcoming large-scale shopping, holidays, or regular discount periods, like Black Friday, that Valve would need to increase Steam Deck supply in order to prepare for. It’s also entirely possible that this is around the time Valve had originally planned to ship the Steam Machine, and it is simply following the plan to make logistics and storage cheaper by keeping the hardware in its own warehouses where it already pays for space.