A new report claims that Steam Machine might be getting ready to ship soon. According to a distribution leak, Valve is receiving many gaming consoles in their US warehouse. However, could it just be a Steam Deck restock instead? Is the Steam Machine release date actually imminent?
Valve Warehouse Leak Hints Steam Machine Shipments Have Arrived
This latest update comes from Brad Lynch, an insider who often leaks things related to Steam. In a post on X, the developer revealed that Valve recently received a large shipment of game consoles to their US-based warehouse. “Valve is receiving a ton of ‘Game Consoles’ these past couple weeks in their USA distribution warehouse.”
However, when a player asked Lynch if they could be Steam Machine, he replied, “Safe assumption. It could also be Steam Deck restocks thrown in the mix along with the Steam Machines.” Now before you handwave this latest rumor off, Lynch goes on to explain why he thinks it could be Steam Machines arriving at Valve’s US distribution centers.
In a second post, Lynch said that other factors such as the “quantities” of consoles arriving is what makes him think it could possibly be Steam Machine. However, he also clarified it could just be a Steam Deck restock. Which, if it’s the latter, wouldn’t be disappointing news either. After all, the Steam Deck has been sold out for months now.
Why These Shipments Could Be Steam Machines
As far as how Lynch got this information, he apparently tracks all of Valve’s imports. “I have a bot that tracks Import Records to companies of interest to me. And it also gives me more info than what you can see on the page sometimes. The importer is Ingram Micro. Valve’s distribution/warehouse company in Carol Stream, IL.”
On Reddit, a poster claiming to know someone that works at Valve’s shipping warehouse also seemed to back up Brad Lynch’s report on large quantities of consoles arriving. “I’m friends with someone on Facebook who stocks at their warehouse in Illinois and said they received about three 53′ truck loads of pallets. Not sure how many units that converts to. I’m guessing some of that was also steam controllers.”
Although we can’t verify the Redditor’s claims. The report from Brad Lynch has more credibility, given that you can actually track shipments to the distribution center. The only thing we don’t know is whether the large quantities of game consoles are Steam Machine’s or not. And in all fairness to Lynch, he doesn’t claim that they are 100% Steam Machines. So at this point this is largely speculation.
Valve Confirms Steam Machine Release Is Soon
Adding weight to this latest rumor, Valve themselves recently confirmed that a Steam Machine release date announcement would be happening “soon.” In a recent interview with IGN, the publisher teased that the Steam Machine’s “release is close.”
At least to me, this sounds like Steam Machine will be launching in the next few months, as opposed to the end of the year (October through December). But of course, this is also speculation as the wording was also vague.
Steam Machine Price and Release Delay Heavily Impacted by RAM
In a separate post, Brad Lynch also claimed that the Steam Controller recently being released on its own was the result of Steam Machine being delayed. According to the developer, Valve’s new console was heavily impacted by RAM shortages and skyrocketing hardware prices in the market.
“I’ve been told some Valve internal pricing targets they had before AND after RAM skyrocketed. Steam Machine is affected the most. Frame is not as bad.” Interestingly, Insider Gaming also recently reported that the Valve console was originally targeting a “$800” price tag before the RAM crisis.
“The original goal was always to keep it under $800 and release it by now. But it’s unclear if that remained the case as component costs rose while supply became less.” If any of this is true, it makes you wonder if the Valve console will reach a $900 or even a $1,000 price at launch at this point.
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