Valve engineer Yazan Aldehayyat has a blunt message for anyone hoping hardware prices will stabilize soon: they won't. Speaking publicly about the state of component costs, Aldehayyat confirmed that prices are still climbing, and that what consumers see on store shelves today doesn't even reflect how bad things currently are at the supply level.
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The gap between shelf prices and reality
"Honestly, it's still getting worse," Aldehayyat said. "Just in case people are not aware. What people are seeing on retail shelves right now, from our observations, is lagging what we're seeing from a bulk supply by at least three to six months."
That's a significant warning. Retail prices for components like RAM and storage are already elevated, but Aldehayyat is saying the real cost pressure hasn't even hit consumers yet. A 3-to-6-month delay between bulk pricing and retail shelf pricing means the increases already baked into supply chains will eventually reach your wallet.
The Steam Machine launched at $1,049 as its entry price, a figure Valve itself acknowledged was higher than the company originally targeted. That price reflected the ongoing memory crisis driven largely by AI datacenter demand pulling RAM and storage supply away from consumer electronics. The situation, per Aldehayyat, has only gotten worse since those units shipped.
Every major platform is already feeling it
This isn't a Valve-specific problem. Microsoft has already announced significant price increases across the entire Xbox Series X/S lineup, effective August 1st, and has stated it expects component prices to double again by autumn 2027. That second figure is the one worth paying attention to: it suggests Microsoft is preparing players for another round of hardware cost increases, not a one-time adjustment.
Sony has raised PS5 prices multiple times. Nintendo announced a Switch 2 price increase set to take effect September 1st. The pattern across all three major console makers points in the same direction Aldehayyat is describing.
The key here is that RAM and storage are the specific components under pressure, and they're not niche parts. Every gaming device, from handhelds to high-end PCs, depends on them. The AI datacenter buildout consuming supply isn't slowing down, and there's no clear signal of when consumer electronics will stop competing at a disadvantage for those components.
What this means for Steam Deck and PC hardware
Aldehayyat's comments weren't limited to the Steam Machine. The Steam Deck uses the same category of components, and PC builders sourcing RAM or NVMe storage are operating in the same market. If bulk supply pricing is already 3 to 6 months ahead of what retail reflects, PC component shoppers should expect prices to keep moving upward through the rest of 2026 and into 2027.
Aldehayyat did express some hope that market forces would eventually correct pricing. The alternative he acknowledged is grimmer: that elevated component costs simply become the new normal for consumer electronics, and hardware prices reset at a permanently higher baseline.
For players trying to manage performance on existing hardware while prices stay high, checking out PC performance optimization guides is worth your time. Squeezing more out of what you already own is increasingly practical when upgrade costs keep climbing.
Valve's position is a useful data point precisely because the company is both a hardware maker and a software platform. It has visibility into bulk component pricing that most consumers don't, and Aldehayyat's candor about the current direction is more direct than the carefully worded announcements from Sony, Microsoft, or Nintendo.
The broader picture isn't encouraging. With Microsoft forecasting another doubling of costs by late 2027, the next 18 months look like continued pressure on hardware budgets across the board. For everything else going on in gaming right now, the guides hub has you covered while you wait for the component market to find its floor.
