Valve’s Steam Controller will be available for purchase May 4th and will cost $99 USD. They explain it will be released before the Steam Machine because: “It doesn’t have RAM.”
No need to speculate anymore. Valve confirmed its Steam Controller will be available for purchase on May the 4th and will cost $99 USD / €99. It will only ship to the US, Canada, Europe, the UK, Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea, Japan, and Australia. Out of the three new devices announced last year by Valve, it is the first to release, and for good reason. In an interview with Polygon, Valve hardware engineer Steve Cardinali explains: “This doesn’t have RAM in it, and it’s not as complicated to start getting out the door for us.” Cardinali continues: “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 also explains releasing the Steam Controller ahead still aligns with their original strategy, as they were never supposed to share the exact same release date: “We had always thought, obviously we want them to work together well, especially the Steam Machine and the Steam Controller, they’re in a lot of ways a pair made in heaven, but we saw no need to ship the Controller at the same time as the Machine.”
What they really wanted to avoid was releasing the Steam Machine before the Steam Controller: “The really only hard deadline is we didn’t want to ship the Steam Machine before the Steam Controller. We want to have that out for the Steam Machine… It wasn’t really ever the plan to ship them together unless it landed nicely that way. So there’s no point in holding it back while we work through the other stuff.”
Valve unveiled their new Steam Hardware line in November of last year. The Steam Controller, Steam Machine, and Steam Frame were all supposed to be available in early 2026, but the recent price hikes in PC components threw a wrench in Gaben’s plans. With an official release date confirmed for the controller, only the Steam Machine and the Steam Frame remain indefinitely delayed.