Steam Machine and Steam Frame delays are the latest product of the RAM crisis
When Valve announced its Steam Machine desktop PC and Steam Frame VR headset in mid-November of last year, it declined to announce pricing or availability information for either device. That was partly because RAM and storage prices had already begun to climb due to shortages caused by the AI industry's insatiable need for memory. Those price spikes have only gotten worse since then, and they're beginning to trickle down to GPUs and other devices that use memory chips.
This week, Valve has officially announced that it's still not ready to make an official announcement about when the Machine or Frame will be available or what they'll cost.
Valve says it still plans to launch both devices (as well as the new Steam Controller) "in the first half of the year," but that uncertainty around RAM and storage prices mean that Valve "[has] work to do to land on concrete pricing and launch dates we can confidently announce, being mindful of how quickly the circumstances around both of these things can change."