Sunday, July 19th 2026

Valve Reportedly Sells 12-15K Steam Machine Units Per Week

Jul 19th, 2026 07:38 Discuss (125 Comments)

When Valve listed its Steam Machine gaming console/PC back in late June, many doubted whether the console would sell due to its high price tag. However, it turns out that Valve's sales data have reportedly been good. Some investigative journalism led to an estimate that Valve is selling anywhere from 12,000 to 15,000 Steam Machine units per week. To reach that number, the Boiling Steam website used Steam's Global Top Sellers list, where Steam Machine is ranked as number two, right between Counter-Strike 2 and Palworld games. Based on data from multiple sources, the Boiling Steam estimation suggests that CS2 generates around $19-20 million in revenue, while third-place Palworld generates $7-9 million. This effectively places Steam Machine's revenue anywhere between $10-18 million per week. Considering that a weighted average distribution model shows most buyers, about 65%, are acquiring the base model priced at $1,049, the remaining 35% are purchasing the higher-tier $1,349 configuration.

The lower bound scenario suggests about 8,700 Steam Machine units sold per week, with the higher bound capped at about 15,600 units. A medium projection is about 12,000-15,000 units sold per week as of July 18, which is a healthy calculation. Since Valve keeps much of its information secretive, this estimation is one of the most concrete numbers we can get, all thanks to Boiling Steam's "napkin math." For the Steam Machine, which has been criticized for its high price tag, the sales numbers seem to be just okay, and the Steam community is buying these consoles in healthy numbers. If sales continue at this pace, there could be anywhere between 600,000 to 750,000 units sold in a year.

Interestingly, we have to consider that this could be due to an elevated number of initial orders, and demand could drop in the coming weeks. It's not unusual to see sales volume dropping by 20-30% in the weeks following the initial hype, so we might get different data in the future. Boiling Steam plans on updating data estimations in the coming weeks as the market settles, so we will know with more certainty how sales are progressing over at Valve HQ.

Source: Boiling Steam

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125 Comments on Valve Reportedly Sells 12-15K Steam Machine Units Per Week

Exilarch

With the insane RAM prices, and supply constraints this isn't bad at all. It's going to take them a year and a half at this pace to reach one million units sold. Hopefully people get tired of waiting and install a Linux distro of their linking on their existing hardware. May I tell you about how cool Gentoo Linux actually is and the incredible things like distributed compilers and what you can accomplish with distcc and distccd? Once you're done, you'd be more exhilarated about recompiling with kernel panics rather than using this lovely piece of hardware for something as boring as... *scoffs*... video games.

yfn_ratchet

A surprising amount of bite on these units. A significant portion is certainly scalping, let's not delude ourselves, but in current times these bad boys selling anywhere near decently is a testament to the value offer these have. I guess an outsized amount of people just want a box that does Steam, in one use case or another.

iameatingjam

I knew this would be the case. You have the enthusiasts commenting on the specs and talking about how they can build a pc with better performance for the money. Then you have people that just want to access (EDIT: MOST) steam games easily without friction on their TV. Totally different demographics.

Though I do think that since ram and ssd prices are so high that its pushed the steam machine into premium price territory that valve should release a variant with a better cpu and or gpu since ram and nand is expensive no matter how good the cpu/gpu is.

So they could probably make a much more powerful machine for not that much more money though I realize it would take time since its all custom. Maybe could be replaced by something not so custom? Like keep the ram and ssd as they are, get a better cpu with 2 more cores and some more cache, and a gpu...hmm... I guess heat would be an issue if we went too far with this and that would mean either louder, which defeats the purpose of the silent machine, or.... a bigger box, which is also was one of their priorities..... Keeping it small. I see the problem....

Maybe the answer is more cache on both fronts, would also help hide the single channel memory thing. Amd has hardware that meets that spec not so different from what is in there, I think, without even going to x3d necessarily.

SiliconSeraph

On this episode of "People Will Buy Anything at Any Price"... :laugh: Maybe my price expectations are naive/foolish/antiquated, but... wow.

Especially the 35% who bought the $1,300 version?? I guess I get it if you want a controller included, given the base model doesn't come with it...

Kinsa83

Good for the none scalpers/people buying from scalpers. Decided Ill be making my own htpc instead.

wheresmycar

Not bad for something that was largely written off as massively overpriced.

Looks like the DOA crowd got proper steamrolled.

TheEndIsNear

Must be the public has disposable income. Nah they live on credit cards

TheinsanegamerN

wheresmycarNot bad for something that was largely written off as massively overpriced.

Looks like the DOA crowd got proper steamrolled.

15k a week is 780k a year, a fraction the sale rate of massively successful consoles like the Sega Dreamcast, 3D0, and Wii U.

What a success story.

iameatingjam

TheinsanegamerN15k a week is 780k a year, a fraction the sale rate of massively successful consoles like the Sega Dreamcast, 3D0, and Wii U.

What a success story.

Who cares if its bringing more people to PC that wouldn't have before, thats a good thing, gives PC more purchasing power aka more ports/better ports. Especially during a time like this when the price of all hardware is going up ( maybe sony even reverses their decision... who knows? Largely depends on how many people buy ps5 for gta6 vs how many stay angry over the end of disks... I'm not exactly hopeful on that front, but it could still be a factor in our favour even if just a bit)

Besides, this is but a side project for valve.

They don't care if you use the steam machine, they just care... that you use steam, and most pc gamers do.

EDIT: And are the numbers limited by demand... or supply? I'm actually not sure, if it counts as soon as you join the list or as soon as its your turn.

EDIT:

The lower bound scenario suggests about 8,700 Steam Machine units sold per week, with the higher bound capped at about 15,600 units.

Looks like sometimes it is a supply bound limitation.

#10

TheinsanegamerN

iameatingjamWho cares if its bringing more people to PC that wouldn't have before, thats a good thing, gives PC more purchasing power aka more ports/better ports. Especially during a time like this when the price of all hardware is going up ( maybe sony even reverses their decision... who knows? Largely depends on how many people buy ps5 for gta6 vs how many stay angry over the end of disks... I'm not exactly hopeful on that front, but it could still be a factor in our favour even if just a bit)

Besides, this is but a side project for valve.

They don't care if you use the steam machine, they just care... that you use steam, and most pc gamers do.

EDIT: And are the numbers limited by demand... or supply? I'm actually not sure, if it counts as soon as you join the list or as soon as its your turn.

EDIT:

Looks like sometimes it is a supply bound limitation.

PC gaming is a huge crowd. It's larger then all the consoles combined. Garnishing incredible praise and acting like Valve has unlocked some new market while pushing such tiny unit counts is just plain silly. You dont see anyone act like this when Dell releases a new Alienware, but Papa Gaben does it and WHOOO LIGHT THE FIREWORKS WOW ITS AMAZING!!!!

The Steam Machine isnt selling in any sort of number to affect the quality or number of games ported to PC, that's the exact type of embellishment I'm talking about. Is this a side project, or is this some disruptive hardware release? You cant have it both ways here. If it's a side project, its not going to disrupt anything, if it's a major release trying to change the industry, then these sales numbers are pathetic.

#11

iameatingjam

TheinsanegamerNPC gaming is a huge crowd. It's larger then all the consoles combined. Garnishing incredible praise and acting like Valve has unlocked some new market while pushing such tiny unit counts is just plain silly. You dont see anyone act like this when Dell releases a new Alienware, but Papa Gaben does it and WHOOO LIGHT THE FIREWORKS WOW ITS AMAZING!!!!

The Steam Machine isnt selling in any sort of number to affect the quality or number of games ported to PC, that's the exact type of embellishment I'm talking about. Is this a side project, or is this some disruptive hardware release? You cant have it both ways here. If it's a side project, its not going to disrupt anything, if it's a major release trying to change the industry, then these sales numbers are pathetic.

I didn't mean to exaggerate valve's role in PC hardware sales, you're right the number is small in the grand scheme of things. I just mean that any gaming PC sale, is good to me, a good thing. Especially one that touches a potentially new consumer not familiar with PC and perhaps is upset at sony for taking away disks or something or xbox for... well there's a lot to choose from.

Its an option for people, who want to deal with less of the unfun parts of pc gaming, I can understand that, I wont buy one myself, because I am not of that demographic.

I just think there's a place for the steam machine and all pc sales are good for pc, especially if the customer is happy and finds the experience good and decides to stay. Okay, make sense? My bad if it came off differently.

There's also the OS, while, incomplete for any hardware right now, hopefully soon will reach a point where people really can turn anything into a steam machine... from an OS perspective anyway... reducing friction and hopefully help keep pc gaming numbers up during this hardware crisis.

-----

Kind of unrelated, its just the all consoles combined comment got me curious so I looked it up and came across this:

gaming/comments/1ry331y/pc_projected_to_exceed_1_billion_players_and
What caught my attention was this statistic:

Seems like good news, I thought the trend was going the other way. Who doesn't like a little good news every now and then?

This projection was released in March, so idk if it takes the ram crisis into account..... either way I think the broadening of gaming away from top titles is still good news. Also the hardware crisis is hitting consoles too, just, not as much... Still lower barrier to entry.

#12

lexluthermiester

A lot of people seem to like this little machine. Interesting for sure. I did not see it's popularity being this significant.

#13

GvonTech

That's a ridiculous claim. Where's the evidence?

#14

lexluthermiester

GvonTechThat's a ridiculous claim. Where's the evidence?

How about the fact that it's sold out? What did you think Valve would only make a few of these machines?

#15

AusWolf

AleksandarKInterestingly, we have to consider that this could be due to an elevated number of initial orders, and demand could drop in the coming weeks. It's not unusual to see sales volume dropping by 20-30% in the weeks following the initial hype, so we might get different data in the future.

That's true during sales of an infinitely available product, such as a video game through an online distributor. But the Steam Machine sells through a reservation queue, with many people still waiting for their chance to buy come up. So if Valve sells X units per week, that's not because X number of people are interested, but because they only have X number of units to sell with many more to come. Way more people are still waiting, so we'll probably see a much more even start, with initial sales numbers being lower than expected due to availability reasons, but stay at that level through the coming weeks or months because they're still supplying the initial interest, only through a longer period of time.

#16

Dr. Dro

The Steam Machine is a great "gateway product" to the world of Linux gaming, and that was likely Valve's goal from the very start. It's got about as much hand holding and tailored game support as any Linux machine will ever get, despite the poor specifications and lack of up to date Windows drivers.

It's not for people who chase performance, or want a PC with a higher potential in that price range, and that is fine. It also shows that Valve learned from its mistakes from the original Steam Machine project released back in 2015, which had a lot less hardware compromises than this system (some actually had high-end specs for the time, there was one model in particular that came with the i7-4790K, which was one of the fastest gaming CPUs you could get 11 years ago). SteamOS 1.0 simply wasn't ready, and since API support was crude and Proton wasn't a thing, game support pretty much didn't exist... all are solved problems now.

By focusing on experience and ease of use, as well as controlling the hardware distribution chain themselves instead of using OEMs like last time, Valve's got a little PC that will cater to the casual crowd and bypass Microsoft entirely, which scores almost all of their objectives. The next logical step is expanding SteamOS to custom PC's. I doubt it'll get very many people off Windows for now, especially at the high end segment, but the interest is real especially as Microsoft is lost in their AI-fueled delirium, rejecting customer feedback and the quality of Windows decays further and further with each passing day.

Truth is, the death of Windows started in August 2012 and its heart stopped beating in October 2025. It turns out Copilot slop isn't the defibrillator it needs, and now the clock is ticking. Any further damage and it might not come back.

#17

lexluthermiester

Dr. DroTruth is, the death of Windows started in August 2012 and its heart stopped beating in October 2025.

That might be an over statement.

Dr. DroIt turns out Copilot slop isn't the defibrillator it needs, and now the clock is ticking. Any further damage and it might not come back.

This however might be accurate..

#18

FatherOBlivion

Not amazing sales numbers, but certainly not "dead on arrival" as so many YT and other industry experts insisted it would be.

While not for me, I can understand the appeal.

#19

Dr. Dro

lexluthermiesterThat might be an over statement.

Probably, but not too far from the truth from a desktop user's perspective, which is most of us anyway. Even today Microsoft remains obsessed with the concept of touchscreen-optimized UX, replacing terms like "My Computer" with "This PC" or "your device", "click" with "tap here", and Windows has been getting more and more bloated, yet less and less reliable and functional out of the box. The iPad broke something in Microsoft they've never been able to fix. It's... almost Freudian in nature.

Yet, Windows needs more hardware resources than ever before, and if the situation with the slop code and trash user interface wasn't bad enough, they've decided to start hardening the kernel, which wouldn't be such a bad thing if it didn't have a quite measurable and sometimes, substantial impact on performance... and 99% of people don't need security at the level of a paravirtualized kernel with core and memory isolation, especially since you can stop most ACE and overflow/underrun hacks dead on their track with KASLR anyway, and that's after whatever gets in and most have been stopped since UAC was made a thing. We'd rather get an extra 20 FPS and have a snappier desktop experience, with competent first-party media player, word processor, image viewer, etc. - all of which seems to be the last thing on Microsoft's mind right now.

Instead of focusing on what people want, their idea of a solution is to chuck AI onto everything, replace as much of the OS with slow and memory-heavy browser applications as possible (and it's a matter of time until we have another Active Desktop mess on our hands).

#20

JustBenching

FatherOBlivionNot amazing sales numbers, but certainly not "dead on arrival" as so many YT and other industry experts insisted it would be.

While not for me, I can understand the appeal.

Usually when people say DOA what they really mean is "not worth buying", not that it won't sell. Everyone knew that it would sell well, but it's still true that it's not worth buying.

With the steam machine money you could buy an infinitely more capable and smaller machine (AM01S for example) 8745hs with 32gb of ddr5 ram and 1tb nvme, buy an external GPU dock AND a GPU of your choice and still have money leftover. :eek:

#21

iameatingjam

GvonTechThat's a ridiculous claim. Where's the evidence?

Who are you talking to? OP?

What do you want evidence for? The evidence is in the post.

Or are you responding to

lexluthermiesterA lot of people seem to like this little machine.

Well, again, the evidence is in the fact that their sales limit has been reached some weeks. That means that if there was unlimited supply, and if buying it meant you would get it right away and not at who knows when, sales would likely be higher.

I get why people want it. Its not for me. But I do think it is a good thing for reasons I already explained above.

For people who just want access to the steam library on their tv, without headaches, its an easy choice. Anyway if you set your sights on 1080p or even 1440p (possibly with some compromises, depends on game), I think that is totally doable, especially if your tv is across the room.

If it gets really popular, it may also encourage more optimization. As most games are kinda just made for everything... But if there's a large amount of pcs with x configuration, you might want to target it... even if say the steam deck was off the table. But it might just end up being the lazy methods a lot of us are used to... lots of upscaling, framegen, buffer flushing etc.

But didn't I read a headline that valve was taking over the handling of system requirements from publishers? If so, I hope those tricks are NOT included in them.... especially framegen to reach 60, or even 30, like I saw in lego batman it think it was.

Sorry... got off track there.

Dr. DroTruth is, the death of Windows started in August 2012 and its heart stopped beating in October 2025. It turns out Copilot slop isn't the defibrillator it needs, and now the clock is ticking. Any further damage and it might not come back.

Is that so? Well I guess I chose a good time to downgrade to win 10, only a month late ( though I know, I should really be on linux.... the day will eventually come). And I still get security updates too....

#22

AusWolf

JustBenchingUsually when people say DOA what they really mean is "not worth buying", not that it won't sell. Everyone knew that it would sell well, but it's still true that it's not worth buying.

With the steam machine money you could buy an infinitely more capable and smaller machine (AM01S for example) 8745hs with 32gb of ddr5 ram and 1tb nvme, buy an external GPU dock AND a GPU of your choice and still have money leftover. :eek:

How is a machine with an external GPU dock, GPU, and PSU (yes, you need one for the GPU) smaller and cheaper than the Steam Machine?

#23

Hecate91

The Steam Machine is selling better than I thought, even when priced too high most gamers just want a PC to play their existing Steam library on. I can see the appeal of the machine with Steam OS, none of the hassle or bloat of Windows, and it must be worth buying for enough people for it to sell, not as well as an average pre-built of course but still enough for a niche mini PC.

#24

JustBenching

AusWolfHow is a machine with an external GPU dock, GPU, and PSU (yes, you need one for the GPU) smaller and cheaper than the Steam Machine?

The AM01 is a lot cheaper and smaller than the steam machine. It starts from 250€ and goes up to 650€ depending on your configuration. A dock with a PSU is around 150€ (im assuming you are not planning on using a 5090 on it right?) and it can be tiny if you go for a mobile gpu. So total price is at 400 to 800 without a GPU. The steam machine is 1050 for the 512gb model and 1350 for the 2tb model, so you have between 650 and 300€ to get a GPU faster than the steam machines, which is entirely possible. A picture below regarding the size, this is beelinks solution, as you can see size is dictated by which gpu you choose mostly. If you get a beefy boy then yeah, it's going to be bigger than the steam machine, but you can get a small one. The PSU is included in the picture btw, this dock is priced at 180€ but there are cheaper solutions

The nice part is you can move the actual PC around much easier than the steam machine since the PC itself is much smaller, unlike the steam machine. So in situations where you don't need the extra GPU, its a much better solution. Especially if you are mostly playing indie titles you don't need the GPU at all, so the whole thing is going to cost you 250€ vs 1k for the steam machine

#25

Gasrim

It was 1# seller on the steam page for me in Australia for a decent time period. Its now a 5# now. I don't hate this little box. Its just poorly priced and you can get much better hardware for $1609. I understand why, RAM and SSD Prices, but still. Wouldn't mind a DIY kit version tho.

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