PC players evidently want an easy way to play their desktop games from the comfort of their couch. Valve’s Steam Controller crashed into gamers’ awaiting shopping carts at 1 p.m. ET / 10 a.m. PT on Monday, and just a few hours later, it’s already listed as “out of stock.” That may bode good tidings for the upcoming Steam Machine, if it inevitably proves worth the price.
Valve only sells its controller through Steam. That means that Valve’s near-$100 gamepad has already become a scalper’s paradise. As of May 4, eBay listings of confirmed preorder or presale units are going for upwards of $200 or even as much as $250. We don’t suggest you pay a 100% tax just to get your hands on Valve’s new gamepad. It’s unclear how many devices Valve shipped for its initial run. Based on this initial demand, the Steam Controller may not be out of stock for too long.
Valve launched the controller ahead of the upcoming Steam Machine PC/console hybrid. That console was supposed to hit the scene earlier this year, but the ongoing RAM crisis and the spiking cost of storage components threw Valve’s release plans into the proverbial wood chipper. The Steam Controller is paving the way for a more varied PC gaming environment. What does that say for Valve’s upcoming 6 x 6 inch console?
VR newshound Brad Lynch posted on X that Valve is receiving many consoles to its warehouse listed as “game consoles.” Lynch previously posted similar tidings related to the controller, which launched just a few weeks after arriving to the U.S.
Even more..
so many… https://t.co/G2CZo3LHTv pic.twitter.com/dqx1CBM529
— Brad Lynch (@SadlyItsBradley) May 3, 2026
The controller came first to help build hype for the console, even though we still don’t have any idea what it will cost. In an interview with Gizmodo prior to the Steam Controller launch, Valve programmer Pierre-Loup Griffais said we would “have news soon” about Steam Machine prices.
Jacqueline Thomas at IGN priced a desktop PC with equivalent performance to a Steam Machine at around $700 back in November last year. In a recent video, reliable AMD leaker Moore’s Law is Dead estimated the Steam Machine could come in around $600, accounting for RAM costs. Griffais told us, “I think we just want to make sure that we take what we think is a good spec kind of this type of machine, and we get it to our users at the cost that it costs us to make it and get it to them.”
“There’s not really any sort of competitive analysis or anything like that,” Griffais continued. “It will naturally end up pretty close to the other things in the PC market because they use the same or similar parts as we do. There are some other considerations there, but overall, it should all be in the same ballpark.”
The Steam Controller is relatively expensive for a gamepad of its capabilities. That hasn’t stopped people from buying it. We’ll see if the Steam Machine’s pricing scheme compared to its supposed performance similarly entices PC gamers who long to become true couch potatoes.
