21 hours ago
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👀 Valve has reportedly imported 50 tons of “games consoles” that may or may not be the Steam Machine
🤔 Import records show a change in weight to Valve’s previous shipments of the same kind, which could mean a different device to the Steam Deck
📈 The measurements work out to 50 or so tons of Steam Machines, suggesting around 20,000 consoles in the last 10 days
🕵️♀️ Shipping manifests also showed large shipments of “Xbox controllers” in the weeks leading up to the Steam Controller’s launch
Valve has reportedly imported 50 tons of game consoles that may or may not be the Steam Machine, suggesting a launch could be imminent.
As per import records seen by The Verge, Valve has reportedly imported a large amount of hardware between April 30 and May 1 on top of the “ton” of shipments that Valve watcher Brad Lynch mentioned late last week.
The outlet theorizes that, as much as the Steam Deck was also designated as a “game console” for import purposes, there are good reasons to believe that this set of imported “game consoles” may be the Steam Machine instead.
Supposedly, Valve has imported nearly 100 tons of product into the USA in the last two months, with two cargo ships, Ever Logic and Ever Shine, bringing ten 40-foot shipping containers from China to Los Angeles and Tacoma, Washington, weighing 140 US tons in total, or 127,228kg.
The containers each weigh 3,700kg each when empty, making it less than the 140 tons of product coming into the US, although the different weight overall against previous shipments might suggest they have a new product inside.
According to The Verge, each of Valve’s previous 40-foot containers has held up to 42 packages for a total gross weight of approximately 14,500kg. This was as true as late as April 18, when the Ever Sigma ship dropped off a package at Tacoma with Valve’s distributor Ingram Micro, which may have had Steam Decks inside.
A few days later, Ever Shine brought a 42-package container that weighed 12,608kg – some 2,000kg lighter than usual – to Tacoma. Import records show that this isn’t a new kind of container, but something with different contents inside.
Valve has had seven shipments like this since April 23, with an average weight of 12,600kg. Taking the 3,700kg weight of the containers into account, the shipments work out to 53,124kg of product, packaging, pallets and padding, working out to 50 or so tons of apparent “games consoles”.
This works out to potentially around 20,000 Steam Machines, if a standalone retail package, although some could be bundled with a controller or other items that increase the weight.
It is possible that all the containers have Steam Decks inside and that something else may account for the change in weight, although in any guise, Valve is getting hardware moving again in a large way.
This previously occurred with the Steam Controller a few weeks ago, when folks spotted it in shipping manifests as an “Xbox controller”.
Valve launched the $100 Steam Controller this week, and it sold out in a matter of 30 minutes after receiving strong reviews in the tech press last week.
We still don’t know when the Steam Machine is going to launch or how much it’s going to cost, even though Valve has maintained it’ll launch this year for sure.
Reece Bithrey is a journalist with bylines for Trusted Reviews, Digital Foundry, PC Gamer, TechRadar and more. He also has his own blog, UNTITLED, and graduated from the University of Leeds with a degree in International History and Politics in 2023.
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