Valve shocks the competition! It introduced a new console, VR headset, and controller

Exactly ten years after the first generation of Steam Machines ended very tragically, Valve is bringing this concept back to the scene. This time, however, the manufacturer is not collaborating with partners like Alienware or Lenovo – Valve is producing the Steam Machine itself, as a direct extension of the successful Steam Deck into the world of home consoles.

Along with the Steam Machine, Valve also unveiled the Steam Frame VR headset and a new Steam Controller. All three products are united by the Linux-based SteamOS operating system and the ambition to create a complete gaming ecosystem from a handheld console to the living room and virtual reality.

Steam Machine: a gaming cube for your TV

The new Steam Machine looks like a black cube measuring approximately 15 × 15 × 16 centimeters. Valve designed it to fit into standard shelves under a TV, which tend to have a similar height. The fact that the result is an almost perfect cube was reportedly not the original intention.

The front panel is magnetic and interchangeable. Valve showed several prototypes, including a wooden motif or the Heavy character from Team Fortress 2. It’s not yet clear if the company will sell alternative panels, but it plans to release 3D models so you can make your own or wait for third-party accessories.

Below the panel, an RGB LED strip illuminates, which can show the status of game downloads, notify you of messages, or simply glow in a color of your choice. If the LED bothers you, you can easily turn it off.

What’s inside: AMD hardware

The Steam Machine is powered by a semi-custom AMD chip built on the Zen 4 architecture (6 cores, 12 threads) and graphics built around RDNA 3 with 28 compute units. The total GPU power consumption reaches 110-130 W, which is significantly more than the Steam Deck, but still a fraction of what desktop gaming PCs consume. The internal power supply has a capacity of 200 W.

Valve claims that the Steam Machine is six times more powerful than the Steam Deck. In practice, its performance should roughly correspond to a mobile RTX 4060 or RX 7600 graphics card. On paper, it’s no monster, but Valve is aiming for 4K gaming at 60 fps with FSR upscaling. During testing by some editorial teams who had the honor of trying out the new hardware, Cyberpunk 2077 ran playable in 4K with FSR on Performance, though not entirely smoothly – switching to 1080p reportedly helped significantly.

Inside the cube, most of the space is occupied by a giant cooler, which simultaneously cools the processor, graphics, memory, and power supply. On the back, there is a single 120mm fan with a special blade geometry. The inspiration reportedly came from server racks, where good airflow is crucial. And it works – during testing, the Steam Machine was practically inaudible while running Cyberpunk.

Memory consists of 16 GB DDR5 RAM and 8 GB GDDR6 VRAM. Valve offers storage in two variants: 512 GB or 2 TB. The SSD uses the 2230 format like the Steam Deck, but the slot also supports more common 2280 drives, which are cheaper and more accessible. Replacing the drive is easy – just unscrew the bottom part. RAM is also replaceable (SO-DIMM format), but it requires partial disassembly and removal of the cooler.

On the back, you’ll find DisplayPort 1.4, HDMI 2.0, two USB-A 2.0, one USB-C 3.2 Gen 2, and gigabit Ethernet. In the front, there are two more USB-A 3.0 and a microSD card slot for up to 2 TB. HDMI 2.1 is missing, which is a shame for 4K 120 Hz gaming, but AMD graphics don’t support it on Linux anyway.

Steam Frame: a VR headset that does more than VR

The second piece of hardware is the Steam Frame – a standalone VR headset with a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor and 16 GB of RAM. However, Valve primarily presents it as a streaming device that wirelessly streams games from your PC via a special 6GHz dongle. This dongle bypasses home Wi-Fi and creates a dedicated channel between the PC and the headset.

The Frame has two LCD displays with a resolution of 2160 × 2160 pixels per eye, features pancake lenses for a thinner design, and a refresh rate of up to 120 Hz (experimentally even 144 Hz). The field of view reaches 110 degrees horizontally. Eye tracking is used for foveated streaming – meaning only the part of the image you are currently looking at is streamed in high quality, while peripheral vision receives a lower resolution. The data stream savings are massive, and one doesn’t notice the difference.

The headset is modular – the base unit with optics, processor, and cameras weighs only 190 grams and can be removed from the strap. The strap contains a battery (21.6 Wh), speakers, and a microSD slot. The battery lasts several hours during streaming, and about an hour during standalone gaming with full processor performance. However, you can recharge it with a power bank via the USB-C on the back.

The Steam Frame can also run regular non-VR games on a large virtual screen. Valve sees Frame as a way to enjoy the entire Steam library – not just VR titles. For standalone mode, it uses the FEX translation layer, which translates x86 games to the ARM processor, similar to how Proton translates Windows games to Linux.

Steam Controller: Steam Deck in your hands

The new Steam Controller looks like a Steam Deck cut in half. It has a complete set of buttons, analog sticks, trackpads, and gyroscopic control. On the right side, you’ll find four buttons like on a classic gamepad, and a D-pad on the left. The analog sticks use TMR (tunnel magnetoresistance) technology, which is similar to the Hall effect – virtually zero risk of drift.

The controller communicates wirelessly via a 2.4GHz protocol outside of standard Bluetooth, which reduces latency. The Steam Machine has this receiver integrated, so you don’t have to sacrifice a USB port. However, a dongle is also included in the controller package – it also serves as a magnetic charging station. No cable, you just place the controller on the dongle.

Thanks to compatibility with the Steam Deck, the controller has thousands of community configurations for various games from day one. It works with any device running Steam or the Steam Link app – PC, Mac, tablets, and phones.

Price, availability, and the great unknown

Valve has not announced the price of any of the products. The company promises that the Steam Machine will be competitively priced with a similarly equipped gaming PC, but what that means in numbers, we don’t know. Given that it uses a generation-old GPU and processor, one can hope for a price under 1000 dollars (perhaps 20 – 25 thousand Czech crowns), but this is just speculation.

All three products will arrive in early 2026 in the USA, Canada, UK, Germany, France, Australia, and via distributor Komodo to Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. Unfortunately, the Czech Republic is not on the list – just like with the Steam Deck, we will have to wait or improvise.

Valve also did not disclose how the Steam Machine will work with anti-cheat systems that do not function on SteamOS. Games like Battlefield 6, Fortnite, or Destiny 2 do not run on Linux, which could be a dealbreaker for some players. A solution exists – you can install Windows 11, but by doing so, you lose the benefits of SteamOS, including better performance.

Second attempt at a Steam console

The first Steam Machines from 2015 failed mainly due to poor game compatibility with SteamOS and a strange controller with trackpads instead of analog sticks. Ten years of work and the success of the Steam Deck have changed the situation enough that Valve has the courage to try again.

This time, however, it’s not a direct competitor to PlayStation or Xbox. The Steam Machine is more of a compact gaming PC for people who already have a Steam library and want to play in the living room without building their own PC. If Valve hits the right price and performance matches the promises, it could work.

The question remains whether the market for such a product is large enough. Valve claims that 20% of Steam Deck owners use a dock to connect to a TV – which is not a negligible number given millions of units sold. The Steam Machine targets precisely them.

Are you interested in the Steam Machine or Steam Frame?

Source: Steam, PC Gamer, IGN