Valve Announces Its Steam Machine For 2026
For a long time people had been talking and speculating about Valve’s upcoming projects. Now the bomb has been dropped and the rumors have been confirmed, the Steam Machine is real, and it will not arrive alone! It will also come with a new virtual reality headset called Steam Frame, and a new controller, the Steam Controller. The Steam Machine, which promises to be six times more powerful than Steam Deck, where you can even install Windows, will be “a consolized PC” that aims to offer complete freedom to the player. Can you imagine the possibilities? No wonder the announcement has Sony and Microsoft on edge.
The upcoming launch of Valve’s hardware will shake up the market. With the PS6 still in development, firmly aiming at late 2027, now Sony and AMD must keep a new competitor in mind in the playing field. The power of this new console and its companions will be something to keep in mind, even despite the powerful consoles we already have on the market. If you want to get an idea of what it looks like, below you can watch the official presentation video of Valve’s hardware, shared from its official YouTube channel:
Although the official prices and their exact release dates have not yet been confirmed, this move marks Valve’s return to home hardware after the success of its portable Steam Deck, now looking to offer a unified experience to PC players, and at the same time recovering its previously failed Steam Machines project, renewed as a single consolized PC with a compact form factor designed specifically for the television. According to information provided by Valve, this new system will have about six times the power of Steam Deck, allowing not only to run the entire Steam library, but also those more demanding AAA titles!
The new Steam Machine will run on SteamOS, the Linux based operating system standardized on its handheld, but even so the company maintains its open platform philosophy, after all it is still a PC, which means the user is free to install other applications or operating systems such as Windows if they wish. If we think about it, there is a lot of versatility for us as players from this point of view, since we will not miss our familiar programs regardless of which system we choose.
Technical Section
As for the interior of Steam Machine, Valve has renewed its alliance with AMD by integrating a semi customized 6 core 12 thread Ryzen processor, ensuring up to 4.8 GHz, along with an RDNA3 architecture based GPU with 28 Compute Units and 8 GB of GDDR6 VRAM. This setup is supported by 16 GB of DDR5 RAM and NVMe SSD storage options of 512 GB or 2 TB, expandable via high speed micro SD, all inside a chassis that promises to stay cool and quiet, and that also does not skimp on connectivity: WiFi 6E, Bluetooth 5.3, DisplayPort 1.4, HDMI, and a total of five USB ports.
As for the Steam Frame, it is a virtual reality headset that moves away from the complexity of previous models by focusing on lightness (it weighs about one pound) and versatility, and it also has a dual purpose: letting us enjoy native VR games and also play traditional Steam titles on an immersive virtual screen. The strength of this headset will be its hybrid nature, both to run games autonomously and to function through streaming from the PC. Valve will include a 6 GHz wireless adapter with dual receivers, thus keeping audiovisual transmission separate from network management.
Steam Frame also introduces foveated streaming technology, a feature already present in other virtual reality headsets like the PS VR2, which, according to company experts, improves image quality and bandwidth performance by more than 10 times. The standalone mode of this beast will be powered by a Snapdragon 8 Series SoC with a specific adaptation of SteamOS, 16 GB of LPDDR5X RAM, and up to 1 TB of storage. Its LCD screens will offer 2160 x 2160 pixels of resolution per eye with an experimental refresh rate of up to 144 Hz, viewed through customized Pancake lenses with a 110 degree field of view.
And these deathly hallows could not be complete without the resurrection stone, or in this case the promising Steam Controller, which has been expressly designed to be the control center of the entire ecosystem: PC, Steam Deck, Steam Machine, and Steam Frame. This peripheral will offer extreme customization through Steam Input. Speaking of innovation, its most striking feature will be the Steam Controller Puck, a removable module that will act as a low latency wireless transmitter as well as a charging station. This controller will combine traditional controls with an evolution of Valve’s iconic trackpads, which are now much more precise, along with rear buttons, magnetic sticks, gyroscope, and high definition vibration!
So…
Okay, what does all this mean?… Let’s say that with this triple announcement, Valve seems determined to expand the boundaries of PC Gaming beyond the traditional desktop. At the time, Steam Deck proved that you could take your Steam library anywhere. Now, Steam Machine and Steam Frame aim to conquer the living room and the virtual reality environment with an ecosystem that is closed on the hardware side but open on the software side, and whose initial prices the entire community will be watching closely until its launch. Although these devices will not depend on each other, they will show significant synergy as part of a system designed to offer us the best of both wireless gameplay and high end connectivity features.
Now, just like the releases of those games we are passionate about, all we can do is wait, but do not be surprised if you see news related to this coming from other companies like Sony, Xbox, or even Nintendo. But since we cannot confirm anything yet, it is time for you to tell us your opinion about these announcements: Are you one of those who already cannot wait for this new giant to enter the game, or on the contrary do you hope the PS6 breaks the market and faces no competition? Come on, answer, don’t be shy. You know gamer, we’ll be reading you! 😉
Images Source: Valve Official YouTube Channel, X
