Valve has done it. It has rebooted the very thing that imploded a decade ago, packing the debris neatly into three shiny new products with fresh optimism and a whole lot of SteamOS confidence. Enter the Steam Machine, Steam Frame, and Steam Controller. It is a full Steam Hardware revival, and the vibe is “third time’s the charm”. Or “Gabe wants a living room empire again”. Whichever works for you.
Gabe Newell said PC gamers kept asking for “more ways to play all the great titles in their Steam libraries”. In other words, Steam Deck users plugging their handhelds into TVs convinced Valve to go big. Literally. And so here we are.
Steam Machine
Valve’s Steam Machine, codename Fremont, is back from the dead. Fortunately, it is not the confusing, hundred-models-from-random-OEMs fiasco of 2015. This time, Valve is building the thing itself, and it looks like a GameCube that hit the gym and started drinking RGB smoothies.
This compact living-room PC measures 152 mm tall, 162.4 mm deep, and 156 mm wide. It comes in 512 GB and 2 TB SSD options and weighs 2.6 kg. Inside, it has a semi-custom AMD Zen 4 chip pushing up to 4.8 GHz, paired with a beefy RDNA3 GPU hitting 2.45 GHz sustained clock. Ray tracing is supported, and the whole thing targets 4K at 60 FPS with FSR. Valve says it is six times more powerful than the Steam Deck, which means it can probably run Cyberpunk without sweating bullets.
It has DisplayPort 1.4 supporting up to 4K at 240 Hz or 8K at 60 Hz, plus HDMI 2.0 for 4K at 120 Hz. There is Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.3, and a custom internal power supply that doubles as part of the chassis. It even has a customizable 17-LED RGB bar so your media console looks like it is preparing for takeoff.
Valve also spent an alarming amount of effort on cooling simulations, designing the fan first so the chassis had to fit around it. This is peak “engineer energy”.
Specs summary:
- Zen 4 CPU, RDNA3 GPU, up to 4.8 GHz
- 16 GB DDR5 + 8 GB GDDR6 VRAM
- 512 GB or 2 TB SSD
- 4K 60 FPS target
- 120 mm cooling system
- Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.3
- 152 × 162.4 × 156 mm, 2.6 kg
Pricing is to be announced.
Steam Frame
Steam Frame is Valve’s new standalone VR headset powered by a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip. It sounds like someone fused a Valve Index with a Steam Deck, sprinkled in some sci-fi, and called it a day.
The core module weighs just 185 g and detaches from the headstrap with three clips, like popping off a LEGO brick worth hundreds of dollars. It has 2160 × 2160 LCD panels per eye, pancake optics, and up to 144 Hz refresh rate. That is a lot of pixels flying into your eyeballs.
The headset supports standalone VR, PC-streamed VR, and even non-VR flat games in virtual cinema mode. With foveated streaming, it only sends full-resolution where your eyes are looking, which is both clever and a little spooky. Eye tracking runs at 8–12 ms, controller tracking hits up to 250 updates per second, and the whole wireless system sits on a dedicated Wi-Fi 6E adapter for low-latency streaming up to 15 meters (~50 feet) away.
Specs summary:
- Weight: 440 g with full headstrap
- Display: dual 2160 × 2160 LCD
- Refresh rate: 72–144 Hz
- Processor: Snapdragon 8 Gen 3
- Battery: 21.6 Wh
- Storage: 256 GB or 1 TB
Valve says the price will be “less than Index”. In other words, still not cheap. Pricing to be announced.
Steam Controller
The Steam Controller is back, and thankfully not in the “five-dollar liquidation bin” form. Codename Triton, the new controller has next-generation TMR magnetic thumbsticks, capacitive touch on everything, including ABXY and D-pad, pressure-sensitive haptic trackpads, and four assignable grip buttons.
It supports Windows, Linux, Mac, iOS, Android, Steam Deck, Steam Machine, and Steam Frame. The included wireless Puck provides a low-latency 2.4 GHz connection at around 8 ms end-to-end, and up to four controllers per Puck. The rechargeable battery delivers over 35 hours of playtime.
Specs summary:
- Size: 111 × 159 × 57 mm
- Weight: 292 g
- Battery: 8.39 Wh
- Connectivity: proprietary 2.4 GHz, Bluetooth, USB-C
- Haptics: 4 LRA motors
- Thumbsticks: TMR magnetic
Pricing is also to be announced.
Valve plans to ship all three products in early 2026 across Steam Deck regions plus Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Until official pricing drops, all we can do is stare at the wishlisting page and imagine the burn hole in our wallets.
Images: Valve.
