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Valve dropped three absolute bombs today. The Steam Frame standalone VR headset,

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that's gonna have to be a separate video. This one focusing on the new Steam Machine,

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and yes, the wait is finally over, the 2026 edition Steam Controller.

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Let's start with a little history. Over 10 years ago, Valve announced their first version

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of SteamOS, a Linux-based operating system that would free gamers from the shackles

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of Microsoft Windows. No, it was a total commercial flop.

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But instead of giving up on Steam Machines, Valve doubled down, working with game developers

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on Linux native ports of their games, and with open source developers

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on the proton compatibility layer that makes their Steam Deck handheld

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out of the box compatible with thousands of Steam games, even ones that only ever shipped on Windows.

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The Steam Deck is believed to have sold millions of units at this point, and no wonder,

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given its great balance of solid gaming and outstanding affordability.

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But its mobile form factor has given it certain limitations, and left gamers hungry

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for something more substantial. And well, here it is.

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I'm calling it the lunchbox. One, because it's substantial, like lunch.

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Two, because it's cube-shaped, like a box. And three, because I think this thing is going

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to eat Xbox's lunch. Okay, that last one was a bit of a reach.

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But not as far as I'm reaching for this segue

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to our sponsor. In what has become typical Valve fashion,

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they've been atypically open about the new Steam machine,

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giving us direct access to the engineering folks who worked on these devices.

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The only thing I didn't have today was time, so we're going to get through this as fast as we can.

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At the heart of the Steam machine is a six-core AMD Zen 4-based CPU

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that turbos up to 4.8 gigahertz with 16 gigahertz.

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And it's a very powerful machine, and it's a very powerful machine.

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And it's a very powerful machine. 4.8 gigahertz with 16 gigs of RAM and an eight gig GPU

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that they compared to a 7,600 XT-ish.

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But they were also quick to point out that it might not be apples to apples

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thanks to their custom software stack and power tuning. Basically, the goal was that pretty much anything on Steam

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should run at 4K 60 FPS, if you're willing to turn down the details

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and use a little bit of FSR upscaling. And we saw that on display with Cyberpunk

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running in the demo room at these settings. Valve says to expect about six times

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the performance of the Steam Deck. Now, I was a little surprised to not see an SOC

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with shared memory, but apparently the decision to go for a discrete CPU and GPU

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came down to balancing cost, power, size, and performance.

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And also they just didn't feel like they needed to.

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And I guess Valve was right because they nailed this thing.

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Compared to a more traditional ITX small form factor machine

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like the OG Steam machine reference design, you can see that it's a lot smaller,

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more on par with a highly integrated design like something like the framework desktop investment disclosure.

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Like the framework desktop, Valve allows customization of the front panel

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using these magnetic plates and they're gonna provide the CAD files

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so you can put whatever your heart desires on here. They even had a machine in the demo room

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with an E-ink display that was showing system vitals. Pretty darn cool, but unlike the framework,

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it has a programmable RGB strip in the front that could be used to personalize your style

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or maybe show a progress bar while you switch your TV input and wait for your game to be downloaded.

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The sky's kind of the limit. The front of the device has a power button, micro SD slot,

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two USB three, five gigabit per second ports,

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then the rest of the IO is in the back where you'll find two USB two type A ports,

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a USB-C 10 gigabit per second port, no DisplayPort on there, that is worth noting,

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gigabit Ethernet, power in for the integrated power supply.

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Good gravy, this thing is compact, as well as an HDMI 2.0 and DisplayPort 1.4 port.

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It is worth noting that HDMI 2.0 port, they have tested it at HDMI 2.1 speeds,

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but there are a couple of features that are not implemented so they can't call it HDMI 2.1.

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Also at the back, we have a large 120 millimeter cooling fan

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that draws air from both the intake on the bottom

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that comes up through the power supply as well as the large heat sink on the front.

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We're gonna crack this thing fully open in a sec, but first I wanna talk about the steam controller.

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No, no, not that steam controller, the new one with the exact same name.

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Before you ask, yes, I made my case to Valve that this is unnecessarily confusing.

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No, they're not going to change it. The good news is Valve learned a lot

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from the first steam controller and this appears to be their most complete offering ever.

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To be fair, the original was really cool. I mean, it made non-controller games

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finally playable from the couch thanks to their innovative haptic touchpad.

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They also unlocked novel input schemes with gesture controller like swiping with momentum,

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but they also turned off a lot of folks

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due to their deficiency of traditional joysticks.

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Well, that's solved now. The steam controller is everything that is great

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about the controller on the steam deck, but usable when your steam deck is in dock mode

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or with your steam machine or with any other PC investment disclosure.

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On the surface, it offers up a conventional ABXY button layout

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with a PlayStation style symmetric joystick design that will work seamlessly out of the box

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with basically any game. The track pads have been repositioned

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to better accommodate the ARM's natural position

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while holding a smaller device compared to the wider steam deck

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and all of the usual Valve buttons are included. A steam button for opening the menu,

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their quick access button for bringing up the SteamOS overlay,

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four rear programmable buttons. The face buttons are satisfying

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with a nice amount of resistance and the D-pad has been tuned from the steam deck

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for better feel. It feels okay to me, but I only got a couple of minutes with it

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before Valve blew my mind. The joysticks are next generation TMR

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or tunneling magneto resistant joysticks boasting superior accuracy and durability

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even compared to hull effect joysticks. And the controller has been designed from the ground up

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for a superior gyroscopic aiming or mousing experience

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with capacitive thumb sticks and even capacitive grips.

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So you can configure your gyro to enable or disable

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depending on whether you put your thumb on the stick or even by simply loosening your grip,

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say to re-center and then reactivate gyroscopic aiming.

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They had a great demo with Bellatro showing how you can use the game's built-in

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controller compatibility like a PLAB or hear me out.

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Track pads with the right for movement and the left one split down the middle

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for left and right click. Or hear me out again. Gyro mouse using the face buttons for clicks.

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And if you don't care about gyro aiming, these capacitive inputs are all remappable as well

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opening up a whole world of possibilities.

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Let's go even deeper. In addition to the haptic texture-like feedback

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that you know and love from Valve's previous touch pads, the steam controller has been upgraded

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with large rumble motors for better immersion and a large battery that they claim should be good

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for 35 hours in the most demanding applications and even better if you don't need quite as much rumble.

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But I haven't even talked about the best part. If you've ever gamed over Bluetooth,

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you know that it can be inconsistent at best.

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Valve solution, the puck. Every steam controller comes with a wireless dongle

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that clips magnetically to the steam controller using a couple of nice strong alignment magnets.

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And it uses a proprietary 2.4 gigahertz wireless interface

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that Valve claims is good for about eight milliseconds end-to-end latency and offers up superior resiliency

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when you're using multiple controllers. It allows four controllers per puck,

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so that's not as good as the Xbox dongle, which can do eight, but Valve has tested up

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to four pucks on a single system for a maximum of 16 players,

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meaning that you're probably gonna run out of seats on your couch before you run out of controller compatibility.

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The last mwah chef kiss on top is an IR emitter

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that's cozyed up beside the power LED to help you find your controller when you're in VR.

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I love it. Now let's get back to the steam machine who got naked while we were busy, oh you.

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While Valve's goal was to build something that is zero hassle, grab and game for the non-tinkverse,

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they really were laser focused on a console-like experience

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with quick suspend and resume and modern standby so that your games are already updated

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when you sit down to play. They also fully acknowledged that there are folks out there

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guilty who are tinkerers and they've come up with an ingenious design for this thing

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that allows it to cater to both audiences. In advance, no, you're not gonna be swapping out

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the BGA soldered processors, but what you can do

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is upgrade the storage with next to no hassle

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to a 2230 or larger 2280 sized M.2 drive

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and while we couldn't go that deep today, Valve also confirmed that the memory

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uses standard Sodium slots. Finally, while Valve hasn't actually told iFixit

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that this product is coming yet, they did say that they're hoping to continue

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their partnership that they've had on the Steam Deck, making replacement parts available for end users.

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Awesome. Since we're in here by the way, there are some really cool details

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that I'd love to highlight. The power supply for one thing is fully integrated

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to the point where it's actually part of the chassis and the cooling solution pulls air directly through it

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which avoids any need for it to have its own fan. The aforementioned Delta cooling fan

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is actually slightly thicker than the standard 25 millimeter

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for extra static pressure and it includes antenna mounts

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that are integrated into it along with IO mounts.

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Cool, right? Oh, this is actually a great look at the four antennas.

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So this is the back of the device where you have your two antennas for Wi-Fi 6E.

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Then if we flip it around to the front, we've got one antenna for Bluetooth peripherals

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and another one that is dedicated to your Steam controller or controllers.

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So that puck that's included with your controller is actually extra and you could chuck it on another PC

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or next to your couch for charging. A major question mark though is of course price.

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Valve wasn't able to give any specific numbers due to rapidly evolving market conditions

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but they will obviously have it nailed down when the Steam machine launches in Q1 2026

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alongside the new Steam controller. They did give me one hint though.

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They said that while they expect it to be very competitively priced with a PC,

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that it will be priced like a PC rather than like a console

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with games subsidizing the upfront hardware purchase.

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They wouldn't say why but if I had to guess, I'd say it's partially to avoid stepping on the margin

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opportunities of their potential partners for Steam games and Steam software

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but also because they recognize that the Steam machine is a full-fledged PC capable of being used

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as a full-fledged PC. There's no guarantee then that say a corporate purchase

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of 10,000 of these things would result in a single game sale.

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So they really do need to protect the sustainability of their hardware business.

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Another major question mark is where the heck

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is standalone Steam OS for custom PC builders?

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Well, we aren't gonna get a formal Steam OS release for BYO hardware configurations anytime soon

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but Valve has expanded the list of supported

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third-party devices and they have supported installing the Steam Deck recovery image

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on AMD CPU and GPU systems for some time

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and recently updated it to support their latest Zen5

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and RDNA4 architecture processors. So nothing prevents you from building your own Steam machine

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and installing the software for free. Though you will miss out on some things.

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HDMI CEC control for instance, required Valve to build a custom motherboard

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in order to have your computer turn on alongside your AV receiver.

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And to get that on a BYO PC would require

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some serious cooperation between hardware makers that I don't know if we should hold our breath for.

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But the bulk of the experience should work pretty much out of the box.

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We may even get a release that supports a broader range of hardware in the future

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but the vibe I'm picking up on around here is that it really depends on better support for Intel

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and especially NVIDIA GPUs. I'm also picking up this vibe to our sponsor.

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I tried to get through everything but I only had about four hours to get briefed on everything right and film so my apologies.

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Now, assuming that that one's up yet, go check out the video on the Steam Frame VR headset

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because it's a game changer, it's a big deal. Please make it clear that this is not a real product.

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Sorry.