Valve dropped three absolute bombs today. The Steam Frame standalone VR
headset. That's going to have to be a separate video. But this one focusing on
the new Steam Machine and yes, the wait
is finally over, the 2026 edition Steam
Controller. Let's start with a little history. Over 10 years ago, Valve
announced their first version of Steam OS, a Linux- based operating system that
would free gamers from the shackles of Microsoft Windows. No, it was a total
commercial flop. But instead of giving
up on Steam machines, Valve doubled down, working with game developers on
Linux native ports of their games and with open- source developers on the
Proton compatibility layer that makes their Steam Deck handheld out of the box
compatible with thousands of Steam games, even ones that only ever shipped
on Windows. The Steam Deck is believed to have sold millions of units at this
point. And no wonder given its great balance of solid gaming and outstanding
affordability. But its mobile form factor has given it certain limitations
and left gamers hungry for something more substantial. And well, here it is.
I'm calling it the lunchbox. One, because it's substantial, like lunch.
Two, because it's cube- shaped like a box. And three, because I think this
thing is going to eat Xbox's lunch.
Okay, that last one was a bit of a reach, but not as far as I'm reaching
for this segue to our sponsor.
>> Hold up. [music]
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In what has become typical Valve fashion, they've been atypically open
about the new Steam Machine, giving us direct access to the engineering folks
who worked on these devices. The only thing I didn't have today was time, so
we're going to get through this as fast as we can. At the heart of the Steam Machine is a six core AMD Zen 4-based
CPU that turbos up to 4.8 8 GHz with 16 gigs of RAM and an 8 gig GPU that they
compared to a 7600 XTish, but they were
also quick to point out that it might not be apples to apples thanks to their
custom software stack and power tuning. Basically, the goal was that pretty much
anything on Steam should run at 4K 60fps
if you're willing to turn down the details and use a little bit of FSR
upscaling. And we saw that on display with Cyberpunk running in the demo room
at these settings. Valve says to expect about six times the performance of the
Steam Deck. Now, I was a little surprised to not see an SoC with shared
memory, but apparently the decision to go for discrete CPU and GPU came down to
balancing cost, power, size, and performance. And also, they just didn't
feel like they needed to. And I guess
Valve was right because they nailed this thing. Compared to a more traditional
ITX small form factor machine like the OG Steam machine reference design, you
can see that it's a lot smaller, more on
par with a highly integrated design like something like the Framework Desktop.
Investment disclosure. Like the Framework Desktop, Valve allows
customization of the front panel using these magnetic plates. And they're going
to provide the CAD files so you can put whatever your heart desires on here.
They even had a machine in the demo room with an e- in display that was showing
system vitals. Pretty darn cool. But unlike the framework, it has a
programmable RGB strip in the front that could be used to personalize your style
or maybe show a progress bar while you switch your TV input and wait for your
game to be downloaded. The sky's is kind of the limit. The front of the device
has a power button, micro SD slot, two USB 3 5 Gbit per second ports. Then the
rest of the IO is in the back where you'll find two USB 2 type A ports, a
USBC 10 Gbit per second port, no display
port on there. That is worth noting. gigabit Ethernet, power in for the
integrated power supply. Good gravy, this thing is compact. As well as an
HDMI 2.0 and DisplayPort 1.4 port. It
is worth noting that HDMI 2.0 port, they have tested it at HDMI 2.1 speeds, but
there are a couple of features that are not implemented, so they can't call it HDMI 2.1. Also at the back, we have a
large 120 mm cooling fan that draws air
from both the intake on the bottom that comes up through the power supply as
well as the large heat sink on the front. We're going to crack this thing
fully open in a sec, but first I want to talk about the steam controller. No, no,
not that steam controller. The new one with the exact same name. Before you
ask, yes, I made my case to Valve that this is unnecessarily confusing. No,
they're not going to change it. The good news is Valve learned a lot from the
first Steam Controller, and this appears to be their most complete offering ever.
To be fair, the original was really cool. I mean, it made non-controller
games finally playable from the couch thanks to their innovative haptic
touchpad. They also unlocked novel input schemes with gesture control or like
swiping with momentum. But they also turned off a lot of folks due to their
uh [clears throat and snorts] deficiency of traditional joysticks.
Well, that's solved. Now, the Steam controller is everything that is great
about the controller on the Steam Deck, but usable when your Steam Deck is in
docked mode or with your Steam machine or with any other PC. Investment
disclosure. On the surface, it offers up a conventional ABXY button layout with a
PlayStation style symmetric joystick design that will work seamlessly out of
the box with basically any game. The trackpads have been repositioned to
better accommodate the arm's natural position while holding a smaller device
compared to the wider Steam Deck. And all of the usual Valve buttons are
included. A Steam button for opening the menu, their quick access button for
bringing up the Steam OS overlay, four rear programmable buttons. The face
buttons are satisfying with a nice amount of resistance, and the D-pad has
been tuned from the Steam Deck for better feel. It feels okay to me, but I
only got a couple minutes with it before Valve blew my [music] mind. The
joysticks are next generation TMR or tunneling magnetoresistant joysticks
boasting superior accuracy and durability even compared to Hall effect
joysticks. And the controller has been designed from the ground up for a
superior gyroscopic aiming or mousing experience with capacitive thumb sticks
and even capacitive grips. So you can configure your gyro to enable or disable
depending on whether you put your thumb on the stick or even by simply loosening
your grip, say to recenter and then reactivate gyroscopic aiming. They had a
great demo with Bellatro showing how you can use the game's built-in controller
compatibility like a pleb. Or hear me
out, trackpads with the right for movement and the left one split down the
middle for left and right click. or hear me out again, gyro mouse using the face
buttons for clicks. And if you don't care about gyro aiming, these capacitive
inputs are all remappable as well, opening up a whole world of
possibilities. Let's go even deeper. In addition to the
haptic texture-like feedback that you know and love from Valve's previous
touchpads, the Steam Controller has been upgraded with large rumble motors for
better immersion and a large battery that they claim should be good for 35
hours in the most demanding applications and even better if you don't need quite
as much rumble. But I haven't even talked about the best part. If you've
ever gamed over Bluetooth, you know that it can be inconsistent at best. Valve
solution, the puck. Every Steam controller comes with a wireless dongle
that clips magnetically to the Steam Controller using a couple of nice strong
alignment magnets. And it uses a proprietary 2.4 GHz wireless interface
that Valve claims is good for about 8 milliseconds endto-end latency and
offers up superior resiliency when you're using multiple controllers. It
allows four controllers per puck. Though that's not as good as the Xbox dongle,
which can do eight, but Valve has tested up to four pucks on a single system for
a maximum of 16 players, meaning that you're probably going to run out of
seats on your couch before you run out of controller compatibility. The last
chef kiss on top is an IR emitter that's
cozied up beside the power LED to help you find your controller when you're in
VR. I love it. Now, let's get back to the steam machine who uh got naked while
we were busy. [laughter] Oh, you. While
Valve's goal was to build something that is zero hassle, grabbing game for the
non-tinkerers, they really were laser focused on a console-like experience
with quick suspend and resume and modern standby so that your games are already
updated when you sit down to play. They also fully acknowledge that there are
folks out there, guilty, who are tinkerers, and they've come up with an
ingenious design for this thing that allows it to cater to both audiences. in
advance. No, you're not going to be swapping out the BGA soldered
processors, but what you can do is
upgrade the storage with next to no hassle to a 2230 or larger 2280 sized
M.2 drive. And while we couldn't go that deep today, Valve also confirmed that
the memory uses standard sodium slots.
Finally, while Valve hasn't actually told iFixit that this product is coming
yet, they did say that they're hoping to continue their partnership that they've
had on the Steam Deck making replacement parts available for end users. Awesome.
Since we're in here, by the way, there are some really cool details that I'd love to highlight. The power supply, for
one thing, is fully integrated to the point where it's actually part of the
chassis and the cooling solution pulls air directly through it, which avoids
any need for it to have its own fan. The aforementioned Delta cooling fan is
actually slightly thicker than the standard 25mm for extrastatic pressure
and it includes antenna mounts that are integrated into it along with IO mounts.
Cool, right? Oh, this is actually a great look at the four antennas. So,
this is the back of the device where you have your two antennas for Wi-Fi 6E.
Then, if we flip it around to the front, we've got one antenna for Bluetooth peripherals and another one that is
dedicated to your Steam controller or controllers. So that puck that's
included with your controller is actually extra and you could chuck it on
another PC or next to your couch for charging. A major question mark though
is of course price. Valve wasn't able to give any specific numbers due to
[clears throat] rapidly evolving market conditions. But they will obviously have
it nailed down when the Steam Machine launches in Q1 2026 alongside the new
Steam Controller. They did give me one hint though. They said that while they
expect it to be very competitively priced with a PC, that it will be priced
like a PC rather than like a console with games subsidizing the upfront
hardware purchase. They wouldn't say why, but if I had to guess, I'd say it's
partially to avoid stepping on the margin opportunities of their potential
partners for Steam games and Steam software, but also because they
recognize that the Steam machine is a full-fledged PC capable of being used as
a full-fledged PC. There's no guarantee then that uh say a corporate purchase of
10,000 of these things would result in a single game sale. So they really do need
to protect the sustainability of their hardware business. Another major
question mark is where the heck is standalone Steam OS for custom PC
builders? Well, we aren't going to get a formal
Steam OS release for BYO hardware configurations anytime soon, but Valve
has expanded the list of supported thirdparty devices, and they have
supported installing the Steam Deck recovery image on AMD CPU and GPU
systems for some time and recently updated it to support their latest Zen 5
and RDNA4 architecture processors. So,
nothing prevents you from building your own Steam Machine and installing the
software for free. though you will miss out on some things. HDMI CEC control for
instance um required Valve to build a custom motherboard in order to have your
you know computer turn on alongside your AV receiver and to get that on a BYO PC
would require some serious cooperation between hardware makers that uh I
[snorts] don't know if we should hold our breath for but the bulk of the
experience should work pretty much out of the box. We may even get a release
that supports a broader range of hardware in the future. But the vibe I'm
picking up on around here is that it really depends on better support for
Intel and especially NVIDIA GPUs. I'm
also picking up this vibe to our sponsor.
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Brother,
I tried to get through everything, but I only had about 4 hours to get briefed on
everything right and film. So, my apologies. Now, assuming that that one's
up yet, go check out the video on the Steam Frame VR headset because it's a
game changer. It's a big deal. Please make it clear
that this is not a real product.