Today (November 13) Valve unexpectedly released a series of new hardware products, including a new generation of small mini PC "Steam Machine", a new controller and a head-mounted VR device "Steam Frame".These new devices are an important sign of Valve's continued investment in its gaming ecosystem.They are expected to be launched within 2026.
Steam Machine uses the same SteamOS system as SteamDeck. It is 15.2 cm high (14.8 cm excluding foot pads), 16.24 cm deep, and 15.6 cm wide. It is approximately a square and weighs 2.6 kg.Using customized AMD Zen 4 CPU (6 cores/12 threads, maximum frequency 4.8GHz) and RDNA3 GPU (28 computing units, maximum frequency 2.45GHz).Valve said its performance is more than 6 times that of SteamDeck, and its performance is very powerful.
In terms of display, it uses FSR upscaling technology to support 4K/60FPS games and ray tracing.The memory is 16GB DDR5+8GB GDDR6 video memory.In terms of storage, there are two options of 512GB and 2TB SSD, which can be expanded through a microSD card slot.
The corresponding controller "Steam Controller" weighs 292 g and is equipped with a new-generation technology magnetic rocker. It also has a touchpad, gyroscope and back buttons, and can be used with computers, Steam Deck, Steam Machine, and Steam Frame.
Steam Frame is a new generation of independent head-mounted device that extends the functions of Steam Deck and Steam Machine to the VR field.It adopts a lightweight modular design with a core weight of 185 grams (440 grams including the headband and other controller accessories).Equipped with the Steam OS system, it can be used as an independent wireless VR headset or as a dual-mode VR device connected to a PC.
A 4nm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor and 16GB LPDDR5X memory are used internally.Storage is available in 256GB and 1TB versions, and can be expanded via microSD card.The included wireless adapter supports WiFi 6E.The most striking thing about Steam Frame is that it supports the entire Steam game library and is compatible with VR games and traditional PC games.Equipped with foveated rendering technology, which uses eye tracking to provide the highest resolution where the player is looking, thereby easing the processing load and communication data volume.
The included "Steam Frame Controllers" track movement in six directions (translation and rotation) and are built on capacitive sensing, which detects player finger touches without having to press a button.It is also equipped with a magnetic rocker (TMR) similar to the "Steam Controller". It uses AA batteries and the official claims that it can last up to 40 hours.
