One STEAM to rule them all - Steam Machine and Frame thread

[Misfit]

Or how 2026 could be very expensive!

I'll let KlaxonCow explain...



And not to spoil the surprise, but the video basically keeps low-key dropping bombshells on you, one after the other. It tries to lull you into thinking it's just about the Steam Deck, but then goes - Bam! Bam! Bam! - announcing a bunch of new Steam hardware:

- New Steam Controller (essentially the Steam Deck controls as a stand-alone controller)
- New Steam Machine (looking at it, maybe it should be called "the Steam Cube")
- New VR hardware (called "the Steam Frame").

All are going to be based on SteamOS.

So this also suggests that Valve have, indeed, finally perfected their generic "SteamOS 3.0" release and, therefore, as well as Valve's own "Steam Machine" flagship PC console, if we get that generic "SteamOS 3.0" release then any PC hardware can be turned into a Steam Machine. But they've learnt their lesson from the previous "Steam Machines" and there will - like with the Steam Deck - be a Valve-produced Steam Machine. A flagship, which'll be optimised and provides the reference model.

And, from the video, the new VR headset looks very lightweight and allows streaming from the PC to the headset (as well as running games locally, as it'll have PC hardware inside - I guess, basically, a Steam Deck strapped to your face). Looks like the Meta Quest and is probably aimed as being a rival to it, but that you can stream wirelessly from your PC to the headset, so your PC does all the heavy lifting.

There's also the fact that it's a joint announcement as "a new open hardware ecosystem", so these will all work together and be based off SteamOS 3.0, like the Steam Deck.

And we have a date of early 2026 for these.

And pulling the specs off Valve's hardware pages, the Steam Machine will have:

CPU: Semi-custom AMD Zen 4 6C / 12T up to 4.8 GHz, 30W TDP
GPU: Semi-Custom AMD RDNA3 28CUs, 2.45GHz max sustained clock, 110W TDP
RAM: 16GB DDR5 + 8GB GDDR6 VRAM

As for the Steam Frame VR:

Screens: 2160 x 2160 LCD (per eye), 72-144Hz refresh rate (144Hz experimental)
Optics: Custom pancake lenses, Large FOV (up to 110 degrees)
CPU: 4 nm Snapdragon® 8 Gen 3, ARM64
RAM: 16GB Unified LPDDR5X RAM
Inside-out camera based tracking

But which hides another bombshell within it. Because it runs SteamOS - yet it's an ARM processor.

So Valve are taking advantage of something else that Linux can do that Windows can't, and they've ported SteamOS to ARM.

Raising the possibility that the general "SteamOS" release will not just run on any PC (x86) hardware, but also on any ARM platform as well. Could Proton start doing for ARM, what it did for running Windows games on Linux?

https://store.steampowered.com/sale/hardware

[Misfit]

Some initial reactions, the Frame sounds very impressive, foveated Streaming...



And Digital Foundry on the Machine - not the most powerful, but to have a simple Steam experience on the TV will be awesome and you know devs will optimise to it as they do the Deck...

[Misfit]

And pulling the specs off Valve's hardware pages, the Steam Machine will have:

As for the Steam Frame VR:

Screens: 2160 x 2160 LCD (per eye), 72-144Hz refresh rate (144Hz experimental)
Optics: Custom pancake lenses, Large FOV (up to 110 degrees)
CPU: 4 nm Snapdragon® 8 Gen 3, ARM64
RAM: 16GB Unified LPDDR5X RAM
Inside-out camera based tracking

This also means they now have Steam running on Arm. Android stuff can sideload, and all the Quest/Side Quest stuff is Android based and they even have PC stuff running on the headset.

[Deckard]

Needs to be a decent price though - as in a low'ish price. Certainly nothing above 400 quid.

[MattyP]

Fantastic news! Having ditched my Windows box earlier this year I have an ophaned Steam library at the moment. Some games work with MacOS but not many in my library. Having tried SteamLink in the past and not getting a smooth experience the Steam machine looks to be the thing that I need to get my Steam library on the TV.

See how much it is I guess and when it releases. Just wishlisted it and a controller. Day 1 if the price is right.

[MattyP]

Needs to be a decent price though - as in a low'ish price. Certainly nothing above 400 quid.

Think £400 is overly optimistic! Expect this will be somewhere around £600. Especially as PC component prices seem to be going silly at the moment. My prediction is £650. (Steam machine). I expect the Frame will be targeting Oculus prices. £499?

[Misfit]

Pretty sure the Machine comes with a controller.

Like many, my Stream library is massive and it so easy to get free/cheap stuff that it always grows.

The Deck has helped me make a dint in it, but also made me buy more.

Spec wise I think they’re going console rather than PC pricing. Well I hope!

It’s so cute too!

Frame feels like it could be expensive.

[MattyP]

Pretty sure the Machine comes with a controller.

Like many, my Stream library is massive and it so easy to get free/cheap stuff that it always grows.

The Deck has helped me make a dint in it, but also made me buy more.

Spec wise I think they’re going console rather than PC pricing. Well I hope!

It’s so cute too!

Frame feels like it could be expensive.

Yes absolutely love the form factor of the Machine. It's what I've been hoping for. Compact quiet box that will sit nicely under the TV. Standard spec for developers to target too. They are using a similar verified mechanism they have on the deck so make life a bit easier.

[KlaxonCow]

It will all be about price.

But, looking at the specs, the Steam Machine is not aimed at being the most pimped-out PC hardware ever but to be a console-like experience and, therefore, surely will be priced competitively against console rivals.

And this also makes perfect sense as the strategy, because if we get that generic "SteamOS" release then anyone who wants to go balls-to-the-wall for maximum performance would be creating their own custom PC and could just install SteamOS on it. It doesn't actually make sense to chase that market, because a "Steam Machine", in the general sense, is a PC running SteamOS.

That's already covered and, indeed, you can already unofficially get that with installing the Steam Deck recovery image to AMD hardware, or using something like Bazzite OS which is that Steam Deck image married to a generic Linux kernel to support any hardware. Again, we're still waiting for Valve to drop the official generic SteamOS image, so all of this becomes official and has optimised support but, unofficially, it already exists and "just works" via things like Bazzite.

So the Steam Machine is a PC-as-a-console - but then, in truth, all the consoles are, it's just that SteamOS doesn't hide that fact - and, surely, will be priced to be competitive with consoles. And, surely, will also do the old console trick of subsidising the hardware, offset by sales of games on the Steam Store, so it's cheaper than it ought to be for those same PC parts on the open market - as was the case with the Steam Deck.

And, of course, the long-term trick that Valve has up its sleeve is that, as we've seen SteamOS be ported to other PC handhelds, the old "Steam Machine" vision will surely become increasingly true - that you can stick SteamOS on anything and make your own "Steam Machine" and third-parties can offer their own "Steam Machine" bundles. Except, this time, there's a flagship "base model" from Valve that they've got to be competitive with, which is doing it right, so they've got to match up to that to be taken seriously.

And, yes, hidden in that tech specs is a bombshell. That they've ported SteamOS to ARM. So the Steam Frame can potentially be running Android (which is a Linux distro, after all, even if it's not a GNU + Linux distro), with sideloaded APKs, and we might well have Proton incorporate FEX (the run-x86-on-ARM translator).

All these things are open source - FEX is MIT licence, which is the very liberal "do whatever the hell you want, but just credit things properly" licence - so whatever Valve don't do themselves, you know the wider Linux community is going to be getting all this to work on a fridge in the background anyway.

While we're all naturally looking at the individual products here, the most significant thing in the long term, is that this is an open ecosystem. If these things hit the mark in sales, like the Steam Deck did, then it's opening things up, directly counter to Microsoft closing down Windows to "walled garden" of spyware. Eventually, other manufacturers will be putting SteamOS on handhelds - already happening - and on PCs - creating the original "Steam Machines" vision - and it won't just be Valve's hardware, but it'll become a whole "Steam ecosystem", like the "IBM PC compatibles" that go beyond their parent - go beyond IBM / Valve - to be their own thing unto themselves.


TL;DR 2026 will be the Year of Linux Gaming. With the closing up of Windows 11, there was already lots of talk online about people jumping ship to Linux anyway. This provides gamers, at least, with a new place to go - a whole growing ecosystem - that supports giving up on Windows entirely.

[Deckard]

Already named the Gabecube across the net I see in reference to its rip of the gamecube - Anything over 499 would curtail its appeal massively in my opinion but again its not for me but I will watch with interest.

[zip accident]

It will all be about price.

...

TL;DR 2026 will be the Year of Linux Gaming. With the closing up of Windows 11, there was already lots of talk online about people jumping ship to Linux anyway. This provides gamers, at least, with a new place to go - a whole growing ecosystem - that supports giving up on Windows entirely.

I am a cynic, and I'm not seeing why in the long term it would be better for Valve for them to open this up to a wider market. It looks as if they can have exactly the walled garden that Microsoft do, with all the avantages to the owner of the garden, simply by not publishing Steam OS 3.0. Sure the DIY freaks will make their own anyway, but if all the retail Steam Machines have a Valve brand, they can have most of the money. They would be well advised to put out a top end version with more GPU, they can do that though probably not in this box, because more expensive GPUs tend to be bigger.

[MattyP]

TL;DR 2026 will be the Year of Linux Gaming. With the closing up of Windows 11, there was already lots of talk online about people jumping ship to Linux anyway. This provides gamers, at least, with a new place to go - a whole growing ecosystem - that supports giving up on Windows entirely.

Absolutely! Great to have options. Ditched my Windows PC earlier this year because I was absolutely sick of Windows. Never really liked the OS anyway but games - and in particular Steam - kept me tied to the platform. So it was a means to an end. Not looked back since getting a Mac again earlier in the year.

[Misfit]

And the Frame will work with the Machine and its special dongle to wirelessly link will allow for the 'secret sauce' foveated rendering.

So hopefully Half Life Alyx in the living room.

[KlaxonCow]

LTT's doing their coverage piecemeal - a video for each - and here's the Steam Machine:

[KlaxonCow]

I am a cynic, and I'm not seeing why in the long term it would be better for Valve for them to open this up to a wider market.

Because they intend to create an ecosystem that all feeds into their gaming store - which is where the profits are made - and not just a single product.

The thing to realise is that it's already opened up.

SteamOS is basically Arch Linux, with KDE Plasma, rigged to load up their Steam Store interface on boot.

Linux is GPL, Arch Linux is FOSS (GPL, LGPL BSD, MIT, etc), KDE is similarly FOSS licensed. Proton is based on WINE - and WINE is GPL, so Proton is GPL. FEX is MIT licensed. DXVK uses the ZLib licence.

Every software component in this is open source. Where it's GPL then that's a viral licence - modifications are obliged to be GPL as well - so once GPL, always GPL.

Valve could walk away and start a new closed source project, but they can't un-open-source this now.

Here is Valve Software's Github repository:
https://github.com/valvesoftware

The only component that's not open source - and I'm sure never will be - is their Steam Store. That has DRM and, of course, is where Valve make their money with a ~30% cut of everything sold via the store.

Everything else is open, because it's all a funnel to get you on the Steam Store and buying Steam games. That's where Valve profits.

It's a bit like all the projects that Google have done. Such as the Chrome browser, for example. Like, why make a free browser?

Because Google is an online ad company. The more people online, the more eyes on ads and the more money they make from the ads. They do all these other projects, just to get more people online and using the Internet - and they've often done things which are just "for the sake of having a better Internet" at their own expense - because it means more eyes on ads. Even YouTube is mostly paid for by ads (well, there is "Premium" but I doubt that's yet the bigger income than running ads).

Valve is the same here. They just want more people playing games. Anything to help the gaming ecosystem broadly, means more games sold... and, yes, they do want that all to happen on the Steam Store, as they get a 30% cut of what's sold there.

Indeed, that's why all these things - SteamOS, Steam Deck, Steam Machine, Steam Frame, Steam Controller, etc. - all start with "Steam" and not with "Valve". The product they're selling you is the Steam Store and all this other stuff is to make you buy more games on their store.

But, crucially, as I say, if you look at the open source licences of these things, then they really can't "close it up". Too late - Proton is based on WINE, and WINE is GPL, so all usage and modification to WINE are GPL as well. You cannot legally "undo" that licence. Valve can walk away and become an evil corporation with proprietary shit, sure, but they cannot now stop what they started.