PC/Mobile Valve Reveals New Hardware Lineup: A Controller, Compact Gaming PC, and VR-Ready Headset

Valve has announced three new Steam hardware products, which will all be shipping out in early 2026. Next year will see the launch of a new Steam Controller, a Steam Machine for PC gaming, and the Steam Frame VR headset, with specific launch timing and pricing to be shared after the first of the year.

The Steam controller is inspired by Valve's Steam Deck mobile gaming PC, and it includes all the inputs required to play a modern game. Valve says this controller is equipped with next-generation precision magnetic thumbsticks, full-sized controls, trackpads, gyro, and grip buttons, and it's compatible with PC, Steam Deck, Steam Machine, and the Steam Frame. According to Valve, you'll get up to 35 hours of use from a full charge.

If you're looking to bring your PC gaming to your TV, the Steam Machine looks like it'll be a compact solution. This roughly six-inch cube runs SteamOS and is made to work with the Steam Controller and Valve says that it also supports other "accessories" so that it can offer a "versatile" PC gaming experience.

This will be available in 512GB and 2TB models--with room for microSD cards to expand storage--and internally, these have an AMD Zen 4 6C / 12T CPU, a semi-custom AMD GPU, and 16GB DDR5 RAM. Valve says that the unit supports 4K gaming at 60fps by using AMD FSR, with ray tracing.

Finally, the Steam Frame is a VR headset that can stream VR and non-VR games. Designed to be comfortable and featuring a lightweight construction, it's powered by a Snapdragon processor and runs SteamOS. It also supports standalone play and full controller-input support for PC VR and non-VR games.

The headset has a 2160 x 2160 LCD per eye, a 110-degree FOV, 72 - 144Hz refresh rate, 16GB of RAM, and will be available in 256GB and 1TB models. Storage capacity can also be expanded with microSD cards, and the Steam Frame controllers have 6-DOF tracking, capacitive finger-sensing, magnetic thumbsticks, and a battery life of up to 40 hours when using AA batteries.

"We've been super happy with the success of Steam Deck, and a lot of the feedback we've received from gamers about it is what encouraged us to expand the options for Steam users. Along with Steam Deck, these are devices designed to work together, optimized for Steam while continuing to operate as open platforms," Valve added in a press release.

Once the price range is confirmed I'd probably pick up a Steam Machine.

It looks like the main weakness is the VRAM it's not using a unified VRAM RAM architecture like Rog Ally or Steam Deck (though the GPU and the CPU are indeed a lot more powerful than the Steam deck), so you are stuck with only 8GB VRAM, not future proof VRAM wise.

16GB DDR5 + 8GB GDDR6 VRAM

I would love to try out the new Steam machine.

The Steam Machine is the highlight of the new announcement. Hopefully, they can keep the price competitive.

Read from wccftech, The Steam Machine won't be subsidized like consoles:

But it's not going to be a sort of subsidized device, like, Valve is not going into this thinking we're going to eat a big loss on this so that we can grow market share or category or anything like that, correct?

Pierre-Loup Griffais: No, it's more in line with what you might expect from the current PC market. Obviously, our goal is for it to be a good deal at that level of performance. And then you have features that are actually really hard to build if you are making your own gaming PC from parts. Things like the small form factor, the noise level that we achieved, or lack thereof, is really impressive and we are excited that people are going to find out how quiet this thing is. But also some integration features like HDMI CEC. The Bluetooth and wireless work that we've done, the four antennas, the very deliberate design so that you can have a great experience with four Bluetooth controllers.

Without subsidization, and with the rumored RAM price hike from Samsung, the Steam Machine might end up costing between $800 and $900. At that price point, it would be honestly a difficult sell to most console users when the PlayStation 5, which launched in 2020 and is priced at $499 (right now, the Digital Edition is actually down to $399 for the duration of the Black Friday sale), is reportedly slightly more powerful.

From Polls so far most people would only buy the steam machine if it's <= $600

• $600
  442 votes 43%
• $700
  222 votes 21%
• Not interested regardless of the price point
  200 votes 19%
• $800
  111 votes 11%
• $900
  62 votes 6%

I'd argue they ARE subsidizing the consoles via steam. They have a lot of profit from the games they sell.

Subsidizing doesn't always mean "oh we won't lose money on every Steam Machine sold." No, you WILL. You sell to retailer, you get your money back, but how much of that is profit is the question. Either that, or you're selling direct via SteamPowered website.

Steam makes or made $17Billion from Steam itself. Enough to manufacture Steam Machine for a few years. SteamDeck, Steam Link, and other products helped with that, too.

I think Gabe/Valve is just saying this to appease the private or institutional investor, they're not talking to us when they said they won't be subsidizing the Steam Machine and Steam Frame.

The Steam Machine isn't designed to be for the "console" style pricing according to how Valve is designing this, here:

cm2 said:

Read from wccftech, The Steam Machine won't be subsidized like consoles:

But it's not going to be a sort of subsidized device, like, Valve is not going into this thinking we're going to eat a big loss on this so that we can grow market share or category or anything like that, correct?

Pierre-Loup Griffais: No, it's more in line with what you might expect from the current PC market. Obviously, our goal is for it to be a good deal at that level of performance. And then you have features that are actually really hard to build if you are making your own gaming PC from parts. Things like the small form factor, the noise level that we achieved, or lack thereof, is really impressive and we are excited that people are going to find out how quiet this thing is. But also some integration features like HDMI CEC. The Bluetooth and wireless work that we've done, the four antennas, the very deliberate design so that you can have a great experience with four Bluetooth controllers.

Without subsidization, and with the rumored RAM price hike from Samsung, the Steam Machine might end up costing between $800 and $900. At that price point, it would be honestly a difficult sell to most console users when the PlayStation 5, which launched in 2020 and is priced at $499 (right now, the Digital Edition is actually down to $399 for the duration of the Black Friday sale), is reportedly slightly more powerful.

Click to expand...

So, the way PC pre-builts are sold, is you buy it, its a sale. No manufacturer losses, because they ordered the parts themselves and they assembled the parts themselves. Either that or a third party is doing the assembly. I dunno, but the public doesn't understand who this message is for - it's not for us. It's for investors.

What Steam Machine is - is a smaller pre-built PC. It has traits of a console, but what you're getting is a PC.

Part of me wants to get the steam machine, but the other half of me is thinking "It's probably not going to be worth it" when I have a gaming rig at the moment. Though it would be nice to have a much easier way to play my Steam games on my tv, I have an old Steam Link still but even back in the day it wasn't the best, the input lag sucked.

I am not sure if I would get the Steam Machine because I still use a usb printer, and scanner, and having another PC which can also use USB accessories made for Windows PC is useful.