Valve has just dropped what most gamers would call a “banger”: the company behind Steam Deck has announced three new Steam hardware, which will be available in 2026. These include the reinvented Steam Machine, the new Steam Controller, and a new VR heatset in the form of Steam Frame.
Steam Machine
While the company’s original Steam Machine attempt a decade ago ended up unsuccessful, it’s trying again with the new rendition taking the form of a cube-shaped, almost Xbox-looking mini-PC that is now colloquially referred as the “GabeCube”. (Gabe being the name of Valve co-founder, Gabe Newell.) It houses an AMD Zen 4-based 6-core processor operating at 4.8GHz boost with a 30W TDP, along with a semi-custom RDNA3-based GPU with 28 Compute Units and 8GB of GDDR6 VRAM, operating at 110W TDP. For reference, that’s slightly less powerful than a regular AMD Ryzen 5 7600 and Radeon RX 7600, respectively.
Steam says the Machine is good for 4K 60FPS as long as you enable FSR – which all current generation consoles use to help upscale the game from lower resolutions i.e. 1080p or 1440p. On the software side, Steam Machine naturally operates on the company’s self-developed SteamOS which powers Steam Deck and Steam Frame (which we’ll get to in a bit), though the company gives the blessing to install anything else should the user wishes to, because “who are we to tell you how to use your computer?”
Other specs and features include: an option of 512GB and 2TB SSD storage with expandable microSD card storage, Wi-Fi 6E connectivity, Bluetooth 5.3 with a dedicated antenna for Steam Controller direct pairing, and an integrated 300W power supply that negates an external power brick. At the bottom, there is a 17-zone LED strip that can be used as a progress bar for game downloads, or as a simple RGB lighting if you’re feeling that way. I/O includes DisplayPort 1.4 with DSC, HDMI 2.0, Gigabit Ethernet, two USB 2.0 ports and one USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10Gbps) Type-C at the back, while the front comes with a pair of USB 3.2 Gen 1 (5Gbps) Type-A ports and the microSD card slot.
Steam Controller
Next up is the new Steam Controller 2 that the company decided to not include the number ‘2’ in its name. This new design is sticks to a more conventional, almost PlayStation-like layout with symmetrical TMR joysticks (with capacitive touch capabilities), with the newly added pair of pressure-sensitive haptic touchpads a la Steam Deck for games that do not use controller inputs. The controller also includes fourth and fifth pair of L/R buttons on the back, along with capacitive grip area that enables gyro-based inputs.
Valve has engineered built-in support for other Steam devices with automatic Bluetooth connection, though the user can choose to connect to any device with a USB-C cable, or via low-latency 2.4GHz wireless by using the included puck that also acts as a charging station for the controller. It uses a 8.39Wh Li-ion battery for power, with a claimed battery life of over 35 hours on a single charge.
Steam Frame
Valve also unveiled a mic drop moment for VR headsets called Steam Frame, which is a “streaming-first” wireless VR headset that, on paper, supports every single Steam game to ever exist (with some capable of running natively), VR-supported or otherwise. That’s a huge advantage it has over the likes of Meta Quests and Apple Vision Pro headsets which are still slowly building their catalogs, and it’s got another trick up its sleeve: it runs SteamOS, too, except this time on a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset. Wait – SteamOS on Arm? PC gaming on Arm of all places?
The party trick involves FEX, a x86-to-Arm compatibility layer that translates the code run on x86 CPUs – that is, AMD and Intel CPUs that existed since 1978 – to Arm-native processors like the Snapdragon in this case. This is on top of the Proton compatibility layer that ensures Windows-only DirectX-based games work on Linux operating systems, including SteamOS. Of course, involving two distinct compatibility layers does raise the question of games running properly on Steam Frame, which Valve says there will be a verification program to help users identify games that work on it.
Hardware-wise, it’s got a pair of LCD displays with 2160 x 2160 resolution per eye, along with refresh rates in the range of 72-120Hz (144Hz is supported, but it is experimental for now). It uses inside-out camera tracking with four outward monochrome cameras (plus IR sensors) for controller tracking, along with two inward cameras for eye tracking, which is designed to complement a new feature called Foveated Streaming. If you’ve heard of Foveated Rendering, it’s the same principle: the cameras check where eyes are looking and only render those visible sections with the highest possible quality, leaving the rest with lower quality to save on resources and bandwidth.
Valve says this offers a 10x improvement in effective bandwidth, which is further bolstered by a dedicated 6GHz Wi-Fi USB adapter that you can connect to a host PC for maximum stability and speed. The Steam Frame features two dedicated radios – the 6GHz for streaming, and the 5GHz for general connectivity (i.e. your home Wi-Fi connection), meaning they won’t compete for bandwidth. As for the bundled controllers, they feature both VR-specific controls and standard controller buttons and joysticks for non-VR titles, and are powered by one AA battery each good for 40 hours of use.
Availability
All three products are said to launch in “early 2026”, although pricing hasn’t been given at this point. Valve did give out some hints: the Steam Machine will cost more than a console but less than an entry-level desktop PC, while the Steam Frame is expected to cost less than the Valve Index headset (which costs US$999).
Pokdepinion: When was the last time a tech company released a product without endlessly talking about AI? What a breath of fresh air.
