Following on from the success of the Steam Deck, Valve is creating its very own ecosystem of products. The Steam Frame, Steam Machine, and Steam Controller are all set to launch in the new year. We’ve tried each of them and here’s what you need to know about each one.
“From the Frame to the Controller to the Machine, we’re a fairly small industrial design team here, and we really made sure it felt like a family of devices, even to the slightest detail,” Clement Gallois, a designer at Valve, tells me during a recent visit to Valve HQ. “How it feels, the buttons, how they react… everything belongs and works together kind of seamlessly.”
For more detail, make sure to check out our in-depth stories linked below:
Steam Frame: Valve’s new wireless VR headset
Steam Machine: Compact living room gaming box
Steam Controller: A controller to replace your mouse
Valve’s official video announcement.
So uh, ahem.
Yes.
Valve can indeed count to three.
Intriguing. Eager to see the price of the Steam Machine.
Some are estimating around $800, but Steam has commented that affordability is a primary focus.
I feel like they’ve got to beat console prices. I’m hoping we see prices similar to steam deck at launch complete with varying tiers.
Gamers Nexus reported cost will be in line with budget PCs and not competing with console pricing
If it hooks up to the tv and has controllers, it is 100% going to compete.
They didn’t say that it wouldn’t compete. They said that it wouldn’t compete on price.
Very possible. I’d pay a premium to bring over my steam library rather than getting a console and starting over tbh.
My guess would be that around $800 sounds roughly right… if you try to approximate a small form factor pc with… roughly those specs?
You’d kinda end up around there, but… the architecture is so nonstandard, its hard to say.
You gotta think of it as an SFF PC not a console.
Because its closer to an SFF PC than it is to a console.
Right like, this thing is also a PC, its a laptop or w/e if you plug a mouse and keyboard into it.
I run desktop mode on my Deck all the time, use it as a laptop/tablet of sorts.
As far as tiers go, GN has said there are plans for a 512 GB and 2TB variant, so, there’s at least two tiers… I would not expect like, more or less GDDR5/6 RAM variants though, the whole thing is built too much around the exact power draw and thermal load.
But on the other hand, Valve have economies of scale, so they can build this thing cheaper than a normal person can build a PC. Plus, they don’t need to make a huge profit on this stuff. The purpose of the hardware is to sell games. At least that’s what I’ll keep telling myself until we find out more.
But on the other other hand, tariffs, and RAM just doubled in cost in like the last month, because… well this time its not bitcoin miners buying all the GPUs, its… the entire AI industry is a multi trillion dollar scam.
Hilariously, one way to read this announcement is that Valve expects the AI bubble to blow up by ‘early next year’, thus lowering RAM costs, ahahaha!
Holy shit, Valve is clowning on MSFT so fucking hard right now.
Especially with microsoft seemingly giving up on (gaming) hardware
There’s no display, no battery, no controller included, no OS fees… I think it could be cheaper than $800.
Because it’s all custom hardware we don’t really have a great basis for comparison. I’m going to guess that the cheapest variant will be something like $650. Doubt more than $700 though.
Agree it has be price competitive with consoles. Though I wonder if making a docked Deck be on equal footing with the Machine would have been a better use of R&D. Maybe simply improving having the dock house an eGPU and bumping the Deck specs.
The deck is a bit underpowered for 4k. Most TVs are 4k these days, so the machine needs to be good at that.
Right, that’s what I’m saying. Make a v2 Deck with upgraded CPU/memory, and put the GPU in the dock so it can do 4k on a big screen. I’m sure “Deck v2 is 4x more powerful than v1 and you can dock it for 4k @ 60fps on the big screen” would be just as good a marketing line as “Machine is 6x more powerful than a Deck”.
I don’t think it has an Occulink port, the Steam Machine.
So… yeah you can maybe try to eGPU it a bit through USB 3.2 Gen 2?
Maybe?
I don’t know that would make much sense though.
Or!
Maybe we do the FrankenDeck thing, take the SSD out, adapt that as an Occulink, run all the storage memory off of MicroSD cards, LOL.
I mean like a v2 Steam Deck and Dock. Give the Deck a bump in CPU/RAM/storage specs and new external ports to facilitate having the GPU in the dock. It could technically even be an externalized PCIe connector instead of Thunderbolt/USB. In handheld mode you get the iCPU limited to 1080, but dock it on the big screen and now you get full 4k @ 60 FPS. Add an HDMI port so you do 1080 on a big screen without a dock.
At this point, you would think that if they wanted to go with an Occulink/Thunderbolt thing… they’d make it in the Steam Machine, the thing that doesn’t move around as much.
They… the Valve video says the Steam Machine is 6 times as powerful as a Steam Deck.
… I have no idea what that actually means, maybe its TFLOPs, who knows, but uh, yeah, if you’re making a 6x thing thats more stationary, I would think that would be the thing you’d make with an option or variant to just jam more compute into it via modularity.
I dunno. It seems like more news about the Deck 2 or whatever is coming, at some point, Valve’s whole actual video is basically making fun of how its not talking about the Deck… stay tuned, goth gamer nation…???
Either way, we always have this:
Oh god are there going to be some very very salty Nintendo fans, very soon.
I hadn’t heard of OCuLink before, apparently it’s an external PCIe connector! Eh, that would seem like a waste of engineering team to build that into a stationary desktop PC. They can just build the PC case to whatever size is needed to house the GPU and related cooling, which they did. This is the second desktop PC they’ve released, no? They had one like 10 years ago that was a commercial failure? My impression as a console gamer is that the Deck is very successful and popular, but it’s under-powered for playing on a big screen.
Right, my point was just bumping the chipset/CPU/memory would give a nice marketing tagline like that without designing a whole new desktop PC. Obviously, you can’t put a giant modern CPU and heat sinks and fans in a handheld. So spend that engineering R&D money on giving the dock a GPU so now the Deck performs as well as the Machine would have, and you have it using a successful branding rather than reviving a brand that already failed once.
Hope so.
With those specs there’s no way it’s going to beat console prices. The CPU alone is ~$200 retail.
Valve isn’t paying retail.
They’re still going to be making a profit off of it. I’d be shocked if it’s below $600.
The profit comes from the games they sell.
Me too. I’m not really into VR but I definitely want the GabeCube.
I have a PSVR2 and I don’t consider the capability of VR to be its failure. I have to assume it’s just that much harder and more expensive to develop for VR. Like the FPS genre is hugely successful, and that’s such a natural fit for VR.
I think it’s just an accessibility thing. VR is expensive, and it takes people pushing through some disorientation/nausea to really enjoy it. Many will simply feel sick the first few times they try it, decide it’s not for them and leave it.
You really shouldn’t push through the nausea. That’s how it gets worse.
If you start feeling sick. Put it down.
But yes. And that’s why the games are still such a limited selection compared to flat screen.
No long campaigns in VR.
Yeah I mean push through as in they don’t keep trying
Just place a fan on the floor in front of you. Bam! No nausea. Because now your body instinctively knows your position and orientation in the space you’re in.
It’s such a simple thing but it really works!
As someone who experienced nausea. I’ve tried all kinds of tricks. They all help, just like Dramamine or those bands with the beads that 1/10 pain.
It took quite a while to get over the nausea. A lot of starting and stopping with slightly longer sessions each time.
I fully expect that most people would not be willing to do that but I received the system as a gift and I really liked it. I wish they had more longer games. I’m so tired of the games that are 30s of concept and then do it over-and-over.
My thoughts exactly. I’m a console gamer. So a straightforward all-in-one box is great.
… and this also just is a linux computer.
Just go into desktop mode, plug in a mouse and keyboard, your TV is your monitor.
So, that means it can be a light duty office work type PC, webbrowsing PC, home media center, etc.
Just maybe plug an external hardrive into it, or get some SD cards with a TB of storage, for music and movies.
Oh and of course, it can emulate basically everything that doesn’t already exist as a PC game, via something like EmuDeck or RetroDeck.
You might say that will be a red letter day.