Phoronix article: https://www.phoronix.com/news/Steam-Machines-Frame-2026
Also listed here: https://store.steampowered.com/sale/hardware
Valve has already sent support for the new Steam Controller upstream: https://www.phoronix.com/news/New-Steam-Controller-SDL
The announcement did not include Copilot? No mention of 300 useless AI features being shoved down our throats??!
It’s wild how by virtue of the fact that Valve isn’t a publicly traded company beholden to shareholders, the same Valve which has a history of putting out half-baked goods and which has an always-on DRM client called Steam, seems poised to surpass most of its competitors both in the user privacy and hardware hardware spaces with just straightforward products. They have a product to sell, and that’s it. They don’t need to micro-optimize for bullshit like seemingly every other large tech company does.
That’s because they make an insane amount of money by taking 30% of every sale on their platform, which nearly everyone uses because they’re a near monopoly and the alternatives are terrible. Around $3.5 Million per employee, nearly 5x the next highest company, which is Facebook at around $780,000 per employee.
I should note that 30% is incredibly standard in the industry, and Valve offers a LOT more for that 30% than literally any other digital publisher. Physical publishers take substantially more, and the only digital store that offers less is EGS, which is simultaneously absolute dogshite and also has been trying very, very hard to astroturd the ‘30%’ thing for ages.
Nintendo, Sony, and Apple all take 30%. I think MS does as well, but don’t quote me on that one.
You‘re getting downvotes for no reason. Also anyone who ever had to contact Steam support felt how criminally understaffed they are so it makes sense they make tons of money per employee I guess.
Fuck you Microsoft!
The VR headset is going to be standalone??
That’s pretty nuts right?
even more nuts is that it will support pc games via FEX, an emulation layer that runs x86 windows games on ARM in Linux
In addition to streaming from your battlestation
Any ideas on Linux support?
The headset itself is running linux and it is meant to be used with the steam machine, which also runs on linux.
pretty sure it’s SteamOS, an Arch Linux derivative, on a fairly popular Snapdragon platform. probably not too difficult to hack on it.
Its a standalone headset that runs steamos.
I used to work with a guy who worked at Valve prototyping stuff like the steam controller. He was a boomer so he complained about how people were always playing games in the break room and what not. Said he hated that job, his reasons might as well have been a wishlist for my future career. If he wasn’t so damn helpful I would probably hate him to this day.
They missed the chance to call the machine the Steam Engine
I thought the GabeCube was even better.
Aaaaalmost shot coffee out my nose. Almost.
But they did name it after a daft punk song
Huh, neat. Til.
banger
That would be impossible to search online
Fuck, they did! 😫
Not gonna lie the controller looks ass but maybe it feels fantastic so I‘ll wait with my final judgement. I‘m interested to see how they will try to push VR since most users are still incredibly uninterested in it.
It’s basically steam deck minus the screen. If you are used to the steam deck it’ll be fine.
Hopefully the Frames can compete with the Meta Quest in both price/performance. It will be good to have relatively affordable VR headset not made by Facebook.
Considering that Quest is sold at a loss and tries to make money forcing you to buy games, I don’t think it’s likely
It will be priced as it isnt locking you into a ecosystem like meta, so it will be of course a bit more pricey. ( rumors say roughly 1200$ )
Since the Steam Machine is more like an entry PC and not a console (and will be priced as that), does that mean that SteamOS for desktop will be officially supported?
I forgot where but some time in the last 3 hours I read that the goal for steamOS is to be supported on all PCs, though it’s an ongoing effort.
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No, it’s supported on two specific pieces of custom hardware, the Steam Deck and Steam Machine. They’ll get there with general support, but SteamOS isn’t there yet.
Well, there’s official support for some third party handhelds if I remember correctly? Asus and the like? And they just announced that the steam frame (vr headset) will also run steamos, and that’s on a snapdragon ARM SoC. Pretty exciting stuff ahead
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It will be able to run android apps, any steam games, and because it’s going to run Steam OS, you can run lutris or heroic launcher as well. So emulation and a whole variety of older games.
Also because it’s a stand alone, but can pair to a pc, you will be able to work straight on it with KDE desktop and whatever applications you want to run.
Steam Frame is interesting. Would love a non-Meta VR headset that doesn’t cost $1k and also doesn’t have a million wires and base stations.
It’s most probably gonna be around $1k, I saw someone say they expect it to be $900, but nothing concrete yet
I feel like if I use this controller those trackpads will go crazy because of my fat hands.
The Steam Deck uses the capacitive thumb stick sensors to completely disable the trackpads as soon as the stick above the respective pad is touched. This works very well, so I think they‘ll implement the same thing here.
That’s so fucking cool
I’m just glad they have dual thumbsticks now. I bought their last model on sale but quickly shelved it. Couldn’t get used to the touchpads and didn’t want to spend the next 2 months sucking at every game I played.
You would need REALLY massive hands to touch those when your thumbs are resting on the analog sticks or the face buttons.
I’d jump on a steam deck with updated hardware, too bad it looks like it will be staying the same
Edit:
Yeeaaaahhhh it’s going to be a while, they want a great performance jump without sacrificing battery life
With a strong internet connection and more capable desktop device, you can already stream for hours with high fidelity graphics, 60+ FPS, and no fan noise.
With that in mind, buying a new Steam Deck is probably going to be multiple generations off for me.
I’ve given that a shot and just can’t stand the input lag I get, even on LAN, unfortunately, I’m glad it works for others though.
And I don’t like to use hotel or other public WiFi when I travel, I’d rather just have the device in hand
That’s surprising to hear, for me the latency is not noticeable even over WAN. We’ve had VR capable streaming for years now, and area where latency issues cause physical sickness.
You might have a network level issue. Gigabit ethernet to the host, WiFi 5 or better for the client, QoS configured to prioritize both devices in the router settings?
I think a wired connection is the key, one of my house projects this winter is running Ethernet through the attic finally
Having both on a different connection is essential!
If you have a spare router, you could connect it via ethernet to the host and then connect your client to that WiFi.
Host would then be able to maintain its internet connection over WiFi and there would be a separate dedicated LAN just for the stream.
FEX is the most exciting thing for me!
Right? It’s a huge bridge between x86 and ARM, it just opened up a potentially huge market for lower power consumption gaming devices. You could have like a Gameboy that runs silksong or something.
I guess this would be the appropiate post to ask under, isnt the steam frame using a last gen flagship arm soc and running linux a huge thing? That seems like its pretty close to us being abke to run linux on a newer phone. Tho at the same time i know phones are unhinged so thats why im asking, whether this is actually a big thing.
Gabephone in 2027? /s
That seems like its pretty close to us being abke to run linux on a newer phone
You can run Linux on current gen flagship arm SoCs. The framebuffer, gpu and cpu stuff mostly just works (with some support from hardware vendors). It’s the rest of the device that’s the problem: the phone part, the camera, sound, power management, etc.
I’d consider it a significant advancement. Phones have much tighter regulations than many consumer devices and this may not necessarily align with Valve’s long-term business objectives, however, so I have some skepticism but would be pleasantly surprised if they pursued such an endeavor.
Steam Machine is interesting. It feels like a solid time for someone to disrupt TV based gaming.
