In typical Valve fashion, the company announced three new cutting-edge pieces of gaming hardware not at a major event or with months of teasing, but instead on a random Wednesday afternoon. On November 12, Valve posted “Steam Hardware Announcement” to YouTube, which shows off three new pieces of hardware specifically designed for virtual reality (VR) gaming and living room gaming. The launch had no build-up, and yet it has managed to garner 3.5 million views as of the time of writing.
The Steam Machine
While Valve’s domain has squarely been in PC gaming, being the owner of the largest PC video game distribution platform, Steam, this is not their first attempt to set foot in the living room, though it does seem to be they’re most promising to date. The Steam Machine is Valve’s direct answer to the likes of Sony’s PlayStation and Microsoft’s Xbox. While it is decisively not a console, it clearly intends to fill that same role. The Steam Machine is a small cube, measuring approximately 6 inches on all sides, with an interior showing most of that volume to be heat sinks. The Steam Machine runs on a 6-core AMD Zen 4 CPU, which was released in 2022, only one generation back from the current latest tech. This pairs with an AMD RDNA 4 GPU, similarly only one generation backwards from the latest tech, all with RAM to match the games you would want to run on this. This small, powerful cube also has the I/O for 4k 120 Hz or 8k 60 Hz gaming, rivalling not only any console on the market, but even many computers!
As hinted at, Valve is very clear that the Steam Machine is not a console. Instead, it runs on Valve’s branch of Linux, known as SteamOS. I plan to dedicate an entire article to the operating system once it is released for consumer download, but this is the same system that powers Valve’s handheld console, the Steam Deck. It has two modes, a primary one for gaming that interfaces directly with Steam, and a secondary mode to access a more normal PC desktop, including web browser access and almost anything you could need. This allows for a streamlined gaming mode in the primary interface, while still affording the user unparalleled freedom in the secondary interface.
The Steam Controller
To pair with any Valve hardware, or even any computer, is a universal controller meant to work with just about any video game, controller, or keyboard. If you are familiar with the Steam Deck, it is heavily inspired by the controller layout of the handheld, including haptics, gyroscopic control, a familiar console controller layout, as well as dual trackpads for games that only have keyboard support. While not terribly more impressive than the Steam Deck controller, implementing this universal solution to the keyboard/controller divide is critical, as many games on Steam don’t have controller support built in, games that potential future users of the Steam Machine may want to play.
The Steam Frame
Six years ago, Valve introduced the Valve Index, one of the most powerful VR headsets at the time. They competed against Meta and Oculus headsets during a spike in VR interest. Today, I believe its safe to say the VR craze has died down a bit, though there is certainly still a market. The Steam Hardware Survey, an annual survey that Steam users can volunteer to participate in, estimates that 1.5% of its users have VR headsets. The Steam Frame is Valve’s latest answer to attempt to bring the market towards them, utilizing new eye-tracking technology to boost resolution without compromising on performance. It also seems to promise some of the best camera tracking, meaning fewer incidents of users bumping into their real-world surroundings while playing. Tech reviewers such as LinusTechTips on YouTube suggest that this will easily be the best VR headset on the market, positioning the Steam Frame to be the go-to headset for anyone getting into the market for the first time.
Conclusion
As a professional Valve fanboy, this announcement is, of course, exciting to me. But this hardware may also promise to shake up not only the PC gaming market, but the living room gaming market as well as the small-but-flourishing VR market. Many professional gamers and reviewers have been praying for a company to make open-source gaming a priority, both for privacy and customizability concerns, and it seems Valve may be the first company to seriously answer that call. From Steam itself to the various hardware discussed, Valve wants to have a strong foothold on all things gaming. Once SteamOS is released for all PC architectures, I plan to also discuss its ramifications. And, if rumors are true, there may be more to write about Valve very soon.