We are so back: Valve reveals a new Steam Machine, Controller, and Frame VR headset

Valve is dipping its toes back into the living room

We can play Steam games on our TVs today, whether it’s with the Steam Link, plugging laptops into TVs, mirroring screens, or using the Steam Deck with a dock. Even with Big Picture Mode, none of these are ideal but they work. I’ve played parts of my library on a bigger screen, and it’s neat. It’s a band-aid method of doing it. Even though I have any numerous ways to play PC games on my TV, whether it’s through emulation or other devices, it’s not STEAM Steam.

But now it is! Or rather, it will be.

Valve has announced a new Steam Family of devices, long-needed updates to its older hardware of yore: The Steam Machine, Steam Controller 2, and Steam Frame VR headset.

The “Family” is meant to all work together, like a unified set, so that players can own any and feel like they’e not missing some piece.

The Steam Machine is back, and though the experiment from 2015 didn’t yield any success it was perhaps not the right time yet. Now, with Xbox hardware essentially out of the picture and gaming habits having changed considerably since the launch of the Switch, a Steam Machine seems like a good idea. This time it’s just Valve producing the Linux-based PC, which can focus not only on Steam itself but also any other OS that folks would want to load onto it.

The 6 inch x 6 inch x 6 inch Machine is meant to be roughly 6 times more powerful than the Steam Deck and support 4k and 60 FPS with FSR. Powering this girl are semi-custom AMD Zen 4 CPU and AMD RDNA3 GPU with 16GB DDR5 + 8GB GDDR6 VRAM, and either 512GB or 2TB of SSD storage. Designed like a cube, the back houses a DisplayPort 1.4, HDMI 2.0 and ethernet ports, while the front has a USB-A port, SD Cart slot and a light bar.

Perhaps more cool than the specs is that it’s got a customizable front face plate — remember that shit from the Xbox 360? Hell yeah, motherfuckers. Now THIS is what I like.

The Steam Controller 2 should look pretty familiar to people because it’s essentially a Steam Deck’s control layout with a couple of added features, notably something the company calls Grip Sense, and HD rumble to rival Nintendo’s Switch offerings.

Finally, the company still thinks there’s space for VR, even though the market is quickly dying, and have revealed the Steam Frame. The device will replace the Steam Index, and will be a streaming first headset that can also function on its own. Players will be able to play VR games as well as essentially everything else on their Steam account and devices in regular-old two dimensions.

Pricing has not been revealed for any of these devices, nor has exact timing, but they’re due sometime in Q1 and will likely be pruchasable via Steam before any stores.