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
Time to sell my never used old steam controller
FEX is the most exciting thing for me!
Removed by mod
This is an LLM bot.
I hope this somehow manages to convince fortnite / ea to support it or support linux. I want to get rid of my xbox so bad.
also i am excited for the headset, i am wondering how open source it is going to be and depending on that i definilty get one (Since it runs steam os, linux is possible atleast definitly)
Im hyped for a new vr headset.
Yeah, I’m debating getting this one as my first headset. It looks dope.
Dooo it! If you can afford it, it will probably be a little pricey.
They said it will be a direct competitor for the Meta Quest 3, so I’m guessing around $400. I’ve been waiting for Valve to drop exactly this!
Me too. I bought the first quest before Facebook acquired it. Now that Facebook/Meta own quest and stuff … I’ve been staying away from VR for now.
I’ll definitely be doing my best to get one as soon as it’s available. Everything about it sounds hype.
Fuck you Microsoft!
Less concurrent is never a good thing. Steam already got too much power. https://www.xda-developers.com/valve-steam-monopoly-real-gamers-chose/
Luckily unlike monopolies in other sectors, Steam doesn’t involve itself in evil oractices that more or less stops others from competing.
Someone just needs to make a better store, but they can’t because no company big enough to compete is willing to be as user friendly.
Epic, probably the second biggest store people thing about, can’t even make a good platform. They try underhanded practices like bribing developers and customers… maybe they should make their store work properly first.
Yet
Yet, unlike other sectors yet.
High chances that this changes. Monopolies are built friendly and get enshitificated later, one baby step at a time.
Market will get harder and harder to join as studios optimise their processes for releases on steam and users get even more trained Games -> Steam.
Especially when Steam manages to kill PS and Xbox, where I see big potential that this happens.
That’s always a possibility, but if it was going to happen, it would have already by now.
It’s very obvious to me that Valves leadership cares about the end goal of making gaming accessible and as easy as possible for everyone.
If they ever become evil, I feel it’s guaranteed to be because of leadership change to someone who is secretly corrupt, we just have to hope the reigns are handed down to someone good.
And if they do become evil and their product suffert as a result, they are going to create an opening for the others to fill.
The market gets harder to join as Steam makes their platform better and better. This is very very good compared to other companies that get to the top and then add physical and legal barries to others to stop them becoming competition.
Xbox has killed itself and I can’t see Playstation going anywhere anytime soon. Steam machines could take some tiny % of Playstation users, but if they do, the users stolen might have been people who wanted to swap to PC anyway. + you can access other stores on a steam machine
Also, public companies can’t make good products because they don’t have long term vision. They don’t have long term vision because they need to have good short term profits and profit margins. Look at Xbox eating itself just because they need to have a 30% profit margin right now!
this only applies to capitalists
That’s good because it is.
Why does the controller look very uncomfortable to use? I hope it’s not.
Still looks better than the first Steam Controller. It was atrocious.
Because it’s so bottom-heavy. But if you look where your hands will be it’s essentially a Dualshock with touchpads stuck to the bottom.
I guess it depends on how long your thumb is
Valve really listened to Saejima’s advice:
Steam Synapse when?
I’m curious about the “it’s a PC” aspect of the Steam Box. Because a device that plays all Steam games but isn’t a Windows computer is extremely appealing, but I admit if I can’t install a few non-Steam games on it, that’s a spoiler for me. But if the whole “it’s a PC” provides some avenue to that, I’m definitely ready to stop building a gaming PC every 5 years.
Allow me to be pedantic here. What you were referring to here, “PC”, stands for “personal computer”. It’s a device on where you can perform computation. Sometimes that computation is to render video streams encoded in H.264 onto the screen, and sometimes it happens to take in your control signal to alter that video stream, like video games. You are free to perform any kind of computation on it.
“PC” has no implications of Microsoft or Windows.
Allow me to match your pedantry.
A “denotation” is an exact, codified definition of a word, commonly thought of as a “dictionary definition.”
A “connotation” is a less official but culturally understood meaning of a word, often dependent on context or setting.
“PC” connotes Windows in the gaming world. But thanks for taking time out of your day to tell me what it stands for, etc 🙄
it’s an arch linux machine. with proton and some tweaks to steamos you can run any game without a kernel level anticheat.
Steam Box
Ahem, it’s a GabeCube.
I’m sure it will be like the Steam Deck, meaning you can absolutely install non Steam games on it, but they still have to work under Proton (meaning the vast majority of games work, except ones requiring kernel anti cheat).
Yeah, you can. SteamOS is basically just a customized arch Linux. It’s what runs on the steam deck, which you can install non-steam games on. They integrate really well into the console experience as well.
It’s going to be like the steam deck, I’ve yet to find a old Non-steam game that I couldn’t run on the steam deck.
Do the kernel level anti-cheat windows only dev guys support steam deck running official steamOS?
Some games anticheat supports Linux. VAC, EAC, GameGuard, and BattlEye either run under Linux by default or can be configured to do so, by the game dev, with a toggle. A number: Destiny 2, Fortnight, etc. break it intentionally even though the client could run without modification. Battlefield 6 breaks because it checks the Windows measured boot API.
Short of explicit developer lockout
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.
It feels like just yesterday that VR was the big hype tech.
VR is so fucking cool tho
To be 100% honest, I like Bitcoin and LLMs too. Could use some pigouvian taxes though.
BTC is neat and I do have some, but I didn’t get into LLMs, no use case for me at this point. But I think VR is in a completely different bucket. VR was so fucking awesome for my partner and myself to chill out in with our friends in 2020 when we couldn’t go out and see peeps. It’s also easily the best most fun form of exercise.
I’m sure you and your partner can think of a more fun form of exercise. 😉
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.
don’t forget google. that applies to all paid apps, in app purchases and donations on the play store, not only for games. google also forbids you from showing any other donation option on your website if you link to it from your app.
I’m going to be honest, I have no idea how I forgot google. They also definitely take 30%.
Can confirm; my app was removed from the Play Store due to a donation link to my PayPal. Absolutely insane.
Fwiw, GOG has no DRM for their titles (its own niche space, not competition). Not sure if they charge 30% too, but even in such case they’re giving you more because of the lack of DRM.
Steam is quite virtuous, they gave us Proton. But is far from being based.
GOG has no DRM, but they also don’t offer the same kind of services, like workshop, updates, cloud sync, etc.
Not trying to say they’re worse or anything, I love GOG, but it’s really kind of comparing apples to oranges here.
GoG also sold the modern hitman games which have DRM.
There are also many games on Steam that are DRM free, you may need to use the Steam Client to download them (but possibly also Steam CMD) but then you can copy the files off as a backup and run them without Steam
It’s fucking wild. Like, I love Steam, don’t get me wrong, but holy shit just suck less (edit: than other stores do) and charge less (edit: of devs) and you could gobble up a lot of that market share. But none of them do.
Notably Epic charges less than 30% (something like 12% IIRC) to try to get more of that market. They even give away games. But their app is still inferior so it gets less use.
Most other competitors charge less than steam, but steam has a clause which prevents devs from putting their games cheaper elsewhere. This is the real big shitty move made by valve, otherwise they do mostly everything right. I hope someone challenges this clause in a court of law someday, it looks very monopolistic to me
Except that is a thing only for selling steam keys outside steam. There are no price parity clauses.
https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys
Also here is a gamedev saying that they’ll sell their game for a cheaper price on EGS: https://twitter.com/HeardOfTheStory/status/1700066610302603405
https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/heard-of-the-story-ff3758
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1881940/Heard_of_the_Story/
If what you saying was actually the case I am 120% sure Tim Sweeney would be all over it lol.
Lastly, there was ALREADY a case like that (Valve vs. Wolfire). The courts couldn’t find anything regarding Wolfire’s claims and then dismissed the case.
Ho ok, my bad, I completely misunderstood the issue then. It seems reasonable to impose a price equivalence on steam key
No worries! And indeed!
It’s OK to run a discount for Steam Keys on different stores at different times as long as you plan to give a comparable offer to Steam customers within a reasonable amount of time.
https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys
Word that stands out is comparable. Which provides a lot of flexibility on discounts outside the steam store. And isthereanydeals data that tracks all the prices over the years shows steam keys going on sale for cheaper than the steam store. Steam also takes 0% of Steam keys.
Recent example is ARC Raiders. https://isthereanydeal.com/game/arc-raiders/info/
Current best price is 15% off for $34.16 versus $39.99 on Steam. And all time low was $31.92.
I do wonder how many people assume Steam store price is the best price, and end up paying more than they’d have to if they checked isthereanydeals. Since I’ve come across some comments that believed Steam did not allow cheaper prices as though it were fact despite reality not being the case.
Around $3.5 Million per employee, nearly 5x the next highest company, which is Facebook at around $780,000 per employee.
that’s a bullshit metric only useful to incite hatred. why the fuck do you want to say that valve is “this many times worse than facebook!”? it is obviously false.
only thing this proves is that they have relatively few employees. which also probably means that most of them do real work instead of being overloaded with managers
The numbers just show that they are 8x as efficient. I only referenced Facebook because they’re the next closest company for comparison.
I never said they were worse than Facebook. That’s your assumption, reading what you want, not what’s actually being said.
Their efficiency is largely due to their flat organizing structure. They have no real hierarchy to speak of.
Which is also one of the reasons so few new things get done, and why they (until now) haven’t been able to count to 3.
To get anything done you either have to be able to do it entirely by yourself which is unlikely, or get enough others organized and on board to make it happen.
What? Valve released CS2 like last year? They do stuff all the time. They have like three games they’re actively maintaining while making HL3 and three new pieces of tech? This is a wild, unfounded take and feels ideologically bound.
That was 2023, and one of very few things made not to specifically promote their hardware or as a cheap spinoff of existing IP. And define “actively maintaining”, because general bug fixes for decade old multi-player games and managing item marketplaces doesn’t require much manpower.
Going further back there’s Aperture Desk Job which was a tech demo for the Steam Deck in 2022. Then an extended cut version of Artifact originally meant as a sequel in 2021, which is a Dota 2 card game, but still remains unfinished, so effectively abandoned. Then Half Life: Alyx in 2020 which 90% of gamers can’t play because it’s VR only, and clearly made to further promote their VR hardware. Dota Warlords in 2020 which was originally a community game mode. The original Artifact in 2018, which had abandoned iOS and Android ports. The Lab in 2016 which was made to promote the launch of the HTC Vive. A zombie CS spinoff in 2014, Dota 2 in 2013, CS:Go in 2012, Portal 2 in 2011, and Left 4 Dead 2 in 2009.
If you remove the spinoff and niche stuff from the list you get game releases in 2023, 2020 (arguable since it’s VR only and thus inherently niche), 2013, 2012, 2011, 2009.
That’s a pretty big gap of not much for the last decade game-wise. Its been previously documented and published that Valve has issues getting games developed because of the flat organization structure. Articles like this.
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.
As if normal for companies to say you know what we are getting enough profits lets not monetize things even more.
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.
I’ve wanted to get into VR for the longest time but they all seemed like extremely walled gardens. This sounds awesome to me.
For most of my life VR has been, ‘VR is a great way to experience shitty games and you just have to pay a grand or more for this interactive tummy ache, and your unit may not be supported next year! Buy!’
I’m going to hold out until I can pick up one of these at the pawn shop for a bill.
I got an Index for cheap last year and was very excited to play a number of my favorite games with optional VR mode. Turns out:
- the Index ecosystem is more accessible than expected. 2) the games I was looking forward to all played like ass and made VR seem like a stupid gimmick. 3) In a desperate move that felt like sunk cost fallacy, I tried several VR-only games, and got TOTALLY hooked on modded Beatsaber. This itself made the buy-in worth it.
‘VR is a great way to experience shitty games
Have you tried Half-life: Alyx?
I recommend you give that, or something equivalent, a go without even buying any hardware. Either ask a friend or go to an arcade. You don’t need to shell out a grand to try.
If you hate it, move on.
Edit! I’m a 90s kid, and I’m really disappointed that VR hasn’t taken off the way scifi suggested it would. Back then, being absorbed in pure information sounded awesome, but now it is just going the way of 24/7 misinformation advertisements and micro transactions.
I’ll hold off on VR until there is a decent open source unit that isnt $800.
I remember trying the first VR headset game 1990 that ran on a Commodore Amiga in like 7 fps and was terrible in every way.
Yegods. My first foray into VR was at a high end arcade at North Pier in Chicago. I think the game was Dactyl. The headset was super heavy and none of the goals of the game were explained to me. I basically wandered around for five minutes, shooting green polygons in the sky, then time was up.
Dad was pissed that he’d blown $20 on it.
Edit: For historical reference, in the mid 90s $5 could keep your kids occupied at a regular arcade for a couple hours. $20 could have gotten us a couple of movie tickets and some Twizzlers.
I’d of been angry too.
I think that’s the same game I queued up for like 90 mins at a computer fair to have a few minutes of very confused playtime and that was it.
I remember seeing the Virtuality kits on TV in the 90s.
Clearly absolutely unplayable nonsense, and yet I still wanted to play on one.
It took so long for hardware to catch up.
I’ve got a Meta Quest 2 as a hand-me-down and yes, it’s extremely locked down. It’s possible to use a third-party app store, but to make it work you have to get a developer account with Meta and enable wireless debugging.
I also recieved a quest 2 recently, any good guides on getting it set up with third party apps that you found?
I haven’t tried it myself yet, but I hear the SideQuest app store is the place to go.
I mean, you can certainly pick up a used Quest 2 if you wanted to try it out. There’s a handful of exclusive stuff in the Quest store you’d be able to use, but not much of value. Resident Evil 4 VR is about it for the Q2. I think there was a Batman game for the Q3. You’d have access to anything the Steam Frame has access to if you’re streaming from a PC.
I think the PSVR2 works as well, but it’s wired only.
Half Life Alyx is certainly worth a blast through.
Stories like Ftumch’s reply, and the fact that it’s owned by Meta 🤮 have deterred me from wanting to try that one.
Looks can be deceiving. Coming from someone who uses the steamdeck, that layout looks exactly how I hoped and imagined it would be. The steamdeck is incredibly comfortable to hold and this looks like it would be the same!
It definitely reminds me of that Steam controller someone on Youtube built by sawing a Steamdeck in two and gluing the ends together so to speak. They said it‘s their dream controller so I‘m sure this controller already has some fans. I just can‘t tell by looking at it.
It’s basically steam deck minus the screen. If you are used to the steam deck it’ll be fine.
The first controller looked the same, but was very good to use once you got used to it. The build quality, though, was…fucking terrible.
I had to fix my controllers so many times that in the end I was swapping them out almost weekly. Still, felt great in the hand.
It might be you just got unlucky. Mine is still going strong all this years, and I use it often.
Definitely will be grabbing the Steam Machine when it releases.
8gb of vram seems… disappointing
They say it can run games at 4k60 “with FSR”, so it seems like it’s targeting 1080p native rendering, which is totally fine for me. I’ll be connecting it to the living room TV and sitting 6-8 feet away so I’ll probably keep it set to 1080p anyway just to keep the framerate high.
Eh, for the number of CUs, it looks fine. It looks like a slightly smaller RX 7600.
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.
That’s a big challenge, but a worthwhile one. The reason that Microsoft exploded in the DOS era was because it ran on everything that was “IBM compatible” aka x86. Meanwhile Apple was over there with a competitive product, but you could only run the software on their OS that ran in their hardware. People were able to get cheap third party x86 compatible computers and run MS-DOS (and later Windows), and they were not locked into a specific vendor doing top to bottom hardware/software support.
If they do this right, they’ll be the go to option for a lot of people who generally use their PC primarily for gaming.
You’d have to assume so!
do people have issues running steamOs on different hardware? genunly wondering
Yeah, it’s not released or supported outside of the Steam Deck or handheld partners. So you’re probably not going to get Nvidia drivers or anything else that’s not built in to the kernel.
You don’t need it though, you can just run Steam in big picture mode on whatever distro you want.
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
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.
That would be impossible to search online
Fuck, they did! 😫
I don’t like the look of this controller… I’m still gonna get one. Everything else I love.
Especially that SteamOS is apparently going to become available on ARM devices.
Arch linux ARM (the base of such steam os) has existed for a while now. Not to diminish Valve efforts, just putting in some context.
Fex works for most games now! This is amazing.
And now there are arm systems that are powerful enough to compete with consoles easily (consoles probably already using ARM?)
I’m running it on my raspi but it seems like the repos have been frozen for a while now?
Same, but at least it feels like the focus was on usability rather than looks. Keep it humble, Steam!
I do appreciate that the grips are flared out at least a little on this controller. The 90° ones on the Steam Deck can be quite uncomfortable, especially given that it’s a pretty heavy and cumbersome device.
My biggest skepticism is the dpad though. It looks nearly identical to the Steam Deck’s, which is easily one of the worst dpads I’ve ever used. Hopefully the underlying mechanisms and feel of it has been improved.
