Valve is making a new Steam-based home console

After the success of the project Steam deckValve, a Steam company, is now releasing a new home console, aptly named Steam engine. There will also be a new Steam controller and a VR headset called steam frameall will be launched in 2026.

I'm most excited about the new console because I love PC gaming in the living room but hate Windows on the TV. However, the Steam Frame is a new fully wireless headset that can compete with its peers. Meta quest lineso it will also be interesting for VR gamers.

Don't call it a comeback

A Ten years after Valve's first attempt at bringing PC gaming to the living room with the original Steam Machines line, she's back with a new custom-made living room computer packaged in a small black cube.

This new machine works SteamOS like the current Steam Deck (and the new Steam Frame), so it should work pretty much the same as the current Steam Deck on the market. The only difference is that this new console is much more powerful and is designed to sit on your desk or in your living room.

The equipment itself is a cube of approximately six inches on each side. It's quite small, but I'm guessing it has one large fan on the top or bottom that helps circulate the air while keeping it quiet. I'm sure we'll discover interesting hardware features when it comes out, but I was surprised to see that it doesn't seem to have anything in common with Xbox series X or Mac Studio when it comes to cooling desktop-grade components. Instead, there appears to be a large fan at the back and a giant heatsink inside to manage the heat.

You can create your own bezels for the new console.

On the outside, Valve has added a fun LED strip that flashes when the machine is automatically downloading or updating games in the background. There's also a Gigabit Ethernet port, one USB-C port, and four USB-A ports—two on the front and two on the back. There is also a microSD card slot, and you can use HDMI 2.0 or DisplayPort 1.4 to connect to your TV.

In terms of technical specifications, the machine is equipped with custom AMD chips. The processor is reported to be very similar to the AMD Ryzen 5 8540U, but the GPU is more unique and more similar in power to some eGPUs or high-end Framework laptop specs, according to the report Edge. Overall, it should be close to the PS5 Pro in terms of power.

Valve says it's targeting 4K gaming at 60fps, which is still a pretty ambitious goal for 2025, but it also plans to achieve this with AMD's FSR 3 upscaling technology. This should stack up nicely, and I'll note that when using my gaming PC with an RTX 5070, I need to upscale a bit (DLSS quality mode) to hit 4K resolution at 60fps in second. Arc Raiders at maximum settings.

At a practical event, Edge reports that the console has been tested Cyberpunk 2077 on medium graphics settings using FSR 3 at 4K resolution 65 fps. However, it is not specified whether the FSR was set for balance, quality or performance. It mentioned that the game was upscaled from 1080p to 4K, which makes me think it was using the “Balanced” or “Performance” mode.

If you're planning on buying it, it'll be available in either a 512GB or 2TB version, and Valve says storage will be easily expandable via MicroSD cards. It's unclear whether you can easily replace or add another SSD or RAM. The Steam Machine has 16GB of DDR5 RAM as base and 8GB of VRAM on a dedicated GPU.

We still don't know the price or exactly when it will be released after early 2026. However, Valve is open to allowing anyone to install the desktop version of SteamOS on their hardware. Edge notes that in an interview with Valve, the company hinted that the price would be comparable to entry-level PCs with similar performance. This tells me it could cost around $1000-$1200 when it launches in Canada. However, building such a small PC usually costs a lot more if you build it yourself, so you can take advantage of the Steam Machine's small size and portability.

Source: Steam, Edge