The Steam Machine, the next-gen console from the PC gaming market giant could be a game changer.
You’ve got your console gamers and your PC gamers and rarely the twain shall meet. Console gamers are generally after an out-of-the-box plug ‘n’ play experience, while your PC propellerheads (and God help me, I am one) tend to like to tweak things – building your own computer is a rite of passage akin to going to see a dead body with your three best mates in the early ’60s. they’re friendly but separate tribes, for the most part – platform snobbery is for losers at any rate.
But there are rumblings on the border of a secret third thing that is both console and PC, sort of. That’d be Valve‘s freshly-announced Steam Machine, the huskier cousin of the Steam Deck they released in 2022, a beast designed to give PC gamers the console experience or vice versa. And direct access to the Steam Store, let’s not forget about that.
Due to be launched in the not-too-distant but as-yet-unspecified future, alongside the Steam Frame and Steam Controller, the Steam Machine is described as a “compact living room gaming box”, which is a long way to say “console”. The Steam Frame is Valve’s new proprietary VR headset, while the Steam Controller is a widget designed to replace your mouse and function across VR and screen-based gaming.
PC Gamer has the stats for the technically inclined, and they’re worth a look. The Steam Machine itself boasts the following:
- CPU: AMD Zen 4 (6-core)
- RAM: 16 GB
- GPU: Semi-custom AMD RDNA 3 (28 CU)
- VRAM: 8 GB
- Storage: 512 GB, 2 TB
- OS: SteamOS
- Release window: 2026
- Price: TBC
Dedicated gamers will be all over this, of course, but the real question is whether the Steam Machine can break out of that more specialised market and into the awareness of casual gamers, alongside Sony’s PlayStation and Microsoft’s Xbox. At the moment it’s still a niche product measured against the market dominance of other platforms, but this could top the balance.
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