With about four to six million units shifted, Valve’s Steam Deck console has been a hit. The handheld Steam Deck has been Valve’s biggest hardware hit to date. Yet, it fell a long way short of matching the Nintendo Switch handheld for popularity and sales, and Valve needs something new to combat the Switch 2. Valve has now revealed it will be launching a new gaming console and virtual reality headset next year, in the form of the Steam Machine console and Steam Frame.
Valve revealed the upcoming Steam Machine console and Frame headset on November 12, 2025, with a YouTube video. That video about the future of Valve hardware gave us a first glimpse of the Steam Machine, confirmed to be six times more powerful than the portable Steam Deck. The video also shows us the Steam Frame, a new virtual reality headset with standalone functionality.
The Steam Machine
What we see of the Steam Machine in the video shows us that the console is cube-shaped and black. That is a hybrid gaming PC and console that enables you to play Windows PC games on TVs. Technically, it is more of a PC than a console in terms of architecture, but one you can hook up to TVs and desk-based monitors for gaming. It does not look like a conventional desktop PC because the Steam Machine has a console form.
A 4.8 GHz semi-custom AMD Zen 4 CPU (central processor unit) is the heart of the Steam Machine. The Steam Machine console (or PC) has a AMD RDNA 3 graphics card with 8 GB GDDR6 of dedicated high-speed memory, which supports 4K gaming at 60 frames per second. It incorporates 16 GB RAM (system memory) with 512 GB storage space for games.
The Steam Machine console shares many of the features Steam Deck players will be familiar with, such as the Steam OS, Desktop mode, notifications, SD card slot for storage expansion, remote play, and fast suspending. It also has a snazzy RGB LED lightbar strip feature on it for a system status indicator. However, users can also customize that lighbar feature to set up custom light shows.
The Steam Machine console has a new Steam Controller, which Valve’s hardware video also revealed. That controller looks similar to the Xbox gamepads with the industry-standard button layout of two thumbsticks, a left D-pad, a couple of back buttons, and four right-side buttons. It features next-gen magnetic thumbsticks for more responsive gameplay.
The Steam Frame
The Steam Frame is not Valve’s first virtual reality headset. However, it will be Valve’s first standalone VR headset. What this means is that you won’t need to hook it up to a VR-ready PC to play Steam Frame games, which makes it somewhat more accessible than the Valve Index.
A core feature of the Steam Frame is its VR streaming. Its VR streaming enables players to stream games from their PCs to the headset with a 6GHz wireless adapter that plugs into USB ports. This high-resolution VR streaming will provide players with wireless access to their Steam game libraries.
Valve has confirmed the Steam Frame is a VR headset with PC architecture. It is based on the SteamOS, like the Steam Machine, and has a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor and 16 GB of RAM. That makes the Steam Frame a PC with a unique wearable headset form factor. Players can also play non-VR games in the Steam Frame headset.
So, what Valve has up its sleeve are 2-in-1 PC/console and PC/VR hardware devices with an open gaming ecosystem. The Steam Machine console and Steam Frame VR headset could revolutionize PC gaming. Valve has not revealed pricing or exact release details for either, but has confirmed a quarter one (January to March) 2026 launch period for them. The Steam Machine and Frame show Valve has serious ambitions in the hardware industry as it merges PC and console gaming like nobody has done before.
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