Valve put up their Steam Year In Review 2025 and initially, they made it seem like their hardware plans were a lot more uncertain but they've since clarified.
Steam Machine, and presumably Controller, will release.
The Machine is just an HTPC with MAYBE a bespoke mobo and cooler (to my knowledge, nobody got a close enough look to truly confirm that). If they were planning for a Q1 release, those would have been all but done by the time they were formally announced and they are living in a warehouse.
The issue is the off the shelf (well, bulk purchased) storage and memory. Which… is the issue for a lot of computing at all levels right now.
My guess? We will have VERY limited release provisioned Steam Machines. “We got 500 units at this price” then “We got 700 units at THIS price” a week later and so forth. And there will probably be a Bring Your Own Memory/Storage version with greater availability for those who have some stockpiled or want to gamble.
As for the controllers? Controllers are actually really cheap to manufacture. Their cost is the R&D that goes into them and the cost of converting a factory in China for a few days a year. But they are generally very high mark-up (for the platform holders) and used to help offset the cost of the console itself. Think “gold plated HDMI”. That is why there have been so many third party controllers over the decades.
But those ALSO are sitting in a warehouse. It is just a question of how Valve wants to use them to offset Steam Machines.
The Steam Frame? Pretty sure that is fucked. Because the memory and storage is going to be soldered on (or outright integrated onto the board to begin with). And, as someone who has owned two HMDs (a Windows MR and now a facebook quest some shit or another)… it was probably always going to be a failure.
Obviously everyone should live their truth and understand what they can and can’t afford and what they should or should not buy going into whatever the fucking hell is coming down the pipeline next.
But if you really want a Steam Machine and have the disposable income and the poor sense? Look into the past year or two of prebuilt HTPCs and NUCs. GMKtec put a LOT of money into marketing last year but… they are damned good products (I have a K11) and if you put Bazzite or one of the other gaming oriented distros on there… it is already basically a Steam Machine.
And the Steam Machine is a Zen 4 with an RDNA3 GPU. So unless Valve and AMD REALLY want to piss everyone off, any efforts to get FSR4 on RDNA3 (of which there is already a lot of work and even some beta proof of concept work?) will apply to ALL RDNA3 cards… of which basically all the recent HTPCs have been.
Oh me too! I’m just afraid this generation of tech will fall victim to the AI black hole. Like cool, we’ll have 100 new 1 trillion parameter LLMs… And nothing to interface with them all while searching for a use case.
I’m starting to become skeptical they’ll ever release. Heading into the end of Q1 with no further news isn’t very hopeful.
Steam Machine, and presumably Controller, will release.
The Machine is just an HTPC with MAYBE a bespoke mobo and cooler (to my knowledge, nobody got a close enough look to truly confirm that). If they were planning for a Q1 release, those would have been all but done by the time they were formally announced and they are living in a warehouse.
The issue is the off the shelf (well, bulk purchased) storage and memory. Which… is the issue for a lot of computing at all levels right now.
My guess? We will have VERY limited release provisioned Steam Machines. “We got 500 units at this price” then “We got 700 units at THIS price” a week later and so forth. And there will probably be a Bring Your Own Memory/Storage version with greater availability for those who have some stockpiled or want to gamble.
As for the controllers? Controllers are actually really cheap to manufacture. Their cost is the R&D that goes into them and the cost of converting a factory in China for a few days a year. But they are generally very high mark-up (for the platform holders) and used to help offset the cost of the console itself. Think “gold plated HDMI”. That is why there have been so many third party controllers over the decades.
But those ALSO are sitting in a warehouse. It is just a question of how Valve wants to use them to offset Steam Machines.
The Steam Frame? Pretty sure that is fucked. Because the memory and storage is going to be soldered on (or outright integrated onto the board to begin with). And, as someone who has owned two HMDs (a Windows MR and now a facebook quest some shit or another)… it was probably always going to be a failure.
Obviously everyone should live their truth and understand what they can and can’t afford and what they should or should not buy going into whatever the fucking hell is coming down the pipeline next.
But if you really want a Steam Machine and have the disposable income and the poor sense? Look into the past year or two of prebuilt HTPCs and NUCs. GMKtec put a LOT of money into marketing last year but… they are damned good products (I have a K11) and if you put Bazzite or one of the other gaming oriented distros on there… it is already basically a Steam Machine.
And the Steam Machine is a Zen 4 with an RDNA3 GPU. So unless Valve and AMD REALLY want to piss everyone off, any efforts to get FSR4 on RDNA3 (of which there is already a lot of work and even some beta proof of concept work?) will apply to ALL RDNA3 cards… of which basically all the recent HTPCs have been.
The supply for RAM and SSDs is really tight these days. I hope Valve can make these products happen in spite of the setbacks.
Oh me too! I’m just afraid this generation of tech will fall victim to the AI black hole. Like cool, we’ll have 100 new 1 trillion parameter LLMs… And nothing to interface with them all while searching for a use case.