Leaks again hint at Valve doing a proper Steam Machine Console

Want one!

Edit: without Winblowz of course.


Last edited by tfk on 21 Aug 2025 at 10:56 am UTC

After the previous failure of the stationary Steam Machine I am worried if this has any chance. I think the SteamOS Verified program (previously, Steam Deck Verified) would need to seriously step up its game to ensure there are no games marked as Verified but actually unplayable. Because this still happens from time to time.

We definitely need that Steam Controller 2 as well that's for sure.

Amen to that, brother

I could see Valve making a few prototypes every couple of years to estimate how well a Steam console could perform within a certain price point. And it's probably easier to slap Windows on them for testing purposes.

Now, would they release a console with similar specs?
Honestly, maybe. The RX 7600 is capable enough to handle most games at 1080p/60FPS or 1440p/30FPS. That's very comparable to the current consoles except the PS5 Pro. Also, RDNA3 isn't that sought-after of an architecture with it's relatively high power consumption and only modest improvements over RDNA2. Especially in regards to raytracing and upscaling. Maybe they can get a good deal on those cards and thanks to Linux we can use FSR4 with solid performance which would be a decent advantage over the lackluster FSR2/3 implementations on console. 8GB VRAM is a bummer but just enough currently.

I could see it being released and doing okay for the right price. Though a cut down RDNA4 card could be significantly better for longevity. A 9050(XT) essentially. Better raytracing and FSR4 performance and 12/16GB VRAM would go a long way to make it last longer.

For a traditional console, the anti-cheat situation is going to be a major roadblock. Who knows, Valve may be doing their tests with the Xbox ROG Ally windows version? They might offer both options?

This said, I would get one to install SteamOS on it, right from the start.

I believe this could be an old testing hardware.
I'm pretty sure Valve aims at something beefier for a TV console.

IMO Valve is experimenting to find the minimal viable product allowing customers to install Windows 11 if they aren't happy with SteamOS limitations (*cough*anti-cheat*cough*). Once you have the minimal viable product, you can estimate the minimal production cost and start looking at what kind of compromise you can do to offer more than the mvp while keeping the cost low.

Plus we have idiots like EA rolling out games using Secure boot and TPM based anticheat which are defeated after one day but the idiots will still keep requiring Secure Boot and TPM as implemented on Windows 11 to launch the game. So until Valve brings up their own server side anticheat to stuff and convince corporates to switch to it, the best Valve can do is pay developper to improve Secure Boot support and TPM 2.0 on Linux so they can implement it on SteamOS. However you cannot test potential OS features which haven't been developped yet on present hardware. Leaving only Windows 11 to test if their hardware is compatible with EA's Secure Boot and TPM based anticheat.

This is my opinion on why Valve.would test a Steam Machine running Windows 11 with only 8Gb of RAM for the CPU (the GPU on the prototype seemingly having its own separate VRAM).

I think enough people would be interested, looking at how many people get into mini pcs these days

One advantage of doing it now is, they're already maintaining an OS and Proton for the Deck, so it's not much more work to put that same OS and Proton on something else.

I don't think that was a Valve console. I still think Valve will release a console this year. Would be a mistake if they don't. Unless they got some real reasons to wait until 2026. Whatever they release, it better be more powerful than this "fremont" device. If they do release a console this year, then my LCD Steam Deck will easily last until 2027 or 2028.

We definitely need that Steam Controller 2 as well that's for sure.

Seriously can't come soon enough.

Whatever they release, it better be more powerful than this "fremont" device.

It all depends on the targeted price tag. 8gb of Vram is clearly not enough, it should be 16gb or 32gb and it should support FSR4.

With this, it could be a competent entry level console priced like a PS5. I've been playing on a Ryzen 5 3600 with RX 6600 for the last two years and I didn't feel the need to upgrade.

In the following weeks/months, I would like to see Valve leak benchmarks using a custom Ryzen ai max+ 395 (core count? minus ai?).

The Steam Deck had many apu iterations, during its development...

unlike steamdeck that have a reason to exist (portability) this thing might strugle without anti cheat , especially when an title like gta6 launches, even if it dont support pc in general, i cant see many people chosing it instead of an xbox/playstation, especially now that sony will support xbox and xbox will support playstation, one of the key advantages of steam and pc games was to have support for both vendor exclusives.

it need to be priced very low or have an much better hardware than the competition


Last edited by elmapul on 23 Aug 2025 at 12:38 am UTC

I don't know if it really needs to be *better or cheaper* to carve out a niche for itself. I've noticed a good chunk of normal non-techy people who are getting pretty interested in cutting Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo out of their lives for moral reasons, but really outside of the steamdeck nothing else on the market really appeals to most normal people who don't want to trust weird small or foreign companies they've never heard of, but want something that's not the big three evil gaming companies or the three "tiny" but evil gaming companies: Meta/Apple/Google who all offer their own gaming ecosystems too but are really just as big and dirty feeling.

Bad joke explained: Tiny because their mostly mobile/VR game companies. ^-^;

Out of the big gaming companies making hardware Valve [at least from what I've seen from people] certainly has the most favorable persona. So I could see if they did something that was truly good enough, they'd have a viable market without needing to be flashy.

This conversation is making me want to lay out a few of the pros and cons now as compared to back when.
So. When the Steam Machine came out, it had a number of cons:
--UI was by many accounts fairly clunky
--Did not offer a good solution for watching Netflix and such
--SteamOS was not well maintained
--Did not have a truly big sales channel, just selling on Steam
--Publicity wasn't good enough
--Plan for everyone else to make them was doomed to failure
--The big one: Compared to a Windows version, had far fewer games. Wine was not up to the task.
--Related: Figuring out which games would really work was not hard exactly, but not transparent enough not to be annoying.

Main pro: Compared to an Xbox or Playstation, still had in effect many more games, including a fair amount of your current Steam library if you had one.
Arguable pro: Steam Controller.

What would a Steam Machine's pros and cons look like now?
--UI has been honed by the Steam Deck; it's pretty good now. So that penalty is gone.
--I'm not sure about the Netflix etc. situation
--SteamOS is well maintained now as far as I know. That penalty gone too.
--Sales channel is still the same, except in the sense that Steam itself has grown considerably in the years since so it's just a somewhat bigger channel.
--How well they'd do the publicity is unknown
--Games situation is much better thanks to Proton and continued Wine development. Unfortunately the anti-cheat situation means there are still some prominent games missing, and they're the kind of game you might well want to play on a Steam Machine kind of setup. Just lack of Fortnite and Roblox is a harsh hit. If Valve could pay off the Roblox people somehow and get solid Roblox support, that would make the difference in a lot of cases between "Get this for my kids" and "No point getting this for my kids".
--The "which games work" problem is largely gone. There are so few that really don't, that people would just try and see. And consider that on Steam Deck, the "unsupported" category is often stuff that doesn't work with the form factor, or sometimes that just really needs beefier hardware. A Steam Machine wouldn't have those problems, so a lot of "unsupported" goes away right there.

On the plus side:
The games advantage vs. Playstation or Xbox has gone from sizable to ridiculous.
The UI is good enough that it seems to be significantly better for the purpose than an equivalent box running Windows.
I expect that a Steam Controller II would be very good.
Probably they would just do the actual box themselves this time, and they now have the hardware experience that they'd probably do it well.

Is all this good enough for a smashing success? Dunno. Most of the really key problems with the original Steam Machines are gone or at least much reduced. But some remain, and the up side . . . I dunno. Probably worth having for a moderate number of people. But one thing is, if they just do it in house, it doesn't have to be such an instant smashing success. As long as it does fairly well, it's a positive and they can build on it.