Valve’s Quiet Return to Hardware Includes a Controller, Compact PC, and VR Headset That Fit Together Perfectly

Valve has thrown a few curveballs with the announcement of three new devices, all of which appear to build on the same magic that made the Steam Deck so successful. Steam Controller, Steam Machine, and Steam Frame will be available in 2026, all running SteamOS and designed to make it incredibly simple to share games, saves, and controls.

First up is the controller, in which Valve integrated the Deck’s best features – small trackpads, gyroscoped targeting, and comfy back grips – into a full-sized controller that lasts 35 hours or more on a single charge. The magnetic thumbsticks include hall-effect sensors, which eliminate drift. Four haptics in the grips and two more in the trackpads provide feedback gamers crave. The little puck that plugs into a USB port offers an ultra-reliable wireless connection (8 milliseconds of lag or less) while simultaneously charging the controller. Bluetooth and wired connections both function flawlessly.

Valve claims that the Steam Machine, a six-inch black cube with a semi-custom AMD chip with six Zen 4 cores, 28 RDNA 3 compute units, and the power to churn out 4K at 60fps with upscaling and ray tracing, is six times faster than the Steam Deck. Storage options include 512 GB or 2 TB, and both come with a microSD slot for extra space. The ports cover almost everything: HDMI 2.0 for 4K 120 Hz, DisplayPort 1.4 for 4K 240 or even 8K 60 Hz, gigabit Ethernet, WiFi 6E, and a mix of USB A and USB C. Even the magnetic front plate, which is easily interchangeable – one example had a Team Fortress 2 design – and a small little LED bar that lights up in any color you choose. Testers breezed through Cyberpunk 2077 with ease, but noticed that newer games began to push the fans a touch – but a large internal heatsink keeps everything nice and quiet, and the entire machine weighs little over 5 pounds.

Then slip on the Steam Frame, which weighs 440 grams (with strap and battery), and you’ll find it feels a lot lighter than some of the recent standalone headsets. And, with a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 running SteamOS natively, you can play Steam Deck verified titles without having to connect to a PC. Simply connect a Wi-Fi 6E adapter to your gaming setup, and the headset will stream full PC VR with eye-tracking foveated rendering – the maximum detail exactly where your head is looking – without losing any of the visual clarity. In actuality, each eye receives a 2160 by 2160 LCD panel with pancake lenses and a field of view of up to 110 degrees. You can even increase the refresh rate to 144 Hz in experimental mode if you want to try it. Four outward-facing cameras handle all of the tracking with the help of an IR illuminator, and a monochrome passthrough allows you to see what’s going on in the real world. And don’t even get me started on that front expansion pot; maybe they’ll offer us color passthrough or some more snazzy sensors as an upgrade later on.

The included controllers are a nice touch; they’re effectively the new Steam Controller split in two, giving you complete 6 degrees of freedom and 40 hours of battery life on AA batteries. They’ve also included capacitive finger sensing to detect how you’re holding the items, and there’s an alternative strap to keep them in place even if you’re swinging them wildly.

Shipping will begin in the same regions where Steam Deck currently ships – Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and South Korea – via Komodo, but specific dates and prices will not be announced until after the new year in 2026. Having said that, you can already wishlist these devices on Steam.