On November 10,2015, Valve released the first version of the steam machine to the world. The steam machine is basically a PC that was made to be more console-like and appeal to people who want to play PC games, but at a comforting level. However due to many problems like the Linux OS, the bad market for the product, and bad advertising from valve and the hardware partners, this caused the first steam machine to be a huge failure. And ultimately led to the steam machine being discontinued and stopped being sold in 2018.
However, flash forward to November 12th of 2025, and Valve has officially announced the release of a new steam machine. And now they are determined to get it right this time.
This new steam machine has people excited, as we see some major differences in this model. This new steam machine is said to be 6x more powerful than the steam deck. It is also using Steam OS which is optimized for gaming. Some of its specs include a semi-custom AMD Zen 4 6-core/12-thread CPU and a semi-custom AMD RDNA 3 GPU with 28 compute units and 8GB of GDDR6 VRAM and 16GB of DDR5 ram. It is also available in two storage sizes, 512GB or 2TB. The power supply also is not an annoying brick but instead it is conveniently built inside the machine. The machine itself is small at only a 6 inch cube, meaning you can put this pretty much anywhere you want. The machine also has ports so you can connect monitors, keyboards, mouses, or the ethernet cord.
All of those amazing specs may sound confusing to the casual gamer, however using the steam machine is actually really simple. All you have to do is connect a controller or keyboard and mouse, then sign into your steam account, and then you just browse your games and see which ones you want to install and play. It’s that easy!
Many people are excited to see how the steam machine performs compared to other consoles and PCs. And valve is definitely more hopeful with this new model. And they have said that the new steam machine is said to be released in early 2026. The price however has not been announced yet. Some say that it will be around $450-$600 while others say it will be $600-$800. This has led to some controversy between people who think that is too expensive and people who don’t. All we can do is wait to see what Valve announces as the price.
