Valve has made three shocking announcements today: the return of the Steam Machine, what essentially is a cube-shaped console, six times more powerful than a Steam Deck, that allows you to play all your Steam library, including AAA titles, at 4K and 60 fps, using SteamOS so that you can start playing right from the start, but with the flexibility of a gaming PC. They also announces a new Steam Controller.
The other announcement was even more surprising: a VR headset, called Steam Frame, with 2160x2160 LCD pancake pannels on every eye, set to move between 74 Hz - 144 Hz. It can work connected to a computer, but it can also play natively some games (it has a Snapdragon 8 Series processor with 16 GB of RAM).
With Steam Frame, you can play original VR games (both streamed from your PC or, if it's powerful enough, natively from the Steam Frame). Games will look great, as Valve says it uses "foveated streaming" to use eye tracking to render only what the user is looking, to optimise resources and improve image quality.
The Steam Frame comes with Steam Frame Controllers, designed to play VR games, but also every game from Steam library (it's basically a regular controller cut in half, like a pair of Joy-Cons, with all the buttons). You can also use a regular Steam Controller when playing with Frame. And all of that, the controllers and the headset, are wireless, using a USB wireless adapter, unlike the Valve Index from 2019, where one of the best VR games of all time was released, Half-Life Alyx.
What do you think about today's announcement from Valve? Are you excited about Steam Frame? It launches in early 2026, but no word on the price yet... You can find more official information on its website.