Announcing new Steam Hardware from Valve: Steam Controller, Steam Machine, and Steam Frame are coming in 2026. Just like Steam Deck, all three devices are optimized for Steam and designed for players to get even more out of their Steam library.
this post was submitted on 12 Nov 2025
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Steam Hardware
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The VR headset seems to be a major downgrade from expectations.
Three year old SoC, subpar quality LCD displays without local dimming (and apparently very bad screen door effect)... the eye tracking and custom wireless with foveated codec is a nice touch though. I think the main benefit here will be the Proton ARM translation layer and the ability to run SteamOS on other headsets.
The most disappointing part is the rumoured pricing of "aiming to be under $1000". I mean I get it, Meta had us spoiled with the $300-400 headsets, but this, aside the software goodies, is hardly better hardware wise than the current Quest 3, will cost approximately twice as much (unless Valve really cuts that "under $1000" target back a lot)... If the Steam layer gets cloned onto the Quest 3, the Frame loses all of its benefits, really.
I'm still excited for it, but found it somewhat lackluster.
It's marketed as a "streaming first" headset. It includes a 6e USB router in the box. The headset has WiFi 7.
It's also being marketed as a standalone headset. Absolutely no excuse for using a 3yo SoC when much better options are available at not significantly different prices.
Also let's not forget this is Qualcomm we're talking about, the company that drops support for even their most popular chips after 3-4 years. Which in turn heavily limits any updates this SoC will receive. Even performance questions aside, using a SoC that is guaranteed to go unsupported within the first year of sales is just a bad idea.
It's likely because of valve needing Linux support. I'm surprised they even got Qualcomm to agree to give them drivers for that chip.
Drivers aren't the issue. Keeping them up to date is.
Most of these drivers are written for specific kernel versions (and are part of the BSP), but Qualcomm only keeps them updated for a given cycle. Which is usually 2-3 years (albeit Google's recent push has resulted in longer support cycles).
It's not terribly important because steam can make their own drivers and update them but they have to usually have a working driver to start from or good documentation from Qualcomm. Patching bugs isn't all that difficult even with binaries.
Official support IS important, because the downstream companies can't (and shouldn't) be expected to make the support happen.
It's Qualcomm's hardware, only Qualcomm has the internal documentation that ensures the drivers are up to spec, it should be up to them to provide 6-8-10 years of continued support. They don't because they're essentially in a monopoly market.
Well good luck getting them to do that.