Earlier this month, AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su said that Valve was on track to release its Steam Machine in the early part of 2026. That could still happen, but Valve has now confirmed that Steam Machine, Steam Frame, and Steam Controller have all been delayed.
In a post on Steam, Valve notes that it had originally planned to release pricing and launch dates for all three products by now. Those plans were scuttled because of “the memory and storage shortages you’ve likely heard about,” wrote Valve. The company reiterated that it still plans to release these products in the first half of this year, but it hasn’t been able to “land on concrete pricing and launch dates that we can confidently announce.”
Valve also shared that it will be sharing faceplate CAD, specs, and details with fans and manufacturers so that they will be able to make their own. The company added that Steam Machine’s SSD (NVMe 2230 or 2280) and memory (DDR5 SODIMMs) “are both accessible and upgradeable.”
Additionally, Valve noted that it is approaching the issue of visually demanding Steam games “from multiple angles” and looking into improving upscaling and optimization for ray tracing performance as well as further improvements to the HDMI VRR.
According to Valve, Steam Frame should be able to work for players with glasses, but it may depend upon the width of the glasses frames. The company also disclosed how its foveated streaming differs from the foveated rendering in other VR headsets. Unlike foveated rendering, foveated streaming doesn’t require a dev to implement it, so it could improve performance for more games.
