A mural on Valve’s wall in Bellevue, Washington that I loved. You can swap the stickers.
I walked around Seattle’s Pike Place Market a few weeks ago, at the end of October, trying apples. A fruit market just handed out these delicious samples. Yellow opal. Like a crisp magic slice. A taste of a chocolate cherry. Some maple smoked salmon candy.
As Seattle is known for some incredible foods, Valve - about twenty minutes from there, in Bellevue, is known for its PC gaming tech. I sampled a lot of strange and magical stuff at Valve that’s coming next year, stuff that feels like a little PC gaming console VR explosion. Steam Frame VR headset. Steam Machine little cube console. Steam Controller. Little tastes, dips into what’s to come.
Valve Steam Machine, Steam Frame, and Steam Controller. I tried them all.
If you’re into Valve, and you’ve been dreaming of something big coming, 2026 looks like the biggest thing since the Steam Deck handheld. If you’re not into Valve you might be wondering: why no new game handheld? Why are they making another VR headset? Can a sleek black Steam Machine cube be as good as an Xbox or PlayStation…or Switch 2?
The Intertwixt is about the overlaps between things, and well, I felt some very Intertwixty feelings over at Valve. A standalone VR headset, Steam Frame, feels like a Quest but also has standard game control buttons and can load up Steam OS games like a Steam Deck for your face. That little black cube of a Machine, it’s like a TV-connected Super Steam Deck. The controller is like the Steam Deck’s controls detached and became their own thing. You can wirelessly stream across a PC with a new wireless connection and use eye tracking on Steam Frame to improve wireless VR play. Also, Steam OS runs on ARM chips on the Steam Frame now.
And the Steam Frame could run Android VR games…even eventually Android XR apps, it seems, based on what Valve’s team suggested to me.
A lot swirling around. Let’s pull out a few things I’m seeing.
The Steam Frame is a standalone VR headset and it runs off a Qualcomm chip. Steam on ARM for the first time.
1: Steam on ARM will let Valve make smaller things, and run Steam on more small devices.
Microsoft’s tried to move into phones and tablets. But Valve’s big Frame move of having a VR headset using a Qualcomm phone chip be able to run PC and Android games via Steam feels like a big door opening. Steam Deck magically shrank PC gaming to work on smaller chipsets, but Frame is going further. Does this mean new handhelds, or more ARM products, or tablets, or a sign of where Steam Deck 2 could go? Yes, I think, across the board. VR for now, and who knows what next. Also, as more small headsets and glasses emerge in the next decade, Valve could evolve with them.
2. Streaming keeps getting better.
I just was wowed yesterday by playing PlayStation Portal as it streamed Astro Bot, a PS5 game, via the cloud without a PS5 on at all. Sony’s been enabling more cloud game streaming, and so are many others. But Valve’s working on making home game streaming better, too. A new 6GHz wireless connection between Steam Frame and PCs, using “foveated streaming” that uses eye tracking to invisibly optimize streaming quality and compress the detail without you noticing, feels like a door to all sorts of better device-to-device home connections.
Steam Deck next to Steam Machine (the one on the right is Steam Machine outside its case - it’s small!)
3. Steam Deck 2 is going to borrow from all of this.
Valve has said over and over that the next Steam Deck isn’t right around the corner. But these three products I saw are. The VR Frame, the console Machine, the Controller, they’re inspired by Steam Deck. They’re expanded parts of the same idea. They’re pushing out thoughts of fast wireless connections, interconnected control and streaming gaming, finding ways off an old-fashioned PC and landing everywhere else. And isn’t that every gaming company’s dream now? The Switch 2 is modular and wants to live in your bag, on a TV. Microsoft is talking up “Xbox everywhere” as if the Xbox has atomized and lives among us all like the Force. Sony’s cloud-streaming PlayStation 5 games on the Portal handheld, almost making the console disappear. Phones and tablets are already half-cloud things in our lives. It feels like pieces of the connected, melted future of media we’re already living in. But Valve’s keeping a bit of an anchor here on stuff you own and can keep personally streamed and transferred between devices. Maybe an open system, running Android and even other apps too?
I can’t even say if any of these three things would be absolutely essential in my future home gaming setup. Steam Frame looks like a more evolved and open Meta Quest, but would I want a Steam Deck on my face when I travel? Steam Machine: is it better than a PS5 or Xbox? Not sure yet. I like the controller. And also, I do love the Steam Deck. It’s made me a PC gamer more than any other type of product ever did before. That could be what Machine and Frame do next…make the idea of “PC gaming” feel more like an abstract concept than a physical form. What is a PC if it’s everywhere?
Valve is laying groundwork here that you’re definitely going to see elsewhere. The shape of products is going to keep shifting and getting weird, because it’s going to be increasingly possible to find ways to stream and melt and connect software we have into new forms.
That day in Seattle has blurred together for me, the different products and the people and the food and the markets and the surprises. All interconnected.
As I think of what game I want to play now, over the weekend…am I thinking of what I’ll be playing it on, or will I just conjure the device I need? Like a streaming show that can live wherever I happen to continue it…where are my games now?
Extra bits, and SXSW
In other news this week, I also tried yet another pair of smart glasses: the Even G2 by Even Realities is lightweight, very normal-looking, doesn’t have massively reflective lenses, and can cast monochrome green displays that can translate or do live teleprompting (or, assist conversation via AI with a “Conversate” feature that listens for possibly interesting terms, then defines them as on-screen pop-ups while you’re chatting?). There’s also a control ring that also tracks fitness like an Oura that’s sold separately. I’ll be testing these when I get a pair with my prescription…good news, Even Realities is great about supporting a very wide range up to +12/-12. I appreciate that.
And: I’ll be at SXSW next March in Austin! First time ever going to SXSW in person, or Austin for that matter. I’m thrilled to say I’m talking on a panel with Meow Wolf and Niantic Spatial about the future of immersive experiences in real-world locations as they bridge across into augmented and digital.
And…I’m continuing to read both Black Hole by Charles Burns and Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. They’re oddly parallel.
See you next week.