- Valve has released SteamOS 3.8 as a stable version
- Contains “initial support for upcoming Steam Machine hardware.”
- This groundwork being laid suggests that the Steam Machine is close now, and that’s backed up by plenty of other rumors lately.
It looks like the Steam Machine could really be coming, as the ground is now officially set for the device on SteamOS.
Valve announced the debut of SteamOS 3.8, which has the following line in the release notes: “Initial support for upcoming Steam Machine hardware.”
In other words, critical support for the Steam Machine is now in the full, stable version of SteamOS, which is obviously one of the final steps for the device to hit shelves.
And this move adds to many other clues that Valve is about to launch the compact gaming PC. To start, we know that the launch is planned for the summer, as Valve itself has told us, which means that a launch in June is possible (that’s right, July or August).
Additionally, the Steam Machine has recently been seen in various forms online, notably a Vulkan compliance test, and there have also been Geekbench leaks (as highlighted by VideoCardz), along with suggestions that reviewers already own the PC.
Elsewhere in SteamOS 3.8, Valve has provided a number of fixes, including numerous general stability tweaks along with game stability and performance improvements via an updated GPU driver.
There’s also a very welcome update to KDE Plasma version 6.4.3 with support for Wayland, which should significantly improve performance in desktop mode on the Steam Deck (as well as beef up support for external displays, including VRR).
Away from the Steam Deck, we have a couple of key changes, with Valve introducing “improved support for recent Intel and AMD platforms,” meaning SteamOS will be smarter on rival portable devices, including those with Intel chips.
Valve also promises “much improved video memory management” for discrete GPUs, and this will of course benefit the Steam Machine (which has a semi-custom AMD RDNA 3 discrete GPU with 8GB of VRAM).
Analysis: a mainstream machine or a niche appeal?
Adding all these clues together, the expectation is that the Steam Machine is planned for launch very soon, barring any last minute setbacks. Additionally, a June launch would be nice, as it would mean the device would simply slip into Valve’s planned release window for the first half of 2026.
Also, I think the sooner the release comes, the better, as it doesn’t look like the pressure of the RAM and component crisis on the PC market is going to ease anytime soon. In fact, things are likely to get worse given the mood that has prevailed this month. That includes Nvidia’s CEO casting a giant pessimistic cloud (no pun intended) by saying he expects the RAM crisis to last “quite a few years.” There is very little hope for a recovery from the pricing issues any time soon based on what we have been hearing most recently.
The main concern about the Steam Machine remains its price, of course, and Valve hasn’t given us any real indication of where it might fall, save for the fact that the company won’t be subsidizing the hardware to drive adoption (which wasn’t comforting to know).
Expectations have been for an MSRP of $1,000 or more for the base model; recently, one analyst floated the idea of a $1,200 launch price in the U.S. The problem then is that this makes it very difficult to push the Steam Machine as a mainstream device to conquer living rooms around the world, when that price will relegate the compact PC to much more niche appeal.
Mind you, we shouldn’t skip the prices, so to speak, and perhaps the Steam Machine outlay won’t be as painful as the Internet imagines. However, in the current climate where everything is becoming considerably more expensive (and you can add Apple’s Macs to that list starting today) it’s hard to stay positive about the potential costs of hardware.
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