With hardware prices going through the roof, it's not a great time to be a gamer. Earlier this year, when Valve announced that it's Steam Machine–its Cube-shaped Linux powered desktop gaming machine–was going to be delayed due to a shortage of RAM and storage components, geeks everywhere groaned. That groan became a pained scream when we woke up one morning last month and discovered that the price of Valve's now four-year old Steam Deck had been increased by hundreds of dollars: a consequence of the same data center related hardware shortage that has kept the Steam Machine and Valve's Steam Frame VR kit out of living rooms and gaming caves for longer than anyone would like. But, It looks as though the long Steam-focused device drought is about to end. According to a new blog post from Valve, the company's VR goggles, controllers and the Steam Machine will drop sometime this summer.
The post, which was aimed more at game developers than consumers, is light on new details about Valve's upcoming hardware. What was re-iterated, however, is exciting. The Steam Machine, which runs Valve's in-house version of Linux OS will be around six-times more powerful than the company's popular Steam Deck handheld. As for the Steam Frame? It's primarily designed for streaming your Steam purchased games directly into your eye holes. However, according to Valve, the thing is a full-blown face computer which can run games internally, making easier than ever to get mugged for your tech while playing Hades on your subway commute to work.
If you bother to read to the end of the post (don't bother, as I've done it for you) you'll discover that the important bit is that Valve's Verified game certification started for Steam Deck is being extended to their new hardware as well. So, if a game runs on your 'deck, it'll also work just fine on your new gear. This is great news and not necessarily a given: Just because a computer offers more processing power doesn't necessarily mean that it's compatible with older software (I'm looking at you M-Series Macs unable to run Windows natively like machines from a decade ago could.)
