Valve said on Thursday that its delayed Steam Machine PC and Steam Frame VR headset are set to launch sometime this summer, narrowing the window for two hardware products it had previously aimed to ship in early 2026.
The update matters now because developers and players who have been waiting on Valve’s new hardware finally have a release window to work around, even if they still do not have a date or a price. Valve said in a blog post that it is excited for players to try titles on the new Steam hardware once they launch this summer, a signal that the company is now treating the launch as close enough to start preparing the store and the games behind it.
Valve unveiled the Steam Machine, Steam Frame and a new Steam Controller late last year, but the hardware quickly ran into delays. In February, the company said a memory and storage crunch had forced it to revisit pricing and shipping plans, and in March it said it would be shipping all three products this year. Around that time, Valve also removed a line from a blog post that had said it hoped to ship in 2026, and it later released the Steam Controller on its own in early May.
For developers, the real work is happening behind the scenes. Valve is redesigning the Steam store before the devices arrive, and it is also sharing details about its Verified programs so game makers can prepare. For Steam Machine, verified games are meant to look and behave almost the same as Steam Deck verified titles, and Valve said it is testing every title on Steam Machine that fell below its performance requirements on Deck. The company also said the Steam Machine is roughly six times as powerful as the Steam Deck, a comparison that should help set expectations without settling the bigger question of what the machine will cost.
The Steam Frame has its own separate badge, and that one is meant to show which games run well natively on the headset. Valve said the headset can also stream games, and that the Steam Frame Standalone Verified program is aimed at the out-of-the-box experience in standalone mode. That leaves the same gap hanging over both devices: the company has now moved the launch into summer, but it still has not said exactly when the hardware will arrive or how much buyers will pay.
