- Valve has pushed out SteamOS 3.8 as a stable release
- It contains "initial support for upcoming Steam Machine hardware"
- This groundwork being laid suggests the Steam Machine is close now, and that's backed up by a bunch of other rumors of late
It seems the Steam Machine really could be on the brink of arriving, as the ground is now officially prepared for the device in 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, the foundational support for the Steam Machine is now in the full, stable release of SteamOS, which is obviously one of the final steps toward the device hitting shelves.
And this move comes on top of a bunch of other clues that Valve is about to launch the compact gaming PC. For starters, we know the release is set for the summer, as Valve has told us itself, which means a June launch is possible (it's either that, or July or August).
Furthermore, the Steam Machine has been spotted in various guises online recently, notably a Vulkan conformance test, and there have been Geekbench leaks too (as highlighted by VideoCardz), along with suggestions that reviewers have the PC already.
Elsewhere in SteamOS 3.8, Valve has provided a raft of fixes, including numerous general stability tweaks alongside game performance and stability improvements via an updated GPU driver.
There's also a very welcome upgrade to KDE Plasma version 6.4.3 with Wayland support, which should improve the performance in Desktop Mode considerably on the Steam Deck (as well as bolster support for external displays, including VRR).
Away from the Steam Deck, we have a couple of key changes, with Valve introducing "improved compatibility with recent Intel and AMD platforms", meaning SteamOS will be slicker on rival handhelds, including those with Intel chips.
Valve also promises "greatly improved video memory management" for discrete GPUs, and this will, of course, benefit the Steam Machine (which sports a semi-custom AMD RDNA 3 discrete GPU with 8GB of VRAM).
Analysis: a mainstream machine or niche appeal?
Adding all these clues up, the expectation is that the Steam Machine is planned for a launch very soon – barring any last-minute hiccups. Furthermore, a June launch would be good to hit, as it'd mean that the device would just sneak in for Valve's planned release timeframe of the first half of 2026.
Also, I think the sooner the launch comes, the better, as it doesn't seem like the pressure from the RAM and component crisis on the PC market is going to ease anytime soon. In fact, matters are likely to get worse based on the vibe that's been prevalent this month. That includes Nvidia's CEO dropping one giant pessimistic cloud (no pun intended) in saying that he expects the RAM crisis to last for "quite a few years". There's precious little hope of a recovery from pricing woes anytime soon based on what we've been hearing most recently.
The main worry about the Steam Machine remains its price, of course, and Valve hasn't given us any real indication of where that might fall – save for the fact that the company won't be subsidizing the hardware to drive adoption (which was hardly comforting to learn).
Expectations have been for an MSRP of $1,000 or more for the base model – recently, an analyst floated the idea of a $1,200 launch price in the US. The problem then is that this makes it very challenging to push the Steam Machine as a mainstream device to take over living rooms around the globe, when such pricing will consign the compact PC to a much more niche appeal.
Mind you, we shouldn't jump the pricing gun, so to speak, and maybe the outlay for the Steam Machine won't be quite as painful as the internet is imagining. However, in the current climate of everything getting considerably more expensive – and you can add Apple's Macs to that list as of today – it's difficult to remain positive on potential hardware costs.
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