On November 12, 2025, Valve announced a line-up of up-and-coming hardware it plans on releasing to the public the following year. This includes The Steam Frame, a brand new VR headset and the Steam Controller, which seems to be a revision from their 2015 release of their first party controller. Most importantly, however, was the announcement of Steam’s first home console: The Steam Machine.
Advertised to have SIX times the power of the Steam Deck, it’s clear that this is Valve’s attempt at breaking into the console market in order to compete with the likes of the Nintendo Switch and Sony’s PlayStation. It may come off as overconfident to say Valve might just steam roll the competition, but there is one distinctive feature of the Steam Machine that helps their case.
Steam Has Games
There’s a running gag in the community that Sony’s ninth generation console, the PlayStation 5, has “no games.” Surviving off the remakes and sequels of exclusives from the last gen with the PlayStation 4, the PlayStation 5 and its exclusive library of games were received as lackluster by many gamers. With Nintendo, its chokehold on the home console stems from its abundance of exclusive titles as well as the innovative feature of also being a hand-held console. We can also trace the inevitable fall off of the Xbox to the dispersing of its exclusive titles such as Halo and Gears of War over to Sony.
What I’m trying to get at here is a console’s library of games equates to just how successful it is. If there was a platform as notorious for its exclusive games as Nintendo, it’d be Steam and its expansive collection of indie titles that have gained that social praise but never spread to a larger public due to being exclusive to PC gamers. That’s exactly what Valve can utilize in order to take over the console industry.
Many console-only players can probably relate to the feeling of having a specific game just out of reach because of its Steam exclusivity, with many resorting to watching “Let’s Plays.” By bridging the gap between the two markets, a unified gaming community can emerge. The possibilities of bringing over the Steam library to home consoles can result in not just the exposure of thousands of indie titles that deserve the support, but the accessibility of playing those titles without dropping thousands of dollars yourself.
Too Good To Be True?
One thing that may hinder the bridge analogy is the potential price of the Steam Machine. With recent inflation of RAM and SSD, many speculate this may either delay the launch or increase the potential price of the console on it’s initial release. Either way, the current market is definitely harming the gaming industry and until more RAM distributors become available, we could expect the Steam Machine be on-par with a thousand-dollar PC, which defeats the whole purpose of it being a home-console.
Let’s not get too ahead of ourselves though; the Steam Machine is one of the most ambitious attempts to rethink what a home console can be, despite these concerns. Whether it is successful or not, Valve is attempting to expand to the home console market and we’re only witnessing the beginning of an attempt to unify both home-console, hand-held, and PC gamer markets.
What do you think about Valve’s attempt at breaking into the console market? Let us know in the comments below or head over to our Discord channel to join the conversation.
Featured Image: Valve
Boss Rush Podcast – A Podcast about Video Games
The Boss Rush Podcast – A Podcast about Video Games – is the flagship show of the Boss Rush Network and Boss Rush Media. Each week, hosts Corey Dirrig and LeRon Dawkins are joined by friends, fellow creators, indie developers, and industry veterans to discuss the latest in the world of video games, including news, rumors, new releases, and what they’ve been playing. They also answer listener questions, debate important industry topics and Boss Rush Banter discussion points, and feature a rotating weekly segment. New episodes post every Monday.
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