When Valve unveiled the Steam Machine at the tail end of last year, it did suggest the tiny Linux-powered gaming PC would be with us in “early 2026.” However, with RAM prices going berserk, GPUs becoming ever harder to come by, and the gaming PC industry in general being in a bit of a tight spot, it’s reassuring to hear AMD’s CEO, Lisa Su, confirm that the Steam Machine release date is still “on track” for “early this year.”
Widely anticipated to be one of the best gaming PCs of this year, the Steam Machine, in many ways, couldn’t have come at a worse time, in terms of Valve hoping to bring it to market at a super-competitive price. Steam Machine price leaks have already suggested it won’t be the console-price-matching little box some had hoped, but whatever price it ends up being, at least we know it’s still on schedule.
Speaking during AMD’s Q4 earnings call, Su talked in general about the company’s custom SoC business, which includes making the chips for the current Xboxes and PS5, and specifically called out that “Valve is on track to begin shipping its AMD-powered Steam Machine early this year.”
The fact that Su specifically used the same “early” phrasing that Valve previously did means we can’t really glean too much more from her statement, as early has absolutely no specificity to it. However, at the very least, this should ensure the device arrives before the summer, even if it doesn’t arrive in the first quarter of the year.
Worryingly for AMD – and for fans of consoles as well as PC gaming – Su also said that “we expect semi-custom SoC annual revenue to decline by a significant double-digit percentage as we enter the seventh year of what has been a very strong console cycle.” While it’s understandable that AMD’s revenue from supplying the chips for aging consoles is steadily declining, that’s a dramatic drop. It also points to future consoles not arriving this year. That was expected, but it’s a shame to see yet more confirmation.
When those consoles do arrive, they’re likely to use very different tech to the Steam Machine. While they’re expected to use Zen 6 CPU cores and the RDNA 5 GPU architecture (at least in the case of the PS6), the Steam Machine is relying on the company’s already last-gen Zen 4 CPU and RDNA 3 GPU architectures.
Based on the specs we’ve seen so far, it’s estimated that the Machine will deliver gaming performance roughly equivalent to that of an RX 7600, which is generally considered a 1080p-class graphics card. Despite this, Valve is adamant it will be a 4k-capable gaming machine, relying on AMD’s FSR upscaling technology to hit playable frame rates at this high resolution. It remains to be seen just how well Valve’s little black box can deliver on this promise.
