Should you’ve spent cash on video games from Steam, Valve’s intention with Steam Body is to make that library extra invaluable.
50 % of Steam customers nonetheless run their video games at 1080p, in response to the newest Steam {Hardware} Survey. What number of of these players have by no means seen a monitor refreshing quicker than 60Hz? Or a contemporary VR show working its content material at 120Hz?
Ignoring the subset of individuals, primarily players, who’ve an idea of the distinction between 30Hz and 60Hz, how many individuals worldwide have by no means seen movement displayed on a display quicker than 60Hz?
In 2026, Valve will observe the Steam Deck by beginning to promote its most moveable standalone PC ever. You put on Steam Body in your face with experimental show help as much as 144Hz.
What Is Steam Body?
Steam Body and controllers, picture offered by Valve.
Steam Body is a VR headset, private laptop, and possibly a complete lot of different issues as soon as its neighborhood verifies Valve’s claims that you could swap out the working system or plug in different equipment into its high-speed nostril port.
“We do not block anybody from doing what they wish to with their system,” Valve’s Lawrence Yang mentioned.
Valve Formally Broadcasts Steam Body, A “Streaming-First” Standalone VR Headset
Steam Body has an included wi-fi adapter, and is launching “early 2026”. Learn the complete specs, options, and particulars right here.
Builders and Steam Body patrons can use excessive body charges in several methods, however at its core this headset incorporates a stereoscopic moveable show as its compute unit. There’s devoted {hardware} to allow top quality streaming from close by PCs additionally working Steam and, whereas in standalone mode, you possibly can nonetheless get one thing like a 1440p image on what seems like a 70-inch digital show working at 90, 120 or probably 144Hz.
UploadVR performed Hades 2 at Valve HQ in a demo that conveyed the facility of getting a digital show comfortably floating anyplace with easily animated content material displaying within the Steam Body at charges often solely related to excessive finish gaming displays tethered to desks. Arms at your sides with a controller in every hand, Valve says Steam Body works in the dead of night too.
“All of those video games can help arbitrary resolutions and refresh charges,” Valve’s Jeremy Selan mentioned throughout our briefing. “We’re eager about it as very a lot a per-game setting. Some video games simply by the character of the play wish to be very excessive refresh and extra modest res. After we had been displaying you Hades, it was at 1440p at 90 Hertz.”
Hades stays a robust reminiscence from my time in Steam Body at Valve headquarters due to that prime body fee, and it bears calling out amid all our protection that having some “VR and non-VR” video games working at an especially excessive body fee – even reclined on a sofa or mattress – shall be an eye-opening expertise for many individuals, together with Steam Deck homeowners.
“Whereas it’s a wi-fi streaming first headset,” Yang informed UploadVR. “We did need you to have the ability to play your Steam library whenever you’re not subsequent to your PC or laptop computer, so we made Steam Body a PC by itself. It has an ARM chip that is working SteamOS.”
Might taking part in current video games at excessive body charges in a light-weight standalone headset make it exhausting to return to 60 or 30 fps screens totally?
For long-time UploadVR readers in addition to newbies studying about the marketplace for the primary time, it’s necessary we convey simply how significant this function alone is perhaps in every day use as Valve works to optimize the system and rally builders into supporting new surfaces for his or her video games on Steam.
Throughout our time with Valve I dug into questions of openness, tracing the trail from the Vive and wired PC VR-only Index to the standalone Steam Body with wi-fi streaming.
“It is a Linux OS, that is SteamOS delivered to ARM. If there are different working techniques, as an illustration, that help these chip units, you are welcome to take action,” Selan mentioned. “You’d at that time be accountable for the monitoring stack and every thing else, however very a lot within the spirit of Steam Deck, that is your system, your laptop, you personal it, you possibly can mod it and prolong it in any method.”
Steam Enter Alignment
Valve appears to align controller enter in Steam Body with conventional gamepad and Steam Deck, with backward compatibility to current VR content material on each Quest and PC. That’s why there are two index buttons as a substitute of 1 on every controller, matching the shoulder and set off buttons on conventional gamepads.
Valve’s Jeff Leinbaugh launched the controllers by saying their design is “going together with all of the objectives of the headset and numerous our {hardware}. We wish this system to work with your whole VR video games but additionally your whole non-VR video games and simply make your entire Steam catalog extra invaluable, ship you a bunch of worth it doesn’t matter what you occur to be taking part in.”
What Is Steam Body’s Worth?
“It is a premium headset, however we’re actually aiming to be cheaper than Index,” Selan mentioned. “Whereas I mentioned we’re gonna be premium, we’re nonetheless attempting to be very value thoughtful.”
We’re due for months of debate over the definition of “cheaper than Index” not because of any fault of Valve, however as a result of that is not a comparability many individuals know find out how to make conceptually.
Valve Index was $999 for a room-scale VR package plus a user-provided Home windows PC to drive it. Steam Body is a standalone headset from Valve. Many individuals, of their heads, shall be evaluating the worth of a element to a pc.
Commerce-Offs: Wi-Fi & Show
Steam Body’s creators acknowledge trade-offs in its design, like the dearth of HDR or a true-black show expertise just like the Steam Deck OLED. My colleague David Heaney requested concerning the potential of a better finish headset at some point exchanging the LCD in its design for OLED or HDR.
“I take into consideration HDR day-after-day,” Selan mentioned.
The place Apple brings to Imaginative and prescient Professional its iPad app and Apple TV content material libraries because the cornerstone of its leap into VR — whereas constructing new Apple Immersive Video content material alongside the best way — Valve representatives declined to speak about content material made for Steam Body by their builders.
Valve is “optimistic” about bringing Half-Life: Alyx to standalone sooner or later. Till then, that is what the streaming focus is about. The story now from Valve is about placing its {hardware} in end-to-end wi-fi management of Steam video games in additional locations whereas bettering body charges, latency and determination wherever doable alongside the best way.
What makes good Apple Immersive Video so highly effective is the quantity of photons hitting digicam sensors after which reconstructed on your view on a digital show at a excessive decision and body fee. Virtually no person notices when an iPad app that sometimes runs at 30 fps on a bodily pill additionally runs at 30 fps on a digital show, however you’ll bounce when one thing comes at you in 180-degree video delivered in Apple Immersive Video at Apple Imaginative and prescient Professional’s body charges and high quality ranges. You’ll have to remain tuned for our assessment of the M5 Imaginative and prescient Professional, launched in 2025, to see if that specification bump from the M2 of 2024 has a significant impact on body charges throughout the broader Apple software program ecosystem. Nonetheless, it is best to hold a few of this in thoughts as Valve seeks to make an impression with new {hardware} centered on Steam video games in 2026.
“We ask ourselves at Valve, what can we do effectively?” Selan mentioned. “We hold coming again to the Steam video games that you just already personal.”
Valve is seeking to its developer and consumer communities to do the lifting right here in centering Steam out there for VR video games working on ARM. Developer functions for Steam Body kits are open in the present day.
The marketplace for VR content material on ARM is at present dominated by Quest, however many high apps have ports of their Android-based software program packages on different storefronts, like these from Pico or HTC. As of final month, it is a market additionally being formally chased by Android XR for the Google Play Retailer.
“The identical method Steam OS has been absolutely expanded and prolonged by the neighborhood. Our hope is to try this identical factor for VR. So this is able to be thought-about an open PC,” Selan mentioned. “This may be like the most important open VR headset system, and like everybody can richly work collectively to make that higher and higher.”
The Finest Headset Demo Ever?
Valve did not present experiences like The Lab with mini video games like Longbow from 2016, and even Beat Saber from 2018, which may’ve indicated monitoring regressions in contrast with the Valve Index or HTC Vive laser base stations surrounding a play space. We did not even see SteamVR Residence, only a compositing system for content material in SteamOS on ARM.
Apple planted its flag in VR {hardware} as the way forward for private computing with its first public demo of Imaginative and prescient Professional in the midst of 2023, with software program displaying full management over images, movies, FaceTime and extra. Loads of software program Apple is understood for, like Closing Reduce Professional and GarageBand, nonetheless is not current in its headset from 2025.
Valve vegetation a flag for all of Steam in VR with its first public demo of Steam Body close to the top of 2025. There is a lengthy path of optimization forward to make Steam video games of all types run effectively with Valve’s new headset and enter.
Pulling up a Linux desktop in VR for the primary time in a headset as light-weight as Steam Body conveys one thing about this medium and its steadfast believers that I felt in awe to see with my very own eyes. You should utilize no matter terminology you wish to describe this medium, however progress by no means stops.
We’ll be watching Valve’s optimization developments carefully throughout all platforms.
Closed vs. Open
The most recent era of VR headsets sees us logging into Samsung, Google, Steam, Apple or Meta accounts to entry massive portions of digital content material. That does not really feel really “open”, even when alongside the best way we’re getting some unlocked bootloaders and the promise of OS-swapping.
Earlier this 12 months, I did the absurd factor of buying a 2 terabyte microSD card which I caught into my Steam Deck. I’ve put in every thing I might probably need onto it, together with 100s of gigabytes of content material I do not anticipate to work correctly in Deck mode ever. Now, as a substitute of ready hours downloading a 100 gigabyte recreation from Valve’s community to a freshly reformatted PC, I can merely switch it domestically proper from the Deck.
I had that card with me at Valve HQ as a result of I had one other hope in placing my Steam library on that card. They warned “no screwdrivers” forward of our demos and mentioned to not take something aside. So, whereas deeply curious, I did not take the step of sticking my card into the headsets there and attempting to log myself into Steam Body.
That mentioned, I sit up for the day I can pop that card out of my Deck and right into a Steam Body and see what experiences work easily as I click on play on completely every thing. Valve informed us they’re planning to distribute assessment items someday early in 2026.
Close to the top of my time at Valve HQ in 2025, six years after I first visited their places of work in 2019, I requested them to border for me the distinction between a pc that is “closed” and one which’s “open.”
Valve’s Pierre-Loup Griffais responded.
“If of us on an expertise that is extra curated and extra closed off are having expertise, that is high quality. However normally, we see that folks which might be attempting to expertise quite a lot of video games in several methods, there is a bunch of stuff that they could wanna try this we’ve not considered. And what we at all times observe is that there is a ton of worth that’s often distributed laterally in the neighborhood, the place customers between themselves will share stuff that can make the expertise higher. And that’s solely doable in an open platform. Like we do not need all the worth in a platform like that to be flowing up and down by us, and for us to be figuring out what’s expertise or not on behalf of all these customers which may have totally different opinions and totally different aspirations.”
“So it is actually necessary for us to maintain that open as a result of it creates these sorts of results that finally results in a greater expertise. Additionally, anybody that is utilizing these items also can go and contribute patches and develop on it. And so we’re excited to have the ability to have stuff get even higher as a result of folks now wish to contribute to it.”
“In reality, numerous the builders which might be engaged on open supply have began as a result of they had been customers and so they simply wish to enhance a particular facet and so they go deep into it.”
“The strains between consumer and developer has at all times been very blurry for us. We have come from a world the place a few of our hottest recreation properties truly began out as mods. And modding on PC was at all times like a robust factor that we had been at all times attempting to help. As a result of so many good ideas and new recreation genres, you understand, free to play, cellular, all that stuff got here by mods, initially. Should you have a look at the historical past of video video games, totally different genres, other ways to expertise video games, totally different peripherals, numerous it got here from PC as a result of PC was an open platform the place totally different firms might innovate in several methods, but additionally customers might mod. Those that created closed off platforms primarily based on a few of these ideas, they’re gonna take a few of these ideas and type of freeze them in time. After which PC’s gonna hold transferring ahead as a result of it is open and we have now all this worth. And we’re simply making use of PC to VR. So it is nothing new for us. We have at all times utilized PC to VR. It is just a few of us have opted to love department it off in several instructions, however I feel we’re simply doing the identical factor as we have at all times been doing.”
From Valve Index To Steam Body
In 2019, once I first tried the Index, a Valve consultant informed me “that is going to destroy you” earlier than I attempted Beat Saber working at 144Hz.
Beat Saber was later acquired by Fb that very same 12 months and, positive, sooner or later in Steam Body I might wish to see how Meta’s cornerstone title performs when it comes to monitoring and body fee.
Looking back, Beat Saber at 144Hz did destroy me within the sense that, once I invited Index into my dwelling, I do not suppose I actually skilled these body charges in any substantial method working an NVIDIA RTX 2080 for many of the lifetime of the headset.
In Steam Body, Valve manages end-to-end controller inputs and body supply not simply within the standalone mode, however when streaming from PCs like Steam Machine too. Even a couple of minutes taking part in your favourite recreation with a number of milliseconds much less lag in enter, or greater body charges visually, will really feel like invisible magic whereas meaningfully including worth to your day. Finally, that is precisely why Valve is making Steam Body.
