Valve Announces Summer 2026 Release for Steam Machine and Steam Frame

The Steam Machine and Steam Frame are officially scheduled to land in summer 2026, Valve announced today in a blog post about something else entirely. There's still no word on how much either bit of hardware will cost. Valve made the big release-window reveal in a developer-focused blog post about the Steam Machine and Steam Frame being included in the Verified program, which launched with the Steam Deck and lets players know how well games will run on the handheld. The Verified program will do the same for the Steam Machine and Steam Frame hardware. For Steam Machine, the requirements for a Verified badge are nearly identical to the Steam Deck's, Valve says. As for the Steam Frame, Valve writes, "Like Steam Deck Verified, the Steam Frame Standalone Verified program focuses on the experience customers will have with the device out-of-the-box in standalone mode. The criteria are similar as well: the default graphics configuration needs to perform well, text and UI elements need to be clear and legible on the built-in display, and the default controller configuration needs to work well with the Steam Frame Controllers. The same test criteria apply to both VR titles and non-VR titles." There's been plenty of speculation about the cost of Valve's hardware since it announced the Steam Machine, Steam Frame and Steam Controller in November 2025. The ongoing global memory shortage has dramatically driven up prices of gaming consoles and PCs in 2026, and there's no clear end in sight. Xbox, Sony and Valve raised prices in their existing hardware lines this year by hundreds of dollars each, with Valve upping the price of the Steam Deck by as much as $300. Nintendo has plans to follow suit with the Switch 2. The Steam Controller hit the market on May 4 and it costs $99, which is a perfectly reasonable price for a well-crafted not-PC controller with touchpads. Of course, it only has kilobytes of RAM, and instead runs on cool haptic screams.