Valve Steam Machine (2026)

K.O.Kiki

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmKrKTwtukE

https://store.steampowered.com/sale/steammachine

Might have found my ideal "small PC"

TheValeyard

im not sure that the VR is much of an upgrade from the Quest 3, will wait and see. The Steam machine could be useful, hide away on a bookshelf.

Coyler

Anyone know where we are with parental controls for SteamOS? Microsoft Family is excellent at this. Parents are aware of these controls now (Google Families, Apple Screentime) and I could see that being a KSP for such a device. Valve controls for Steam on Windows are great so can't imagine they are not aware of this.

the_amazing_raisin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123985123#Comment_123985123

You can control everything through Steam Families, your child needs a separate account to yours

In general I find the parental controls on Steam to be very good in that you can only allow certain games rather than a global age rating like some platforms

You can also control things like access to the store and chat and allow or block friend requests

The biggest issue I have is access control on hardware. With the deck Valve seemed to take the view that the owner of the deck would be the main user and you set a global passcode to open the login screen

This is a bit of a pain since my son and I share my deck and I have to log him into his own account. It would be easier if we had separate passcodes for each account

It'll be interesting to see if Valve changes that for the Steam machine since its more likely to be shared

the_amazing_raisin

I think a lot of the appeal is going to come down to price, if Valve can get it competitive with the PS5 (or 6) and also keep it cheaper than a custom build small PC

I think we're really going to see the line blur between the mini PCs and games consoles and as far as I'm concerned that's a good thing

Coyler

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123985770#Comment_123985770

Yeah, sound similar to what Steam can do with Steam Windows app already. Which makes sense if kids are hopping from a Steam OS device to a Windows one.

What about desktop mode? Can you filter web content using parental controls or is switching to desktop on child accounts blocked currently? Again, having a desktop mode would be a selling point to a lot of parents but not if it's completely open.

Just to be clear, massive Valve fanboy myself. The Steamdeck and Steam OS are the only things from them I haven't consumed. I'm probably bottoming out my use case :)

the_amazing_raisin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123987120#Comment_123987120

I haven't actually tried that, I might give it a go later

I think you can block access to desktop mode entirely but the Steam parental controls would end once you're in Desktop mode since it's just Linux

There are parental controls available in some Linux distributions

SteamOS is based on Arch Linux, so the wiki article below might help

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Parental_control

K.O.Kiki

Gonna have to get a purple skin for mine 😎

Royale with Cheese

I bought a high end machine last year (4080) after years of holding off and staying with console. The main reason I never had before was that I just did not enjoy playing games while sitting at a desk, I spend all week sitting at a desk looking at a monitor and I've little interest doing the same in my spare time.

I haven't changed my mind since I got the PC but I have managed to hook it up to a TV with a 7 meter long HDMI cable while it remains under my desk so it is getting used. Without that I'm not sure I'd bothered playing much on it.

I've no idea if I'm in the minority here but a gaming PC designed to live under your TV sounds perfect to me.

Penn

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123988219#Comment_123988219

That's exactly where I am too. Have a great graphics card and an overall decent PC, but also I work from home most of the time. The last thing I want to do after sitting at my desk for 8 hours is to sit at my desk for another few hours to play games. Prefer being on the couch with a controller and a big TV.

But I also haven't bothered with any type of mini-PC in the Living Room because that also just feels cumbersome and console has always just been plug and play.

But I have a Steamdeck and some games on my PC, so have started building up a bit of a Steam library. So the idea of the Steam Machine being there in the Living Room with my Steam Library is absolutely ideal. Means I can easily jump between the three.

the_amazing_raisin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123988239#Comment_123988239

I really like the idea of a Steam based console since that's probably where most of a library is. Playstation is good for FPS games but I'm tending towards more strategy games at the moment

The problem is, I feel like this idea already exists, you can get mini ITX based PCs, or those tiny NUC style PCs. The higher end NUCs seem to be decent enough for gaming and if you want more power or the option of expandability you can get a small case PC

As I said before I suspect it'll come down to price. No doubt Valve will do a good job at the level of polish, but one major advantage they have is they can sell the hardware for a tiny profit and they make make money on the game sales

Personally I'd tend towards a small case PC, but they tend to get very expensive when you go for a discreet GPU

I'm very much in 2 minds if I'll go and get a Steam Machine over a PC but I think it's a great addition to the Valve hardware lineup