There's every reason to believe that the Steam Machine launch is just around the corner.
Since its surprise announcement in November, Valve hasn't provided many details about its Steam Machine. In fact, the American company had already given a very detailed presentation of its mini-PC designed to take its place in the living room. In the end, all that was missing was information on its launch date and, more importantly, its price. In fact, while the launch window has always been more or less set for the first half of 2026, it depends on factors that Valve can't entirely control... like the price. Indeed, Valve is obliged to make do with the vagaries of the moment and, in particular, thecontinuing inflation around DRAM and NAND.
An entry that leaves little room for doubt © SteamDB
Nevertheless, it would appear that this launch window is now very close. When announcing its three new hardware releases, Valve had particularly linked the Steam Controller and the Steam Machine: the former being the ideal accessory for controlling the latter. Now, as it happens, a certain Brad Lynch has noticed the appearance, on the SteamDB databases, of a video unambiguously named " steam_controller_unboxing_2026 ". The video is not yet accessible, but it would seem that Valve is preparing to release an unboxing of its future controller. It's only a short step from there to imagining that the release of this controller, followed by that of the Steam Machine, is not far off.
The cool little PC imagined by Playnix © Playnix
That said, it's amusing to see that several companies have decided not to wait, and one of the best examples to date is the Playnix machine. Conceived by a single person, based in Spain, who relies on 3D printing to produce the chassis, this little machine boasts a datasheet quite similar to that of the Steam Machine. It features a Ryzen 5 5500 CPU with 6 cores and a TDP of 65 watts, and a Radeon RX 9060 XT card (32 cores, 16 GB VRAM) with a TDP of 150 watts. In both cases, these are more powerful components than those of the Steam Machine, but they also consume more energy. That said, and more importantly, the price of this Playnix is unfortunately very dissuasive: at 1,179 euros for what is already the third print run, it's a far cry from the prices envisaged/hoped for the Steam Machine. To be continued...
