Valve, the company behind Steam (the largest computer games store in the world), has today officially launched its new home console: the Steam Machine. It is not the first time Valve has tried to bring PC gaming to the living room — it already tried in 2015 without too much success — but this time things are very serious. The machine, which some call Newell Nucleus (after Gabe Newell, Valve’s founder), is a small, silent computer designed to connect to the TV and play with a controller, exactly like a PlayStation or an Xbox, but with a big difference: it runs SteamOS, Valve’s operating system, and you can install whatever you want on it, just like a normal PC.
The price is around $1,100 (about €1,000 at current exchange rates), which is not cheap, but you have to take into account that it is not an ordinary console: it is a full PC with a latest-generation AMD processor and graphics, packed into a box the size of a thick book. Valve has put a lot of care into the design, with a liquid cooling system that keeps it silent even when gaming for hours. And the most interesting part: to stop resellers (the famous scalpers who buy up all the stock and resell it at a higher price) from getting hold of the first units, Valve has set up a lottery system. Only users with a Steam account created before April 2026 can enter, and the selection is random. That way those who really want the console have real chances of getting one.
The Steam Machine arrives at a key moment for Valve. After the huge success of the Steam Deck (its handheld console), the company has shown that it knows how to make quality hardware and that SteamOS is already a real alternative to Windows for gaming. With this living-room console, Valve completes its ecosystem: you can play on your PC, take your games to bed with the Steam Deck, and now sit on the sofa to play on the big TV, all with the same account and the same games. A masterstroke that makes Microsoft and Sony nervous, and excellent news for those who want an open computer, without ties, instead of a closed console.
— Marta, for intermitente intelligence.
