Valve has revealed that the Steam Frame and Steam Machine are slated for launch before the summer ends. In a new post on its Steamworks Development page, the company revealed its plans to expand the Steam Deck Verified program to also include indicators for Steam Machine and Steam Frame, and reaffirmed its summer launch plans.
“As with Steam Deck Verified, the goal is to help customers understand the out-of-box experience for a given title on these new devices, and how smoothly a game will run with no user work or configuration required,” explained Valve.
Games that want the Steam Machine Verified tag will need to make sure that the customer experience out of the box fulfils a few key requirements, including support for the default controller configuration and optimized default graphics settings. Unlike the Steam Deck, which has a much smaller display than anything the Steam Machine would be plugged into, UI legibility doesn’t seem to be a key requirement here.
Valve has assured developers that, “if your game already runs well on Deck, it will also run well on Machine with no extra work required from you.” As for games that don’t run well on the Steam Deck due to CPU or GPU restraints, the company has noted that they might still run well on Steam Machine, thanks to the Linux-based PC having roughly six times more horsepower than the handheld PC.
“If you have games like this, you don’t have to take any action: We’re already testing every title on Machine that fell below our performance requirements on Deck,” explained Valve.
As for Steam Frame, the company has noted that, while the hardware was primarily designed around streaming games from a nearby PC, the headset is also capable of running games on its own hardware without connecting to any other system. To help pick out games that can run well on Steam Frame, Valve is introducing the Steam Frame Standalone Verified program, which focuses on the out-of-the-box experience of running a game on the handheld.
The test criteria for VR and non-VR titles are going to be the same, with important aspects being legibility of text and UI elements, default graphics configurations need to perform well, and default controller configurations need to work well with the Steam Frame Controllers.
Valve designer Lawrence Yang had spoken about the Verified program for Steam Machine, and how it would have fewer constraints than the Steam Deck, in an interview back in January. At the time, Yang had confirmed that any Steam Deck Verified game would automatically also be Steam Machine Verified.
In the meantime, there have been quite a few reports about how much the latter might end up costing. Considering the recent price hikes seen by the Steam Deck, it’s bound to be more expensive. A report from last month indicated that the company’s price estimate for the Steam Machine from a few months ago was already higher than the Steam Deck’s current prices.
These questions about its price largely come down to the global memory shortages right now, and rumors have indicated that these shortages have caused the Steam Machine’s price to “skyrocket”.
