“They were targeting 2028 [as far as I know], but the whole RAM/NAND situation could delay it,” wrote KeplerL2. “Also, since they don’t have a semi-custom SoC, unlike the PS6/Xbox, if it gets delayed, it could end up with better specs.”

Since its launch in February 2022, the Steam Deck has proven to be quite successful for Valve, and recent trends in memory prices have even left the company to deal with greater demand than it can supply.

The handheld features a quad-core AMD CPU running on Zen 2 architecture with 8 threads, a clock speed of between 2.4 GHz and 3.5 GHz, depending on the software. It’s paired with an RDNA 2-based GPU with eight compute units clocked between 1 and 1.6 GHz, and 16 GB of unified LPDDR5 memory either clocked at 5500 MT/s or 6400 MT/s, depending on whether you have the LCD or OLED version of the Steam Deck.

Valve’s thoughts on making a new version of the Steam Deck have largely revolved around the company waiting for a major generational jump for hardware, not just in terms of raw specs but also energy efficiency. In October 2024, Valve designer Lawrence Yang said there was no reason to work on yearly iterations of the handheld.

“It is important to us, and we’ve tried to be really clear, we are not doing the yearly cadence. We’re not going to do a bump every year. There’s no reason to do that. And, honestly, from our perspective, that’s kind of not really fair to your customers to come out with something so soon that’s only incrementally better. So we really do want to wait for a generational leap in compute without sacrificing battery life before we ship the real second generation of Steam Deck. But it is something that we’re excited about, and we’re working on.”

In more recent times, the company has had its hands full with trying to launch the Steam Machine, Steam Frame, and new Steam Controller, which were unveiled back in November 2025. While there hasn’t yet been any solid launch window announced for the three products, the company is still trying to release them in 2026, and that “More updates will be shared as we finalize our plans.” Hardware delays have largely been blamed on memory and storage shortages.

A game must run at 1080p and 30 FPS to be verified for the Steam Machine, just as it does on a Steam Deck. That comes straight from Valve at GDC 2026. That doesn’t mean the upcoming gaming device from Valve is incapable of going higher than those numbers, but it is the minimum a game needs if it aims to be verified for the platform.

The Steam Frame is a tad more demanding if you’re going to be running your titles off its native chip, with a 90 FOS requirement for VR titles. 2D titles only need 30 FPS at 720p, though. There was also talk about offline mode for games right off the bat, optimizing titles for lower-specced machines, and improving controller support, all of which was advice aimed at developers looking to release titles on SteamOS.

We’re looking forward to getting our hands on the upcoming Steam Machine and Steam Frame, and we think we’re not alone in our excitement to check out Valve’s way of taking the fight to the PlayStation and Xbox in the near future.

In South Korea, the 512 GB model will be priced at ₩898,000, and the 1 TB model at ₩1,048,000. Taiwan will see prices raised to NT$18,980 for the 512 GB model and NT$22,480 for the 1 TB model. Currently, no price hikes are planned for Hong Kong.

The announcement came from Komodo Station—the company in charge of selling the Steam Deck in the Asian markets. And while no explicit reason has been noted, it comes in light of “rising logistics costs that have continued since the [Steam Deck]’s launch, as well as recent fluctuations in the exchange rate environment,” according to the report (via machine translation).

Back in February, Valve had started issuing a warning on the official listing for the Steam Deck OLED. The company also confirmed that production on the Steam Deck LCD 256 GB had been stopped, with any available units being leftover stock.

“Steam Deck OLED may be out-of-stock intermittently in some regions due to memory and storage shortages,” wrote Valve. “Steam Deck LCD 256GB is no longer in production, and once sold out, will no longer be available.”

Valve has been seeing many of its hardware plans affected by global memory shortages. The company confirmed that its plans to launch the Steam Machine, the Steam Frame, and the new Steam Controller had been pushed back, with the new release window being the first half of 2026.

“Our goal of shipping all three products in the first half of the year has not changed,” explained the company. “But we have work to do to land on concrete pricing and launch dates that we can confidently announce, being mindful of how quickly the circumstances around both of those things can change. We will keep you updated as much as we can as we finalize those plans as soon as possible.”

In the meantime, Sony is also seeing adverse effects of the RAM shortage, with a report from last month indicating that the company might push the launch of the PS6 back as far as 2029. Nintendo is also reportedly keeping an eye on memory prices, with a price hike possibly coming later in the year. Neither company has made any statements, however.

Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa had spoken about keeping an eye on market conditions like memory shortages and trade tariffs back in January. At the time, he said, “We aim to address this by advancing component procurement over the medium to long term.”

“Steam Deck OLED may be out-of-stock intermittently in some regions due to memory and storage shortages,” wrote Valve on the official Steam listing for the Steam Deck. “Steam Deck LCD 256GB is no longer in production, and once sold out, will no longer be available.”

The company had previously spoken about memory shortages affecting its hardware line-up earlier this month. Without revealing too many details about its previous and current plans, Valve said that shortages in memory had caused it to “revisit our exact shipping schedule and pricing.” While there’s no new launch date, Valve has noted that it plans to release the Steam Machine, Steam Frame and new Steam Controller in the first half of 2026.

“Our goal of shipping all three products in the first half of the year has not changed,” explained Valve. “But we have work to do to land on concrete pricing and launch dates that we can confidently announce, being mindful of how quickly the circumstances around both of those things can change. We will keep you updated as much as we can as we finalize those plans as soon as possible.”

While this current memory shortage may affect the Steam Deck for the short term, it might even have a further-reaching impact on the company’s R&D efforts for the handheld system’s successor. However, it is worth noting that Valve has been clear about having no current plans for a Steam Deck 2.

In an interview about how the Steam Deck helped pave the way for the Steam Machine, software engineer Pierre-Loup Griffais spoke about how nothing in the current market matches Valve’s needs for a potential Steam Deck successor, at least for now.

“We’re not interested in getting to a point where it’s 20 or 30 or even 50% more performance at the same battery life,” he explained. “We want something a little bit more demarcated than that. So we’ve been working back from silicon advancements and architectural improvements, and I think we have a pretty good idea of what the next version of Steam Deck is going to be, but right now there’s no offerings in that landscape, in the SOC landscape, that we think would truly be a next-gen performance Steam Deck.”

In the meantime, recent rumors have indicated that Sony might end up pushing the PS6’s launch to 2028 or 2029 due to inflating RAM prices.

The Steam Deck Verification program takes a number of things into account, including performance on the less-powerful hardware of the handheld system, as well as other aspects like the usability and readability of the UI on the smaller display, and whether or not it will manually require players to pull out the on-screen keyboard. The Steam Machine, in contrast, is a considerably more powerful system—referred to by Valve as being equivalent to six Steam Decks in its announcement video—and games will likely end up having an easier time running on it. Along with this, the Steam Machine also doesn’t have a tiny screen that UI and UX designers might have to account for, and keyboards are expected to be connected to it anyway since it is essentially a desktop PC.

Along with this, Yang also noted that a game being Steam Deck Verified also means that it is automatically Steam Machine Verified. “One easy rule of thumb is that if your title is Verified on Steam Deck, it will be Verified on Steam Machine,” he said. The major difference with Valve’s new set of hardware will end up being with the Steam Frame, which will likely have its own set of requirements that Yang has noted Valve will discuss with developers. He said that the company will “be going through the same rounds of testing and providing developer feedback,” as it does with its Verification program for the Steam Deck.

The Steam Machine was announced alongside the Steam Frame and the new Steam Controller in November. While the company hasn’t yet announced a launch date for the new products, it has been revealing quite a few details. Engineer Steve Cardinali, for instance, has revealed why the company went with a separate wireless protocol for the new Steam Controller to connect with a PC rather than Bluetooth.

“While Bluetooth is a great wireless connection method, we found in our testing that people’s home wireless environments and PC Bluetooth capabilities are highly variable (clogged networks, wireless interference, increased latency when using multiple BT devices, etc.),” said Cardinali, who went on to note that the new Steam Controller’s Puck “addresses these issues.”

“Another problem we set out to solve was the fact that dedicated wireless receivers that are plugged directly into the back of a PC near other USB ports can create interference issues. Adding the charging capability encourages people to leave the puck in a place where it’s likely to have minimal interference while providing a really easy charging experience,” he continued.

For more details on Valve’s new hardware, here is everything you need to know. Also check out rumours of the highly-anticipated Half-Life 3 apparently being a launch title for the Steam Machine.

Along with ARC Raiders, games like Battlefield 6, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Dispatch, and Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 were also among the top releases in the charts. Some older games could also be seen, with 2023’s Baldur’s Gate 3, 2020’s Cyberpunk 2077, and 2013’s Grand Theft Auto 5 also being represented, albeit with its Enhanced Edition release.

Valve has also seen continued success with the Steam Deck, with SteamDB ranking the handheld gaming PC as the second-best-selling Steam item, just under ARC Raiders. Check out the list below.

Embark Studios itself hasn’t revealed recent sales data for ARC Raiders, rumours from back in November indicated that it was close to hitting 7 million sales just a month after its release.

ARC Raiders art director Robert Sammelin had recently spoken about Embark Studios’ plans to support the extraction shooter for “the longest time.” In an interview from last month, he noted that the studio has a 10-year plan and that as long as players continue to engage with the title, support will continue.

“Our ambition is to keep this game alive for the longest time. It is a live game,” said Sammelin. “It’s something that we want to keep alive for the longest time possible, as long as players engage with it and have fun and see that it is evolving in a good way.”

The art director also spoke about how the community of ARC Raiders plays a vital role in the game’s evolution, since a major reason for the extraction shooter’s success hinges on how players interact with each other.

“I think games like this will evolve depending on community behaviours, feedback, and how we pick out the things we see people engage really well with. But also throw things into the mix that sort of afford new challenges and opportunities within the game,” he explained.

“I think there’s a wide range of routes that we can take with this, and time will tell how we sort of dig into it. But we for sure have a pretty long-standing plan of where we want to take it.”

As part of the studio’s plans to support ARC Raiders, the Cold Snap update was released last month, bringing with it a new Winter-themed weather condition which also affects gameplay by prompting players to seek shelter (or die trying). It also affects visibility and movement, making some surfaces much more challenging to traverse.

ARC Raiders is available on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. For more details, check out our review. Also check out our guide on all ARC machines and how you can beat them in battle.

Top ten best-sellers on Steam from December 23 to December 30:

1. ARC Raiders
2. Steam Deck
3. Battlefield 6
4. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
5. Baldur’s Gate 3
6. EA Sports FC 26
7. Dispatch
8. Cyberpunk 2077
9. Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2
10. Grand Theft Auto 5 Enhanced

“Dear Valve Software, please just let 3rd parties use SteamOS and make the [hardware] with many different configurations,” wrote Ybarra. “SteamOS will take off and your Store revenue will only go up.” Ybarra went on to note that using SteamOS like this would also be a great move for Xbox, rather than the company sticking to Windows.

“This is what Xbox should do, btw,” his post continued. “But they will likely be forced to push Windows with AI, co-pilot, teams, and more. They could do GREAT if they embraced SteamOS on HW.”

It is worth noting that, since it is a Linux-based operating system, SteamOS is quite open even in its current form, with some users even finding success when they attempt to use the Steam Deck’s SteamOS recovery image on a desktop PC with AMD hardware. However, Valve hasn’t yet released SteamOS on its own to the public, and the operating system is still largely limited to specific sets of hardware, like the aforementioned Steam Deck and Lenovo’s Legion Go S.

The decision to not open it out the public is likely a technical one, since the operating system would need wider driver support in order to run on more hardware. Currently, the company is more focused on ensuring that its own hardware – the Steam Deck and the upcoming Steam Machine and Steam Frame – and is working with AMD to ensure the correct drivers are available in for the operating system. In fact, the company is likely keen on opening the operating system up to more hardware companies, but doesn’t have the bandwidth to ensure that all of the required driver development for different hardware configurations can be supported.

While SteamOS on its own might be “officially” limited to only Valve’s hardware releases, the Linux community has stepped up to fill in the gaps on its own. One of the more popular Linux distribution that offers a SteamOS-like experience is the Fedora-based Bazzite, which allows users to set it up to be quite similar to SteamOS, including booting right into Steam’s Big Picture mode.

On the subject of Xbox and the Steam Machine, NYU Stern Schoool of Business professor and industry analyst Joost van Dreunen has referred to Valve’s upcoming compact gaming PC as “Microsoft’s worst nightmare”.

“Steam Machine basically turns Microsoft’s worst nightmare into a shipping product,” said van Dreunen. “It pushes Microsoft further down the path it’s already walking, where Game Pass and cloud access matter more than plastic boxes.”

The Steam Machine is slated for launch some time in early 2026, alongside the new Steam Controller and the Steam Frame VR headset.

Rather, Valve is more interested in larger improvements made with silicon, as well as improvements made to hardware architecture. Through this, the company currently has a “good idea” of what the successor to the Steam Deck looks like. Unfortunately, however, nothing available in the current market meets the expectations that the company has for this potential successor.

“Obviously the Steam Deck’s not our focus today, but the same things we’ve said in the past where we’re really interested to work on what’s next for Steam Deck… the thing we’re making sure of is that it’s a worthwhile enough performance upgrade to make sense as a standalone product,” said Griffais when asked about a potential Steam Deck upgrade.

“We’re not interested in getting to a point where it’s 20 or 30 or even 50% more performance at the same battery life. We want something a little bit more demarcated than that. So we’ve been working back from silicon advancements and architectural improvements, and I think we have a pretty good idea of what the next version of Steam Deck is going to be, but right now there’s no offerings in that landscape, in the SOC landscape, that we think would truly be a next-gen performance Steam Deck.“

When it comes to the Steam Machine, Griffais also brings up the upcoming PC’s parallels with the Steam Deck, since the two offer a base level of hardware that can then be targeted by game developers. He spoke about the fact that this reduces hardware variance for developers will end up being one of the strengths of the Steam Machine. It also helps that Valve announced that it will be expanding its Steam Deck Verified processes to also include Steam Machine in compatibility ratings for games.

“And so just like Steam Deck, every single Steam Deck has the same level of performance and can run all the games on Steam and all the games that are Steam Deck verified, it was really important to us that even just the initial process of figuring out a Steam Machine is a product for you wasn’t already laced in a bunch of different choices based on what games you have to leave behind or other choices like that,” Griffais explained.

“So I think the unified performance spec is actually a strength of the product offering there. And similarly, we expect that’s going to have good side effects when developers are doing that work that we mentioned to tune the graphical settings, because they’ll be able to just focus on one spec.”

For more details about the Steam Machine, check out our coverage of its announcement. Also check out Valve’s plans to ensure better hardware availability, as well as the fact that it isn’t working on a first-party game to showcase the Steam Frame VR headset.

The feature is live on the Beta and Preview channels and is designed to cut heat and power draw during long installs—without forcing players to leave the screen lit for hours.

Valve’s announcement spells out how it works. “Today we are adding a new feature to Steam Deck, enabling it to complete all active downloads in a new display-off low-power mode, before going to sleep.” It’s enabled by default when the handheld is plugged in, and there’s a manual toggle for the battery under Settings and Power. When a download is in progress, pressing the power button now brings up a prompt to continue in this new mode.

In this mode, waking the device briefly shows a status screen with progress before you choose to resume or let it keep going in the display-off state. For handheld owners juggling patches, the change removes a long-standing friction point. Instead of tethering the Steam Deck to a bright screen overnight, players can queue downloads, tap the power button, and let the hardware handle the rest, especially handy on the OLED model where heat management is a concern during sustained transfers.

Bottom line: Small switch, big win. Display-off downloads make the Steam Deck feel more console-like for the boring parts of PC gaming. Once this exits testing, there’s little reason to leave the screen blazing to finish a patch.

The role-playing game would run on the handheld via Proton, and while that’s still possible, the native Steam Deck version boasts lower CPU and memory usage. Mod users who connect their Larian Account to mod.io should see everything downloaded after the transition. If you have Steam Cloud Saves enabled, they should be synced automatically.

Aside from this, the hotfix addresses potential crashes in combat with Slow and the Find Familiar spell with Scratch and Boo. A crash that occurred on the Xbox Series X/S version after suspending and resuming mid-cinematic should also be fixed. Check out the full hotfix notes below.

Baldur’s Gate 3 is available for Xbox Series X/S, PS5, and PC. It’s reportedly sold over 15 million units as of November 2024.

HOTFIX #34

FIXES

Crashes and Performance

• Fixed a potential crash related to the Slow condition during combat.
• Fixed a potential crash related to using the Find Familiar spell on Scratch and Boo during combat.

Xbox

• Fixed a crash that could occur when suspending and then resuming the game mid-cinematic.
• Fixed a crash when loading a save while playing an Honour Mode game.
• Fixed an issue that could cause the game to hang and become unresponsive when exiting to the Main Menu from an Honour Mode game.
• Selecting View Xbox Live Profile via the Larian Friends list will now correctly show the user’s gamercard.
• Fixed a Cross-Play issue where, if one player had their cross-network privileges blocked on Xbox and was then invited to a multiplayer session by a friend, they wouldn’t get notified of the conflict in their settings telling them why they couldn’t proceed to the lobby.
• Fixed a bug where creating a new game in Honour Mode after having loaded a previous savegame would cause the game to get stuck at 33% or 83% loading.

Gameplay

• Fixed the Hound of Ill Omen and the Accursed Spectre’s HP being affected by difficulty modifiers for enemy characters.
• Fixed a bug causing the Apostle of Myrkul to regain Hit Points every time you load a savegame mid-combat in Tactician and Honour Mode.

Audio

• Fixed a bug causing the sounds that djinn summons make when they follow you to loop continuously, creating an uncharacteristic metallic thrum.
• When you’re on the ground floor of Felogyr’s Fireworks, the smokepowder explosions going off on the floor above will no longer sound like they’re happening right next to you.
• Fixed the audio levels for a rat in the Lower City that you, tragically, couldn’t hear squeak when it squoke.
• Fixed missing SFX when preparing to cast Wind Walk.
• Fixed an issue causing the SFX to play longer than they should when preparing to cast the Way of the Drunken Master’s subclass-specific actions.
• Fixed missing SFX when preparing to cast Booming Blade.
• Fixed the SFX for preparing a Starry Form continuing to play if you cast the spell quickly after selecting it.
• Fixed missing SFX when Astarion taps Woe on the ground during a cinematic.
• Fixed missing SFX in the overhead dialogue between Minthara and the questioners in Moonrise Towers Prison.
• Fixed a sound resource for Photo Mode not being generated correctly.
• Fixed the rattling Moonlantern SFX continuing to play after you unequip it.
• Recovered some missing SFX when casting Speak with Dead on the mind flayer in the Shattered Sanctum.
• Reminded Halsin to actually yell when he gains barbarian Rage instead of silently miming it.
• Fixed the SFX during Vlaakith’s appearance at camp getting cut off prematurely.

Cinematics

• Told one of the imps on the nautiloid to stop looking in the wrong direction.
  Fixed a super-mega-ultra-close-up shot during the dialogue with Raphael at Last Light.
• Removed a static pool of blood hovering mid-air in the cinematic with the gnolls on the Risen Road when playing as a short Dark Urge character.
• Fixed Karlach’s line about Gale being a hero getting cut off prematurely.
• Fixed a bug causing party members to appear as floating torsos (or simply floating hair) when talking to Ketheric’s dog, Squire.