Valve announced a new Steam Machine this week, and while I think it’s going to have a major impact on the next generation of gaming hardware – however PC-like that looks – there’s still one big question mark looming over the little game cube. How much will it cost? The price is seemingly the one thing Valve didn’t reveal when it announced its new system, but it did give us some hints.
Namely, the Steam Machine is equipped with the equivalent of a mobile Radeon RX 7600, albeit with a much higher TDP (thermal design power). When I was in Bellevue looking at the Steam Machine a couple of weeks ago, I was told that while there wasn’t a price, it would be similar to a "similarly specced gaming PC."
And there is reason to believe that Valve wants to keep the pricing reasonable. When I asked Valve Hardware Engineer Yazan Aldehayyat about the pricing goals, he told me that "[Affordability] is just something we thought about every time we made a hardware decision, a feature decision, is to make sure we keep it as approachable, as affordable as possible." While that alone doesn’t mean the Steam Machine is going to be affordable it does fall in line with how the company approached Steam Deck pricing – which is still the most affordable handheld gaming PC ever launched.
If the Steam Machine is going to be competitive with gaming PCs with similar performance and specs, what does that mean? Well, there’s a lot to unpack here. The Steam Machine is equipped with a 6-core Zen 4 CPU and a RDNA 3 GPU with 28 Compute Units. In terms of desktop hardware, that would make it roughly equivalent to an AMD Ryzen 5 7600X and a Radeon RX 7600M – both of which are pretty affordable, at least compared with other components.
I went ahead and priced out an equivalent PC on PCPartPicker, and ended up with a build that costs about 913ドル at the time of writing. That seems like a lot, but it’s actually an imperfect comparison due to the size constraints of the Steam Machine, which is essentially a 6-inch cube. That’s less of a desktop PC chassis and more of a mini gaming PC, most of which use mobile-class hardware to fit into a small chassis – and the Steam Machine is no different.
You see, the Radeon RX 7600 for desktop has 32 Compute Units with a 165W TDP, which is a bit more powerful than the 28 CU GPU found in the Steam Machine – and it also has a higher default power level. The 7600M, however, is built on the same graphics architecture as Valve’s custom-made chip, and has the same 28 CUs, but usually operates at a much lower 90W TDP. So, the Steam Machine is running on what’s essentially an overclocked laptop chip. How much would an equivalent gaming laptop cost? Well, right now there basically aren’t any, so it’s perhaps better to look at laptops with a 6-core processor, 16GB of RAM and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060.
Right now, you can find something like the MSI Thin B13VF, with a Core i5-13420H, 16GB of RAM, an RTX 4060 and 512GB of RAM for around 780ドル. That almost exactly lines up with the Steam Machine’s actual specs – and that’s with a monitor stapled onto it.
Realistically, the Steam Machine is probably going to land somewhere between the laptop and the desktop in terms of what it’s capable of, due to the greater amount of electricity being pumped into it. There is a third class of computers that already occupies this middle ground: mini PCs and NUCs.
Intel initially came out with the NUC (Next Unit of Computing) back in 2013. These were essentially tiny barebones PCs with laptop chips that asked you to bring your own SSD and RAM. Intel doesn’t make them anymore, and has since essentially sold the concept off to Asus, which now makes gaming NUCs – I even reviewed one last year. But it’s expensive.
The Asus ROG NUC I reviewed last year actually starts off with specs very similar to the Steam Machine. It started with an Intel Core Ultra 7 processor, a mobile-class RTX 4060 and 16GB of RAM. It even came in a chassis that’s not much larger than the Steam Machine, even if it was more of a rectangle. The problem was the price: The ROG NUC started at 1,629ドル. I’m pretty sure that if the Steam Machine launched early next year with that kind of price tag it’d be dead on arrival.
Unfortunately, that kind of high price comes with the mini gaming PC territory. We just reviewed the GMKTec Evo-X2, which doesn’t carry the same kind of name recognition as Asus ROG. That mini PC costs 1,499ドル to start, though, and it’s equipped with – admittedly powerful – integrated graphics and 64GB of RAM.
I don’t think the Steam Machine is going to cost as much as one of these mini PCs, largely because most mini PCs are marketed to professionals that just need a tiny little PC on their desk to power through creative or AI workloads. And even if the cost of engineering these powerful components into such a tiny box would raise the price tag a bit, Valve has a secret weapon that most PC manufacturers don’t – it owns Steam.
Because SteamOS basically railroads you into Steam the second you load the operating system up, and barely – if ever – requires you to go to the actual desktop, most Steam Machine users will primarily be buying and playing games on Steam. Don’t forget that Epic tried to make Epic Games Store exclusives a thing because of Valve’s high margin on software sales. If the Steam Machine sells a lot of units, Valve can essentially subsidize the cost of the hardware through all the cash it’ll make from you buying games.
After all, this is essentially what console-makers have always done in the past. Console hardware is so affordable because every game that’s sold for those platforms earns Sony, Microsoft or Nintendo a bit of cash. The only real difference is that you can just wipe SteamOS off of the Steam Machine and install Windows, which probably affects the math a little bit. I just don’t know by how much.
And speaking of Windows, that’s another reason why Valve may be willing to shave down its profit margin – to stave off the oncoming threat of Xbox. Steam is currently by far the most popular digital game store on PC, but Microsoft and its PC-like next-gen Xbox is looking to lure more gamers over to the Microsoft Store and its "Play Anywhere" promises. More games sold on the Microsoft Store means fewer games sold on Steam, which means less money for Valve. But by planting a flag with the Steam Machine, Valve keeps those PC gamers in the Steam ecosystem and that sweet 30% cut on software sales rolling in.
That’s exactly what Valve did with the Steam Deck though. Gabe Newell famously told us that hitting its 400ドル price was "painful" but "critical." However painful it was, it worked, and now "Steam Deck" is practically synonymous with handheld PC gaming.
Ultimately, no one will actually know how much the Steam Machine will cost until Valve shares the price. My initial gut feeling was somewhere around 1,000ドル when I heard that it’d be priced similarly to the same class of hardware. But realistically it’ll likely be around 700ドル-800, depending on how much tariffs get worked into the equation – maybe 600ドル if Valve is willing to get really aggressive. While I know a lot of people are hoping that it stays below 500,ドル I just don’t see it happening. I’d love to be proven wrong, though.
Jackie Thomas is the Hardware and Buying Guides Editor at IGN and the PC components queen. You can follow her @Jackiecobra
]]>Just like pretty much everything else these days, the prices of gaming monitors have risen significantly, especially if you’re looking at displays with OLED panels, massive screens, and high refresh rates at sharp resolutions. Luckily, there is still an excellent pool of affordable monitors out there that don’t sacrifice image quality and features as much as you’d think. Just look at the AOC Q27G40XMN with its impressive mini-LED screen for around 300,ドル which feels like a minor miracle in the age of tariffs. It's my top pick for a reason: It competes with monitors that cost hundreds of dollars more and is an object lesson in the kind of quality that's available on a limited budget... if you know where to look.
The best budget gaming monitors may lack certain technology and features, but they still provide an excellent display to enjoy all the capabilities of your gaming PC. Even mid-range graphics cards and CPUs can be pushed to the extreme, as high refresh and 4K monitors can go for relatively cheap. While there are often trade-offs, like height-adjustable stands on the low end and value-adds like KVM switches on the high end, by focusing on performance and your personal "must haves," you can find truly great values at every price point.
Now, not all budget gaming monitors are created equal, and if something appears too good to be true, it probably is. A 100ドル monitor might be a great deal upfront, but chances are good it’ll die quickly and/or strain your eyes as you game, doing more harm than good in the end. Our picks may cost a bit more than 100,ドル but their solid builds, excellent panels, and gaming features make for a better experience. However, just like any other gaming accessory, nicer gaming monitors are available if you’re willing to spend more.
I was saddened to see my previous pick, the Xiaomi G Pro 27i, disappear from availablity, but AOC quickly swooped in with its own mini-LED showstopper. The Q27G40XMN puts picture quality and gameplay first with its 27-inch Quantum Dot Mini-LED enhanced display. It's bright, vibrant, esports-tier fast, and offers a killer HDR gaming experience thanks to its 1,152 local dimming zones.
For around 300,ドル this monitor is simply one of the best values in affordable PC gaming. Because of its use of a mini-LED backlight, it's able to reach a peak brightness of 1,200 nits and offer deep, highly localized contrast. It checks all of the boxes for a "true" HDR experience at a fraction of the cost of most of its competitors.
The Q27G40XMN isn't the only mini-LED monitor available around this price, but it has far more local dimming zones than most others. While that's one feature among many, it's absolutely critical for the best viewing experience. Most others around this price only offer around 330 local dimming zones and the difference is night and day. The AOC keeps shadows and dark areas in check with a minimum of blooming (glowing around darks from the surrounding lights).
On top of all that, the Q27G40XMN hits the sweet spot for resolution and refresh rate. Its 2560x1 440 resolution won't take a super computer to run at high frame rates and with a peak refresh rate of 180Hz, motion blur and input latency are at a minimum, so you can enjoy everything from competitive esports to your favorite cozy game.
The trade-off comes in the form of limited inputs and a pretty basic stand. But for what you're getting, it's well worth the investment.
The Asus TUF Gaming VG277Q1A is a killer value that's able to run with ease on a wide range of hardware. You won't need the latest graphics card to push this display to its limits, and thanks to its VA panel, you can enjoy deeper blacks and wider dynamic range in all types of games. With a 1ms gray-to-gray response time and game-enhancing features to give you an edge in competitive shooters and esports, it offers great bang for your buck.
In this price range, I tend to look toward VA panels. Though IPS panels are known for their colors, VA panels like the one used here are often just as good (or close to it) while offering a substantially better gaming experience due to their improved blacks. This model is also decently bright for the price at 350 nits, so colors will pop and gaming in well-lit rooms won't be an issue.
It also offers some game-enhancing features designed to give you an edge in competitive matches. You can enable an on-screen reticle for games that lack one, turn on Shadow Boost to peek into the dark and easily identify enemies, and turn on an Extreme Low Motion Blur (ELMB) mode to reduce motion blur for a smoother, clearer gaming experience.
There are only two big drawbacks worth knowing before pulling the trigger. First, like a lot of gaming monitors around this price, the stand isn't height adjustable. It supports VESA mounting (100x100mm), so you can grab your own aftermarket stand or monitor arm if you can't get its positioning to your liking, but that means spending a little extra money if it's not a perfect fit right out of the box. Second, while its spacious 27-inch screen is a Pro for immersion and taking up more of your field of view, it's a con for total crispness, given its 1080p resolution. This monitor is as big as you can go before the screen door effect sets in, so while it looks good, it's not as sharp as a 24-inch display at this resolution.
What it brings to the table is far more than what it lacks, however, and this is an upgrade I recommend if you want noticeable improvements to your gaming experience without overspending.
The LG Ultragear 27GN800-B is a great upgrade for gamers on a budget. For under 300,ドル you get a boost in resolution to 2560x1440, which brings a serious increase in sharpness compared to a 1080p monitor. Those crisp visuals will pop even more thanks to great color accuracy and decent factory calibration. Its 27-inch screen is spacious enough to deliver an immersive gaming experience that perfectly balances crisp details with reasonable system requirements.
This 27-inch gaming monitor excels in other areas, too. It has a 144Hz refresh rate and is compatible with AMD FreeSync and Nvidia G-Sync for smooth, tear-free HDR gaming. One aspect that I place a lot of value on is that it features Low Framerate Compensation. If your system struggles to hit the 144Hz maximum, the monitor is able to insert frames and sync with the refresh rate, making games that would otherwise be choppy play more smoothly.
The biggest drawback to this display is that its stand isn't height adjustable. Depending on your desk setup, you may find that it's not positioned perfectly for your height. It supports a standard 100x100mm VESA mount, however, so it's easy to swap the included stand with something more adjustable if height is an issue. Still, it's got the feature set and affordable price to make this a prime pick.
The KTC H27P22D is an object lesson in how far the budget gaming monitor market has advanced. Coming in at 400,ドル and regularly on sale for much less, it shows that you don't need to spend an arm and a leg to get a great, high refresh rate, 4K gaming experience. In truth, I find it hard to find too much to criticize about this display. It's a well-rounded package at an exceptionally reasonable price. If you have the hardware to run it, it is absolutely worth considering.
In addition to its crisp 4K resolution, the H27P22D offers an impressively speedy 160Hz refresh rate. This comes with full support for AMD FreeSync Premium and compatibility with Nvidia G-Sync, so you can enjoy a smooth gaming experience even if you can't quite hit that high refresh rate. It's a stellar pick for console gaming too, thanks to its dual HDMI 2.1 ports. Just bring a headset or pair of speakers because there are none included here, though given the quality of most monitor speakers, I don't consider that a major drawback.
As is common with budget gaming monitors, there's a bit of overpromising in the marketing, but its real-world performance remains impressive for the price. While its 400 nits of peak brightness isn't bright enough for true high dynamic range, it's certainly bright enough to deliver a vivid SDR gaming experience. Its color coverage is also great, though, unlike more expensive 4K gaming monitors, it's not calibrated at the factory. It's fine for gaming where perfectly accuracte colors are less important, but for creative work, you'll need to invest in a colorimeter or find a downloadable ICC profile. It also lacks a USB hub (its sole USB Type-A port is for software upgrades only), so you won't be able to connect peripherals directly.
Given everything you're getting here, its shortcomings are more than forgivable. These same features would have cost hundreds and hundreds more only a couple short years ago. The KTC H27P22D is a gift to budget-conscious gamers interested in upgrading to Ultra HD.
An ultrawide curved monitor is a great choice if you want an immersive gaming experience, and the Dell S3422DWG stands out as the best budget ultrawide. It has a contrast-rich VA panel with a resolution of 3440x1440 that provides a vibrant, sharp image that looks great in any genre of game. The 21:9 aspect ratio and slight curvature of the screen wrap around your field of vision, so you can focus on the action occurring in your games rather than outside distractions.
When it comes to large ultrawides like this one, I always prefer the "1440p" resolution over the ultrawide equivalent of 1080p. Though it does require a bit more graphics power to run than a 16:9 1440p monitor, the higher pixel density makes for a much better image.
The monitor features a solid 144Hz refresh rate and supports AMD FreeSync. This means your games should play butter-smooth. The S3422DWG can suffer motion blur behind dark objects, but motion clarity is otherwise strong.
Despite its competitive price, the S3422DWG is an attractive monitor. It has a height-adjustable stand, two HDMI ports, one DisplayPort, and can even be used as a USB hub.
The Acer Nitro EDA270U Pbmiipx is an affordably great pick for anyone looking for a cheap but impressive curved gaming monitor. It lacks the bells and whistles of more expensive options, but Acer has wisely chosen to invest in the quality of the gaming experience instead of price-raising extras that you may or may not use.
This monitor packs 27 inches of screen real estate into a thin but stylish frame that won't leave you scrambling for desk space. It's easy to integrate into most setups and easy to adapt to thanks to is noticeable, but not distracting, 1500R curve. It's deep enough to add to your immersion without warping text or imagery as you play.
This monitor also offers solid picture quality for its modest sub-200ドル price. It uses a VA panel for improved contrast and is color rich, coming in a close second to its better-tuned IPS counterparts. Its wider dynamic range may just make up for what it lacks in color gamut, however. It also comes with game enhancing features like a 180Hz refresh rate and AMD FreeSync Premium for smooth, blur-free gameplay.
For such an affordable price, you have to expect some trade-offs. You shouldn't expect many dedicated gaming features beyond the staples you'll find on every gaming monitor, and its port selection, while fine for pushing the monitor to its full potential, doesn't offer the same bandwidth as more expensive options.
As an entry-level or budget conscious on-ramp to curved-screen gaming, however, it's definitely worth considering.
We've all been there: The latest and greatest monitor comes out, full of features and promising an amazing gaming experience. You start to get excited and then see the price: 800,ドル 1,000,ドル maybe more. It's disappointing, to say the least, but thanks to the KTC MP27P6, you don't need to break the bank to bring cutting-edge features and a killer picture your own.
At around 500,ドル the MP27P6 isn't what most people would consider "budget," but it's hard to argue that it's anything other than a fantastic value. For around half the price of the big-brand competition, it offers dual-mode resolution and refresh rates, a mini-LED backlight behind a colorful Fast IPS panel for bright highlights and deep blacks, a built-in USB hub and KVM switch, software configurability, and one of the best out-of-the box calibrations you'll find at any price point.
It's almost like KTC looked at the feature list of a brand like Asus ROG and used it as a checklist for this display. While it's mini-LED backlight doesn't offer the same inky blacks as OLED monitors, it costs hundreds less and offers better dynamic range than any traditionally backlit monitor you can buy today. HDR gaming looks better, and if you dabble in content creation or photo editing, it's tight calibration makes it a perfect fit for creative work too.
It's also one of the only affordable gaming monitors you'll find that offers dual resolutions and refresh rates. For single-player or slower paced games, you can embrace the crispest possible picture at 4K, 160Hz. When it's time for competitive shooters and other esports, you can drop the resolution to 1080p and push its speed all the way to 320Hz.
It even offers software support, so you can change settings without worrying about diving into the OSD at any point, but it's here that its budget leanings are most apparent. You won't find the same level of polish in its software as you will from some of the more expensive options, like those from Asus or Acer, and it lacks advanced gaming features like Sniper Mode for an added competitive edge. But, if you can live without those OSD extras, this is a stellar pick.
If you're looking for a budget gaming monitor, a good sweet spot to aim for is around 200ドル-300ドル. You can find plenty of gaming monitors that are cheaper than that, but then you start running into issues with quality. You're going to have to make compromises either way, but in general, a gaming monitor should last 3-5 years, and a 100ドル gaming monitor probably isn't going to do that.
In order to find a gaming monitor that hits that price tag, you'll need to know what to look for in a gaming monitor, and figure out which areas are most important to you, so you can make the right compromise for your needs.
Gamers on a tight budget don’t have to make as many sacrifices as they once did, but there’s still a need for some compromise. In general, you can go for a higher resolution, or you can go for a higher refresh rate, but you sadly won’t be able to snag both in a budget gaming monitor.
1080p remains the standard go-to resolution in budget displays. It certainly lacks the clarity of modern 4K TVs, but on the plus side, the low display resolution means you won’t need high-end hardware to play new games and achieve high frame rates. 1440p resolution is a nice upgrade, and a better overall value if you can stretch your budget. A 1440p monitor with a 27" screen actually has a higher pixel density than a 48" 4K television. However, this means a 240Hz refresh rate will no longer be affordable.
4K is available on a budget but you should expect to pay closer to 400ドル or to make bigger sacrifices in brightness or screen size. You should also bear in mind the higher system requirements to run 4K resolution at high frame rates. In any case, this is the compromise you must make if you want to play at 4K for as little cash as possible.
The refresh rate of budget gaming monitors is generally 60 to 240Hz, with most landing at 144Hz or 165Hz. A refresh rate of 144Hz is a great all-around choice that can handle most games with ease, but 240Hz is a noticeable upgrade for players who only care about competitive games. 360Hz is also now more in reach for cheaper gaming monitors than it used to be.
It’s important to note that a monitor’s maximum refresh rate may not be supported by every input. For example, many monitors that reach up to 165Hz will only support 144Hz over HDMI. DisplayPort is the best bet if you want to use a high refresh rate.
A monitor’s display panel technology is an important and often overlooked factor. All the monitors we recommend use either an IPS or VA panel. IPS panels are prized for motion clarity, vibrance, and responsiveness, all of which makes them great for competitive gaming. VA panels have a much better contrast ratio and far superior dark scene performance, so they’re better for games with immersive, high-end graphics.
Screen size is less of a limitation than it used to be. Our budget gaming monitor guide focuses on 27" options, alongside a 34" ultrawide. Smaller monitors (24") tend to be less expensive and are also preferred by competitive gamers, who want the entire display to be firmly within their focus. Larger monitors (32" and up) are more immersive, but will start to lose detail if not accompanied by a higher resolution. With that said, it is possible to buy a monitor that’s too large for your desk, so make sure to measure if you’re unsure. If in doubt, a 27" monitor with a 16:9 aspect ratio is a safe bet.
It’s wise to buy a monitor with Nvidia G-Sync or AMD FreeSync support, depending on whether you have an Nvidia or AMD video card. Many budget gaming monitors support both. My preferred picks all list the standards they support.
Finally, a note about HDR. While HDR is marketed on many affordable monitors, it unfortunately remains unimpressive on most as they only get up to a maximum 400 nits of screen brightness. A maximum brightness of 400 nits is considered "HDR compatible" because it will technically display this content but it will lack the dynamic range required to display more than SDR.
Budget gaming monitors typically come with either a VA or IPS panel. One of my picks is an IPS monitor with a mini-LED backlight and trumps both other panel types due to how the technology is implemented. Go with that if your budget and needs allow for it. Otherwise, the choice between VA and IPS comes down to three things: response time, colors, and contrast.
For response time and color accuracy, IPS panels are the way to go, though the former is much less of a concern than it used to be. These days, 1ms panels exist for both types. IPS monitors still tend to offer the most vivid and accurate colors, however.
For contrast, unless the monitor uses a mini-LED backlight like my top pick, VA has a major advantage. Because it doesn't use edge-lighting like IPS panels do, dark colors and blacks look much more rich. Because of this, VA panels can offer a better dynamic range.
While there is no "best," there are certainly better choices depending on what you value most in a gaming monitor.
The best time to buy a gaming monitor for a reasonable price (or a budget gaming monitor for even cheaper than usual) is during shopping events like Amazon Prime Day and Black Friday. Gaming monitor deals can also pop up during Back to School sales, and major retailers usually lower the price on older models to make way for new releases.
It’s really a matter of personal preference when choosing a gaming monitor, but there are some general rules of thumb to keep in mind. The first is the most obvious: Consider your available space. You don't want to get excited for your new monitor to arrive only to find that it won't fit into your gaming space. Next, consider the resolution of the monitors you're considering and how it relates to pixel density. A 24" monitor is more compact and is a good fit for 1080p gaming. For 1440p, 27-32" is a good fit, offering plenty of detail and a bigger-screen gaming experience. For 4K, I recommend a minimum of 27" to take advantage of its higher pixel count. Also beware of 1080p monitors larger than 27" as each pixel becomes visible at this size, leading to a screen door effect.
Christopher Coke has been a regular contributor to IGN since 2019 and has been covering games and technology since 2013. He has covered tech ranging from gaming controllers to graphics cards, gaming chairs and gaming monitors, headphones, IEMs, and more for sites such as MMORPG.com, Tom’s Hardware, Popular Science, USA Today, and Popular Mechanics. Find Chris on X at @gamebynight .
]]>OnePlus is back for another round in the fight for dominance of the Android smartphone space with the OnePlus 15. The OnePlus 13 before it was a shimmering success, offering extreme performance – even among gaming phones – a stunning and study design, extensive battery life, and excellent cameras. With the OnePlus 15, the brand has changed up the design for something more distinct from its predecessors, but it has also dropped some bigger aspects, like its Hasselblad camera partnership and its three-way Alert Slider. The internals may be on the right path, but how well the other changes shift from the great heights OnePlus previously held is the big question.
The OnePlus 15 redesign makes the device a little less bold and original (not that earlier designs could really be called original, as they borrowed heavily from the Oppo phones they’re based on). At the heart of the redesign is a new camera bump, squared now instead of circular, which comes by way of the OnePlus 13T that never saw release in the US. This bump just has a bit too much in common with every iPhone from the last five years, excepting the iPhone 17, with a little sprinkling of the Pixel line’s flat edges. It’s a little plain, especially next to the shimmery design on the prior model.
Another big shift is the removal of the Alert Slider, which to my recollection has been on OnePlus’s flagship phones forever. In its stead is a single small button much like Apple’s Action button. Here it’s called the Plus Key. You can customize it to do a handful of different things (including adjust alert settings like the Alert Slider) with single, double, and long-presses, though there’s no option to make up actions you want it to perform on your own. By default, it will work with a special AI-powered "Mind Space," with the ability to take a screen grab and scan it for info with a tap, to record an audio note while holding the button, and to access the Mind Space with a double tap.
The phone itself is only modestly shifted away from the earlier model. The OnePlus 15 is flatter, with flat aluminum sides and a flat glass back – a shimmery black-sand-like look to it on the Infinite Black model, which still manages to look bland compared to the woodgrain of the black OnePlus 13. Though the OnePlus 15 is actually a touch smaller than its predecessor, it ends up feeling slightly larger in the hand due to the flat edges where the OnePlus 13’s edges curved.
The OnePlus 15 still feels nice in the hand, especially with the smooth texture of its back glass. It also feels sturdy, and OnePlus has gone well beyond just a robust feel. The OnePlus 15 offers IP66, IP68, IP69, and IP69K protection, keeping dust out and standing up to close-range, high-pressure, and high-temperature water jets and submersion in up to 2 meters of freshwater for 30 minutes. The OnePlus 13 was already pretty ridiculous in this area, and the OnePlus just nudges those protection levels even further.
The phone’s display is excellent, but it makes some trades from its predecessor. The OnePlus 13 offered a 6.82-inch, 1440x3168, 120Hz display. The OnePlus 15 bumps up to a 165Hz display but drops negligibly to 6.78-inches and lowers the resolution to 1272x2772 (a resolution OnePlus oddly keeps on calling "1.5K" despite the use of K in the resolution naming convention tending to reference horizontal resolution and neither of the dimensions having a 5 in it. In any case, it would seem more appropriate to call it a 2.5K display given it’s a higher resolution than DCI 2K at 2048x1080.) Thankfully, in spite of the resolution downgrade, the display remains very sharp and smooth, even if the speed bump is also hard to notice in day-to-day use.
The screen is a bright and colorful OLED that looks predictably wonderful whether gaming, watching movies, or just scrolling the web. It is also paired with solid speakers that pump out impressive volume. The speakers easily passed my test, letting me clearly hear a podcast while showering, and did so without noticeable distortion.
OnePlus has made its thinnest bezels yet at 1.15mm, though it’s hard to appreciate them with most flagship phones also getting their bezels so thin they go almost unnoticed. OnePlus has fitted the display with a pre-applied screen protector, but it’s perhaps the worst in recent memory, clinging to finger oils and scratching easily. Removing it reveals the Gorilla Glass Victus 2 front, which should handle scratching a lot better (though I’d still recommend a screen protector).
The OnePlus 15 offers an under-display fingerprint scanner that works reliably quickly, though not noticeably faster than the OnePlus 13’s.
While the phone supports 80W wired and 50W wireless charging (and includes that 80W charger in the box), it doesn’t add Qi2 support for magnetic attachments. First-party cases from OnePlus do support magnetic attachments, though.
The OnePlus 15 has a dual-SIM tray, but it can also support eSIM, providing some nice flexibility for network connections. I got good reception in Chicago on T-Mobile’s network and saw some astounding speeds, with one speed test showing a download speed of 853Mbps and a decent 80Mbps upload speed.
The phone also continues to support IR remote control functionality, letting you set it up to serve as something of a universal remote. This time around, the IR blaster is hidden on the back of the phone instead of the top edge.
The OnePlus 15 comes running Android 16 right out of the box, an impressive bit of pace-keeping for a non-Google phone launched so soon after the launch of Android 16. OnePlus is promising four years of software updates and six years of security patches, but after clarification on the OnePlus 13’s update policy, that first year of updates is likely counting the out-of-the-box Android 16, so expect updates through Android 19, but likely not Android 20.
The phone uses the OxygenOS 16 skin of Android, which remains a very flexible option. There’s plenty of customization available to get things like the home screen, app drawer, notification and quick settings shades, navigation, and much more looking and feeling just how you want.
One big addition OnePlus has made on the software front is Mind Space. This seems to work much like Google’s AI screenshots app, letting you create a repository of screenshots and voice recordings that it can use AI to search through and glean information from. With a screenshot of my calendar, I was able to query it about upcoming details, like which airline I had a flight on, and it successfully used the flight number to tell me the details of the flight. However, I also caught it guessing with limited context, as one calendar entry was cropped and it tried to fill in the blanks. The full entry said "Flight to Chicago," but the cropped version showed just "Flight to Ch." The AI interpreted this to mean "Flight to Charlotte" and started producing some confused responses to questions as a result. To its credit, it did note the inconsistency in my itinerary, but didn’t use that inconsistency to deduce that I was not, in fact, going to Charlotte.
Despite more and more AI hardware coming to devices in the form of specialized cores and NPUs, Mind Space still processes data remotely. This means it won’t work offline or when you have spotty service, and there is a slight delay to responses, though not a long one. OnePlus says that all data involving cloud processing is encrypted and that even OnePlus cannot access the information. But you should still be mindful of what you’re doing with private or sensitive data. The reliance on remote processing also means this may not be a permanent feature or even a permanently free one.
The OnePlus 15 is one of the first devices on the scene with Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 SoC on deck, and that gives a nice boost on what was already phenomenal performance from the prior generation. In day-to-day use, the phone hasn’t once felt anything other than perfectly fluid. It also has abundant memory for multi-tasking, letting me switch back to apps I hadn’t used for a couple of days almost as seamlessly as if I were switching back to the previously used app.
The OnePlus 15’s full potential is really only unleashed when hammered with a heavy task, like gaming. Even then, it keeps up steady performance. It maintained a steady 110-120fps in Call of Duty Mobile with the graphics maxed. Even after some lengthy gaming, the phone was comfortable to hold, albeit warm. That said, I kind of expected more, as Call of Duty Mobile was listed as one of the games supporting native 165fps. I found it was able to reach a stable 165fps with the graphics dropped to their lowest and second-to-lowest (medium) settings, but the game already looks a bit low-res at even max settings compared to the PC version of the game.
Firing up Wuthering Waves, the phone is happy to run that game at a stable 60fps with everything maxed out, but this also fails to run faster than that, even after OnePlus’s OP Gaming Core badge pops up when the game launches and proudly announced "165 OP FPS MAX," which would lead me to think maybe it will somehow get past the game’s 60fps limit, perhaps with interpolation at the very least. This also deviates from the "Industry-First Always-On 120fps gameplay" claim OnePlus made of the new phone, which appears to only apply to the game Mobile Legends: Bang Bang. Claims like that are no fun when they come with unclear caveats. Considering the phone doesn’t build up much heat while gaming, it seems that most games simply aren’t taking full advantage of the hardware just yet
Unsurprisingly, the OnePlus 15 benchmarked very well. In GeekBench 6, the phone achieved a single-core score of 3683 points – this highest score we’ve seen from a phone yet, including the iPhone 17 Pro Max. Its multi-core score also proves exceptional at 10,100 to again beat the iPhone. The only device to exceed it is the RedMagic 11 Pro, a phone that runs on the same chip but applies two forms of active cooling: air and liquid.
In 3DMark’s graphical benchmarks, the OnePlus 15 continued to show excellent performance with a nice average uptick over the OnePlus 13 of 9.3% and what would be the best performance results we’ve seen, again save for the RedMagic 11 Pro, which is proving to be something of a showstopper where performance is concerned. Both phones still show a huge lead over the iPhone 17 Pro Max, with the OnePlus 15’s 7,111-point score in Wildlife Extreme creating a huge gap between it and the iPhone 17 Pro Max’s 4,795 points. The OnePlus 15 also boasts a wide performance lead over the Pixel 10 Pro, with 58% better performance in both Geekbench single-core and multi-core tests and a 116% edge in Wildlife Extreme and 182% in Steel Nomad Light. Even the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra lags behind by an average of 26.8% in our 3DMark tests.
When the OnePlus 15 is really grinding in these benchmarks, it suffers from thermal throttling. This is a common occurrence for phones, so the more important question is how badly does that throttling come into play. A phone with active cooling like the RedMagic 11 Pro may be able to sustain peak performance largely over a long period, but most devices I’ve tested will lose about 30% of their performance over the course of a 20-run stress test with 3DMark’s Steel Nomad. The OnePlus 15 saw its performance sink by a third, with speeds quickly dropping after the SoC exceeds 30 degrees Celsius. It’s not a bad result, as most phones see similar results, but it does undercut OnePlus’s hype for its "360 Cryo-Velocity Cooling System" some.
Beyond the gobs of performance the phone has to offer, it also has heaps of battery life from its 7300mAh battery. I am generally a light phone user, and can often stretch most phones through one full day with some charge to spare into the second day. For phones with large batteries, I can often even get through that second day without plugging in. With the OnePlus 15 in operation as my primary phone, I made it through four full days without touching a plug. This included plenty of texting, browsing, a ton of podcast listening (both through Bluetooth earbuds and the phone’s own speaker), and even 20 minutes of gaming. The phone was at 2% charge when I finally plugged it in at 2am at the end of the fourth day. And when I have to juice the phone back up, its 80W charger makes the job super quick.
When I heard the updates OnePlus had in store for its camera system, I was a bit worried. The company’s Hasselblad partnership bore fruit with some excellent photography, especially on the OnePlus 12 and OnePlus 13, which offered not only crisply detailed shots but lovely color. The OnePlus 15 not only drops that partnership but also swaps out all the cameras on the rear for models with smaller sensors and tighter apertures, a double whammy for light-gathering potential. Here’s a rundown of what the phone includes:
To my surprise, the camera system ended up proving solid. While there’s the occasional, obvious difference between a shot taken on the OnePlus 13 and the OnePlus 15 (like the color of the sky), side-by-side shots tend to look nearly identical. The OnePlus 15 can capture excellent detail and color, and it proves consistent across the three sensors.
The triple sensor setup offers a good range of shooting options, going from very wide to a nicely punched in 3.5x. That extra bit of zoom over the OnePlus 13’s 3x telephoto also makes a surprising difference in clarity for distant subjects, especially when stepping up to a 7x zoom level. That said, it still falls short of the 5x telephoto camera on the Pixel 10 Pro.
While it’s great to see the clarity and color hold up on the OnePlus 15 after the strong showing from its predecessor, the change in sensors and apertures does impact low-light performance. It opts for higher-ISOs (more grain) and longer exposures (more risk of blur), and this can make for lower-quality photos in dim settings. It’s a minor setback, but a setback all the same.
All told, the OnePlus 15’s camera system is a great one, but it’s more of a side-grade than an upgrade over the OnePlus 13’s. I wouldn’t consider it a reason to upgrade from the OnePlus 13 or 12 even.
]]>The Legion Tower 7i is a clean and neatly packed gaming PC with a powerful Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 and Intel Core Ultra 9 285K tamed by a 360mm AIO cooler – which makes it a solid high-end prebuilt gaming rig, even if it is quite expensive. It’ll give you that powerful performance you want in a premium gaming PC, but if you’re into shiny RGB components, you may want to opt for RAM that doesn’t look like a naked piece of circuit board.
However, if all you’re interested in is graphics performance, there are certainly cheaper gaming PCs out there. And while I do like the RGB lighting, the case screams budget more than anything else. That may be a dealbreaker for some, but the Legion Tower 7i still offers everything you need in a gaming PC to take on modern AAA games at high settings.
The Legion Tower 7i slimmed down from last year’s model, which is great because it was quite chunky. It now measures 18.8 inches tall (previously 19.37 inches) and 16.34 inches wide (previously 18.27 inches). It’s still kind of chunky, but it’s an improvement.
But the Lenovo Legion Tower 7i is still your average 35-pound mid-tower blasted in a stormy gray paint that will make you mistake it for any other nondescript gaming PC until you turn the lights on. Then, you’ll get blasted with the bold RGB, highlighting the tower’s caged honeycomb aesthetic alongside its bright Legion logo. Meanwhile, the rounded edges and fans on top add to the mechanical aesthetic. If you’re looking at the tempered glass panel when the lights kick on, white LEDs glow and highlight the components in the chassis, while the liquid cooler, GPU, and rear fans alight in RGB. However, the RAM remains to be naked in the motherboard.
Popping open the glass panel was easy; I just removed two thumbscrews in the back and slid it off (getting it back on required similar minimal effort). While the RTX 5080 is a relatively average size, it does take up the size of two PCIe slots. Below that, there’s one PCIe 4.0 x16 and PCIe 3.0 slot, but if you want to plug anything into those ports, they’ll need to be relatively thin cards. But even with the tight packing, this is an extremely clean build, with the cables neatly packed.
Getting the back panel off was a bit harder. The thumbscrews were tight as heck (I had to pull out a screwdriver), and I had to put way more pressure than I should have to slide it off (and back on). The cables in the back were zip tied and shoved in the empty space in front of the PSU slot. It looks neat, but if you wanted to replace anything, you’ll need some scissors and some dexterity to avoid knocking a cable out of the PSU.
The front panel connectors are located at the top instead of the front, near the power button. There’s a headphone jack, one USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A, two USB 2 Type-A, and one USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C slot. It’s great to see a Type-C port on the front since it was missing last year, and gaming PCs need more than one Type-C slot in 2025.
You can find the other Type-C port on the back, which supports Thunderbolt 4. You also get four USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A, two USB 2.0 Type-A, an RJ-45 Ethernet, and six audio ports. The number of audio ports is confusing, for sure, but its the same amount as on the previous model. There’s also a DisplayPort on the motherboard, which most people shouldn't use, but can be useful for troubleshooting.
The Legion Tower 7i also comes with a generic keyboard and mouse. If you’re buying an expensive gaming PC like this, you probably shouldn’t play games with a keyboard and mouse you could find in a lost and found bin. That seems brutal, but after playing a few matches of Marvel Rivals, the mouse could not keep up with my movements to defend myself before I got ganked. The keyboard is less offensive, but it’s still at the bottom of the barrel. Its membrane keys are mushy and don’t offer the satisfying feedback you need from a gaming keyboard, and the kickstand on the underside barely lifts it up, providing nearly no support for my wrists.
Unfortunately, the Lenovo Legion Tower 7i does have some bloatware, like the Lenovo Vantage app, which keeps track of your warranty, system information, and can maintain hardware health with scans and driver updates. That is useful, especially if you don’t want to deal with Windows 11’s built in hardware management. Lenovo also pre-installed the ‘Lenovo Now’ app, which is essentially a link to the Lenovo Subscription Marketplace, which will try to sell you stuff you probably don’t need – you should probably uninstall that.
However, one tool you should actually keep on the machine is LegionSpace. This is where you can monitor your CPU, GPU, and RAM, change the lighting profile of your PC and adjust performance profiles between Quiet, Balance, and Performance. You can also use this app to overclock your GPU, which I wouldn’t do unless you’re comfortable doing the necessary tinkering.
That chunky card you see in the Legion Tower 7i is an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 GPU with 16GB of VRAM – that's as premium as you can get if you want to stay around 3,000ドル. It's paired with an Intel Core Ultra 9 285K and 64GB of RAM. You won't be getting triple-digit frames in every game you play, but you won't need DLSS 4’s frame generation for 4K, 60 fps gaming.
Jumping into Cyberpunk 2077 at 4K with the Ray Tracing Ultra preset and DLSS set to Performance, the Legion Tower 7i hits a strong 76 fps. If you want to take advantage of that high refresh rate display you got for your birthday, throw on Frame Generation (x2) to get 124 fps. Jumping to Multi-Frame Generation (x4) will net you 198 fps.
Similarly, the Legion Tower 7i managed a strong 62 fps in Assassin’s Creed Shadows, while frame generation took it up to 94 fps. The Legion struggled the most with the Metro Exodus benchmark, hitting 59 fps, but that tracks since it’s a heavy workload without all the upscaling. A competitive game like Black Ops 6 runs smooth, at 121 fps, which is enough to catch the enemy slipping.
I hopped into a few matches of Marvel Rivals (trying to do those weeklies) at 4K, with the Ultra preset and DLAA, 4x Multi-Frame Generation. I averaged about 167 fps with 44 milliseconds of latency as I scorched a Jeff from across the arena with Phoenix’s cosmic flame. You won't be able to fill out a 4K, 240Hz display on max settings, but the Legion Tower 7i offers more than enough for the average gamer, even a competitive one. If you turn down a few settings, or play less demanding games, you’ll definitely be able to saturate a 240Hz refresh rate
If you don’t want to compromise, you can just get the Legion Tower 7i with an RTX 5090, but then you start getting to prices that make the Origin Millenium or the Maingear Apex Artist Series look a little more reasonable – and that’s saying something.
Rami Tabari is a contributing writer at IGN with over 9 years of experience in the tech and gaming industry. You can find his bylines at Laptop Mag and Tom's Guide (and on a random Predator review at Space.com). When Rami isn't wading through a sea of the latest gaming tech, he's agonizing over the worldbuilding in his upcoming novella.
]]>Update: After comment from Dbrand, it's clear this isn't a skin, but an actual enclosure. This article has been updated to reflect that.
I'm sure there are more than a few of you who just assumed that Dbrand would be making a weighted Companion Cube skin for the newly-announced Steam Machine. Me too, but it seems the company is going even further with its Portal reference by making a full-blown Companion Cube enclosure for the thing, Dbrand CEO Adam Ijaz told IGN in an email this morning.
"Even after accounting for the removable faceplate and air intake requirements, we're confident it's fully viable," Ijaz said. He added that the company will be "refining details over the coming month, but are registering interest now and intend to bring the product to market in early 2026." I'd bet that'll be before the Steam Machine itself. You can jump on a mailing list to be notified about the Companion Cube enclosure on the Dbrand website.
Have a look at the Companion Cube Steam Machine enclosure concept, in all its glory:
In a subsequent email, Ijaz explained the work that needs to be done before Dbrand can settle on pricing:
"We're still early in development and the Companion Cube enclosure is going to involve a lot of custom work on both the engineering and finishing side of production. That means achieving the proper dimensional geometry (jutted out bumper corners, proper topography, etc.) is only half the work. The iconic weathering and panel wear are likely going to require fine paint application and detailing techniques that go well beyond typical mass-production parts. Once we're a bit deeper into tooling and development, we'll have a clearer sense of what final pricing can look like."
When I asked whether the company is making one for the Nintendo Gamecube – something I asked because I'm impulsive, not because I thought Dbrand would do it – Ijaz responded that it was "possible," but that certain things, "like a GabeCube or a microwave," work better as a skin than an enclosure, and to expect the company "to explore more of those types of concepts as the hardware approaches launch in Q1." (To be clear, my question was meant to ask whether the company had considered a Companion Cube skin for the GameCube, not a GameCube skin for the Steam Machine. Ijaz's answer makes a lot more sense.)
Now, we just need the company to create a skin that, I don't know, makes the upcoming Steam Frame look like Gordon Freeman's face. Or perhaps one that just says "HALF-LIFE 3 CONFIRMED" (it's not) across the headset's front glass or the top of the new Steam Controller? Just spitballing here.
Wes is a freelance writer (Freelance Wes, they call him) who has covered technology, gaming, and entertainment steadily since 2020 at Gizmodo, Tom's Hardware, Hardcore Gamer, and most recently, The Verge. Inside of him there are two wolves: one that thinks it wouldn't be so bad to start collecting game consoles again, and the other who also thinks this, but more strongly.
]]>Apple's just-announced iPhone Pocket accessory has been mocked over its 230ドル price point and threadbare nature — which has been described as simply being a ribbed fabric "sock."
The high-fashion holder is described by Apple as a "beautiful way to wear and carry iPhone," born out of a collaboration with designer Issey Miyake — who previously created some of late Apple leader Steve Jobs' famous turtleneck sweaters.
But the response to iPhone Pocket has not been kind, with the overwhelming amount of feedback online suggesting that the accessory is emblematic of Apple's ability to create products that fans will pay over-the-odds for — even those made out of fabric.
"Crafted in Japan, iPhone Pocket features a singular 3D-knitted construction that is the result of research and development carried out at Issey Miyake," Apple wrote in its product description. "The design drew inspiration from the concept of 'a piece of cloth' and reinterpreted the everyday utility of the brand's iconic pleated clothing."
Apple says the iPhone Pocket is compatible with nearly all iPhone models, which is perhaps unsurprising as it is just a fabric bag you shove your smart device in. However, some Apple fans have sounded alarm that signalling you're carrying a smart device — and can also afford a high-end holder that comes in brightly-colored designs — might only invite those looking to steal a phone.
"No zip, no structure and considering how many thefts of iPhones there are these days... no security?" wrote one social media user in response, as noted by BBC News. And then there's the look of it, which is, well...
The new Apple iPhone Pocket! 😂🤦♂️ pic.twitter.com/bZM59K0MAd
— Erik Richter (@ErikJRichter) November 11, 2025
iPhone Pocket is designed as limited-edition release, and available in lemon, mandarin, purple, pink, peacock, sapphire, cinnamon, and black colors. A version with a short strap costs 149ドル.95, or its long strap design costs 229ドル.95.
Select Apple Stores will begin taking orders in the U.S., UK, France, Greater China, Italy, Japan, Singapore and South Korea — should you be interested.
Tom Phillips is IGN's News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
]]>Microsoft gaming boss Phil Spencer has welcomed Valve’s next-gen Steam machine in a congratulatory message to Valve.
Yesterday, Valve unveiled its next-gen hardware plans by announcing a new Steam Machine, a new Steam Controller, and its Steam Frame virtual reality headset.
The Steam Machine is a gaming-focused PC designed to be more accessible than a standard desktop PC, with a sleek, cube-like design and SteamOS on-board. It’s a clear play for the PC in the living room space, and comes ahead of Microsoft’s own reported next-gen console ambitions.
"Gaming moves forward when players and developers have more ways to play and create, especially across open platforms," Spencer tweeted. "Expanding access across PC, console, and handheld devices reflects a future built on choice, core values that have guided Xbox's vision from the start. As one of the largest publishers on Steam, we welcome new options for players to access games everywhere. Congrats on today's announce."
A recent report claimed the next Xbox is a console / PC hybrid that will play PlayStation games released on PC via Steam. That means the likes of Sony Santa Monica’s God of War, Insomniac’s Spider-Man, and Sucker Punch’s Ghost of Tsushima and pretty much all other PC games will all be playable on the next-gen Xbox in an industry first.
Windows Central reported that while users of the next-gen Xbox can remain inside the Xbox ecosystem if they want, they can exit to Windows, where the console acts like a traditional Windows PC. That means having access to PlayStation games on Steam, and mouse and keyboard games from Blizzard's launcher, Battle.net (World of Warcraft), and Riot's launcher (League of Legends).
Following that report, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella dropped yet another hint that the next-gen Xbox is basically a PC. In an interview with TBPN, Microsoft boss Satya Nadella responded to questions about the evolution of the company’s gaming business, and in doing so dropped a clear hint at where the company is going.
"Remember, the biggest gaming business is the Windows business," Nadella began. "To us, gaming on Windows... and of course, Steam has built a massive marketplace on top of it, and they’ve done a very successful job. Now, we’re the largest publisher after the Activision [deal]. Therefore we want to be a fantastic publisher. Similar approach to what we did with Office. We want to be everywhere, in every platform. So we want to make sure, whether it’s consoles, whether it’s the PC, whether it’s mobile, whether it’s cloud gaming, or the TV, we just want to make sure the games are being enjoyed by gamers everywhere.
"Second, we also wanted to do innovative work in the system side on the console and on the PC. It’s kind of funny that people think about the console-PC as two different things. We built the console because we wanted to build a better PC which could then perform for gaming. I kind of want to revisit some of that conventional wisdom.
"But at the end of the day, console has an experience that is unparalleled. It delivers performance that is unparalleled, that pushes I think the system forward. So I’m really looking forward to the next console, the next PC gaming."
Fast forward to this week, and Valve appears to have gazumped Microsoft by returning to the Steam Machine. In an interview with IGN ahead of the reveal, we asked Valve software engineer Pierre-Loup Griffais and hardware engineer Yazan Aldehayyat whether they saw gaming PCs being the natural evolution of the console, given both Microsoft and Valve’s efforts here.
Here’s how they responded:
Pierre-Loup Griffais: When we think about what to work on next and working on things like Steam Machine and stuff, we're typically not looking at consoles or other products in that direction. Everything we do is informed by what's happening on the PC gaming side of things. Of course there ends up being quite a bit of overlap because we’re doing a bunch of stuff that helps PC gaming work better in the living room and that's traditionally where consoles have been. But really I would say that most of our thinking is not informed by what's happening on the console side, and so I don't know if we have many theories as to where that might be headed. But in general it seems like people seem to be recognizing that there's quite a bit of value in a more PC-like experience and the customizability and all that, and so we're happy to see more of these elements being embraced by platforms in general.
Yazan Aldehayyat: As far as we're concerned the Steam Machine is a PC, so that delineation is not there. In our view, the Steam Machine is just one option in the ecosystem of gaming PCs out there. If you're already happy with your PC gaming experience, that's great. We love that. We are a PC gaming company. We're just trying to give you more options. And that's how we view it. It's just something that we think is a really great addition to a living room or a desktop, but it's just one other option that people can have available to them to play their Steam games basically.
So, Valve is downplaying the idea that Steam Machine is set to compete with the next-gen Xbox, but it’s hard to see Microsoft being particularly thrilled by the idea of Valve’s device coming out first and with a similar proposition. But there’s much we don’t know about either company’s plans. For a start, we don’t know when exactly the Steam Machine will come out, beyond a vague 2026 release window, and we don’t know how much it will cost (Aldehayyat told us the Steam Machine "is going to be a really competitive price to that and provide really good value to it").
The replies to Spencer’s tweet are, predictably, packed with memes, most of which riff on Microsoft’s often derided ‘This Is an Xbox’ marketing campaign. Some are wondering when Game Pass will eventually launch on Steam.
Was bound to happen pic.twitter.com/PHnUSOh0RX
— Adrian Apolonio (@adrian_apolonio) November 12, 2025
Behind the scenes, this is Phil. pic.twitter.com/x9bSgMJVlx
— AP on X (@AntiPar2ival) November 12, 2025
— Nook Browser (@browsewithnook) November 12, 2025
So, what else do we know about the next-gen Xbox? Xbox president Sarah Bond has called out the recently released — and pricy — ASUS ROG Xbox Ally X handhelds as pointing in the direction Microsoft is taking with its upcoming console. In an interview with Mashable, Bond talked in vague terms about what Microsoft is going for, but did strongly suggest it will be an expensive device.
"The next-gen console is going to be a very premium, very high-end curated experience," Bond said. "You're starting to see some of the thinking we have in this handheld [ROG Xbox Ally], but I don't want to give it all away."
Prior comments from Bond have backed the console / PC hybrid suggestion up, too. "This is all about building you a gaming platform that's always with you, so you can play the games you want across devices anywhere you want, delivering you an Xbox experience not locked to a single store or tied to one device," Bond said.
"That's why we're working closely with the Windows team, to ensure that Windows is the number one platform for gaming."
Xbox is set to go up against PlayStation once again, with both Microsoft and Sony reportedly set to release their next-gen consoles in 2027. The next-gen Xbox is taking a different route this time, but the expectation is the PS6 will be a more traditional console, offering genuinely exclusive games — as the PS5 does now. Perhaps now we need to throw Steam Machine into the mix.
We’ve got plenty more on all Valve’s hardware announcements, and have a handy roundup so you don’t miss a thing. We went hands-on with Steam Machine and Steam Controller, and if you’re wondering about Steam Deck 2, we asked Valve about that as well.
Photo by Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg via Getty Images.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
]]>Corsair is the latest company to enter the fighting game controller space and they have certainly come out of the gate strong with the Novablade Pro. This is one of most feature packed leverless controllers on the market, complete with wireless functionality right out of the box, and eight customizable buttons (three on the surface of the controller and five on the side). It’s also a looker with a bunch of really cool lighting modes to play around with, and an easily removable and customizable faceplate to round out the highlights. At a very competitive and reasonable price of 250,ドル it makes the question of the best leverless controller a bit more difficult to answer.
Let’s start with how the controller actually feels – in terms of size and weight, it's most immediately comparable to the Victrix Pro KO with the exact same size at 13.35" x 9.23" x 0.80", but it is about double the weight at around 4.0 lbs. Of course, it’s not a huge difference, and even if it is the heaviest leverless controller I’ve used, it still felt super convenient to carry around in my backpack as I walked over to my local tournament and carried it around as I waited to play.
There are a total of 15 buttons on the face of the controller, which is three more than a standard leverless controller, giving you three buttons on the face to map however you see fit. You might want to put the L3 button above the left, down, and right buttons to give you a quick reset or record button in training mode; or maybe map L2 to one of the buttons next to your either of your thumbs and give yourself an easily reachable button for parries in Street Fighter 6, just as a few examples. It’s easy to map them to whatever you need in case, like me, you find yourself accidentally hitting them in a pinch.
The buttons have a really nice feel to them as well – they sound quieter than standard arcade buttons, but still loud enough to be able to hear the rhythm of a combo as you tap it out. If you really want to get into the weeds, the Novablade Pro also lets you customize the actuation points of the buttons as well. So if you want a move to come out the instant you come in contact with a button, you can set it to a 0.1 mm actuation point. Or if you find that too sensitive, you can set it higher, all the way up to the full 4.0mm, which will make it less likely to accidentally press a button if your finger lightly brushes against one.
Along with that, there’s a rapid fire switch that resets a button’s input to neutral as soon as it starts traveling upwards, allowing for even faster presses of a button than what would normally be possible. If I’m being completely honest, these features weren’t super noticeable for me in games like Street Fighter 6 or Tekken 8, but for other games that reward you with extra damage the more you mash on a button, I could see it giving a bit of an advantage.
One of the cooler features of the Novablade Pro is that it allows you to very quickly customize how the controller handles simultaneous opposite cardinal direction button presses, otherwise known as SOCD. Being able to press and hold up and down or left and right at the same time is a unique feature of a leverless controller, and there are a number of different ways those inputs can be sent to the game you’re playing. The Novablade Pro allows you to easily cycle through all of those options; from the default method of having no input sent when SOCD buttons are pressed. Inputs like "giving up" the priority so you can hold down and back to block low but also press up to leap backwards if there’s an opening in your opponents pressure; giving the first button pressed the priority; giving the last button pressed the priority; or just sending both inputs and let the game’s own programming decide what to do with the two simultaneous button inputs – these are the unique advantages afforded by this type of controller.
There are use cases for all of these, and the option to be able to easily switch between them depending on what game you’re playing is pretty sweet. Some of these, however, are genuine cheats in competitive play and will get you disqualified in an actual tournament if you’re caught using them. Fortunately there is a Game Mode toggle that immediately sets the controller to a default tournament-legal setting.
All of these features are very easily navigated thanks to the five buttons on the right side of the controller, which themselves are mappable as well. It can be easy to accidentally hit these buttons when picking up or passing the controller along, thus inadvertently messing up your settings, but the convenience of being able to easily adjust these functions is certainly worth the occasional and easily fixable button press.
The Novablade also has some of the best lighting effects of any leverless controller I’ve played. There are six onboard lighting effects to toggle between, with my favorite being the one that lights up both the individual button and the color ring around the controller whenever you press a button.
The big competitive advantage of the Novablade Pro though is its wireless functionality, something that most of its competitors lack. By popping off the aluminum faceplate, you can set the controller to bluetooth mode for PCs, or you can set it to low latency wireless mode and connect the included dongle to either a PS4, PS5, or PC.
]]>Sometimes good ideas aren't fully formed when they're put into practice the first time around. The original Steam Controller that came out back in 2015 was a uniquely designed gamepad for PC gaming, but it was too awkward to be a mainstay. Still, it had features – namely its haptic touchpads that allow for mouse-like control – that paved the way for how the Steam Deck handles. In turn, the Steam Deck has now informed this new iteration of the Steam Controller. And it feels like that good idea is now reaching its full potential, because after getting my hands on it when I visited Valve last month, I haven't been this excited about a controller in a long time.
Let's run through some of the basic specs of the new Steam Controller: It uses TMR magnetic sticks to stave off stick drift and keep power consumption low. There are two trackpads on the lower part of the gamepad, which can be customized through Steam Input. You get four programmable back buttons on the handles, gyroscopic motion controls, HD haptics, and capacitive touch sensors on each handle to detect whether or not you're gripping the controller. And it uses a 2.4GHz connection protocol through its charging pod for low-latency input (and those new Steam Machines have that connectivity built in). Despite all of these sophisticated technologies packed into the controller, Valve is claiming around 35 hours of battery life from a full charge as well.
It's impressive on paper, if not for the fact that we've never seen a controller do all of these things at the same time. But as someone who's reviewed several high-end controllers at this point, fancy features don't mean much if it isn't comfortable to use – in the short time I got to use the new Steam Controller, I can say that it has nailed the ergonomics. It felt natural to hold, with contours and substantial grip where you expect them, and it remains fairly light so it doesn’t feel like you're holding onto a hulking gamepad. However, more long-term usage in the future will really test my initial impressions. Now, you're probably thinking the same thing I did when Valve first showed it to me – this thing isn't exactly pretty. But for what it may lack in aesthetics, it more than makes up for in functionality, and that's what's important for a controller after all.
I played about 30 minutes of Cyberpunk 2077, Metal Gear Solid Delta, and Silent Hill f on the new Steam Machine with the Steam Controller, and analog stick performance was as good as any major gamepad since the TMR sticks had a smooth and consistent resistance along the full range of motion. Folks who have been using an Xbox controller on PC or any gamepad with offset stick placement might be put off by the PlayStation-esque symmetrical-style sticks, but it just takes some getting used to. If anything, I like the stick placement better than the Steam Deck, which I feel are a little too high up on the device – the Steam Controller is able to bring them down in a more comfortable position while still having the trackpads in a good spot.
The shoulder bumpers are clicky, the analog triggers are smooth on the pull, and I'm a big fan of the back button design as they're placed in a natural position to hit with my middle and ring fingers – they're also easier to actuate than the back paddles on the Steam Deck. Mapping d-pad and face button actions to them in a game like Cyberpunk lets you keep your thumbs on the sticks without missing a beat. This is the kind of experience you should expect from a premium controller, and it seems Valve is getting it right.
Strangely, the more impressive demo I had was with Balatro, the poker-inspired roguelike deckbuilder. This is because it's a specific use-case for the various control styles enabled by the trackpad and gyroscopic motion, and the flexibility afforded by the Steam Controller being built specifically for PC. While the default controller mapping is fine, sometimes it's easier to navigate the interface using the trackpad with my thumb to select cards as if I have a mouse on hand (if you've played on Steam Deck, this kind of functionality will be familiar to you). You can enable the gyroscopic motion controls to act as your mouse cursor and have it only activate when the capacitive touch sensors on the handles recognize you've fully gripped the controller itself. You can swap between these control styles and tweak them SteamOS-side by hitting the Steam button on the controller and going through the menus.
On the note of the trackpads, they can also be configured in Steam Input quite easily and each pad has the ability to act as two separate buttons, like splitting left- and right-clicks. Their pressure sensitivity and haptic feedback can be tweaked as well. And the capacitive touch of the grips can also be assigned for different kinds of actions, although I didn't have the opportunity to test this specific feature to a greater extent. However, it's little things like this that make the Steam Controller stand out and give you more options for how you play games than anything else out now.
That took years of iteration starting with the first Steam controller, then adapting the best parts of the Steam Deck controls, and even integrating features unique to the Valve Index, like gestures and gyros, in a way that make sense for a PC gamepad. And now the software is there as well with SteamOS being a fuller ecosystem that can make compatibility and customization relatively simple.
While this is a controller that was designed in tandem with the Steam Machine to work seamlessly together, all its features work on any PC, of course. The tiny charging puck that easily latches onto the controller magnetically also acts as the wireless receiver for fast input rated at 8ms. It can also handle up to four Steam controllers connected to it at the same time. And it works as an iOS/Android mobile controller via Bluetooth. With the Steam Deck running SteamOS, it could be a sensible solution for those who frequently dock their handheld.
There is no price set yet, but this is a premium product that will probably demand a premium price, and we won't know until we get closer to its launch. I would like more time with it to really put it through its paces, but given the versatility of its features and execution of the basics, the new Steam Controller could be my go-to PC controller when it launches sometime in early 2026 alongside the rest of Valve's new hardware.
For more coverage of Valve's new hardware, check out our hands-on previews of the Steam Machine and Steam Frame VR Headset, as well as our interview with Valve about the Steam Machine.
]]>I know what you're probably thinking – why put out a new VR headset in 2026? Big hit VR games have been few and far between in recent years, but Valve is convinced that there's still an appetite for VR, especially if it can make a headset that combines the best of what headsets offer today and innovate in key areas. That's where the Steam Frame comes in – a successor to the Valve Index that came out in 2019. Along with the new Steam Machine and Steam Controller, I was able to use the upcoming Steam Frame when I visited Valve last month and it is genuinely impressive tech that I wish came around a lot sooner.
I'll start with a few of the basic tech specs – the Steam Frame can be used as a standalone device like the Meta Quest 3, as it's powered by a 4nm Snapdragon ARM processor and 16GB of RAM. It’ll be available in 256GB and 1TB UFS storage options, and there's a microSD slot for expansion. Its pancake optics put out 2160x2160 resolution per eye and can do between 72Hz to 120Hz refresh rate with an experimental 144Hz. And its FOV goes up to 110 degrees. The Steam Frame does inside-out tracking via four outward-facing cameras with IR illuminator for dark environments, and two interior cameras for eye tracking. No need for Lighthouse sensors – external VR sensors are officially a thing of the past.
However, the biggest innovation here is in its wireless tethering tech. The Steam Frame comes with a USB receiver that connects the headset to a PC wirelessly through a super low latency 6GHz signal. This lets you wield the power of your PC without cables tying you to it and without any jarring lag that'd make you sick. I tested this myself playing about 15 minutes of Half-Life: Alyx on the Steam Frame and just anecdotally, it ran flawlessly – of course, this was under perfect conditions, but movement tracking, gesturing with the controls, and image quality were all on point, living up to my memory of playing it on the Index via a wired connection when I reviewed the game back in 2020. And with WiFi 7, it'll work simultaneously when connected to the internet without interference.
Because of the bandwidth and speed afforded by the 6GHz wireless signal, Valve is able to wield a new technique called foveated streaming. With eye tracking, the headset is able to recognize where you're looking and immediately focus resources there for optimal image quality and highest resolution to the visible area. It's a similar idea to foveated rendering, where the game itself will dedicate your system's resources to better handle the load for performance and graphics. But with foveated streaming, it's happening at the hardware level, so it's not something developers need to worry about implementing. Either way, it's key to understand that this is not necessarily affecting core performance – rather it's to ensure that the wireless feed stays lag-free and looking its best.
Both the freedom of sharp built-in tracking and fast wireless connectivity, along with the power of a proper gaming PC, makes for the ideal VR experience. But that's not all the Steam Frame excels at. It's fairly lightweight overall, and its weight distribution makes it feel like a natural extension of yourself rather than a front-loaded brick strapped to your head. Its battery is actually on the rear of the headstrap, so it's more balanced than other VR headsets, and if you need to plug in, the USB-C port is also on the back so the cable stays out of your way. The padding around the headset is plushy and was comfortable in the short time I used it, and the strap was easily adjustable to get the right fit.
The Steam Frame runs SteamOS natively, so you get the same interface and quality of life features as you would a Steam Deck or upcoming Steam Machine, including the advantage of Proton. But I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the virtual theater experience when using the Steam Frame. Like other VR headsets, you're able to play non-VR games inside of it through a "fake" TV that SteamOS projects within the headset's virtual space. And on the Frame, it looked really crisp. I played about 10 minutes of Hades 2 at 4K with the virtual screen blown up to its maximum size, like having a 100-inch TV I didn't have to buy and fit into my living room. This kind of experience isn't new, I know, but the seamless integration through SteamOS also makes it very easy to use, and the super fast wireless tech means you can play PC games with the full strength of your system at low latency. I did notice a bit of stuttering at times with the image rendering, similar to screen tearing, but further testing in the future has me curious about how reliable it's going to be.
While Valve is intending the Steam Frame to be primarily used with the wireless tether for robust VR experiences, the internal hardware is decent enough for certain games. I played the puzzle adventure game Ghost Town, and while it ran smoothly, it was visually a bit muddy, which speaks to the competent but very modest power of the Snapdragon ARM processor. But the ARM compatibility is impressive for running less demanding stuff. To be clear though: Don't expect Half-Life Alyx to be playable straight off the internals of the Steam Frame.
The new Frame controllers are also an evolution of the excellent Index controllers, including capacitive touch sensors for recognizing hand gestures and the grip of your fingers. The battery slots are placed so as to not get in the way of this, as they need one AA battery each and should last for about 40 hours of use. They feature the TMR magnetic sticks and HD haptics you see on the new Steam Controller, and have all the features you've come to expect from a traditional gamepad to create parity across all sorts of games. The Index controllers were bulky, for sure, but I do miss how their strap-pad design latched onto my hands to feel more in-tune with VR. Conversely, the Frame's use a more standard wrist strap design, which feels less like an extension of my hands, but makes them more versatile as controllers.
Lastly, I should mention the built-in speakers, which sounded solid and are cleverly tucked into the headstrap, as is the integrated microphone. Unlike the Index, they're not actual off-ear headphones but instead integrated into the headband like the Quest 3, which creates a sort of bubble of sound around your head.
When looking at the big picture, the Frame is one piece of a larger Steam ecosystem that Valve has established and will keep growing. There's a console-like PC in the Steam Machine, a new state-of-the-art Steam Controller, the very successful Steam Deck handheld, and now a smartly designed VR headset. Valve is furthering its claim in PC gaming with all of these devices hitting market while having SteamOS and Proton mature enough to position itself as a serious platform holder.
Hardware lives or dies by its price, and like the Steam Machine, Valve doesn't have anything to share quite yet. For reference, a 512GB Meta Quest 3 goes for 500ドル at regular price as of now, so the Steam Frame will have to at least compete in that range. We'll know for certain when we get closer to its early 2026 release, and when we find out, you'll definitely hear it from us first.
But the Frame in particular begs the question of where VR gaming is today and where it might be going in the future. As someone who got in on day one reviewing the original HTC Vive and Oculus Rift back in 2016 and keeping up since then, I'm a little perplexed by the state of VR games – especially with something as technically great as the PlayStation VR2 getting very mild software support. I thought Half-Life: Alyx set a bar so high that others would try to reach with the hope of getting a wave of great new VR games in the process, but such wasn't really the case. Not to say there aren't noteworthy games that've come out since then; Asgard's Wrath 2 was one particular game that stretched what I thought was possible. But in the nine years it has hit commercial gaming, VR has remained a niche and perhaps Valve is fine with that so long as it has the go-to piece of hardware for that niche.
For more coverage of Valve's new hardware, check out our hands-on previews of the Steam Machine and Steam Controller, as well as our interview with Valve about the Steam Frame.
]]>Steam Machines are back for the first time since Valve teamed up with manufacturers like Alienware and Lenovo back in the 2010s. But while those original console-PC hybrids failed because of a lack of game compatibility with the nascent SteamOS, 2022’s Steam Deck has paved the way for the Steam Machine’s return.
This time around, instead of partnering with outside manufacturers, Valve is building and releasing a singular Steam Machine with the goal of being able to run all current games at 4K with upscaling. The secret behind this is an AMD RDNA 3 GPU with power roughly equivalent to an RTX 4060 or RX 7600 mobile graphics card. That might be disappointing to anyone looking to max out everything at a high resolution, but it should have plenty of power while still being relatively affordable (we assume) – Valve hasn’t announced a price for the thing yet.
I spent a day at Valve playing around with this new mini gaming PC, and while I haven’t had the chance to run my usual gamut of gaming benchmarks, it looks like the new Steam Machine might be a serious contender for your living room space.
On the surface, the new Steam Machine seems a lot like the old Steam Machine. They’re both gaming PCs with a modest spec, and meant to run games on Valve’s own Linux-based SteamOS. But while the original machines had trouble selling, mostly due to high prices and a lack of Linux compatibility at the time, SteamOS has changed a lot over the last decade.
The biggest part of that is Proton, Valve’s compatibility layer that essentially translates Windows games to Linux, allowing you to play most of Steam’s vast catalog of games on SteamOS, even if they don’t officially support Linux. Anyone that’s used a Steam Deck over the last few years will know that most games run extremely well on SteamOS, sometimes even with performance that exceeds equivalent Windows 11 machines, as was the case with the SteamOS version of the Lenovo Legion Go S. There are a few exceptions – notably some online multiplayer games with anti-cheat software that doesn’t play nice with SteamOS, like Battlefield 6 and Destiny 2 – but for the most part, if it’s on Steam, it’ll run on SteamOS.
While I was at Valve playing games on the Steam Machine, the company had a wide variety of games installed to show it off. The PC ran everything from Cyberpunk 2077 to Silent Hill F without any major issues – though the latter did have some performance trouble. Obviously, once I get the Steam Machine in the lab, I’ll be able to run a wider variety of games to see just how flexible it is, but for the time being, it seems like most games will run.
Luckily, Valve is also taking the Steam Deck Verified program from the Steam Deck and duplicating it for the Steam Machine. Soon there will be three different verification badges: one each for the Steam Deck, Steam Machine and the Steam Frame, the company’s new VR headset. Because the hardware isn’t actually out yet, I’m not sure how widespread this will be, but Valve has been very successful with the Steam Deck Verified program, to the point where I use it to gauge whether games will run well on other PC handhelds.
The Steam Machine might be a gaming PC, but it doesn’t really look like one. It’s a tiny black box with a slim RGB lightbar across the front, mostly meant to indicate that it’s on. And when I say it’s tiny, I mean it: the PC is a cube that measures roughly 6-7 inches on each side, and appears less than half the size of the Xbox Series X. It’s closer in size to a GameCube.
The front panel is magnetic, too, and can be swapped out to customize the way the console looks. For instance, when I was at Valve, I saw a Steam Machine with a wood panel, which contrasted beautifully with the rest of the all-black chassis. Valve hasn’t confirmed whether or not it will be selling alternative front panels, but the company will release 3D Printing files so you can make your own, and third-party accessory companies will undoubtedly sell plenty of custom options for you to choose from.
Because this is ostensibly a desktop PC, there’s a wealth of ports on offer, with two USB-A ports and a MicroSD port on the front. In the back you’ll find a DisplayPort, HDMI, two USB-A ports and a USB-C port, along with the power connector. What’s impressive, considering the Machine’s size, is that the actual power supply is internal, which means you don’t have to worry about fitting a giant power brick in your entertainment center.
Valve did open up the Steam Machine so I could get a brief look inside, and what I saw was impressive. A bulk of the space is taken up by a giant heatsink, which has an exhaust fan at the back that sucks air through the front and bottom of the device and expels it through the rear to keep the device operating cool. It’s a bold design, especially considering that the Steam Machine’s GPU is operating with a TDP (thermal design power) of 110-130W. I’ll have to wait and see how its thermals balance out when I get the system in for review early next year.
The bottom of the device houses the SSD, which will either be a 512GB or a 2TB drive, depending on which version you buy. This drive is easily replaceable by the user. Just like the Steam Deck, the Steam Machine will ship with an NVMe 2230 drive. However, unlike Valve’s handheld, the SSD slot has space for a full-sized NVMe 2280 drive, which are both more affordable and easier to find on store shelves. Don’t get too hopeful about upgrading the device beyond the storage, though – the rest of the components are soldered on and will not be upgradeable.
That’s a little disappointing, especially given Valve’s history of letting its users do what they want with the hardware. However, if the rest of the internals were user-swappable, it wouldn’t be able to be as tiny as it is. Whether or not that tradeoff is worth it is up to you, but given the Steam Machine’s console-like qualities, it will likely appeal most to people who just want a plug-and-play gaming device. For them, I suspect the lack of upgradeability will be a non-issue – at least until it starts showing its age in a few years.
The Steam Machine will also be available with the new Steam Controller – or without one. No matter whether or not you get the Steam Machine bundled with the controller or not, though, the PC will have the controller’s wireless dongle built-in, so you don’t have to worry about always having one of your USB ports occupied by a little antenna. What’s better, though, is that the Steam Controller that’s bundled with the system will also come with a wireless dongle, which you can use with another system, or just have it on the table next to you to wirelessly charge the controller when you’re not using it.
Tying things up is an RGB light bar that stretches across the bottom of the Steam Machine, just below the removable front panel. Valve tells me that this is primarily meant to be a status indicator, but it is still user-addressable, with 13 lighting zones. I don’t know what kind of software Valve is cooking up for lighting control, though. (One of the pain points with SteamOS right now – at least with the Legion Go S – is that it’s not that easy to customize the RGB around the thumbsticks.) We’ll just have to wait and see what the final software looks like here before rendering judgment.
The Steam Machine is powered by a custom chip made by AMD and Valve, with a RDNA 3 GPU with 28 compute units and a TDP between 110-130W, which would place it roughly around a mobile RX 7600 – not exactly the best graphics chip out there. This is paired with a 6-core Zen 4 CPU with a TDP around 30W.
But despite the modest specs, the Steam Machine seems to be a capable gaming PC. I played Cyberpunk 2077 at 4K with the Ultra preset and FSR set to Performance, and the action stayed nice and smooth. I even went into the settings menu and turned on ray tracing, and performance seemed to stay solid – though I didn’t have a frame counter up telling me exactly what kind of frame rate I was getting.
Things were slightly different with Silent Hill F, though. After a lengthy process of installing the shaders – something every game seems to need to do these days – it defaulted to Ultra settings at 4K with TSR (temporal super resolution) instead of AMD’s FSR. At these settings, Silent Hill struggled, chugging along at what seemed like 15-20 fps – not exactly what I’d call playable. After adjusting the settings down to medium at 1440p with FSR enabled, things felt much better, but this just highlights that the Steam Machine is still a gaming PC at the end of the day, for better or worse. Tweaking settings to optimize performance is a time-honored tradition among PC gamers, but again, might be less appealing to people who just want a plug-and-play gaming experience.
Valve says it intends for the Steam Machine to be able to play all current games at 4K with FSR upscaling, but there are going to be plenty of games – especially ones running on Unreal Engine 5 – where you’ll have to lower settings to get it running at a smooth frame rate. Ultimately, I’ll have to get it in the lab to benchmark it to see exactly what it’ll be capable of, but I have little doubt this PC will be running most things – it’s just that the quality settings are definitely going to vary.
It’s likely that over time developers will be able to sense the Steam Machine hardware and automatically set quality settings that are appropriate. After all, many games do that with the Steam Deck now, but only time will tell if the Steam Machine will receive the same treatment. If it does, though, this thing could be a serious contender in the next generation of consoles, especially as the next Xbox looks increasingly PC-like.
According to Valve, about 20% of its Steam Deck users used its official dock to connect their handheld to their TV. That might not seem like a lot, but given that Valve has shipped millions of Steam Decks – a first-generation product, mind you – that 20% is not an insignificant amount of people. However, there are limitations to running a Steam Deck on a TV – chief among them is performance.
While the Steam Deck is plenty powerful for running PC games on its 800p display, it can’t really handle higher resolutions very well, especially when you connect it to a 4K TV. The Steam Machine, then, is the answer. This is a living room gaming PC that should be able to play most games at 4K, assuming you’re ok with upscaling from 1080p. But of course, most gaming PCs should be able to do that these days.
And while the Steam Machine will have to contend with similarly spec’d gaming PCs that can be upgraded, I don’t think this is for the traditional DIY hardware enthusiast. Rather, this feels more like a PC for console gamers – people who didn’t play games on PC until the Steam Deck hit the market in 2022. It runs the same operating system and has the same library, only it’ll be able to play games at much higher settings. After all, Valve claims the Steam Machine is up to six times more powerful than the Steam Deck, so it should avoid situations like Baldur’s Gate 3, where the second you load into Act 3 on the handheld, your framerate slows to a crawl.
So, if the Steam Deck made you flirt with the idea of PC gaming, the Steam Machine looks like it’ll be a great next step, especially as games get increasingly more demanding as we head into the next generation of consoles. For everyone else that already has a gaming PC, at least the hardware support for SteamOS is starting to broaden a bit.
It’s impossible to talk about PC hardware in 2025 without bringing up the price. Devices from the Asus ROG Xbox Ally X in October to the RTX 5080 back in January have all launched with significantly higher prices compared to what they would have been in previous years. Console pricing hasn’t fared much better, as the Switch 2 hit store shelves at 150ドル more than its predecessor, while the PS5 and Xbox Series X have both faced price hikes within the last year. Valve hasn’t shared pricing for the Steam Machine yet. The only guidance the company has shared with me was that it will be priced competitively with similarly spec’d gaming PCs.
Keeping in mind that this is running a last-generation GPU and processor, it could mean that pricing might end up being relatively reasonable – but we just won’t know until Valve decides to share more. I’ll update this preview as soon as I find out, but my hope is that Valve keeps the Steam Machine under 1,000ドル. If it wants to compete for Xbox’s and PlayStation’s space in the living room, it’ll have to.
For more coverage of Valve's new hardware, check out our hands-on previews of the Steam Controller and Steam Frame, as well as our analysis of what this could mean for the future of the console and PC landscape.
Jackie Thomas is the Hardware and Buying Guides Editor at IGN and the PC components queen. You can follow her @Jackiecobra
]]>Valve has announced a return to its Steam Machine PC / console hybrid hardware alongside a new version of the Steam Controller.
As part of a big day for Valve hardware announcements, Valve confirmed the next-gen Steam Machine and Steam Controller features and specs, but failed to announce one key piece of information: price.
We do know, however, that the Steam Machine comes as a 512GB model and 2TB model, and will ship in a bundle with Steam Controller as well as standalone at some point in 2026.
Specs wise, it has a semi-custom AMD Zen 4 6C / 12T CPU, a semi-Custom AMD RDNA3 GPU, and supports 4K gaming at 60 frames per second with FSR. Valve described the new Steam Machine as six times more powerful than Steam Deck, with 16GB DDR5 and 8GB GDDR6 VRAM. The full specs for the Steam Machine and Steam Controller are below.
It’s an interesting move from Valve considering the original Steam Machine range, released 10 years ago in November 2015, was considered a failure. The initial idea was to release a small form factor gaming computer that operated SteamOS and offered a home game console-like experience.
Valve also released a Steam Controller to support the release of the original Steam Machine, so it makes sense that it would release a next-gen Steam Controller to go alongside this new Steam Machine. But Steam Machine didn’t last long, and as interest dwindled, Steam pulled many models from the Steam store in 2018.
The next-gen Steam Machine does not have a release date or a price, both of which are key pieces of information Valve is keeping under wraps for now. But it’s an intriguing move in the context of the increased focus on console / PC hybrids from various gaming hardware companies. Microsoft, for example, is set to release a next-gen Xbox that by all accounts is basically a PC wearing a console’s clothing. It will be interesting to see how Valve entering the fray mixes things up.
Here's a comment from Valve boss Gabe Newell: "We've been super happy with the success of Steam Deck, and PC gamers have continued asking for even more ways to play all the great titles in their Steam libraries. Our work over the years on other hardware and even more importantly on SteamOS has enabled Steam Controller, Steam Machine, and Steam Frame to do just that."
We’ve got plenty more on all Valve’s hardware announcements made today, November 12, and have a handy roundup so you don’t miss a thing. We visited Valve’s office ahead of the reveal to go hands-on with Steam Machine and Steam Controller, and interview Valve to find out why it’s returned to the space. And if you’re wondering about Steam Deck 2, we asked Valve about that as well.
Models
Specs
1/0
Other features
Works with any device that runs Steam
Three ways to connect
Li-ion rechargeable battery
Magnetic thumbsticks (TMR)
Grip sense
HD haptics
Full input list
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
]]>Valve has announced a next-gen virtual reality headset, dubbed Steam Frame.
Steam Frame differs from its predecessor, Valve Index, in that it can be used as a standalone VR headset, and even comes with streaming tech that lets you play games from your PC without the need for cables.
Valve failed to announce a firm release date or a price for Steam Frame, and it doesn’t look like it has any new games to show off the hardware either. Valve released Half-Life: Alyx to showcase Valve Index back in 2020, but in an interview with IGN ahead of today’s reveal, the company said no new software was in the works. Be sure to check out IGN's Steam Frame hands-on preview to find out what we think of it.
It’s a big day for Valve hardware announcements, with a next-gen Steam Machine and Steam Controller also in the works. Be sure to check out everything announced by Valve today to make sure you don’t miss anything.
Lightweight, modular architecture
Specs
Optics
Tracking
Other features
Steam Frame Controllers
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
]]>As well as announcing a next-gen Steam Machine and Steam Controller, Valve has confirmed plans to once again head into the world of VR headset hardware with Steam Frame, its follow up to 2019’s Valve Index.
In an interview with IGN conducted ahead of today’s big reveal, Valve hardware and software engineer Jeremy Selan and hardware engineer Gabe Rowe explain why the company is releasing a new VR headset now, what it’s capable of, and what it thinks of the state of VR right now.
And if you'd like to know more about the next-gen Steam Machine and Steam Controller, check out our interview with Valve on both devices here.
IGN: So the first thing I want to ask is why dip back into VR, going from the Valve Index to now the Steam Frame?
Jeremy Selan: I'd like to draw an analogy to where Steam Deck was, right? If you think back to the original Steam Machine way back when, we threw that out there, we learned a lot from that experiment, but then the technology, we learned a lot that we had to go back and do more work, and that's how Proton came into being. That's how we knew we had to simplify the ability of partners to put content on the device. And by the time all that work had been done and ready, it sort of came to fruition for the Steam Deck. I think it's a very analogous thought process for this device.
So the Steam Frame draws upon a lot of the technology from Valve Index and that VR catalog, but it also... we had to wait until the computing technology was on the headset for us to have not just a good streaming experience, but we wanted SteamOS and ARM and all of that support, which is the ability to allow us to play content locally, we wanted those all to come together to be able to create a device that really breaks those boundaries and lets you do both.
One of the real superpowers for this device is to not have to choose before you put it on whether you want to play VR or non-VR content. So I love the Index, I love my Steam Deck, but I would very often have to think before I picked up one of those devices, am I interested in playing a VR game? Okay, go to the room with a VR system. Or do I want to pick up my Steam Deck and play that catalog? With the Steam Frame, you don't have to make that trade off. You just put it on, you have your Steam catalog in front of you and you can just browse through it and see what you feel like doing. And so for us, the reason we're doing it now is because we can finally create that lower friction experience that really lets you think about being able to enjoy that full catalog in a different way.
Gabe Rowe: And I think one of the things that also goes into that is when we think about the streaming experience from the PC, the PC obviously can run your entire Steam catalog. So we wanted to make that streaming experience as seamless as possible. So you're looking at your Steam catalog in front of you on your headset on the Steam Frame, and you can easily choose if you want to play a game streamed from your PC, both 2D games and VR games. And so that process right there, once again, the friction is super, super low and you can basically say, I want to be able to play local content, I want to play streamed content, and you really don't have to be taking the headset off, putting it back on, and that friction is as low as we could get it.
Jeremy Selan: We would've loved to have built this device five years ago, but the technology just wasn't there for us. We really had to wait until all of the compute and the form factor — that's only recently become possible and that's why now is the time for us to build this device.
IGN: Tell me a little bit more about the wireless dongle that you have, the ultra low latency.
Jeremy Selan: So we have three things together that create a really great streaming experience. The first one is the dongle. So people might be familiar with streaming and they might be familiar with some of the challenges and gotchas involved with streaming. I think people, when they think about streaming, they might think about the cloud where you have some computers at a nearby data center and then they send that information across the internet and they send that information across your home's Wi-Fi, and when it finally hits your device, there are certain challenges enjoying that type of content.
With the included wireless link we take all of that out of the equation. We have a direct connection between the headset talking to your PC or your laptop where you don't even have to think about it. It's designed to be plug and play. You plug it into your device. Steam just directly makes that connection and you don't have to think about when you hit the play button, whether it's on your local device or whether it's streaming.
We've also done one other thing in conjunction with that, which is the eye tracking in the headset. We do a new technology, we're calling it ‘foveated streaming.’ A lot of customers might be familiar with foveated rendering, where you spend more of the PC’s computability to render the pixels where you're looking. This is not that, but it is similar in spirit to that, but applied at the transport layer. So we call it foveated streaming where we send the highest quality information, essentially full fidelity for the area you're directly looking at, and then the rest of the scene is sent at lower fidelity. And that trade-off gives us a much higher effective bandwidth. So say for example, the foveated area is one tenth of the size of the frame, you can think about it as an effective 10x multiplier in bandwidth and quality improvement you get from that. So those two things together are really three things, which are what led us to have a streaming experience we're really proud of and that we think everyone will be able to enjoy.
IGN: Why engineer the foveated streaming instead of just packaging in a more powerful antenna?
Jeremy Selan: It's not just about the antenna, it's about all of the trade-offs, right? So there's only some number of channels in the spectrum. There's always errors that happen. So you do things like forward error correction. There's always trade-offs, and so you are really balancing bandwidth, robustness and latency because of retries and things like that. And there's no magic bullet. There's no magic solution. So us being able at the system layer to introduce this multiplier, this 10x factor really just gave us link budget for free in being to spend that. So even if we made it a more powerful radio or a more powerful link, I would still want to bring this technology and apply it in this case because it just makes things better.
IGN: Can we get some of the ideas behind the design decisions here?
Gabe Rowe: The same team that's working on Steam Frame, we all worked on Index, so we definitely have the history of all of the different VR headsets that have been made over the last 10 years. And so we've put on a lot of headsets on our faces and we've said, okay, how can we make our own headset that really does a really holistic job where we say, okay, let's put as low of a weight as we possibly can on the person's face, let's get the battery someplace else — let's put it in the back — let's put the charging port, the type-C port in the back so that if you happen to be using an additional battery in your pocket, for example, that cable would be in the back. We have the facial interface that's as soft as we possibly can. We've iterated like crazy to make that as comfortable as possible.
We've made the audio that's built in on the sides of the head strap as high quality as possible. We're always trying to shave weight, make the eye tubes as small as possible. We're basically just constantly wanting to make the device as lightweight, as comfortable as possible so that when somebody puts the device on their head, they immediately feel comfortable and they're thinking, okay, what content do I want to enjoy right now? What game do I want to open? And they're not thinking, man, this thing is uncomfortable.
And so there's a huge focus on comfort. And then within that saying, okay, what performance can we squeeze out of the chip that's in here? How much battery life can we get? And then having that ability to have a very high performance wireless link to your PC. So we have a very high-end radio that's on device. We have a very high-end SOC that's in there as well. So all of these things altogether are really basically saying, within this package, how can we get a really high performance device that feels good on your face and that you're going to be happy to put on and not be immediately thinking, man, I really don't want be wearing this thing right now. So that's a huge, huge thinking process.
Jeremy Selan: I think one of the consistent threads throughout all of the Valve hardware projects is that we use the devices ourselves a lot. So I know in some more traditional types of hardware organizations, you might have a team that's responsible for the battery and another team that's responsible for the processor and another team that's responsible for the software, and they're very dedicated independent teams. But one of the challenges with that type of organization is that it's sometimes hard for that feedback to make it across and to be acted upon.
And similar to our game teams where — I don't know if people are familiar with how our game teams work, but they're a very ad hoc organization where you sit by who you're working with and anyone could give feedback on any system — Valve hardware works exactly the same way. So if I'm wearing the headset every day writing software or working on the user interface and I have feedback about the weight in the front and exactly how it fits, I walk over 20 feet, I tell that to the designer, and then I'll have a new version the next day.
I think all of us acting as real users and playtesting these things every day, as well as being so closely tied to the interdisciplinary engineering where you can just literally walk across the hall and talk to someone who's working on a radically different part of this design has just allowed us to turn the crank really quickly and go through a whole bunch of iterations. That's one of the reasons I think we are uniquely able on small teams to do such awesome devices.
IGN: For folks watching this who might want to just get a lay of the land in terms of things like resolution, FOV, refresh rate and the integrated cameras and how that works for tracking...
Jeremy Selan: Sure. Yeah, so the FOV is up to 115 degrees. They're pancake optics, so people are familiar with those from other top tier premium devices. That pancake optical design is a folded optic system where it has both refraction and reflection, and that allows you to have a very compact small form factor, which really helps the ergonomics, as well as still getting sharpness edge to edge over that up to 115 degree FOV. The panels are 2160 by 2160 per eye. They’re LCD. They allow for refresh rates from 72 hertz up to 120 hertz, and then 144 is allowed as well with... we call it experimental mode. Exactly the same as Index, actually.
We have integrated cameras. There's four monochrome cameras on the exterior doing tracking. They're specifically designed to be very good at tracking, as well as very good at doing that in low light. They pair with integrated IR illuminators, which allow you to track in certain environments in complete darkness. We also have two cameras on the inside for eye tracking, which as we discussed, is a large advantage for streaming. Just to talk about the APU (Accelerated Processing Unit), we also have 16 gigabytes of RAM that's standard. And then the processor...
Gabe Rowe: Yeah, the processor is a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, also known as the 8650 platform. And that is a very, very capable processor right now that combines a ton of things as far as being able to talk to all of the different peripherals as well as the very high performance wireless solution. All of it goes together with essentially running SteamOS now on ARM. And what's really cool about that is that allows us to bring together a whole bunch of different ecosystems onto one device, both on the VR side, the non-VR side, whether it's streamed, running content locally.
And we also have 256GB as the base SKU for storage, a 1TB option. And we also have an SD card slot. And the SD card slot would allow you to plug in one terabyte, two terabyte SD cards, and that's something where you could even take, for example, your SD card from a Steam Deck and plug it directly into the headset, and now you have your games running right there. Another interesting detail there would be, we do have the camera expansion port on front that has two different modes: a high-speed camera interface, as well as a PCIe (Peripheral Component Interconnect Express) port. So a lot of interesting modularity and functionality there.
IGN: I know you guys are building a piece of hardware, but I imagine you have some thoughts on the current state of VR games and kind of want to ask your thoughts and feelings on VR now and where you want it to go in the future.
Jeremy Selan: There have been a lot of awesome games that have come out in the last few years, so I think we're really excited about where it's at and even going forward. I think going forward, one of my favorite thoughts is that VR feels like a little bit of a segregated island from non-VR gaming. I know on Steam very often you think about it as, there's VR users and non-VR users. But when we look at the playtime data, what we see is it's blended a lot more than that. A lot of the people who play VR also play non-VR content, and that's one of the major decision factors in us deciding to come to market with this type of product.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
]]>Valve announced three new devices today: Steam Frame, the new Steam Machine, and the new Steam Controller. But where’s the Steam Deck 2?
That’s a question we put to Valve software engineer Pierre-Loup Griffais in a new interview at the company’s office ahead of today’s big reveal. He replied to explain that Valve does indeed plan to release an upgraded version of its handheld at some point, but it’s waiting for the technology that would let it make a big enough performance jump to justify its existence while maintaining a reasonable battery life.
"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," Griffais explained.
"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 [System on a Chip] landscape, that we think would truly be a next-gen performance Steam Deck."
Griffais' comments might come as a disappointment to some given the capabilities of the aging Steam Deck. The handheld launched in February 2022, with the OLED model coming out November 2023. Steam Deck will soon be four years old, and while there is a long list of Steam Deck-verified games to play, it does struggle to run some modern PC games well. Indeed, in September 2023, Pierre-Loup Griffais told The Verge that the next Steam Deck was at least a couple of years away, which had some hoping for the next version in time for the holidays this year. Clearly, that won't happen.
Based on Griffais' comments, the sticking point with a Steam Deck 2 is battery life, and you can see why. As IGN's Steam Deck review points out, battery life is a "massive problem" while running Windows. Even when running the native SteamOS on the device, we noted "battery life still wasn't great," citing the fact that God of War on default settings chewed through a fully charged Steam Deck in just 90 minutes.
Still, there’s plenty more for Valve hardware fans to sink their teeth into. The aforementioned Steam Frame, and next-gen Steam Machine and Steam Controller are coming and we’ve got loads of exclusive content for them, which you can check out in our handy roundup. Meanwhile, here’s what we want to see from the Steam Deck 2.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
]]>Valve has announced three new products: the next-gen Steam Machine, the next-gen Steam Controller, and Steam Frame, its next-gen virtual reality headset. It’s a huge day for the company behind Half-Life and its fans, with lots to digest. So, we’ve rounded up everything Valve announced today and all our exclusive coverage so you can sink your teeth into Valve’s hardware plans.
Let’s start with the next-gen Steam Machine, Valve’s surprise follow-up to its small gaming computer released 10 years ago. The original Steam Machine was seen as something of a failure, so why was now the right time to make a new one? That’s just one of the questions we put to Valve itself during our interview ahead of today’s announcement.
We’ve got plenty more on Steam Machine, including our hands-on Steam Machine preview, and our thoughts on what it means for the next-gen.
With a new Steam Machine comes a new Steam Controller. This new peripheral was also a topic of our discussion with Valve, which made the case for why gamers should be interested in buying it even if they already have a traditional gamepad.
We’ve got a Steam Controller preview where we dig into the details, and it’s worth checking out our conversation after our hands-on with all Valve’s new hardware, in the video below.
And finally, Valve has a next-gen virtual reality headset in the works. Steam Frame follows on from Valve Index with a crucial new feature: you don’t need to hook it up to a PC for it to work. Check out IGN’s Steam Frame preview to find out what we think of it, and our exclusive Steam Frame interview with Valve.
Now, you might be wondering where Steam Deck 2 is in all this. Of course we asked Valve, which had an explanation for why now isn’t the right time for a next-gen version of its handheld. And there’s no new video games to go along with all this either, which is something of a surprise given Valve released Half-Life: Alyx as a VR showcase for Valve Index back in 2020.
Still, Valve has a lot going on, including with the new Steam Machine, an interesting addition to the growing PC / console hybrid space which Microsoft has its eyes on with its upcoming next-gen Xbox.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
]]>Steam Machine is back, and with it comes a new Steam Controller! Valve made a number of exciting hardware announcements today, and ahead of the big reveal, IGN took a trip to Valve’s headquarters in Bellevue, Washington, to interview software engineer Pierre-Loup Griffais and hardware engineer Yazan Aldehayyat to find out everything we could about both next-gen devices (we’ve also got a separate interview on the Steam Frame right here!).
Read on to find out why Valve has decided now is the right time to go with new hardware, who the new Steam Machine and Steam Controller are for, and how it's keeping everything affordable.
IGN: So you're announcing a new Steam Machine, but this isn't the first time Steam Machines have existed. The first iterations of Steam Machines were not commercially successful. They were widely regarded within the public sphere as a failure. What made you revisit the form factor?
Pierre-Loup Griffais: That's a good question. I think for us between having shipped a Steam Deck and having made a lot of progress on game catalog compatibility with developing Proton and all that, it felt like it was the right time. We had done a bunch of different shaped PCs back in the day and we worked with third-parties. It told us a lot about what was working well with the experience of getting into your game and getting the PC experience into the living room. We were pretty happy with how that went. But the process by which game developers had to do some work to port their games over, we looked back at that and it didn't seem like the right model.
So we started working on Proton and made a lot of improvements there to try and get to the point where games would just run without needing any of that extra work, or if any work was needed, we wanted that work to be additive to the experience. So when folks do any work to get to the Steam Deck verified stage, it's usually work that either improves text legibility on smaller displays or is going to make the game run better on lower end PCs. Stuff that helps everyone.
We think we came far enough along with our work on the OS and the compatibility layer, and there has been enough of that work on the game developer side to get all those games working well, that it just felt like the right time. It felt like we could just have a really good product at this point in time. It was pretty natural.
Yazan Aldehayyat: Yeah, I think in a lot of ways the Steam Deck proved that to us, like the reception that we got from Steam Deck, people obviously love the portability and the handheld form factor, but one of the big pieces of feedback we got was that they also just love SteamOS and the convenience of SteamOS. And so getting that feedback essentially proved to us that we finally have the pieces needed to make the original vision of SteamOS a reality, if that makes sense.
IGN: Now that there's going to be four products that officially support SteamOS, are there plans to make SteamOS more widely available beyond a try at your own risk kind of model the way it is now?
Pierre-Loup Griffais: Yeah, in fact to some extent that's already the case today. We've seen enthusiasts in the community, both folks with existing products like other handhelds, but also people bringing their own PCs, actually get some measure of success installing SteamOS from the Steam Deck recovery image. Because we've been continually expanding hardware support so that you would have a better chance of success. So I think to some extent that's already happening.
But definitely, just like Steam Deck paved the way for SteamOS on a variety of third-party handhelds, we expect that a Steam Machine will pave the way for SteamOS on a bunch of different machines in either similar form factors, different perf envelopes, different segments of the market and get to a good outcome there. We definitely want to encourage people to try it out on their own hardware, and we'll be working on expanding hardware availability over time as well, or hardware support for the drivers and the base operating system. Just last week we fixed something that was preventing us from booting on the very latest AMD CPU platforms. Last month we added support for the Intel Lunar Lake platforms. We're constantly just adding support and improving performance and we want it to be at the point where at some point you can install it on any PC, but there's still a ton of work to do there.
IGN: So for the actual Steam Machine, now that it's there in addition to the Steam Deck, how will you communicate performance levels and how they differ between the two systems?
Pierre-Loup Griffais: The Steam Machine is also going to have a verified program. Our intent is that if you're using the Steam Machine and the controller together, you have essentially the same experience as the Steam Deck, where the Steam Store guides you to games that we know from testing that every part of the game will be playable with correct acceptable performance, but also every dialogue, every feature of the game will be accessible with the controls that you have at your disposal.
In fact, a lot of those test criteria will be common between Steam Deck and Steam Machine because things like SteamOS compatibility, any sort of Proton bugs that could be causing any issues in the experience, will be common across those platforms. But things like performance will be tested individually per product, and so we'll be able to tell you if a new game that comes out on Steam that might not necessarily be a great experience on Steam Deck is going to be playable on Steam Machine.
Yazan Aldehayyat: So just to clarify, there'll be separate badges, so it will be clear whether this is a Steam Deck verified or Steam Machine verified, et cetera.
IGN: Can you talk about how the Steam Machine is positing itself as the more approachable PC gaming machine, and a lot of the things that went into designing both the hardware itself and how you've modified or improved SeamOS to coincide with the idea of this being the easy thing to figure out and use?
Yazan Aldehayyat: Yeah. Our ultimate goal is to make the process of playing your games as easy as possible, and there's a lot of ways we did that. So obviously the first thing is just make it faster to get back into your games. We heard a lot of good feedback on the fast suspend/resume from Steam Deck. Steam Machine has that as well, so you're able to pause your games and come back even days later and basically jump right back exactly where you were. But we also added something where the software bits, like the OS and the games and the cloud syncs, updates in the background for you, so the game is always ready to play whenever you come back to it. That's something that we want to do with Steam Deck as well. It's just with Steam Deck, given it’s a battery-powered device it's a little bit more challenging. We don't want it to be burning a lot of power in suspend mode. It’s a little bit easier on Steam Machine since it's always plugged in. Steam Deck Verified is also a good example of that, so people know whether the game is going to run without having to do a bunch of research, et cetera. Your carousel is always showing you the last game you played.
So really there's a theme here of, how do we get you playing as fast as possible? We go through the whole process and eliminate all those friction points. Another one actually is the CEC support. So Steam Machine also can wake up your TV and your soundbar and set all those channels for you just by a single button press, again to get you playing, not waste any precious time you have for gaming and just get you there playing as fast as possible.
Pierre-Loup Griffais: Of course all the elements from Steam Deck and the general SteamOS experience are there, so you don't have to update drivers. Everything's always ready for you to play. There's no third-party software required, you can just get directly into your games.
One thing that we're doing as well is you have tools from outside the game to control performance, so you can control the internal resolution and the external resolution of the games from the operating system. So if you want to change the performance level, you can easily do that from convenient knobs inside the Steam UI settings, and also the same quick access menu with all the performance settings, framerate limit and all that stuff, exists in SteamOS just in the same way.
Something that happened shortly after Steam Deck released was that a lot of games started detecting that they were running on Steam Deck to pick exactly the right default settings for an experience that the game developer considered balanced, which is a pretty small amount of work for a game developer. We expect the same thing will happen with Steam Machine, and we'll be providing APIs in Steamworks so that game developers can detect what platform they're running on to be able to have the right amount of detailed settings and that corresponds to the balanced experience that they have in mind.
Yazan Aldehayyat: We definitely want the default experience to be as easy and friction-free as possible, but we also love tinkering. We're tinkerers ourselves. We definitely make sure that the Steam Machine is designed with that in mind. You absolutely do not have to, you don't have to do anything, you can just play your games, but if you would like to mod and tinker and do all that kind of stuff, we definitely want to support you and make sure you also have a good experience that way too.
IGN: Speaking of the system, obviously there's a wide range of easy hardware available that you can build a system out of. Why did you pick the GPU you picked and why did you pick the CPU you picked when there are cheaper options or more powerful options?
Yazan Aldehayyat: We arrived at this in a variety of ways. We just triangulated our way via different directions. The mandate that we had was, you need to be able to play every game on Steam or at least have enough performance to play every game on Steam at 4K 60 hertz when using upscaling. And so that was the important thing, because we didn't want people to worry about whether their Steam Machine supports whatever game they're playing. We just wanted it to be a pretty simple message that yes, if it's on Steam, this device will have enough performance to play at these settings. But we obviously also wanted to make the device affordable. We understand that affordability is really important, so we kept that in mind and made sure that's a device that's going to be reachable for a lot of people.
And another piece of information that we always had available is the Steam hardware survey. So we can essentially look at everybody's devices, we understand what the medium performance looks like for people, we understand where the Steam Machine is going to be positioned relative to those. We think that the Steam Machine is going to be equal or better perf than the majority of people on Steam. So essentially we think it's going to be a good upgrade path for a lot of people, especially people who are on older machines; a really easy, simple way to get more performance and get back into PC gaming.
IGN: So on affordability, what kind of considerations do you have to have to make an affordable gaming PC / console right now when everything's getting more expensive lately?
Yazan Aldehayyat: If you're trying to make a PC that has similar features and similar performance, I think the Steam Machine is going to be a really competitive price to that and provide really good value to it. The affordability piece you mentioned is one of the reasons why we think a Steam Machine makes a lot of sense right now. So it's just something that we thought about every time we made a hardware decision, a feature decision, is to make sure that we keep it as approachable, as affordable as possible.
IGN: When you're thinking about not just specs but also talking about it being easy for people to jump into, you're doing one hardware spec for the Steam Machine. So talk a little bit about the thought behind that and also the fact that you'll have two storage options and that's kind of it. How did you arrive at that?
Pierre-Loup Griffais: It's really the same idea as the Steam Deck. It was really important to us that the level of performance and experience that you get is the same across the board, so that it's simple for developers to target and it's simple for users to pick what platform they want to use. We think it'd be not a goal for a lot of different performance options to exist and for the first step to be for a user to have to figure out what can run on what, right?
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. 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.
IGN: You mentioned the Steam Deck, and that’s aging a little bit. Are there any plans to upgrade that in a similar way?
Pierre-Loup Griffais: 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. 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.
IGN: Can you tell me a little bit more about the data you have in terms of people using their Steam Deck docked, and how that feeds into the pitch of the Steam Machine?
Pierre-Loup Griffais: Yeah, it's definitely informed some of our decisions around Steam Machine. Obviously Steam Machine is something we've been thinking about for a while, and like you pointed out, we've been at it for quite a bit longer than the Steam Deck. It's been at the back of our minds. But in terms of the Steam Deck docked experience, we get a lot of feedback just organically from users talking between themselves on discussion forums or just doing game reviews that are happening on Steam Deck and other things, and we've seen a lot of feedback saying that the experience around getting in and out of game and how it's connecting to the TV, all that was working really good. They just wished that they had a little bit more crispness and graphics horsepower to work with. And so that definitely helped us dial the right level of performance to get there.
But it also informed things like the Steam Controller, because we got the feedback that folks that were working back from a docked Deck, were sometimes missing some of the inputs they needed to play the same games that they could play in handheld mode, which informed development of the Steam Controller as well. We don't have a ton of detailed data on what's happening with the Steam Deck in real-time, but we have things like the Steam hardware survey. And when we look at that, it's between 10 and 15% of Steam Decks at any given time are connected to an external display. So that's about what we're looking at in terms of docked use, which for us is encouraging enough that we think a product like the Steam Machine makes sense as well.
Yazan Aldehayyat: But it's also more than just the numbers really for us. It's like the fact that so many people are opting for that experience, it just proves that the software experience is already good enough that people are opting into it. So it's really more about proving to ourselves that yes, the experience is already really good, we just have to make it even better, push it over the line and deliver it to those people. That's what is so important to us about the Steam Deck docked experience. It's just the proof of existence of the whole SteamOS being ready to be played on the big screen basically.
IGN: The next-gen Xbox is going to be a gaming PC rather than just a console, it's going to be running Windows. Do you see gaming PCs being where consoles are evolving into, and is this kind of like you’re a part of that?
Pierre-Loup Griffais: When we think about what to work on next and working on things like Steam Machine and stuff, we're typically not looking at consoles or other products in that direction. Everything we do is informed by what's happening on the PC gaming side of things. Of course there ends up being quite a bit of overlap because we’re doing a bunch of stuff that helps PC gaming work better in the living room and that's traditionally where consoles have been. But really I would say that most of our thinking is not informed by what's happening on the console side, and so I don't know if we have many theories as to where that might be headed. But in general it seems like people seem to be recognizing that there's quite a bit of value in a more PC-like experience and the customizability and all that, and so we're happy to see more of these elements being embraced by platforms in general.
Yazan Aldehayyat: As far as we're concerned the Steam Machine is a PC, so that delineation is not there. In our view, the Steam Machine is just one option in the ecosystem of gaming PCs out there. If you're already happy with your PC gaming experience, that's great. We love that. We are a PC gaming company. We're just trying to give you more options. And that's how we view it. It's just something that we think is a really great addition to a living room or a desktop, but it's just one other option that people can have available to them to play their Steam games basically.
IGN: Can you run down the philosophy of making a new controller and some of the features you needed to pack into it to pair with a Steam Machine?
Pierre-Loup Griffais: The pairing with Steam Machine, it’s a strong pairing. The experience is nice when you have all the controls that you need to play all the games on PC, and you can navigate through launcher screens and you can easily do everything that you need to do just like you could on, say, the Deck touchscreen or with the track pads and so on. So for sure we think it's part of that experience.
But for us, the Steam Controller, the scope of it is a little bit larger than that. Just like the first Steam Controller was a great peripheral if you're just sitting at your desk and just wanted to lean back and play games that were made for a mouse and keyboard, I think there's a lot of people on a desktop PC that will get great use from the new Steam Controller as well. Because you might be playing games that are controller enabled, but now you're able to alt-tab to your desktop and interact with it in ways that you couldn't really, at least not as comfortably with other controllers.
And similarly, there's a lot of remote play use cases where you might enjoy the extra inputs or just being able to just have higher performance aiming and responsiveness. So I think for us, a next generation Steam Controller that not only was able to play all the games on PC but also had the approachability of a regular controller is something we had been thinking about. We did it in a Deck, and for us that really showed that it was possible, just the same as a lot of these other things that we've discussed around Steam Machine and all that. And so it was the right time to make it standalone. But definitely the controller, I think great pairing with Steam Machine, but also with a docked Deck, a desktop PC and really anything that runs Steam, we expect that there might be a reason that someone would want to use the new Steam Controller with it.
IGN: Could you run down some of the key features of the Steam Controller for those who may be looking at this and saying, well I already have a gamepad or I remember the old Steam Controller, why would I use this?
Pierre-Loup Griffais: For someone that's really used to gamepad and has a lot of experience with a traditional gamepad, the Steam Controller has all of the same controls in all of the same familiar places, but in addition it has high quality, next generation magnetic thumb sticks that offer superior feel and good performance over time and small dead zones. In addition to that, it has four grip buttons that you can use to use, for example, A, B, X, Y while you're still aiming with a stick so you can reload while sprinting, and you don't have to use claw grip if you're playing a Soulslike. There's a lot of advantages that are immediately there, even if you're just using it like a traditional controller.
But then in addition to that, we have things like our new haptics feedback that is now able to also do rumble in very high definition. So we're pretty excited about that. We think it's an advancement in feedback and rumble. We have the track pads that are able to augment your aiming experience and be more comparable to keyboard and mouse. You have the full power of Steam input. You have a lot of macro buttons. You can have a 16-way menu on the left track pad that displays on-screen that lets you play a PC game that has lots of hotkeys, for example. So there's a lot of extra things there.
And of course motion controls is something that we've been exploring and developing since the early days of the first Steam Controller, and we have a lot of features in the new Steam Controller. Not only are the thumb sticks capacitive, so they detect when they're touched, so are the track pads and so are the new grip sensors on the back of the controller. All of those can be used to seamlessly toggle motion controls on and off, which lets you do ratcheting and aim correcting in a way that isn't really there when you only have the gyro, but no easy way to toggle it, or if you have to use one of the main buttons on your controller to toggle it, it's quite a bit of a different experience.
So I think all of these things together, there's a lot of different reasons, like everything on PC. I think every user will have one of these reasons that maybe they're using the controller for, or they will find new ones we haven't even thought of. But I think that's it at a glance
Yazan Aldehayyat: The wireless connectivity on Steam Controller when used with the puck is probably best in class. It’s really good, super low latency, really fast, really responsive, and pretty robust through a variety of wireless experiences, and you can use it for charging magnetically really easily. So that's another thing that we think is really cool about the Steam Controller.
IGN: Tell me a little bit more about your wireless technology and what kind of performance people can expect from it.
Yazan Aldehayyat: We are basically using a 2.4 gigahertz protocol. It's a proprietary protocol. Basically what we did is to kind of simplify it and remove as much of the overhead as we can. The closest analogous thing would probably be Bluetooth, which is also 2.4. But for us, because we control both the transmitter side and the receiver side and we basically have a single use or single profile, we can make it as lean and as simple as possible and remove as much overhead as we can, so that you're transmitting the minimum number of packets possible as fast as possible.
Pierre-Loup Griffais: I think our actual real world latency numbers that we're showing is like eight milliseconds, which we consider best in class. I think it's really high performance there. But more importantly, compared to Bluetooth where the latency gets doubled every time you add a controller, our performance remains consistent even with up to four controllers per puck, and then you can add more pucks if you want. So we're really proud of being able to maintain that eight millisecond effective latency even with multiple controllers. And so that's what the wireless puck protocol is all about.
The Steam UI lets you re-pair a puck. And one of the interesting things about that is, say you buy the Steam Machine plus Steam Controller bundle, you're going to have a puck in that bundle and the Steam Machine already includes the receiver in it. So then it opens some interesting options, like the one we're demoing here where you have the puck by the couch and you can just use it like a charging station while the controller's connected wirelessly. But what I expect a bunch of people will do is they'll connect the puck to their desktop computer and the pairing information will be on both, and you'll just be able to seamlessly switch the controller between your Steam Machine and the desktop PC you might have without needing to go into any UI or reprogram anything.
IGN: Another big question is about battery life. Do you have estimates on how long it's going to last off a full charge, and how do you balance that with all the technology that you're packing?
Pierre-Loup Griffais: Yeah, the battery life was always a very important part. Even for the first Steam Controller, I think just like Yazan was talking about with budget and pricing for Steam Machine, power usage is very much something that you have to keep in mind throughout the development cycle. So every time we're thinking about firmware, new features, what kind of sensors are on, we're always thinking about power usage. That was one of the factors that made us select this particular magnetic stick, because the power usage was also very conducive to having a high battery life. I think we're saying 35 hours.
Yazan Aldehayyat: Yeah, it obviously is going to depend significantly on what you're doing, right? Like the haptic motors do consume a lot of power. But we think the 35 hours would represent a pretty conservative estimate. That would probably include a lot of haptic and track pad use. If you don't use those, you’ll probably get significantly more than that as well. We think 35 hours is a pretty great place to be and we think most people get more than that.
IGN: How easy is it to customize all these different features with the SteamOS backend?
Pierre-Loup Griffais: It's as easy as you want it to be. So by default, we expect that people will just have a good experience out of the box because of all the work we've done on Steam input. The developers can set a Steam input template. The community can contribute to a lot of configurations. A lot of folks will never have to go deep into the menus and change anything. And the template that will be selected by default or another base configuration that they select will do what they want out of the box. But for folks that want to customize that, there's a lot of menus you can get into to customize every aspect of the experience. Every binding slot could be remapped to any keyboard or mouse or controller binding. Every sensitivity, response curves, haptic feedback setting can be configured on pretty much every single aspect of the controller.
So if you're trying to customize things, reverse things left to right, if you're trying to use a south paw, if you're trying to have a multi-step trigger with different bindings, with different levels of haptic feedback, if you're trying to be programmable and have the controller switch modes based on what mode the game is in, you can do all that. And that whole ecosystem has existed for 10-plus years at this point. So there's a vast array of features that are being used by enthusiasts to create configurations that folks that are not enthusiasts can just consume and then they're good to go out of the box. So we're pretty excited.
IGN: For the Valve Index and for the Steam Deck, there have been games put out to show what those devices can do. Can we expect a third version of that?
Pierre-Loup Griffais: I believe that we're tweaking [Aperture] Hand Lab to work on the controller. We're thinking about it. We had a nice tutorial for the Steam Deck and obviously the Steam Controller has a lot of the same controls, so we're looking at doing that. I think right now there's one screen in that experience that you used a touchscreen or something, so we just need to tweak that, but we expect that's probably going to be what we have.
IGN: So no new game that's getting put out with it?
Pierre-Loup Griffais: We have no plans for that right now.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
]]>After more than a decade, Valve is launching a new Steam Machine. While this little gaming PC is exciting on its own, it's also the next step in Valve’s play to become the face of PC gaming – at least more than it already is. Because alongside the Steam Machine, Valve is also launching a new controller and the Steam Frame, a VR headset that itself runs on SteamOS. Combined with the Steam Deck, Valve now has the makings of its own gaming tech ecosystem.
But this didn’t happen overnight. This is an ecosystem Valve has been quietly working on for more than a decade. And now that it’s starting to look like the next generation of ‘consoles’ is going to look more like gaming PCs than ever, it’s the perfect time for Steam to assert itself as the face of PC gaming.
When I talk about hardware ecosystems, the first thing that comes to mind is Apple. Over the last couple of decades, the Cupertino company has created a range of devices that all work in concert, syncing together your settings and preferences. It’s why, for the most part, when you get a new iPhone these days, setting up a new device is as simple as holding it up over your old iPhone, letting software move everything over. This works with pretty much all of Apple’s devices, too. Whether it’s an Apple Watch, Apple TV or even a MacBook, everything is just kind of easier if you have other devices from Apple.
On the surface, these different devices are all distinct from one another. But because Apple makes both the hardware and the software, the company can make it extremely tempting to only buy Apple products – it just makes certain things easier. Apple’s definitely not alone in doing this – even staying in the realm of phones, Samsung is very similar in its approach, too.
There’s a problem with this, though. Apple’s ecosystem is often referred to as a ‘walled garden’ in the way it makes people feel trapped after they’ve already invested in a couple of Apple devices. But it’s not the only way to do it.
Microsoft has also tried to create a similar ecosystem several times, starting with Windows Phone. I was one of the twelve people who owned one of these things, and it was genuinely useful to be able to carry my Windows settings over to my phone. But even after Microsoft’s mobile operating system faded into obscurity, Windows started to become a lot better at being a multi-device ecosystem in and of itself – even if it was limited to PCs.
If you have multiple PCs running off of Windows, it’s remarkably easy to set it up so that everything is just shared between them. Game saves, documents, and even settings are easy to set up so that they sync between your devices. Recently, the company has also tried to work Xbox into this ecosystem-centric approach. That’s why Microsoft claims everything is an Xbox – because through programs like Play Anywhere and Game Pass, everything potentially is. There’s just one problem, though: user experience.
Because Windows has been designed around mouse and keyboard for decades, retooling it to be cross-compatible with a UI that’s primarily used with a controller is going to take a lot of work. Microsoft has made some decent first steps in making Windows usable with a controller – just look at the Xbox Ally X – but Valve has a leg up with SteamOS.
Between the Steam Machine, the Steam Frame and the Steam Deck, Valve is clearly moving to make a SteamOS ecosystem of its own. SteamOS itself blew up in popularity with the Steam Deck in 2022, but it’s been around much longer than that.
Valve’s linux-based SteamOS launched in 2013, followed by the original Steam Machines in 2015. But while the skeleton of the operating system was similar, it relied on games that already had built-in Linux support. There certainly were games that would run on SteamOS, but not enough to sell people on abandoning Windows – especially when it was paired with expensive hardware.
This led to third-party Steam Machines being rebranded as Windows 8-based mini PCs, and it seemed like Valve’s PC-making days were in the past. But in 2018 Valve funded Proton, a compatibility layer that allowed SteamOS – along with other Linux distros – to run Windows games. While it was rough at first, only supporting a few games, according to a post on GamingOnLinux, it’s grown considerably in the seven years since its initial release.
Proton is ultimately what led to the Steam Deck’s success. Through this modified version of Wine, Valve’s little handheld can run pretty much any game in my library – albeit excluding any games that rely on anti-cheat (not that I play those anyway). The software is only getting better too. With the Steam Frame that Valve announced today, the company was able to get Proton running on the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, which not only allows Windows games to run on Linux, but also allows games built for traditional PC processors like the x86 architecture to run on ARM. That’s something Apple has been struggling with – just look at the limited amount of PC games that are running on macOS, even with the Rosetta translation layer.
Thanks to Proton, Valve can now relaunch the Steam Machine while completely avoiding the compatibility issues that killed it in the past. It’s also joining a growing crowd of devices that are running SteamOS. Since people are already familiar with the operating system, it’ll be that much easier for them to ease into Valve’s nascent ecosystem. What’s more, SteamOS and Proton are largely open-source, so you don’t even have to tie yourself down to Valve’s hardware to get in on the action.
For the longest time, if you wanted to play PC games, you were almost forced into Windows, and it’s not hard to see why. Microsoft’s operating system has always had good hardware compatibility, which meant a wide range of machines and a huge built-in install base. But as Windows 11 gets more bloated with features like Copilot, an alternative has been desperately needed. The Steam Deck showed that it was possible to play most games without Windows, and the Steam Machine is going to go even further with its more powerful hardware. But there’s still room to grow.
Thankfully, due to the open-source nature of Linux – which SteamOS is built on – anyone can install it or modify it to their own needs. The actual Steam launcher is proprietary, of course, but you can add or remove features to SteamOS if you have the technical know-how, or at least know how to follow instructions on a GitHub page.
Right now, you can theoretically install SteamOS on any computer, even if it’s not technically supported by Valve. You just have to go to the SteamOS Recovery page, download the image to a flash drive and follow the instructions to install it. At the time of writing, only the Steam Deck and the Legion Go S are guaranteed by Valve to work, but as long as you have AMD hardware, you should be good to go. And even if you can’t, there’s always Bazzite, another gaming-centric Linux distro.
Valve might be launching a bunch of ‘official’ devices that are running SteamOS, but you don’t really have to use any of them to get in on this platform. It’ll be more user-friendly to use devices that already have everything installed and configured, but Valve isn’t going to do anything to stop you from using any other hardware. Similarly, the Steam Machine itself is compatible with any controller, so you don’t have to use the new Steam Controller, and the Steam Controller will work with any PC, regardless of operating system. Valve is just putting the toys out there and letting people play with them however they want.
Both Microsoft and Valve are selling a dream of sorts: one where you can play all your games on any device. In some ways, PC gaming is already there. You can access any of your games across different launchers and operating systems, and they’ll work – plus more games than ever support cloud saves.
The problem comes from trying to play those games on anything but a desk, though. As we’ve seen with the plethora of Windows handhelds that have come out over the last couple of years, Windows doesn’t cope that well when you’re trying to use a device with just a controller. SteamOS runs most games, and is very user-friendly whether you’re using it with a mouse and keyboard or a controller. Add on the fact that the operating system is free to download on any device and isn’t loaded with features that slow you down or spy on you, and it really does start to seem like SteamOS and other Linux gaming distros are going to be the future of gaming.
There are definitely still kinks to the system – Linux can be complicated to install, and a lot of multiplayer games just won’t run on it. But, the more people install and run games on SteamOS, Bazzite, or other Linux operating systems using Proton, the better the software is going to be, and the more incentive that developers and publishers will have to make sure that their games will launch with native support for SteamOS. And I don’t know about you, but I’m ready for a major gaming platform that’s open and free, and most importantly, that isn’t loaded down with subscription fees and AI services that you’re never going to use.
For more coverage of Valve's new hardware, check out our hands-on previews of the Steam Machine, Steam Controller, and Steam Frame.
Jackie Thomas is the Hardware and Buying Guides Editor at IGN and the PC components queen. You can follow her @Jackiecobra
]]>Sony has announced a Japanese-language only PlayStation 5 Digital Edition just for Japan.
Revealed during its State of Play Japan broadcast, the cheaper 825GB PS5 Digital Edition costs 55,000 yen (approx. 350ドル) and comes out on November 21, 2025.
It's a similar proposition to the Japanese language-only Switch 2 model Nintendo released at a discounted price in Japan earleir this year.
For comparison's sake, the base PS5 with a disc drive currently costs 549ドル.99 in the U.S., while the PS5 Digital Edition costs 499ドル.99. The PS5 Pro, meanwhile, costs 749ドル.99. All three went up in price in the U.S. back in August.
Releasing a cheaper PS5 model in Japan will be a key part of Sony's strategy to expand sales of the console and grow PlayStation's userbase. Earlier today, Sony announced the PS5 had sold 84.2 million copies at the five year mark, having shifting an additional 3.9 million units during the three-month period ending September 30. That means the PS5 is slightly behind the PS4, which had sold-in to retailers more than 86.1 million units after five years on sale.
The cheaper Japan-only PS5 wasn't the only new hardware Sony announced at State of Play Japan. It also confirmed a 27-inch PlayStation Monitor, with VRR support and DualSense charging hook. Other notable announcements include the first DLC for FromSoftware's Elden Ring Nightreign. Here's everything announced at State of Play Japan.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
]]>Apple's really leaning into its assertion that there are normal people who want to wear their phone on their body as a fashion accessory all by itself. First, with attachment points for crossbody straps on its first-party iPhone 17 cases, and now with the iPhone Pocket, a stretchy, knitted phone sack which Apple is calling "a beautiful way to wear and carry iPhone."
The new strap is designed by Miyake Design Studio, a studio started by Japanese designer Issey Miyake, who, as MacStories' John Voorhees notes, is credited with designing the black turtleneck sweater Steve Jobs so famously wore. And as he and others have pointed out, it's also pretty reminiscent of the 29ドル iPod Sock, which was a fun, silly product that Jobs smirkingly introduced back in 2004. (It also reminds me of those colorful cases for the iPhone 5c, which I genuinely liked.)
Apple's announcement is so much more serious than Jobs was then; according to it, the iPhone Pocket was inspired by "a piece of cloth," or the "concept" of one, anyway. The company labors to point out that this "understated design fully encloses iPhone," and that, when stretched, it "subtly reveals its contents and allows users to peek at their iPhone display." You know, like some sort of precious bauble you've been charged with keeping secret and keeping safe, but that you can't help but sneak peeks at, compelled by a growing obsession.
Apple quotes Miyake Design Studio director Yoshiyuki Miyamae as saying the iPhone Pocket is meant to be "universal in aesthetic and versatile in use," so I guess it'll fit everything from the smaller iPhone 17 and 17 Pro to the wider, taller iPhone Air to the gargantuan iPhone 17 Pro Max. I'm sure you could slip anything from a Pixel 10 to a Galaxy Z Fold 7 into the iPhone Pocket. A New Nintendo 3DS XL, too, I bet.
Look, I've heard the arguments for wearing your smartphone. That it keeps you from dropping the phone, or that it makes it easier to get to when you need it. It's not for me, but hey, whatever works for you. I'm not sure the iPhone Pocket does either of those things, but I'm very clearly not the target demographic for this product. I can't wait to see one in real life.
The iPhone Pocket comes as either a short strap version in eight colors, or as a long-strap version in three colors. Oh, and it costs 150ドル or 230,ドル depending on strap length.
Wes is a freelance writer (Freelance Wes, they call him) who has covered technology, gaming, and entertainment steadily since 2020 at Gizmodo, Tom's Hardware, Hardcore Gamer, and most recently, The Verge. Inside of him there are two wolves: one that thinks it wouldn't be so bad to start collecting game consoles again, and the other who also thinks this, but more strongly.
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