In case you somehow missed it, the big PC gaming news of the day is Valve’s new slate of hardware: The Steam Controller, Steam Frame VR headset, and most notable of all (I think, anyway), the Steam Machine, a cubical, console-esque little PC that aims to bring Steam libraries to the living room. It’s a big power move by the Steam team, and one of the first to congratulate them was none other than Phil Spencer, the head of Microsoft’s gaming division.
“Gaming moves forward when players and developers have more ways to play and create, especially across open platforms,” Spencer wrote on X. “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.
Maybe it’s just me, but I feel a certain coldness behind Spencer’s message, which featured not a single enthusiastic exclamation point. It’s understandable, I suppose, because he’s in a tough spot right now. After being thoroughly trounced by Sony—”Halo on PlayStation” is the whitest flag I’ve ever seen flown—Microsoft’s future console ambitions seem uncertain at best, even though the company insists that a next-gen console is on the way.
But that determination to put out a new set-top box is sort of undercut by Microsoft’s “This is an Xbox” marketing campaign, emphasizing how widely available Microsoft’s gaming platform is: As PC Gamer hardware writer James Bentley aptly put it in October, “Everything is an Xbox now, so I see no reason to buy Xbox again.”
And then along comes Valve with a cute little number that not only puts your whole Steam library (minus a sizable list of multiplayer games that still don’t play nice with Proton) right there beside your television, but leverages the success of the Steam Deck to do it. I’m not a high-priced games industry uber-executive so I can’t say for certain, but if I was in Phil’s position, this would come as a kick in the head that I really don’t need.
Much will depend on the price of the new Steam Machine, which hasn’t been announced yet, but Valve will at the very least have a head start on whatever new hardware Xbox puts out: The Steam Machine is set to launch sometime in 2026, while new console hardware from Microsoft isn’t expected until 2027. If Valve can keep the cost of its cube down to a manageably dull roar, maybe in a year we’ll have one more thing to point at and say, “This is an Xbox.”
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