We have an interesting new rumor about Valve’s future hardware plans.
As shared by exTas1s in his latest video, Valve has been working with AMD and their upcoming Radeon RX 9070 card. This would be the latest generation of AMD’s GPUs, expected to arrive alongside AMD’s next generation of CPUs this year, as soon as next month.
As exTas1s explains further, this will be the first AMD GPUs to come with RDNA 4, the latest generation of AMD’s GPU standard, as well as FSR4, the latest generation of their upscaling technology. What’s interesting about this is that exTas1s claims that Valve is doing this out in the open, and he’s actually right about that.
As explained in this NotebookCheck report from just last week, AMD confirmed that it will have perfect support for RDNA 4 on Linux on the day when their Radeon RX 9070 GPUs launch. And this is particularly because AMD and Valve have been working on their open source API, Vulkan.
So, exTas1s claims that Valve has not been working on this because they hope to use RX 9070 GPUs on a future Steam Deck. As of this writing, AMD is not planning to make a mobile version of the RX 9070. It would follow that Valve wants to add this support to future SteamOS desktop hardware. In other words, Valve is plotting the return of Steam Machines.
Now, it isn’t clear if exTas1s is making conclusions on his own or if he has other sources backing up his claims that aren’t publicly verified information. But we can certainly see Valve getting so bold as to challenge the console companies and try to enter as a fourth entrant.
And we have seen Valve has seen huge success with the Steam Deck, but exactly how successful is that? Last 2023, Valve claimed they sold ‘multiple millions’ of the device, but they didn’t give a solid figure then, and they haven’t given a number or even an estimate ever since.
If we put forward the conservative estimate that the Steam Deck has sold a million units a year, the Vita, and even Sega’s Game Gear, would have easily outsold it, as both are estimated to have sold between 10 to 14 million units.
As for Steam Machines, they famously flopped over a decade ago, but Valve is obviously in a much better position now. With all the work they put into Vulkan, Proton, and SteamOS, most of the games they sell on their platform can be played on SteamOS instead of Windows. They also definitely have a captive audience with the spending money who would be willing to get a Steam Machine now, and they may credibly decide that’s a better choice than going for a new PlayStation, Xbox, or Switch.
But there’s still a lot of uncertainty on just how successful that could be. We would already point out that Valve’s unwillingness to work with game companies on DRM and especially anti cheat is a vulnerability they have deliberately allowed to remain. Call of Duty players, for example, will still save more money staying on their PlayStation 4s and Xbox Ones, but they wouldn’t go to a SteamOS device if they wanted to upgrade.
And other Steam games remain incompatible on SteamOS for other reasons. As it is, SteamOS is a useful alternative, but isn’t still ready to replace Windows as the desktop PC gaming OS. We can see hardcore gamers declaring Steam Machines to be the ultimate video game console when they launch, and that hardcore base will turn out to be 1 % of the total market. It’ll be a niche, but one with a more solid foothold than VR, and one that’ll be more enduring than in mobile gaming.
