The biggest gaming announcement this week came from Valve when it revealed the six-inch Steam Machine, a new device coming in 2026 that will allow people to play PC games on their TV. Some have seen this as Valve attempting to enter the living room marketplace currently dominated by the mainstay platform-holders like Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo. But Valve apparently doesn’t pay too much attention to existing consoles and instead came up with the idea for the Steam Machine by looking at the latest trends in PC gaming.
Software engineer Pierre-Loup Griffais told IGN that when Valve was setting out to create the Steam Machine, the company was “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.”
At the same time, he admitted that there ended up being “quite a bit of overlap” because the Steam Machine aims to make PC gaming “work better in the living room and that’s traditionally where consoles have been.”
