Valve has put out an official overview and quick start guide for the Steam Machine, a roughly five-minute video that walks through unboxing the hardware and getting it set up. The video comes a couple of days after Valve confirmed the $1,049 starting price and June 30 release date earlier this week, with reservations closing June 25, so think of it as the setup manual for anyone who manages to get one.
Most of the video is a straightforward hardware walkthrough, and the headline details line up with what Valve has already shared. The Steam Machine is about six inches square, roughly the size of a tissue box, with an internal power supply so there’s no brick to hide. The 2TB model ships with two extra swappable faceplates, one in solid walnut and one in red fabric, and Valve says it will release CAD files so the community can design and print their own. A built-in wireless adapter also lets you pair up to four Steam Controllers directly, no charging puck required.
On the software side, the walkthrough leans on the Steam Deck comparison throughout. Steam Machine runs SteamOS just like the Deck, so you get the same gamepad-first interface, a desktop mode, and the Verified program that tells you at a glance how well a game runs. Obviously, the difference between the two devices is power. Valve has pegged the Steam Machine at roughly six times the horsepower of the Steam Deck, and says many games that were unsupported or merely playable on the Deck are now Verified and run well here. The video also reminds you not to set it directly on carpet or wedge it into an enclosed space, since it pulls cooling air in through the bottom.
When Valve first revealed the hardware last November, we said we hoped it would land at a price competitive with consoles. At $1,049 to start, it didn’t, though Valve has pinned much of that on the memory and storage shortages that drove up component costs. The Steam Machine launches June 30, and this overview video is Valve’s way of showing what you actually get in the box before then.
