Nej, Steam Machine er ikke bare navnet på en af Daft Punks sange, men også et slags hardware-certificeringsprogram fra Valve, der samarbejde med blandt andet Alienware om en række små, kompakte gaming-computere, designet til blandt andet at køre SteamOS. Lidt som en slags kombination imellem en konsol, og en PC.
Men det koncept fejlede til den store guldmedalje, men Valve mener dog stadig ikke at ideen fejlede noget, og de siger samtidig, at Steam Machines banede vejen for Steam Deck. I et interview med IGN siger designer Greg Coomer følgende:
"Steam Machines was a really good idea. The operating system wasn't quite there, the number of games you could play on the system wasn't quite there. Really, we've looked at a lot of what we've learned as boxes that we needed to check if we were ever going to talk to customers again about that category. We didn't really want to bring this device to customers until we felt it was ready and that all those boxes were checked, essentially. But definitely, doing that, I don't think we would have made as much progress on Steam Deck if we hadn't had that experience."
Steam Deck står til at blive lanceret senere på året, og det bliver interessant at se om hvorvidt produktet får succes, når nu Valves hardware ikke altid nyder lige så meget succes som deres software-platform.