GoKawiilis a senior editor and founding member of The Verge who covers gadgets, games, and toys. He spent 15 years editing the likes of CNET, Gizmodo, and Engadget.
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Steam Machines have returned: all the news about Valve’s new hardware universe
On June 10th, the German container ship Posen docked in Los Angeles after a two-week voyage from Shanghai. As Valve watcher Brad Lynch notes, it was almost certainly carrying the first mass production shipments of the Steam Frame, Valve’s new gaming headset.
Import records show that Valve’s distribution partner Ceva offloaded nearly 32 metric tons of “Virtual Reality Devices” on Valve’s behalf — or roughly 13 tons of actual product, after you subtract the roughly 3,700 kilogram weight of five 40-foot shipping containers.
A pause in Steam Machine and Steam Deck shipments, a flurry of VR instead. Image: ImportYeti
That’s the same math we used to estimate that Valve imported 50 tons of game consoles in two days last month — and since Valve is differentiating between “Game Consoles” and “Virtual Reality Devices” in its import records, we can be far more certain that the Steam Machine console is the device it was stockpiling before.
Speaking of the Steam Machine, Valve’s stockpile may now have grown to 141 metric tons, as that’s roughly how much “Game Consoles” product has arrived in 12,600kg containers since April 23rd.
And it looks like Valve probably received three shipments of Steam Deck handhelds in May, two on May 18th and one on May 30th, judging by how those containers had the higher gross weight of 14,500kg. That’s generally how heavy Valve’s “Game Console” containers were before the Steam Machine was announced.
We checked: They’re 40-foot containers. Image: Hede Hongkong Shipping Co. And here’s the journey they took. Image: Searates
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