Valve Gears Up for Steam Frame Launch With Improved Arm Support in Proton, Qualcomm Listing

With the launch of the Steam Controller now firmly behind us and shipping slowly getting some momentum, gamers have started speculating about the two remaining products in Valve’s 2026 hardware line-up: the Steam Machine and Steam Frame. Now, an update to Valve’s Proton 11 Beta 3 indicates that Valve has updated FEX, the Arm64-x86 emulator to run traditional x86 games on the Frame’s Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 Mobile SoC. The update brings Proton up to FEX-2605, which includes performance improvements for 32- and 64-bit games, improved stability with controllers, and support for newer Qualcomm chipsets.

In addition to the Proton updates, the Steam Frame also now appears on Qualcomm’s XR/VR/AR Finder page, where it lists the device’s SoC and said that it features “advanced CPU and GPU performance, AI acceleration, and fast connectivity,” so there’s nothing really of substance there in terms of specifications. It is notable, though, that the Steam Frame is making more and more appearances in the news cycle, thanks to these sorts of updates and the most recent updates to the Steam Store’s hardware page. These, along with recent signs that Valve is stocking up US warehouses with both Steam Machine and Frame hardware may be signs that Valve will stick to its original “first half of 2026” launch promises with an imminent launch for the Steam Frame.