Valve's introduction of the Steam Deck has been a massive success in the handheld gaming market. However, we have long anticipated the return of the legendary Steam Machine, which has its road paved by the ecosystem support around the Steam Deck. According to United States Patent and Trademark Office submission, Valve has patented "Steam Frame" trademark that is reportedly "intended to cover the categories of computer hardware; computer networking hardware; computer peripherals; computer hardware and computer software for the reproduction, processing, and streaming of audio, video, data, text, and multimedia content." Additionally, another trademark filing also claims that Steam Frame "is intended to cover the categories of computer game consoles for recreational game playing; video game consoles; video game accessories, namely, controllers for video games."

All the evidence points to the Steam Frame being a standalone console designed to fulfill Valve's mission and execute the vision left behind by the Steam Machine. That means the Steam Frame will arrive as a standalone console unit, paired with a controller, and boot straight into SteamOS, with all optimizations configured just like the current Steam Deck. It would be interesting to see what hardware powers the Steam Frame, given that portability is not a priority and that more adequate cooling would be available for a standalone console. Valve could target higher frame rates on much higher resolutions. For now, all we can do is speculate about the future, so we need to see some more concrete information about the project soon.