No prices yet. I may never financially recover from this.
I wish we had a pricing-point for the VR headset. I’m still considering getting a Quest III and break it open a bit, since the hardware is so damn good. This seems marginally under it (monochrome instead of full-color etc) but running SteamOS instead of Android sounds amazing.
But I’d need more information on it first - and granted, knowing if ever it releases over here. 😅
I’ll definitely get the new controller if possible though. Still rocking my original, and it’s still the best way to play mouse-centric games on the couch, I prefer it over a lapboard with an actual mouse.
I’m bracing myself for the Steam Frame to be around $700-800. The monochrome pass through might seem like a downgrade, but mixed reality is also not part of what valve wants to do with the headset, i.e. focus on VR. Everything else seems like they might be pricey upgrades, especially with the eye tracking and streaming tech. They also shifted manufacturing to the US due to tariffs.
I will buy the VR headset immediately
I wonder why only HDMI 2.0 on the Steam Machine, 'cos RDNA3 is capable of HDMI 2.1 and you need it to go over 4k 60Hz (I know it says 4k 120Hz for the Steam Machine’s HDMI but I suspect that’s either 4:2:2 color or DSC if it is really HDMI 2.0).
amdgpu (the Linux driver) does not support HDMI 2.1 because the HDMI Forum does not allow them to open source their implementation.
Valve would have to provide their own solution and I assume they have not been able to deal with the crooks at the HDMI Forum yet either.
The HDMI Forum doesn’t allow opensource HDMI 2.1 drivers, AMD has the drivers ready but they aren’t allowed to release them. Yes, it’s that stupid
I believe they mentioned that it is basically HDMI 2.1 but some features weren’t supported maybe 4:2:2 color, I don’t remember. I think they also mentioned they are working on fixing it so they can call it HDMI 2.1 but they aren’t sure if they can so they are just calling it 2.0 right now to be safe.
I wonder if the Steam Frame is the codename deckard. I was really excited for that because it was supposed to have Steam Deck performance, but with an Arm processor that will be hard since most games need an emulation layer.
It is Deckard, from the looks of it won’t be as powerful as the steam deck but not because the ARM chip is slow. They said it is just because the effective TDP of the ARM chip (after subtracting all the work it is doing to track the headset and controllers and do the rendering) is like 7 watts, compared to the 15 watts of the steam deck. So you will probably still be able to run some of the more indie games on it. The translation later is also a 10-15% slow-down for CPU bound games, but they said should be negligible for GPU bound games.
From early reviews it seems penalty for emulation is in single digits. Also honestly I am considering one just to watch movies but my intereat would depend on the price of course. So wait we must.
Really excited for this and hopefully that means steamvr on Linux will actually start working better! The current Beta build is much better but still lots of work to do.
I’m definitely getting the frame as upgrade from quest 3 which I rarely use due to it being attached to Meta. The controller is no brainer considering that old steamdeck controller is still one of the best controllers on the market. Not sure about steam machine mostly because I just built my own PC - would have totally waited for it if I knew it was coming but it looks so slick.
Very excited for Linux in 2026!
I mean I think better Linux SteamVR is a given since they are selling the new steam machine as an option for streaming to the Frame.
So excited!
Valve remains committed to an open PC ecosystem
happy noises
How big a deal is this eye tracking that then only shows higher resolution stuff where you’re looking? Is it legit and works well, or is it a gimmick VR uses to say its’ better than it is?
Foviated rendering is a massive thing, usually only done in the expensive stuff.
It gives you a pretty big FPS boost because the device doesn’t have to render stuff the human eye can’t see anyway
Does every game need to support it in a way, or would this be done on an OS level? Because I don’t know, from my experience, the game tells how detailed anything has to be rendered in a frame.
The games that will play natively on the steam frame will have to support it on a game level, but for streaming it’s handled at the os level through “Foveated Streaming”. So the PC isn’t getting an fps boost from it but it does allow the latency to be very low through streaming.
I’m not sure that the eye tracking data will be passed through for foveated rendering from the PC side though I can’t imagine why it wouldn’t. In that case you get both render and streaming which would be incredible
Thanks for your insight :)
it’s a huge thing
Apple vision pros do it and it is pretty great
Did Valve just announce THREE of something?
Second steam machine (not deck!), Second VR headset, and second controller ( I actually don’t know if that’s totally true)
I believe this is their third VR headset.
The first one was a collaboration with HTC I believe.
Holy shit you’re right.
Where’s my Steam Phone Gabe ?
It’s coming right after the GabeCube
the deck can be a phone, if your pockets are big enough
With GameHub lite you can run steam games on high end android phones right now. GameHub lite is based on the work valve has been doing to get games running on ARM. I won’t be surprised if valve announces official steam for android in the next few years. (Steam for android as in an app that can run your games not just browsing the store).
It would be cool to see Valve actually release a Linux phone with the direction Google has been going, and maybe helping to lead to companies like Asus deciding to also move into Linux phones if Valve Linux phone is a decent success.
Don’t android me, I want KDE plasma steam phone dude.
Introducing: The GnomePhone
The headset runs on an ARM processor with Steam OS that uses KDE in desktop mode. It’s really just missing a cell modem.
Oh boy Unreal Engine 5 titles at 0.1 fps instead of 10
Sometimes I think about how LOATHED Steam was when it launched. That was probably valid even. Still, it feels worth noting that Valve is maybe THE only company from my childhood that feels like it largely stayed true to its spirit, or whatever.
I think its because there’s likely more people who got into Steam after Steam was already a pretty popular storefront so clueless about the growing pains. My first ever PC game purchase was from the Steam store and that was maybe back in the 2010s.
So those going on about days of CDs or whatever are talking to a generation that had already moved onto digital.
People who came to Steam later on probably don’t realise that when it was new it barely fucking worked.
Downloads crawled, games refused to launch because of authentication issues, friends/chat was offline for literally months, etc.
The only reason it became widely adopted was because Valve forced you to use it if you wanted to play the latest CS or, later, HL2. Everyone hated it.
I only got Steam when HL2 released because I had no need for it before then. I don’t remember having any real negative feelings about it.
friends/chat was offline for literally months
Friends lists didn’t work reliably for years.
What if he really wanted to make it up to you? Is there anything he could do to apologize?
Yeah he could hand over a couple billion dollars, that would make up for it.
HALF. LIFE. FUCKING. THREE.
Exactly. How tf do you propose to get it if you digest him? You’ve hit on the crux of the issue here.
I was one of the haters when it first launched because I was on dialup at the time and physical discs I bought were forcing me to install steam AND THEN install a massive patch that did not work on dialup. My first day playthrough of Skyrim was ruined because of that. Took a week for that shit to download even though I went physically to a store.
But now Steam is the last man standing between us and corporate greed.
But now Steam is the last man standing between us and corporate greed.
Man how quickly people forget what things were like before the lawsuits forced valve to make steam more consumer friendly and regulatory abiding…
When was that?
I remember being annoyed that I had to install yet another launcher and make yet another account when I was installing portal. But I didn’t know at the time that this was the launcher to end most other launchers and accounts, or at the very least made most of that transparent other then adding an extra click to launch some games.
Iirc, Blizzard had just replaced the wow in-game patcher with a launcher (though I don’t recall if they had a unified launcher for each game, if they all had their own at that point, or if it was just wow), Oblivion had a game launcher, and I think there were a few others. Some of them even needed to be installed separately iirc.
Steam is nice because, being the launcher for most of my games, it’s just always open and helps organize my games. And it doesn’t feel like its main purpose is to make money, with everything else just being about opening pathways to that money. And even though it is meant to make Valve money, it’s the lack of blatant dark patterns and constant upsell attempts that makes it feel better than most of the rest of the commercial world.
because most people got exposed to steam’s launch on HL2’s launch. Where they bought the physical game, came home, installed it off like 5 CDs… then had to run steam to decrypt it and download more files because the fucking install was encrypted, and the goddamn fucking decryption took like 8 hours if you didnt have the worlds greatest computer.
Nope, I’m still totally not salty about not being able to play the game I fucking bought until the day after cause bullshit encryption fuckery, why would you ever think that.
I still have that goddamn box somewhere… i need to dig it up and see what release retail HL2 is like compared to HL2 you’d downlaod today from steam…
Well, I bought Half-Life and OG You Don’t Know Jack on discs at Target, then had to return them because HL didn’t run and YDKJ was “too worldly.” So.
It happened to me (with blizzard)…and it will happen to you!
A lot of companies turned to utter shit over the years but Blizzard hit me the hardest I think.
It basically didn’t add any value to the experience. We just wanted to play CS, and steam just got in the way.
I just paid $20 for a physical copy Counter Strike, and I find out I need to install an additional launcher and make an account to play the game I just installed. It’s the principle of the thing!
They have good PR and fanboy propaganda. They’re every bit as evil as every game company out there. Steam fans just got tricked into thinking Gabe was THEIR billionaire and steam is THEIR billionaire corporation, and they can do no wrong. No other game platform has a fan base as aggressive and hostile when you point it out
Why does everyone here Yuck other peoples Yum? You aren’t forced to buy them
The irony of this being your previous comment
If billionaires and corporations are your “Yum” i don’t want to know you. Sucking Gabe dick isnt a hobby, unless it is for you
Technically no PR. Their MO has been to let others do the work. Their games come from hired modders, with many skins made by the community. Their localizations are from the community. The game devs and publishers have to moderate their own spaces on Steam. The players do product promotions by using the social network of Steam. Valve is practically unreachable for the press, and their actual press releases are the rawest I’ve seen: infrequent, featuring no images and little information. Their press account is run by Kaci Aitchinson, the local Fox News host who was originally hired to present The International for Dota 2, but ended up doing a bit of everything, like many at Valve.
The downvotes seem to agree with you…?
Hmm this makes me wonder if the Steam Deck 2 will be ARM. If the Steam Frame works well, that could be a way for Valve to push more performance/battery life out of the deck
If they shared the same processing unit it could also cut their costs down.
With Valve talking about open ecosystems so much, I have glimmer of hope that they’ll move to RISC-V.
Probably not gonna happen though… At least not yet
That would be amazing, but given how speculative the Framework and other RISC projects are I feel like that would be a massive headline for Valve.
I don’t ever see this happening, with Proton being x86, and games also predominantly being x86.
Seems like you haven’t looked at today’s commits to proton bleeding edge.
I seems to have not, but, how many games are compatible with ARM now? Surely it’s similar to the situation with game support on Windows ARM or MacOSX?
Edit: Hmm ok, they have a new “FEX” Translation later for ARM now. Interesting but I’m still not convinced that this will have better game support than Proton on x86.
That controller makes me swoon.
Plz fucking give us the clear option
Swoon worthy indeed. So many features.
Yet still only four face buttons. I don’t know why every controller manufacturer in existence refuses to bring back 6 button pads, even Valve. Instead they all just copy each others’ designs. Even Nintendo—once known for being innovative—is guilty of this. The Switch/Switch 2 Pro controller is literally just a crappy XBOX controller with crappy digital triggers.
Also I’m not a fan of symmetrical joysticks. The left stick is used way more than the D-Pad, and as such, should be placed where the left thumb naturally lies, instead of the D-Pad. I’ll eventually get used to it but I don’t like it.
With all the inputs on the front of the controller and 4 on the back you have plenty of options.
With the fact there’s apparently surprisingly reasonable evidence of a new half life game, I wonder if that’s likely to get announced when they give these a release date. I could see them bundling it with the steam machines at least. Assuming the rumors turn out to be true.
I’ve been under the impression that it is very likely to be a sequel to Alyx. Possibly a launch title for the Frame.
But I don’t think any of the rumors expected a new Steam Machine. We thought it was gonna be a new Deck.
Early leaks were pointing to a Alyx sequel, but I think the more recent leaks are pointing to it just being Half Life 3, which would presumably be playable on the Deck. Frame and the new Steam machine.
I hope the Frame is as cheap or cheaper than a Meta Quest 3. It’s almost identical in the specs, but goes back to monochrome external cameras instead of full color. But also has eye tracking which the Q3 does not. I want eye tracking so fucking bad… I set up cameras for it before I was like “Hold up… They can’t see my eyes with the headset on 😬” lol
You have to remember, the price isn’t only due to the hardware.
We often still think of “hardware” as if it’s some tool we actually own like a wrench or a hammer that we can freely use how we like, and the price of it should depend on the cost.
But in the modern world the electronic hardware we buy is subsidised through gated ecosystems, and by profiting from slurping data and selling ads.
The reality is that Meta hardware is priced aggressively low to encourage adoption - on the basis of all the money they expect to make later from your data. Same with smart TVs and everything else with a similar business model.
Valve’s hardware will seem expensive, but that’s just the price you have to pay in the modern world for some small amount of control and privacy.
Personally, I’ll pay it gladly.
No way it is as cheap as a q3. All valve have said is that they are aiming for < the price of a valve index full kit. https://www.uploadvr.com/valve-steam-frame-hands-on-impressions/
@Kolanaki@pawb.social @ampersandrew@lemmy.world @games@lemmy.world
Some important differences in the specs. It’s not the same SoC, should have like 20-30% more GPU power, then there’s their whole wireless streaming system (comes with the dongle). Could potentially do something better for audio but it certainly cannot be Index quality in that regard.
At the end of the day Meta does still do the console thing of subsidizing the headset with the software and Valve doesn’t always do that so how close or far it lands in price is going to depend on that too.
The cameras can’t track eyes with the headset on …Unless they make it like the vision pro, where your eyes show up on the headset’s outer screen. ಠᴗಠ
steam deck is still incredibly good for what you get. i have on of the original ones with a 64 gb ssd and although i have some hangups with that i just put in a 1.5 terabyte sd card and it runs almost everything i throw at it. just discovered the other night it can do vr very poorly with a beta steam client and beta steam vr while streaming to my quest 3s with steam link. we really live in a new era.
I could have had one and didn’t get it because I never really go anywhere other than work. But boy did I regret it when I was at BLFC recently. My hotel roommates all had one and were playing Helldivers and Rocket League every night 😩
I could have brought my Quest… But I don’t have anything for the stand alone system; all my VR games are on Steam.
