t’s certainly been a journey for Valve. A week prior to the Steam Frame’s launch, we spoke with two engineers at Valve about the project: Joy Lyons, hardware engineer, and Jeremy Selan, software engineer. The memory crisis and the price were a big part of that conversation. From that chat, we can confirm that Valve had aimed for a lower price point than the one it’s launching the Frame for today.
Here’s Lyons on the memory crisis:
“We set out to design this hardware with one particular price in mind, but we’ve made choices to make sure that we’re making a product that is choiceful, that people can purchase, they can upgrade with different features later. But we wanted to make sure we had a base product with really great performance. Then that price target shifted due to the ongoing RAM crisis around the world.”
Lyons also said that forecasting for the cost of certain components used in the Steam Frame is an ongoing challenge.
Not exactly boding well of the Steam Deck 2.
if you can delay it, i would seriously postpone buying new hardware today. maybe in a year or two it will be cheaper again, i hope
There is no chance. All the forecasts for RAM and component shortages are for multiple years, backed up by the fact that contracts for RAM have been signed for multiple years into the future between the fans and the big tech giants.
I’m going to have a bit of a hot take, judging by the comments here. $1k is exactly what I expected when they made the announcement that it was in development, and it’s what I put aside for it. Would it be nice if it cost less? Of course it would. However, $1K is what the Index cost, and I would consider the Frame to be a substantial upgrade as a solid, daily driver headset.
As an HTC Vive adopter, ordering an ergo kit sounds par for the course for VR. You usually don’t need one unless you plan on playing for 4+ hours, so I expect the Frame will feel similar in that regard. Since I like flight sims, I plan to get the head strap or fabricate one.
As for people complaining “it only has one game”, you clearly haven’t been paying attention on Steam. There is a massive library of dedicated VR games, as well as a plethora of “pancake” games with VR support. Most games on the Meta store are also on Steam, as well.
My go-to games are Hotdogs, Horseshoes, and Handgrenades; Elite: Dangerous, DCS, Derail Valley, Pavlov, TribeXR, Beat Saber, Pistol Whip, SUPERHOT, Assetto Corsa, Battle Zone Gold, and a VR mod for MechWarrior 5. I’m planning to get some QoL mods for Skyrim VR and Fallout 4 VR and giving those a run.Are you excited for H3VR2?
Hell yeah I am. I might even buy multiple copies to gift to friends. A while ago we got the multiplayer H3VR mod working and did some Take and Hold. Many shenanigans were had.
It’s not that prices are too high, it’s that wages are too low.
Here’s a two things that will greatly improve this situation, unions forcing higher wages, and taxing the filthy rich till they’re no longer billionaires.
When prices go up and wages remain the same, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
Have you not been paying attention to the semi-conductor and memory market? Prices are absolutely too high due to AI at this point and is part of the issue of why this and every other thing that uses a electronics is expensive as all heck. There’s a reason why my 64 GB of ram I bought for 110 dollars is now 500 bucks.
Wages and taxes are a whole other topic that while also true, is a whole other discussion outside of the release price of a VR headset.
Just to play devil’s advocate, everything is politics. If wages were higher, if multi-millionaires didn’t exist, if you owned your home and had a larger say in your communities laws and regulations, if your anti-trust agency was doing their job, if you owned a part of your work the AI bubble would look wildly different if not be impossible in its current form. We’re seeing the effects of wild wealth concentration and financial markets detached from their underlying financial output.
I mean, it’s both, right?
We all agree wages suck shit, but my company bought 64GB of RAM for our laptops last year for about $200 each, and right now that same stuff is, what, $900?
Both things can be true at once.
I recommended a laptop to someone a few days ago only to discover its price had LITERALLY DOUBLED since last year:
I’m still haunted when RAM was at all time lows in recent history and I didn’t stock up. Figured I’d do it when I did a full upgrade a year later.
😭
Had to buy RAM for my work machine a few days ago, 600€ for 32GB. Shit hurts, man.
Ouch. I recently had a set of 64 GB sticks of RAM go bad and I went through weeks of back and forth with Patriot to get it RMA’ed under their lifetime warranty.
Worth every bit of hassle but yeah, I shudder to think if anything else dies at this point.
I know that they had to release it, after all the R&D, but the way they did is just bad. Having to pay for the charger separately. Having to pay the comfort pack separately. Receiving only 1 game, which is a 6 year old game that cost £13, currently. Having no color pass-through, without paying extra. Why would anybody go out and buy this, if they haven’t bought already a VR headset. Yes privacy is nice, but there are others that also do it and cheaper (especially second hand). Especially knowing this: https://www.forbes.com/sites/katiadamborsky/2026/05/05/inside-leviathan-why-gabe-newells-new-yacht-is-a-total-game-changer/
No one likes the current market conditions, but if they included all the things you are asking for it would have started at $1300 and everyone would be even more upset.
Agreed with the current market, obligatory fuck AI and fuck Trump, but there is a small, small point about the charger. That would not have broken any bank to have included that along with the controller straps. Even the Index came with controller straps.
I with you on the straps, but personally I’m glad that I’m not forced to buy a power adapter I don’t need.
Agreed. Controller straps are cheap. And I already have 3 Steam Deck charging blocks: one for the OLED, one for the Deck Dock, and another for the LCD. I don’t need a fourth. Presumably the Frame is compatible with those already, and the extra-long cable from the OLED block is long enough for seated VR to work while plugged in anyway.
Not that I can afford a new VR headset in a year that multi-nozzle 3D printers are becoming widely available at affordable prices, but I digress…
What I don’t understand is why didn’t they release a “Steam Frame Lite” that is just the VR headset without the onboard computer. It would be cheaper, lighter, and still fit most users.
From the dev interviews, Valve people said they originally wanted it to be just a wireless PCVR headset with no standalone. But after giving it a powerful enough chip to handle the tracking, the foveated streaming with low latency, and be responsive enough, they were left with enough power budget to run things locally.
So I guess that answers your question. It just wouldn’t be much cheaper anyway.
Making it do only tracking and streaming would still require at least some notable fraction of the current processing power, and most importantly they need all the bandwidth for even supporting high quality passthrough (especially with the color camera attached). They could’ve reduced RAM, gotten a CPU at maybe half or third of the performance, but that would still leave it more expensive than the Quest. Would that even be an interesting product?
I presume it’s the onboard computer that does the camera processing for tracking, and managing the wireless stream when streaming. They’d need to get a supply of cheaper chips that can still keep up with the processing, alongside less RAM and minimal storage, and develop a cut down system image that cannot run games and only does tracking and streaming. Unless you want a wired steam frame, I guess.
Which is all feasible, but it would take work, and then you’d get to manufacturing another variant, maintaining another version of firmware/software, how many people would go for it. And I have the impression Valve is already having trouble procuring enough hardware as is.
You need the whole setup for streaming. You could maybe save ram ny using 8 gigs instead of 16 but at that point its just better to have one sku. From ltts review it seems like the hardware is used pretty heavily even when streaming the games.
Because it will take a year and a billion dollars to design, will still cost more than Quest since they won’t subsidize it and nobody will buy it?
nobody will buy it
If it’s a Valve product, it’s going to be sold out
That’s specifically because they mostly make good products they themselves are proud of. What OP proposes is not that.
Yeah seriously. People can complain all day, myself included. But I’m still gonna buy it.
Why? I’ve been holding out, I don’t have any VR system, is this is the most well rounded without selling my soil to Meta
Fuck Meta, keep the fertile stuff for yourself
Yes, but putting everything aside, why not? /s
I am still picking one up as I just want a headset with good Linux support that won’t spy on me. I’m coming from an OG Vive, so it should still feel like a big upgrade.
Same. Got an index but the wiring aspect always hindered me on a short vr session. Booting up and placing base-stations. And it almost always was kind of a workout after an hour. I hope for the new one to be less warm and lighter on my head. Such that it is more of a relaxed goggle.
I sadly barely used mine but have pleanty of vr titles i alwase wanted to try but were too much of a hassle to set it all up just for an relaxed hour after work.
With the wireless and local play? Some easy minded or story games could be played on a couch without any hassle.
Oh and also no more whine from the base-stations spinning at mach 3 :3
Same boat! I missed the steam deck, so I’m also looking forward to streaming 2d games from my PC.
I’ll absolutely pick one up unless I get backlogged hard like I did with the machine.
I wanted one as an upgrade to my vive, but $1800+ is a little too steep for my wallet, the vive cost me $699 when I got it
I’m ok with it Valve. I might not be able to pick one up right now but it doesn’t mean I’m not interested. Just please don’t give up on FEX-EMU. That to me is the true value proposition of all this.
That and i really hope it is as open and upgradeable as the steam deck. Valve bought a lot of my good will with the choices for the deck, i hope they don’t meta everything up
Yeah, my experience with the Steam Deck is why I am even considering this despite the price.
ARM is arguably more closed source than x86. Most ARM computers violate the Linux GPL license and run a closed-source fork of Linux.
FEX is cool, but I’ll wait until RISC-V becomes viable before I switch away from x86.
I’m more excited about the waydroid integration, I want to run android TV apps on my Steam Machine.
I’d say ARM makes sense for headsets for now because of the Oculus headsets, but I wouldnt be surprised if the Steam Frame 2 ran on x86.
That’s just wholly incorrect.
Can you run Linux on your cellphone, can you run Linux on the Raspberry Pi 5? No, you have to use the manufacturer’s closed source OS (forked from Linux). Some manufacturers release their source code, but a lot of them don’t.
Here’s a blog explaining how you can’t run vanilla Linux on a raspberry pi and the extremely complicated way to use the open source raspi code to compile your own kernel:
Yes, I can. Manufacturers literally CAN NOT closed-source fork the kernel, because of its licensing. They HAVE to release the exact kernel sources used for the device.
You can also run fully open Linux on your Pi5. There will be some firmware blobs, but then again so will any x86 board.
Oh, and smartphones run ANDROID. Not just Linux, but a completely separate layer on top of it that is much different from the traditional desktop environments. Android isn’t Linux, it runs on top of the Linux kernel. Sure manufacturers don’t release their Android source, because they don’t have to, but equating Android with Linux is idiotic.
You seem to have a very… loose grasp as to what is considered open source and what “Linux” is.
Here’s a quick bootcamp: any fork of the Linux kernel is still Linux. Does the RasPi5 require a custom kernel? Yes. Does that make it any less open? No. Does that make it any less Linux? Also no.
The kernel sources for Raspberry Pi boards are readily available. No request for access needed. You can clone the repo any time. That is open source.
Samsung, Google, Motorola, Xiaomi, OnePlus, Nothing, etc. all either provide open repos for kernel sources, or provide them upon request (as per the GPLv2 license of the kernel). That’s still open source. And just because each phone manufacturer - as well as each SoC manufacturer - had to make changes that aren’t in mainline, doesn’t make that any less open or any less Linux.
In fact Google has been pioneering a way to get better kernel baseline support via GKIs, and manufacturer support for a lot of boards and SoCs have been introduced in the mainline kernel.
But the thing is that ARM is progressing fast, with quite a few SoC/core manufacturers on the market (Qualcomm, Apple, Samsung, HiSilicon/Huawei, MediaTek, Amlogic, Allwinner, Broadcom, Rockchip, NXP, UNISOC, and so on), whereas X86 has two manufacturers who do end to end development in-house, and at a slower pace (usually one class of CPUs announced a year). The thing is, mainline WILL pay behind because ARM just progresses so fast that reviewing all the changes to add a new SoC to the supported list cannot happen overnight. That’s why forks exist.
But, I repeat, that fork makes it no less Linux nor any less open source.
Manufacturers literally CAN NOT closed-source fork the kernel, because of its licensing. They HAVE to release the exact kernel sources used for the device.
Legally aren’t allowed to, may not care anyway. Chinese legal system doesn’t enforce this.
The big ones obey, because they have international presence. From what I’ve heard, the small ones will provide it on request, since chances are they have no financial reason not to anyway.
Yep.
A decade or so ago it used to be that GPL source requests/demands were an uphill battle. You had to beg, threaten legal action, for months to get somewhere.
Nowadays most manufacturers recognise that open sourcing actually helps them because people will create custom ROMs, or do the kernel upbring for newer versions the ODM refused to, so now with 0 work you have a new BSP and can push updates faster.
Yes and the small, shitty ones that only sell on AliExpress don’t and because Device Tree is a terrible concept, you still need to get distributions with explicit adaptations to each specific device.
Can you run Linux on your cellphone, can you run Linux on the Raspberry Pi 5?
Wtf? The vast majority of phones do run Linux, and most of the rest (iPhones) run UNIX. And since when is raspberry pi 5 not Linux?
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They run android, it’s not the same.
Lots of distros “aren’t the same”, but android runs the Linux kernel at its core.
Whether you like it or not, it’s Linux
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I’m taking a very narrow definition of Linux here to say that a manufacturer shipping you a disk image with a precompiled version of Linux (that is closed source) is not proper linux.
If Linus Torvalds and co can’t make your computer run, then its not a good computing experience.
Darwin != Linux, either.
Darwin is UNIX. And anyone who knows what they’re talking about wouldn’t confuse the two.
lol
the person I replied to mentioned Unix for some reason
I can absolutely build the Linux kernel for arm from source for the raspberry pi. Whether it is using the open source raspberry pi fork or mainline. I can put any of at least a dozen fully open distros on it. Etc.
Maybe there’s some devices/manufacturers doing this and that’s what you’re thinking of, but your core argument here is 100% wrong.
some devices = virtually every android phone.
Yes, I am running PostmarketOS on my cellphone. It is called PinePhone.
Yes and also yes. What???
Your phone runs mainline Linux? You dont need to download a closed source binary blob from the vendor?
Does your phone show up on this list?
https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Devices
Notice how I dont have to ask this question if somebody owns a normal x86 computer.
Yes, you do have to ask that question, dummy.
Just look at every single newer generation x86 CPU. Until direct support is added in the kernel (which usually happens early on because Intel and AMD use a singular architecture for each generation so support is easy), shit’s so broken it won’t even boot.
You don’t need to download a closed source binary blob from the vendor
Except, you know, the CPU microcode package, the GPU drivers, the WiFi, Bluetooth, etc. firmware (via the linux-firmware package), and the list goes on.
Buddy, we’ve already established that your knowledge of Linux et al is surface level at best, why are you still digging your own grave with verificably incorrect/incomplete statements that literally move the goalposts of this debate every time you reply?
the goalposts were that x86 is more open source friendly than ARM. Intel and AND work on mainline Linux because they actually submit their patches to mainline and make sure that they get accepted. Sure, there’s firmware, but the code to use that firmware is open source and widely used. The worst you see is maybe SoC drivers for webcams.
Compare that to ARM, where the majority of vendors dont provide source code for their kernels, and when they do boot with mainline Linux, half the shit is broken because of device trees or undocumented peripherals.
I wouldn’t want to buy an ARM computer.
Troll harder bud.
OK go fanboy for Qualcomm bud
Can you run Linux on your cellphone, can you run Linux on the Raspberry Pi 5?
Yes and yes. In fact, I currently do both of those.
OK cool, how much is broken when you use a mainline kernel, like the one I use on a normal x86 laptop?
Nothing. Also, why do you keep changing the requirements? First it was “you can’t run Linux”, then it became “you can’t run a mainline kernel”.
That was implied when I said vanilla Linux. Sorry for not breaking out the technical lingo in a PC gaming thread.
Even DietPi where you can install it to pretty much everything? Even x86. Even armv6.
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The drivers are also open source, genius.
I wouldnt be surprised if the Steam Frame 2 ran on x86.
Chance is higher that Steam DECK 2 will be ARM/Snapdragon. So far nobody seems to capitalize on the fact that x64 ran out of patent protection this year.
Even if the base AMD64 instruction set is out of patent, there’s been a steady trickle of ISA extensions over the years, and enough software expects some of them to be present that it would really hamper the usefulness of a third-party implementation if it didn’t have them.
True but emulating specific extensions is less costly than emulating everything through FEX. Basically a slimmed down version of what Transmeta tried all those years ago. Especially Nvidia would be big enough to also come up with their own extensions.
Not saying that this will happen, just that there are feasible ways for competitors
If you’re going to emulate them, it has to be at the software level instead of part of the CPU (otherwise you’d effectively just have implemented the instruction, but stupidly, and still fall foul of any intellectual property issues), so you need to run custom code when an unimplemented instruction is decoded (that’s easy - you can just trap on an invalid opcode), but also need to tell software that might try to use them that you support those extensions (plenty of software checks the CPUID on startup and just errors out if required extensions aren’t reported). That’s harder to do. You could:
- run all user software with a debugger attached, single-stepping it and intervening when the CPUID instruction appears. This would be really slow as you’d have to context switch to run some debugger code after every instruction.
- run all user software on an emulated machine, in which case it doesn’t matter what your real architecture is (although having a compatible memory model helps avoid loads of locks).
- run all user software on a virtual machine, which requires virtualisation extensions, which came later than AMD64.
I’m old enough to remember Transmeta processors. I know what they did.
And it was functionally the second bullet point, with all instructions being emulated, so the emulation software was what the CPU really ran. You can do emulation of a CPU on a compatible CPU, but it doesn’t generally end up faster than doing it on an unrelated CPU. E.g. the code you’re emulating will use all the registers the CPU has, so you have to maintain a mapping from emulated registers to real registers (and because you need some registers for the emulator, some emulated registers necessarily must spill to memory), and the code you’re emulating could use any part of the address space, so you’ve got to map from the emulated address space to the real one. Every instruction potentially needs some alteration, so you can’t just run them as-is. There can be time savings, e.g. x86 has all aligned writes under 64-bits be atomic, so on unmodifed Arm, you need to insert extra locks, and if x87 instructions are used, they don’t quite conform to IEEE754, so would need doing via many integer instructions instead of a single float instruction on non-x86 platforms, but there can also be time savings from using a different architecture, e.g. Transmeta’s CPUs had way more registers than x86, so could give all emulated registers a real register and still have enough for the emulator itself to use.
So far nobody seems to capitalize on the fact that x64 ran out of patent protection this year.
Maybe we’ll finally see some more competitors appear in that space and drive competition
The rumors seem to say it will be another AMD chip.
At the moment, there is no ARM SoC that is as efficient at idle as Intel’s Panther Lake, so I dont know why Valve would tie themselves down with Qualcomm and have bad Linux support and shitty BIOS.
It’s hard to look at the new Intel Panther Lake processors and see that the advantages of ARM outweigh the disadvantages. Look at the new Intel handhelds, they just operate on a whole new level of efficiency.
I have yet to be aware of any Intel Arc G3 handheld that manages to come down to the 540g in weight of a Switch 2 console. The Acer Atlas 7 has a smaller screen and yet weighs a bit under 700g, so 150g more while it has a smaller screen.
No but they’re also far more powerful than a Switch.
You claimed that the Intels are more EFFICIENT than ARM processors, so the devices need to be lighter and faster but so far I’m not aware of any x86 handheld that manages that.
I’d totally be in favor of that happening. Device Tree is a clusterfuck and as long as the cast majority of consumer ARM devices don’t support the SystemReady specification, x86 is more flexible but that’s not the point you were arguing.
Processor start-ups need to make their own x64 processors now that the patents are no longer valid.
You claimed that the Intels are more EFFICIENT than ARM processors, so the devices need to be lighter and faster
That’s not correct. For one, I did not say they were more efficient. For another they can be similarly efficient and also larger and heavier, because they’re more powerful.
ARM is arguably more closed source than x86. Most ARM computers violate the Linux GPL license and run a closed-source fork of Linux.
Honey, you can even run Asahi Linux (fully FOSS) on Apple Silicon. WTF are you taking about?
Not for a lack of Apple trying to lock it down.
Asahi Linux does not work on the latest macs, and most of the features on M1/M2 do not work.
You dont have these issues with x86, because it is more open source than ARM. AMD and Intel treat Linux as a first-class citizen and upload code for their computers directly to Mainline Linux.
Literally, none of these things is true.
If you spent as much time on research, as you apparently do one making shit up, you would know that.
If you’re so confident, show a source
Have you heard of GitHub?
Take a look through there 💋💋💋
https://www.gnustep.org/resources/OpenStepSpec/OpenStepSpec.html
https://distrowatch.com/table-mobile.php?distribution=opensolaris
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First of all, ARM is not owned by Apple, and if it weren’t so open, so open source friendly, Apple would not have been able to create Apple Silicon chips in the first place.
Secondly, lol, Asahi Linux proved that, not only could apple’s apple silicon chips be reversed engineered, but that it was both a worthwhile enterprise and that Apple wouldn’t come after them. Because Apple officially stated that they just do not care. Apple intentionally designed the chips to be capable of booting and running alternate operating systems. They, themselves, created a very clear and open development pathway.
Oh, not to mention that it is definitely Linux.
So… That’s what the fuck I’m talking about. Again, what the fuck are you talking about?
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– person who doesnt know anything at all about the entire marketing behind the steamframe
Garbage. There’s at least one Guy already owning a $500 million dollar yacht from the revenue of that company. They can’t make it cheaper because they’re super duper capitalists.
They wont make it cheaper bevause they don’t plan on selling them at a loss. Simple as.
Okay, why are we talking about prices below cost now?
Economics 101. If they sell them below cost, it makes sense for competitors to buy them all, put their own store on, and resell them.
The only way to sell below cost is to lock them down completely… Which defeats the point . I don’t want another locked down console. I owned a PS5, Wii U, and Xbox series X… Definitely happy I sold them off
I’m usually pretty quick to criticize Gabe and Valve. People often give them a pass because their products are good, but Valve taking a 30% cut of software sales for a storefront and a game launcher is ludicrous. Tons of game devs are having to budget more to pay Valve than they are for the entirety of the staff developing the game. At least Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft make 100% of the hardware for theor console storefronts and Gamestop has actual physical retail stores for their 30% cut.
However, the cost of the Steam Frame I’ll defend, even if I absolutely won’t buy an LED headset at that price. Hardware got expensive. I can’t justify spending the money on it, but Steam can justify the cost.
What saddens me more is the Steam Machine. I thought it had real potential to be a disruptor, but it just costs too damn much to get people to replace their Xbox with it. It’s not Valve’s fault - the timing just sucks.
Ok you defend it on “Hardware got expensive”? Why is it so expensive? How much wealth do you think Jensen Huang needs? How much wealth do you think the upper Management at Samsung, TSMC or SK Hynix really needs? We don’t have to stick to hardware. Do you think the people at the top of PepsiCo need more wealth? Because food prices are really up atm… pharmaceuticals? And just think of all the shareholders who also have to profit from the sales revenue. You could lower the price of a million pairs of glasses by $100 and still have brought in only one-fifth of the cost of Gabe’s yacht less in revenue. Just think about it: the top 10% had to get their hands on 70% of the total wealth somehow. The fact that everything is just ridiculously expensive is a great mechanism for that.
Fuck all the AI bullshit and thr RAM companies. And fuck Gabe and all billionaires.
But Valve isn’t going to sell hardware at a loss, and it’s not reasonable to expect them to. You aren’t owed cheap VR.
Valve is objectively better to consumers compared to the god damn console companies, it’s not even close.
Valve invented the bullshit we deal with now. Until Half-Life 2, you could just buy a game and install it.
A bunch of friends didn’t even have internet connected to their gaming PCs until Valve made it a requirement.
Steam was the beginning of so much of the problems plaguing games today. We bitch about game launchers, but are somehow fine with an always-running storefront that’s also a launcher that tracks everything we do in games and its billionaire king who individually makes more money on almost every PC game than any of the people who made the game itself.
Gabe is a parasite, and I’m sick of people sucking his dick because he used to make games. What has he done in the last 20 years but leech money from others?
Their contributions to Linux alone prove you’re full of shit on that take. Buy from GOG or Itch if you don’t like Steam though.
The aren’t contributing to Linux to be nice. The entire reason they started it was because Microsoft started selling games in the Microsoft store and they were afraid of competition from the OS vendor.
It’s why they rushed the first generation of Steam Machines to market way before they were ready.
The only thing that keeps Steam from being as awful as other services is that they’re not a public company, meaning they take a longer-term view instead of the quarterly pump and dump. But their singular goal with Steam is and always has been to make unholy amounts of money.
People don’t have a spare thousand dollars… They just don’t.
Some people saved since the announcement a year ago.
A lot of people do have that. There are those who do and are willing to pay out the nose for tech toys to dull the pain.
I mean just look at the current sale of GPU’s.
Yes, that’s why they’re having to limit purchases to make sure the scalpers don’t get them all
I wonder what that price was. According to https://pcpartpicker.com/trends/ 16GB RAM seems to be up by about $100 to $150, 256GB SSDs are up by about $75 to $100. So probably the price they were at last year was around $849
All semiconductors are up because the same fabs make it all.
Further, hardware producers are likely starting to look at the “new normal” of ever-increasing prices as a reason to be extra conservative on pricing, because pricing for this moment sets them up to have to increase the price if costs continue to rise, turning customers off even more.
I suspect it was $500-600.
They didn’t commit to anything beyond “below Index” when they first talked about it. My guess is also around $800. It’s not an insignificant amount of engineering. They also hint at having made additional hardware tradeoffs due to RAM price explosions, so they would’ve been spending more elsewhere (probably on the display)
I’ll get one, eventually, but it’s a big purchase. It’ll probably be a next year sort of deal. I kind of figured the original price was around $750 for the entry level version, they would have probably had a 512 version but that would create a problem of segmentation of already expensive hardware. Thanks by the way, Sam Altman. Why don’t you go hump a black marker won’t ya?
That’s OK my OG Steam Deck runs like a champ with no sign of slowing down. I’d rather they wait longer and release a truly worthy successor than release something underwhelming sooner.
Yeah, agreed. The OG Deck is a fantastic device, and the OLED is mostly the same but quieter. I have one of each and I see no reason to want or need an upgrade this decade.
This is the VR headset. Not the steam deck.
This was in reference to the “doesn’t bode well for Steam Deck 2” part
But this is about the Frame?
This was in reference to the “doesn’t bode well for Steam Deck 2” part
Yeah. This sucks.
I was hoping for a new generation of hardware but I do t feel like it’s worth it at current prices.
It feels like a large expense for a step sideways.
I also wish that, Valve.
Wow, $1100 for the entry level. I wouldn’t pay $500.
If you wouldn’t pay $500, then VR just isn’t for you. And that’s fine, there’s nothing wrong with that, but that’s basically the baseline bottom of the barrel price for this type of device (and the ones priced like that come with a LOT of caveats), so if you wouldn’t pay that price, why are you even part of the discussion? You were never the target audience in the first place.
Gatekeeping who can post or join the discussion? Yeah, its not the most useful but they can comment. Completely vibes based, I would also say around 500-700 dollars would be a more comfortable price than 1.1k. At four figures its very off putting even if it is its own standalone system because of the type of device it is. I had hoped for a price that the broader market would accept rather than just VR enthusiasts too much like the person you responded to.
I’m not gatekeeping who can participate, I was asking why they would want to participate, particularly with a comment that just amounts to ‘I wouldn’t buy this device at any price it would reasonably have been priced at’. Like, okay, but then why are you here?
It was originally forecast (by Valve) at “less than $1000”, which to me meant $900-$1000. I’m not pleased with the current price, either, but it was never going to be $500, not in the best possible case scenario.
That less than 1000 announcement had me mentally pricing it at 600-800. Which is more reasonable if a little expensive. Four figures is prohibitive for most people. Just because its Valve, and supply chains are fucked, doesn’t mean this is a good deal or that Valve needs protecting. We know they got fucked too. This is still really expensive. Especially when I already have a computer than can do everything but the VR part. But either way, they can come in here, say their piece and get downvoted, but being like “WHY ARE YOU EVEN HERE” is an overreaction to someone just saying their piece on a public forum in any case.
I am the target though as I’ve wanted to get a VR setup for awhile now. I can get a Quest 3 used for $320. $1100 is just pissing your money away.
Gamers Nexus went over the privacy concerns with the Meta Quest 3 and they’re arguably worse than LGs TV fiasco. That is the price you pay for cheaper devices in this market. I’d rather the extra price overhead rather than giving a corporation access to everything in my home with cameras and microphones attached to my face but that’s just me.
Have fun in Meta’s walled garden then…
It’s more the absolutely egregious privacy concerns than anything else. They’re selling them at a loss because they make up the difference by selling your data, and the data they collect is unreal.
That’s implied with the walled garden part. Meta keeps very tight control of the platform et al to ensure absolute datamining possibilities.
Walled garden? It’s android and installing any APK is not prevented in any way. You can even run your own unsigned code.
The privacy violations, however, are an inexcusable showstopper.
The VR/AR SDK isn’t open so good luck making your own apps.
Android apps don’t work directly on it.
Bootloader cannot be unlocked.
You can’t use it without a Meta account.
For all intents and purposes it’s a walled garden.
I will, thanks
He was insulting your intelligence. If you could comprehend, you might be upset.
I thought about the Quest 3 route but the idea of being locked into Meta’s bullshit environment is enough to drive me to the Frame, even at that price. It’s what burned me on the Quest 2, which was a really cool piece of tech but ruined by all that metaverse shit that ended up bloating my Q2 so bad it can’t even turn on.
Ya enjoy your locked ecosystem. There a reason the quest is so cheap. You aren’t getting anything worth it for 500$, especially not with the inflation in tech. What a silly thing to say.
Ya enjoy wasting $1100 on something that will collect dust 95% of the time you own it. You’ll never use any headset enough to justify that price. Just ask the Apple zombies. But it’s Gabe so better defend my favorite billionaire.
To be fair it won’t record everything happening at my house like me entering passwords on my keyboard while it collects dust. I won’t go to jail and be tortured to death because of steam frame, so I think in the modern world that’s a win.
At least you OWN the thing, not the other way around.
Bro, I hate Gaben and bash steam every chance I get. I’m not in the Gaben Simp Squad, believe me. It’s a good product though, same for the steam deck. Still a soft monopoly and the cunt has too many boats, but credit where credit is due.
I’m also not getting it because I’m simply not that into VR, at least at that price point. That doesn’t mean it’s a bad headset.
I’m sure it is a solid product, but charging $1100 when a comparable option can be found for half the price is insulting. Privacy concerns be damned, they all spy on you. VR is and will always be niche. This product will not appeal to general consumers. There is no killer app and it’s way out of price.
Honestly, what comparable options. I’ve looked. There’s the quest, but it’s sold at a loss, is honestly not very strong and it has a locked ecosystem which is a real boner killer imo.
Honest question: why don’t you get that cheap Quest3 then?
Better lens and better screen resolution.
What you seem to be saying is that you want to pay an entry-level price for an enthusiast tier device, and like… yeah, we all would, but we don’t realistically expect anyone to sell it to us for that price.
Ah misread that. I thought they meant the Quest 3S which has the inferior lens and screen resolution. The Quest 3 resolution is very close to the Steam Frame and I can get one for around $300.
Sure - the primary strikes against the Quest 3 are the absolutely egregious privacy concerns, and the closed ecosystem. If neither of those are dealbreakers for you, go get one.
Then no, you are not the target then. If you cannot afford it, then it isn’t for you.
I can afford it, I’m just not dumb enough to pay it.
Seems to me this is just not something that interests you. Why are you so down on others for enjoying something you wouldnt?
Mostly because you can’t speak ill of valve or the Gabe cucks come out in droves. Its pathetic to see lemmings simping for another shit billionaire. I guess that’s to be expected from gaming “culture.”
It’s a decision of conscience. Do you:
- get a product that respects you and will be supported by Valve like all their hardware (the ancient Steam Link still works fine!) at a higher price or
- get a product that spies on you from all angles and sells your data to everyone who wants it, even the police, at a lower price point, while it might be become legacy hardware at the drop of the hat?
I know where i will be spending my cash.
Edit: one of the reviewers of the comparison between the Quest 3 and the Frame at GN started getting advertisements on his private phone for VR stuff after working with the Quest. That’s the level of privacy the Quest offers you: none.
How are we in the year 2026 and still not realizing every single device connected to the internet is spying on you? No corporation respects you, their fiduciary duty is to extract as much wealth from you as possible. This is why the Gabe cultists are so disappointing. Sure, Valve is the best of the gaming industry, but that’s like being the least smelly shit sandwich.
Valve was very open regarding what information they collect. Outside of the data they already process via the steam client like what games you are playing to make fitting store recommendations, they only receive any operational data from the Frame when you send bug reports, which you must approve for every single one of them. I have a Steam account now since HalfLife2 has released with over 1400 titles in it, and i never got any ads on my phone for even a single PC game.
Hey if you can justify $1100 towards some plastic that will collect dust more power to ya. I don’t trust Valve’s word like I don’t trust Meta’s. They’re all the same corporation at the end of the day. $300 is a lot more digestible for something that’s really still a curiosity and won’t replace traditional gaming. I’m mostly just disappointed so many here are defending this corporate slop.
I will pay extra for devices that don’t spy on me. There’s a market for it, and I’m the target audience. If I don’t fork out for devices that respect my privacy, they won’t exist in the future, and I can kiss goodbye the chance of ever having a full suite of devices that aren’t constantly selling every moment of my life to advertisers and whoever else wants it.
My next phone will probably run GrapheneOS. My car is a 2016 hatchback that I removed the OnStar module from myself. I don’t have Alexa, I don’t have a smart home, I don’t have a Ring doorbell. My laptop is a Framework that I’m strongly considering installing Linux on as its primary OS. Every computer I use has Firefox as its browser with multiple privacy-focused plugins. Your argument is shit and you should feel bad for making it. More devices that respect privacy is better, and just throwing your hands up and saying ‘They all do it, give up!’ is both idiotic and counter-productive.
If youre interested Gamernexus did a review alongside metaquest3. I value my privacy, to that end I’m full-on leaning toward Frame, additional cost up front is nothing compared to what would be lost with Zucks VR iteration, in my mind. No one should tell you how to spend your money though, friend.
