Announcing new Steam Hardware from Valve: Steam Controller, Steam Machine, and Steam Frame are coming in 2026. Just like Steam Deck, all three devices are optimized for Steam and designed for players to get even more out of their Steam library.
Announcing new Steam Hardware from Valve: Steam Controller, Steam Machine, and Steam Frame are coming in 2026. Just like Steam Deck, all three devices are optimized for Steam and designed for players to get even more out of their Steam library.
The VR headset seems to be a major downgrade from expectations.
Three year old SoC, subpar quality LCD displays without local dimming (and apparently very bad screen door effect)… the eye tracking and custom wireless with foveated codec is a nice touch though. I think the main benefit here will be the Proton ARM translation layer and the ability to run SteamOS on other headsets.
The most disappointing part is the rumoured pricing of “aiming to be under $1000”. I mean I get it, Meta had us spoiled with the $300-400 headsets, but this, aside the software goodies, is hardly better hardware wise than the current Quest 3, will cost approximately twice as much (unless Valve really cuts that “under $1000” target back a lot)… If the Steam layer gets cloned onto the Quest 3, the Frame loses all of its benefits, really.
I’m still excited for it, but found it somewhat lackluster.
It’s about 30% faster than the quest GPU wise or similar to a 1050 in shader performance, a bit behind a 1050 on some other things.
It will probably be playing PC games at 720 to 1080p, upscaled and framengend to 4k at 90hz. That’s not terrible considering the power usage of the device. It has to run off of batteries. If it’s much over $500 it won’t be a huge hit, if it’s 650 or less, then it will likely become the best choice for VR but not break into the mainstream. The steam machine, if it can hit $500 would be very popular, although $500 is not really a lot of money these days with all the inflation.
A 1050 can barely play modern games at 720p 30fps.
Add on top of that the fact that the headset needs to:
add the overhead of the various Proton translation layers and such, and that 30% extra GPU capacity is gone.
I think you would only be using this for either games designed for VR or older games, and also be using FSR and frame gen. This is actually a perfect use case for those.
You can also stream games wirelessly from your PC which is another cool feature. That is how most people will probably use it. The native running of apps is just a cool bonus for people I guess.
If it’s not too expensive I might get one and get my daughters one. Probably a very cool little device.
Proton also doesn’t add much overhead and in many cases it can run games faster then windows, especially if it’s not debloated and very lean windows. Games that use modern rendering backends like Vulcan only need CPU translation. The CPU is pretty fast on this device, but it’s only going to be good for certain things. You could definitely play Minecraft and older titles, like space engineers and stuff.
$1 is “under $1000”.
at $999, even for the 1TB model, this is a really tough sell.
I’m not sure I’d get one, even though I love what they’re doing, and want to support it.
I really hope, that the “under $1000” is a misunderstanding from the “cheaper than index”, which currently sells for 539€ (~$625, incl tax) without controller and base stations.
That would be a great price.
I can just hope it’s nearer to that than the $1000.
Well the primary competition for the Frame, especially with the hardware limitations, is definitely the Quest lineup rather than the new Android XR headsets or the AVP. So pricing should reflect that.
IMO anything above $600-650 will be a super hard sell for anyone but hardcore Valve fanboys.
It’s marketed as a “streaming first” headset. It includes a 6e USB router in the box. The headset has WiFi 7.
It’s also being marketed as a standalone headset. Absolutely no excuse for using a 3yo SoC when much better options are available at not significantly different prices.
Also let’s not forget this is Qualcomm we’re talking about, the company that drops support for even their most popular chips after 3-4 years. Which in turn heavily limits any updates this SoC will receive. Even performance questions aside, using a SoC that is guaranteed to go unsupported within the first year of sales is just a bad idea.
It’s likely because of valve needing Linux support. I’m surprised they even got Qualcomm to agree to give them drivers for that chip.
Drivers aren’t the issue. Keeping them up to date is.
Most of these drivers are written for specific kernel versions (and are part of the BSP), but Qualcomm only keeps them updated for a given cycle. Which is usually 2-3 years (albeit Google’s recent push has resulted in longer support cycles).
It’s not terribly important because steam can make their own drivers and update them but they have to usually have a working driver to start from or good documentation from Qualcomm. Patching bugs isn’t all that difficult even with binaries.
Official support IS important, because the downstream companies can’t (and shouldn’t) be expected to make the support happen.
It’s Qualcomm’s hardware, only Qualcomm has the internal documentation that ensures the drivers are up to spec, it should be up to them to provide 6-8-10 years of continued support. They don’t because they’re essentially in a monopoly market.
Well good luck getting them to do that.
Where did you hear about the very bad screen door effect?
Regarding the price, as far as I know, Meta only sells the Quest 3 for $500 because they sell every unit at a significant loss. I don’t imagine that Valve can afford or wants to do that. I recall reading that any other company would need to sell the Quest 3 for 2-3x the price in order to make money. In other words, Meta has been “dumping” to dominate the market.
As far as Steam layer getting cloned onto the Quest 3, I think Meta would do everything in their power to keep that from happening.
Meta doesn’t sell Quest units for a loss anymore. That’s what the “recent” price hike was about, raising unit prices by $150-200.
The “really bad screen door effect” was mentioned by multiple reviewers.
Thanks, I had not heard, but that makes sense. Hardware that sells a lot of units gets cheaper to manufacture as time goes by.
Yikes, that’s not good about the bad screen door effect! I hope they fix it before release. I thought that this was a solved problem in VR, so I don’t see why they wouldn’t.
If it’s a screen door problem, it means they had to cut costs somewhere. Adding in a battery, SoC, networking + wifi dongle isn’t cheap at all. Adding tracking cameras isn’t cheap either. Redesigning controllers and switching them to optical ain’t cheap. And all that, coming in at less than an index system’s launch price, with tariffs on top. I think that’s just the price you pay for Questifying the index.
Personally, I’m really bummed out that they added in a bunch of mobile crap that will swiftly become outdated within five years. The benefit of the Index was that, aside from hardware becoming worn down, all the processing was offloaded to the computer’s GPU, so buying a new GPU could instantly raise the bar for graphics and framerate for years to come.
Give me an Index 2 with high res screens that are stupidly high refresh rate, even higher resolution motion tracking, and optional wireless accessories.