Steam Hardware [new Steam Controller, Steam Machine, and VR headset Steam Frame, coming in 2026]
No prices yet. I may never financially recover from this.
![Steam Hardware [new Steam Controller, Steam Machine, and VR headset Steam Frame, coming in 2026]](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/0455c52b-705d-4ba2-9f22-e26743f6c95c.jpeg)
https://store.steampowered.com/sale/hardwareOpen linkView original on lemmy.world1219
Comments444
I posted this in the other thread, but wanna share here too:
Most interesting thing to me is the Frame apparently runs a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, and is using SteamOS, implying official ARM support for SteamOS, Steam and Proton! Could mean steam and proton coming to android too.
And the base would be Arch Linux ARM, right? So that should see an uptick in development too.
Arch Linux has been implementing a build system for other architectures. Perhaps they'll make ARM official by the time Frame comes out.
If I remember correctly Valve paid for this build system specifically for ARM support, so yeah I think that is going to happen.
I’m still a little curious how that will work for games. Are they going to somehow emulate Win32 amd64 games? Do devs have to recompile them in some new way? Will engines support it beyond Unity and Unreal?
It was mentioned in the LTT coverage. Aside from native ARM games they have a translation layer(FEX) to play x86 games on ARM. They'll have a "Verified" tag like the Steam Deck for compatibility. I assume you'll still be able to force trying to run unverified games.
Edit: FEX is not a Valve thing, but an existing open source x86/x86_64 emulator that Valve is using. It's not clear if they're forking it or directly contributing though.
That same video says that "Valve has heavily contributed to FEX"
Well, that shows how well I was paying attention to the video
Yup, FEX to translate x86 to ARM.
The Frame isn't playing the games on its ARM chip. It's just streaming audio/visual data from the PC and relaying the controller inputs back to the PC.
That's the normal mode of operation, but it can apparently also run games locally on the Frame itself, which I guess gives people a portable --- if less powerful --- gaming option that they can haul around easily if they want.
Hm, guess I missed that part, my bad.
Jeff Geerling is probably having a fit right now.
what does that homophobic ass have to do with it, is he not a fan of ARM or something?
...wat.
I think you must be thinking of some other Jeff Geerling. The one I'm talking about is probably the #1 guy on Youtube for content about ARM stuff, and AFAIK isn't a homophobe.
Your comment doesn't make any sense because, even if you were talking about the right person and your accusation were accurate, why would you know some obscure thing about him while being unaware of the thing he's famous for?
Going back roughly a decade you can find blog posts and some bits on Twitter. I don't see anything outright gay-bashing but his moral worldview, when he speaks on the matter, seems to be shaped by his Catholic faith. I don't think he hates homosexuals, and I can't guess at how his beliefs effect others (who for, or how, he votes and such), but he certainly seems to have a moral opposition and hasn't since stated otherwise that I am aware.
If you need a smoking gun, here's a quote from Twitter around 2017. Context is that this apparently stemmed from the removal of developer Larry "Crell" Garfield over "Gorean" (?) beliefs or participation in that subculture. Relating to some BDSM, male-domination, female slaves "Gor" novel series, that I cannot be assed to dig deeper into, and concerns he'd carry the "misogyny" into into the workplace. Anyway:
As an atheist looking in, I find Abrahamic faiths fundamentally incompatible with homosexuality. Having a gay Christian marriage, for example, is an absurdity to me. To be clear I'm not personally opposed to it. I find very much wrong with his faith but I don't believe Jeff is wrong about his faith. But kudos and power to whoever wants to lie to themselves and retcon Christianity in order to believe (what I perceive to be) a bigger, more comforting lie. If we can keep eroding at it maybe we'll finally get over the hatred and hangups it causes, or at least no longer be able to point to it as a justifying source.
Well, that's unfortunate re: Jeff, but it's still weird to me that the other commenter would be aware of that about him (which you mention having to dig through a decade of blog posts and old tweets to find), without at some point also finding out that he's 'the Raspberry Pi guy.'
It's like knowing that Hitler was a vegetarian but somehow not knowing that he was the dictator of Germany who started WWII -- it just doesn't make sense for a fact to be that isolated from its context.
A bit odd I suppose, but he's also "The ansible guy" and a solid "proxmox/truenas" guy. It's not unlikely they could've become aware of him looking for information on automation or virtualization. That's actually how I first came across his content. The Pi and other hardware reviews are okay but I care more about the how-to's and what I'm actually running on my toys over the toys themselves.
Anyway, I didn't dig real deep but I'm not ready to nail him to a cross. I've met Christians who "don't approve" of whatever while simultaneously acknowledging someone else doesn't need their approval in the first place to be who they are. That it isn't their place to thrust their moral beliefs upon others. Not to say I don't still find their worldview problematic either, and their level headedness is being drowned out by Christofascist rhetoric as of late, but time is still sanding the edges off their faith and it remains light-years ahead of other parts of the world.
I know Jeff does raspi stuff. I know about his colostomy. I've used one or two of his scripts and took some Home Assistant motivation from him. I liked his gentle sounding voice and mannerisms until I learned he's a religious freak.
Then why'd you ask if he's not a fan of ARM? Were you unaware that Raspberry Pis use ARM CPUs?
I'm not trying to defend the guy or dispute you, BTW; I'm just still confused about why you'd say that.
No, I know exactly who I'm talking about.
https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2011/exodus-app-%E2%80%93-pulled-app-store
As homophobic as this indeed is, it's also from 2011. As a pansexual trans woman, I'm pretty sure I might have sais some very transphobic/homophobic stuff in 2011 as well, thankfully I was not posting it online.
I'll give him the benefit of the doubt, but I respect that you may not be inclined to do that. I have possibly too much faith in humanity.
But also, let me say this : acting on your homosexual tendencies is pretty damn righteous 😎
I love acting on my homosexual tendencies!!
That whole article reads like he was a reasonably intelligent person who was born into a christian family. So he's been conditioned to automatically see homosexuality as bad, and been educated in writing eloquent arguments to support his position, but he's just aware enough to not take a stand and actually say what he thinks because that would get him in trouble.
Even just considering your snippet:
This is just an opinion and the logic seems sensible. But why make the comparison to only negative traits and vices?
Stating the obvious then referring to 3rd party opinions. Doesn't seem to do much other than keep up the negative tone.
Whoa, I agree! And using my view of the world and society at large I hereby judge that we need to lay the fuck off of people who act on their homosexual tendencies and focus on actual problems! I wonder if the author can say the same.
Also, I just want to point out and give a "fuck that" to the heavy focus on "choosing" and "acting" rather than simply existing. In my experience that is a very common step in the short process of dehumanizing somebody and mentally writing off their concerns and rights.
Dehumanizing somebody for a trait they were born with is obviously doable, but it is still a tougher sell for some people than dehumanizing a person for an intentional act. Even if that act didn't hurt anybody or anything.
I'll leave the whole train of thought of "how can you punish people for acting like the thing they were born as" as an exercise for the reader.
Oh shit he's homophobic?
Yes
https://pawb.social/comment/18977143
Yikes
Steam/Proton on android would be quite something, I would finally be able to play something decent on my phone that wasn't originally released for the PS2
It is fascinating and a huge step, but I want to keep expectations low. It will work, but it will not be as compatible as x86 Proton, not at all. It is first and primarily an OS for streaming games and running VR. That is the VR rendering from the streaming computer, not the VR game itself. In other words, they only had to get exactly one app to run well enough for public use. According to the developer, it is working with a surprising amount of games. I agree, one game is surprising, but trust me when I say you will not be running Windows x86 games in ARM Linux for a long time.
It's using an x86 compatibility layer, pex i think it was called. So apparently you will be running windows x86 games on it.
Edit: fex! https://github.com/FEX-Emu/FEX
Edit 2, from tom's hardware article:
That is nice, but Hades II is hardly my idea of a hard benchmark to clear. Looks like a fun game, though !
Wonder how long it could run standalone on decent fps.
I think that for running games locally on the Frame, for anything other than games designed specifically to be gentle on a battery --- and many games are not, unfortunately --- you're also really going to need to leave it plugged into a powerbank. The internal battery just isn't that large relative to what the device can draw.
https://www.pcgamer.com/hardware/vr-hardware/steam-frame-specs-availability/
I want backpack sized battery banks.
You could probably put a 400 Wh powerbank in a backpack (search for "power station" on Amazon).
Attach a decent rumble pack and you have total immersion in your military/adventurer game!
Dang. The new Steam Controller has a D-pad, buttons, thumbsticks, gyros, and trackpads.
And the thumbsticks are TMR (like Hall effect, but nicer).
As long as it's comfortable to reach all that stuff, that's gonna be a new bar for PC game controllers.
EDIT: and grip sensors.
EDIT2: and four haptic feedback motors, two in the trackpads.
Now if it just had a replaceable battery...
It does! Verge reports that battery pops out like old cellphone batteries
Nice!
Edit: do you have to disassemble the controller (with a screwdriver or something) or is it accessible with just my hands? I swap (rechargeable) AAs on my XBox360 controller quite a bit, and part of why I like it is that I can do it quickly if the battery dies while playing.
Looks like you'll have to remove the entire bottom shell. From GN's video:
The shell doesn't seem to have a separately removable battery cover, although I don't see a reason why someone wouldn't be able to just cut a hole or 3D-print an accessible shell. Dbrand comes to mind. Or that's just a show piece and the retail product might have a battery cover.
It also looks like the screw posts don't have threaded metal inserts, which is concerning.
That is a bit of a shame, I was excited to see the Steam Frame controllers simply use AA batteries.
I wish more things used those, or maybe some new standard with more energy density. Swapping batteries immediately is one thing I miss from the Wii days...
kagis
https://www.theverge.com/games/815061/valve-steam-controller-hands-on-deck-frame-machine
FYI you can just post the link without shilling for your preferred search engine
but kagi is a good search engine
Companies are not your friend. Also a single douche can ruin the company.
You can also not whine when people mention it. FYI.
Also, if they said "googles" or "ddgs" I doubt you would have complained. They don't use either of those presumably.
It probably will. Watch Gamers Nexus' video, it has a short clip that shows the battery, and it looks like it's held in a receptacle like removable phone batteries. Valve have already said that you'd be able to disassemble the controller with a screwdriver, but no word yet on replacement parts. But based on the Steam Deck, I would be shocked if they didn't offer at least replacement batteries.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWUxObt1efQ&t=41m19s
I personally think the Deck is very comfortable given its bulk. I have a lot of faith in the controller ergonomics.
The first time I held a deck I was kind of amazed at how comfortable it is to hold. Bricks shouldn't be that comfy to hold, but, it is. The ergonomics are spot on. Gotta handle the Steam Controller V2 myself before any verdict, but I have high hopes.
The 8bitDo Ultimate 2 has TMR sticks too, best controller I've used. Better than the Xbox Elite Controller Series 2. I do wish the 8bitDo had 4 underside buttons instead of only 2, but it's still better. The sticks are insane.
~$25 for an 8bitdo ultimate 2c! The price is just too good. I know it doesn't have TMR or the extra buttons, but it just works and feels really good to me compared to the xbox elite controller that got the shoulder button issue within 3 months for me.
The trackpads are unnecessary imo. Games made for controller aren't going to expect the deck touchpads, they're gonna expect xbox and playstation controllers without it. The touchpads just fit a very specific niche of people who want to play with the steam deck on a TV in games that are not fully controller supported and don't have a keyboard and mouse paired for that use case. Always better to have options I suppose.
I have carpal tunnel syndrome and mouse heavy games hurt, but playing with a controller is great. If this can easily replace a mouse and keyboard setup then I'll be playing with it a lot, and those track pads are a big reason why.
They're also good for emulating certain consoles with quirky controllers, like the N64.
It can't really replace mouse and keyboard though. Not unless developers start designing games to work that way, and these touchpads are exclusive to an ultraminority of the hardware market share. The deck gives you that virtual keyboard which kinda works with the touchpads but it's not ideal.
There's no shortage of amazing games that are fully compatible with controllers though, thankfully.
Btw have you tried a trackball? i've been using a thumb based one like a logitech M575 for the better part of 30 years, ever since I saw one at CompUSA. Professionally 100% of my time is spent with one, and I used to have top tier KDR in counter strike 1.X back in the day (though I use normal mice for gaming usually nowadays.)
The 8bitDo Ultimate 2 was like $40–50 or something, so cheap compared to the Elite 2. I got the dirt cheap 8Bit just to try it out for giggles because I'd never tried TMR sticks before. Bro I haven't touched the Elite 2 since unpacking the 8bit.
Trackpads give options. Sure most first person games have controller support. Coming from mouse and keyboard, I still can't stand playing those with a stick though. Trackpad + Gyro is an absolute game changer, I prefer that even over a mouse now.
Literally just got one the other day!
I've been using OEM controllers forever, and after the Xbox Elite controller crapped out on me after ONE year, I gave up on "premium" controllers. It had everything I wanted in a controller EXCEPT durability.
The Ultimate 2 is amazing so far! For $60, I can't complain. Much better than the PS5 controller I had been using for over a year. Nothing terrible with it except te battery. It seems to need to be charged on a wall outlet to fully charge.. but that could be because I'm using Linux, but it also happened in Windows so..
Excited to continue using it for the next few months to really wear it in, but I am legitimately impressed with it so far!
Cheers!
I'm super pleased with it, rock solid performance. Very snappy input lag as well, not even detectable, and I play games that require very precise timing on inputs.
Wish I could disagree with you on the durability of the premium controllers from Xbox. So bad. I got the Elite 2 like I said, but I exchanged it for a new one literally an amount of times that I can't even remember, and it took place over almost a year. The issue was with its sticks. They were either drifting or had some kind of gap where the stick wouldn't sit still in its socket. Both left and right sticks, or one or the other.
Eventually I had enough and settled on one that had very little of the issue, on the left stick (less used), because I just wanted to freaking play my games because I was without a controller all the time sending them back.
8Bit? Third of the price, first controller sent to me was flawless.
I'm not experiencing an issue with charging though. In what way do you notice that it doesn't charge fully? The charge light never switches off?
Sorry, I probably made it confusing on which controller was acting up in which ways!
The Xbox Elite 2 controller had the RB button go out on me, and that means I couldn't play games that required that button (which is surprisingly a LOT of the games I play!). I think it gave out on me on Dark Souls 2 or 3 since that is a RB button heavy game for the light attack. I tried using the paddles to replace the RB button, but even that wasn't enough to keep me using it, so I put it away. I'm sure I could fix it somehow, but I have a very limited amount of time when I get home from work and just want to chill and play a video game, so tinkering isn't something I would really want to spend my limited time on at this moment in my life.
For the PS5 controller, it basically refuses to charge when connected to my desktop computer. Specifically, it would never seem to charge, even when turned off fully and then connected to the charging cable. Now, when I read a Reddit post about someone else having the charge issue (without a PS5, apparently...), they said they had to plug theirs into a wall outlet to charge it. It actually charged it to 100% over night, and was able to last an entire 3-4 hours of gaming in one go, unlike before where it would ding me on KDE that the battery was low, IMMEDIATELY after unplugging it from the desktop cord to use for play. It was such a shitty experience that I had to look it up on Reddit! lol
This 8BitDo controller is absolutely fantastic so far, and like you, I must've gotten a good one from the warehouse! I saw some of the reviews saying it had some issues, but I usually chalk those up to user error unless it has some convincing pictures to go with it. Anyway, I have only had the 8BitDo controller for two days so far, BUT:
The sticks are literally the best feeling sticks I've ever used. I was actually able to turn my dead zones on both sticks to 0 (or negative in Steam? I'm not entirely sure how that works, as it looks like it goes into the negatives?) and can feel every little turn in game. Can't believe I've been playing my games in an inferior manor!
The hall effect triggers are also amazing! I'm playing GTA4 (with FusionFix mod) on openSUSE Tumbleweed, and I have never had better feeling triggers before. When I can barely press on the right trigger, and the vehicle (Comet, in game) actually starts going slowly? That was something to see with my own eyes, and feel with my own hands. I can't describe it well enough, but if you are reading this, it made a HUGE difference in feel!
I can't tell you about battery life just yet, since I only get 3-4 hours after I get home, but I'm sure with it's charging stand, I won't need to personally worry about that!
The only thing I can say I don't like is that I have decent sized hands, and can accidentally press the back buttons just by gripping or rearranging my grip on the controller, so I have those turned off in Steam for now until I relearn how to handle a controller like this since I have been using a PS5 one for so long now.
Sorry for the huge wall of text, but I just can't believe I have been missing out just because a few controllers gave me issues! Plus, I just love talking about gaming! Thank you for taking the time to reply! :)
I read every word. 😉
But yeah, it just goes to show that the mass production vs caring and dedicated production really are playing in different leagues altogether. Mass produced stuff is just shit no matter how expensive, and this controller-centric company blows the big dogs out of the water for a third, quarter, eighth of the price!
Anyway, I hope you get more free time for yourself soon, so you can enjoy it more. 😌
I've been dreaming of this since the first steam controller released! I absolutely loved the first one but it definitely had it's quirks and issues. This seems just like the upgrade that I wished for in every way possible with some nice additional stuff on top. I just hope it won't be $100+
I got the Steam Controller (OG) when it was $5. I wanted to love it so bad, but never could get over the full replacement of the thumbstick on the right side with a trackpad. I could even get over the "cheap" feeling plastic, but that non existent right thumbstick was just too weird for me to get over.
I'm a life long controller gamer though, so maybe it was the best thing ever for some, but I am happy they went with the Steam Deck layout, as that was what I was hoping for!
I understand that feeling and a lot of people shared it, but I was someone that loved it regardless despite generally being a controller gamer as well.
I think to get a good experience you had to be very willing to play with the settings a lot. Not unlike the Deck now, but the software wasn't as accessible and the users not as accustomed to it. Of course it would never feel the same no matter what, but it was definitely responsive!
I understand exactly what you mean by it not being as accessible. They really outdid themselves with the Steam Deck. With EmuDeck, it installed so many different profiles that each have their own little sections in the radial menu. If I had known that was a thing, and if I had some time on my hands, I'd probably have used it a little more!
Either way, we have the best of both worlds now with this controller, so I can't complain at all now! :)
But it's missing a 3.5mm headphone jack bizarrely.
Only one company has apparently learned how to print money and not be ghouls.
To be fair, they say they made a lot of tradeoffs in the name of being price conscious, but they haven't put a price on it yet.
I'd say it's priceless.
That's a great deal, I'll take the full set and throw in some extra controllers thanks
They have haptic grip sensors and ALL the sticks and pads, I wonder what they traded off lol
conscious*
Thank you. Didn't notice I screwed that up.
Valve and therefore Steam is still privately owned, never went public. No share holders demanding things surely is a major factor.
I’m aware. Once Gabe retires or dies, I’m going to start distrusting Valve. Once they go public, it’s over.
Privately owned still means shareholders. Ultimately it comes down to the board and the rules around it, not so much as to whether it is publicly listed.
Yeah sure I love their hardware and contributions to software, but I'd say profiteering off of children gambling for over 10 years is pretty ghoulish.
I mean, they get a sizable cut from the majority of games sold on PC. I think that's their business model.
I hear you about loot boxes and skins and stuff. It's just, that has to be a small part of their total profit.
Why does it have to be? It's basically free money for them, whereas they have to make deals and curate their store front a lot more. Games take time and energy (if you don't just want AI generated slop, at least), so to get that to market takes time. Whereas microtransaction garbage is basically hit it and quit it and generates insane amounts of money.
Um, no?
I guess this must be surprising to hear, but it's just easier to sell content of actual value than bullshit. Yeah... some people will buy bullshit, and yeah, one can take advantage of those people, but having actual products is still a better business model.
But hey, if you've got these things all figured out, totally start your own game studio/global digital distribution system. Go make bank on microtransaction garbage.
Sorry, clearly you are far more knowledgeable about such things, despite having nothing more than I do to back it up. I apologize for contradicting your opinion on the internet, that was my bad.
Hey, if I've offended you, I do apologize for that, it truly wasn't my goal. But I do strongly disagree (which is allowed).
And I think it's pretty obvious that microtransactions could never, ever, possibly be more lucrative for Valve than selling games. It's just a numbers thing. I mean, dlc can sometimes make more money than game sales for some titles, that's a fact. But Valve has what, a dozen games that they could potentially sell dlc for? That's a pretty hard limit. Whereas they also make money on every title sold in the store, and there are currently over 10,000 titles available from the steam store. That's just like, a lot more than a dozen...
Any data to back that claim? I thought most of their income is from Steam and games(including those with pushing gambling on children) is a very small share.
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.
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.
What if he really wanted to make it up to you? Is there anything he could do to apologize?
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.
Yeah he could hand over a couple billion dollars, that would make up for it.
Friends lists didn't work reliably for years.
This is true but this was also done at at time when all of these things were unprecedented. Valve was blazing a trail with Steam and digital distribution and there was nothing else even close.
It was pretty janky. I received a download code for Half Life 2 in the box with my Radeon 9800 Pro several months before the game was actually released. I didn't have a lot of use for Steam before then, but I installed it anyway and my account is so old that back when the account IDs were still numeric and sequential, mine was four digits.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
If Valve went DRM free like GOG, I would have no reason to ever buy games anywhere else
(apart from exclusives, which should be illegal IMO)
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.
Hello, Veteran Steam User (made my account the day steam released, I was big into the half life/cs/tfc scene back in the day), steam was HORRIBLE when it released. I had a cable modem way back then and it was incredibly slow. Only the ugly green theme, and crashed all the time. It was only used as DRM, not as a way to catalogue games. I clung to those WAN servers up until Valve no longer supported them, it was a sad day at the time.
I still remember the pissed-off memes, novel-long outrage threads, etc.!
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 ou
Edit: im being downvoted, sent IM threats and have had my comments on here removed by mods, if that’s not proof of what I was saying I don’t know what is lol
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 irony of this being your previous comment
Edit: Since parent is editing - his reply called me a cocksucker, hence the mod removal. Yay for blatant homophobia
Steam's main thing is that they have recognised that killing the golden goose is a bad thing for everybody. They have consistently played for long term growth and profits, over purely short term gains.
Steam has made mistakes, but their demonstrated values have been shown to be mostly compatible with mine. I can work with that.
Also, them being privately owned means that they are less have seagull investors swooping in and demanding short term gains now now now.
The downvotes seem to agree with you...?
Did Valve just announce THREE of something?
Been waiting for a competitor to the meta quest. Looks like my patience has paid off. I hope it’s not too pricey/compromised
"The Frame headset won't be priced higher than the Index":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWUxObt1efQ&t=1m57s
Yes but which index ? The headset alone is 540€, but the full VR Kit is 1080€
Dont get me wrong, I'm still going TK buy it if it costs 1080€, but I will be annoyed, and very sad for all the kids who will still have to sell their soul to Meta for a while...
I really hope it's ~500€
Why did I buy a PSVR2 with the pc adapter three weeks ago …
I appreciate the assist lol
So you could sell it now !
I don’t know, after three weeks? Also the bigger issue are the digital games I’ve bought.
Should have waited instead of buying the Pico.
A brief moment of KDE desktop shown.
2026 will be the year of Linux Desktop!
Linux... facetop?
Linux! It's in your FACE!!!
The quest runs on a variant of Android correct? Like everything else that isn't desktop, Linux is already the industry stander in facetop computing 😎
Not Android, it's straight up Linux, I believe Arch-Based like the Deck is and the Machine will be, but on ARM.
Edit: I completely misread the post I replied to, thinking they were asking if the Frame ran on Android.
No. The Quest runs Android.
Thanks for replying. It made me realize that I had completely misread the post I replied to, thinking they were asking if the Frame ran on Android. I going through a lot of comments quickly yesterday. I've edited my post to clarify.
I hope they release an official Steam OS for desktop. Maybe a little Nvidia support.
happy noises
I want them all, but mostly the Frame. Finally decent Linux VR? On a standalone device that can also stream from a PC? On ARM?! It seems too good to be true.
And: "cheaper than the index“ Sure that only means less than 1000usd (unless they mean the headset only price at 500....?) but that's still better than I was assuming it'd be.
wonderful time for linux on arm as well. if i read the post right, it seems there will be standalone games that will be compatible with it- even non vr ones.
Allowing diversity of hardware and operation system environments is going to be amazing. arm is so much more efficient and being able to run linux on arm while getting mainstream games is going to be cool as fuck
Even better: they're developing a new translation layer in the style of proton for x86 to ARM called FEX, so theoretically most x86 games will run on the frame. Naturally it's also compatible with proton so you can go windows game -> x86 linux -> ARM Linux. We'll have to see how that runs but it's certainly exciting to think about.
They're not building FEX, but they have made major contributions to the FEX project! :)
Oh dang, the tested video made it sound like they were making it. Good to know, and honestly even better that they're supporting a preexisting project!
Same, but I live in Australia so I'm not holding my breath. The deck has only just officially launched here. I bought my deck on the grey market, with a UK plug, but that ended up being a couple of hundred $ more than when it officially launched here.
They said all products will launched in all markets the Steam Deck currently ships in, and I believe their full list included Australia
Oh my god, my wallet is in trouble haha
Better start saving now!
Oh SNAP
Saving what?
The controller is exactly what I wanted. Take a Steam Deck, cut out the middle, glue the grips back together. Take my money.
Steam Dk
ouch!
And even then there's some nice QOL features like capacitive strips on the grips.
When I look at this announcement, the hardware is very exciting, for sure. But it is Valve's dedication to Linux that really has me smiling. I don't see three hardware devices to buy. I see two big proclamations for which the hardware is the message:
SteamOS on desktop! It seemed inevitable but it's still great to see.
STEAM VR USING LINUX AS ITS TARGET PLATFORM?!?!?
I will grant that it's very possible I buy all three pieces of the hardware, even though I like building my own PCs. I will also grant that Valve's support for linux probably would not be what it is without the enshittification of Microsoft's ecosystem. But in this world I'm gonna go ahead and accept the imperfect good news.
Finally! I've been holding out for years waiting on steam to release a new VR set, time to finally get one!
Where's my Steam Phone Gabe ?
NGL the cube thingy looks so damn attractive to me, especially as I don't own any form of PC gaming...
Now please Steam, officially sell to Mexico god damn it!
I’ll buy you one and sell it. You gotta pay shipping to send it across the border. If the thing breaks, send it back to me in the U.S. and I’ll file a warranty on your behalf. I’m just a dude who wants other people to play games and have never done something like this before.
Dm me if you are interested.
This is (literally) the way a gamer should be. Cheers!
Someone else in here commented on how it took a while for the Deck to come to his country.
I almost asked him, but since you're the second one...I mean...wouldn't you be able to just get a Deck or a Steam Machine or whatever from anywhere and use it?
It not being available to purchase directly from Steam means you have to get it from a 3rd party reseller, or order it to an address in an officially supported country and forward it from there yourself, both of which are generally more expensive than what steam is offering. The cheapest price I can find for a Steam Deck OLED in my country is a solid 20% more expensive than the price Steam lists on their website.
Ah, gotcha, so it's middleman overhead. Thanks.
No warranty in unsupported countries, and from what I've seen of Valve's quality control you probably wouldn't want to risk that.
Wait, what? Care to expand on that?
I didn't even want to engage with a non official purchase of the Steam Deck yet for what has been already established here, and reading this kills the excitement even further 😅
My Deck definitely had its fair share of hardware issues when I got it. Ended up getting a replacement for a faulty GPU, but the WiFi card also had its issues and kept disconnecting constantly. It was a first year LCD Deck though, so maybe they're better now. I also used to be in a Steam Deck discord and the number of users reporting hardware (and software) trouble seemed fairly high there too.
Valve sorta makes up for these issues with above average customer service, but in an unsupported country I'd for sure avoid early adopting their hardware.
My Index has never been reliable. Not the headset, nor the controllers. I have given up using it.
I've been saying for years that VR can get off my lawn until I can buy Linux native hardware. I guess I'm interested in VR, now.
is well said.
I need to buy all of these.
This is so fucking good for linux gaming
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
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.
As someone who works in assembler a lot, RISC-V is probably my favorite.
If anyone knows a useful open source project where people like me can contribute to this future happening, please do respond to this comment !
I've followed RISC-V development. It is so promising and so cool. But it is also under-cooked right now, I don't think it is ready to carry such a product. It might get better in the future, but as it stands it takes way too much effort to release a hardware product using it, never mind a high performant one like a gaming console. My hope is that the EU and FOSS initiatives can take a stronghold on the standard up to the point that it becomes a feasible competitor to Qualcomm and it retains it's openness. It is the only way stuff like a truly spyware free and privacy respecting smartphone can exist. Linux will never thrive with the hostile hellscape that is ARM hardware. Valve themselves have had to fight with the stubbornness of a myriad consortiums that want to gatekeep their modules and refuse to offer open source software. RISC-V just needs a lot of love and care for now to grow into a competitive standard. Many cool developers are working on it but it doesn't have the same financial effort behind it that ARM has.
But then, isn't that kinda where linux was at before steamOS kicked this revolution off?? Like, I had kinda dabbled in various linux distros here and there prior to steamOS and was always left feeling like it lacked complete polish - VR, gaming, easy app installs (outside the terminal, for normies)... All that has never seemed so well rounded -- until steamOS blessed me with KDE, and since then I've mained Debian w/ KDE on all my machines (hopefully I can even main deb on my phone, one day!!)
Point is= maybe if a company like valve (or even valve themselves) pulls a similar approach with RISC-V that we've seen them do with steamOS, we aren't wrong to hope for the same sort of outcome for it as well!
But, that's just a dream I suppose 😅 here's hoping!!! 🤞🤞
Yes, and that is why I'm hopeful for more RISC-V development. One day, maybe, there will be first party manufacturers making open devices that work easily with any software of choice instead of proprietary vendor lock-in.
If they shared the same processing unit it could also cut their costs down.
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.
Lets fucking go! This lineup looks sick.
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!
If Valve makes ARM Linux work properly as a gaming/desktop OS, I will uhh hmm.
I will buy this thing.
I wonder if they're still using Arch for the basis of this. Its ARM version is kinda not so great, although not terrible either.
why is this thing not called Steam Engine?
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
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/
@[email protected] @[email protected] @games@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.
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 only on the cost of manufacture.
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.
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.
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
After V, it more or less became a console game
7 has become a lot better with patches. I love it and I've been playing since the original. I still wouldn't want to play it without UI mods though.
I can’t wait to get the controller
Hell yeah! I have an upgrade path for my original Steam Controllers!
One under the radar feature of the Frame's controllers is being able to use them without the headset as essentially a normal controller split in two.
I just like that they have the complete compliment of normal controller buttons. It seems the world has agreed on twin sticks, a d-pad, ABXY (or triangle square cirlce et cetera, you know what I mean), and two shoulder buttons... Except for VR controllers. Every brand has their own dinky layout and they're all sparse on buttons, I guess not to "intimidate" newbies, but it requires making weird compromises or binding actions to directions on one of the analog sticks or something, and that always feels lacking.
I hope they also stole the idea from the OG Oculus controllers where it can sense when your fingers are on the buttons but not pressing them, to so they can show your fingers in VR space and help people work the things by sight as well as feel.
Edit: I watched the LTT video. Yes, the buttons have capacitive finger tracking as well. Rejoyce.
The Index controllers have touch-sensitive sticks and actual finger tracking so they measure how far your fingers are from the body of the controller. They put touch-sensitive sticks on the Deck as well.
I loved it on the Wii with attached nun-chuck, having my arms both facing out feels more comfortable then in, when sitting with a controller. Now you'll have a full set of inputs to go with it, very cool!
I really hope that we can buy the Frame controllers separately. Playing Twilight Princess on the Wii with one hand behind my head and the other resting on my lap was the most relaxed gaming experience I've ever had. Miles away from the crazy flailing about that haters would describe Wii gaming as.
That controller makes me swoon.
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.
You can also map the trackpads (on the Steam Deck at least, so I assume for the controller) to use a menu that you can tie to anything. EmuDeck set up plenty of Profiles that can switch the controls and the prompts on the touchpad radial to show so many options it would make my head spin! Hopefully that can fulfill your needs?
Plz fucking give us the clear option
The frame being a standalone linux headset is huge, hopefully this does to vr what the deck did to pancake.
(I know vr works on linux already but it's a pain)
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?
Glad to have sold my Index this past summer. Prices are gonna plummet once V.2 comes out
Where steamphone
These were the prices of the first generation: (Wikipedia Steam Machine US$400–$600; Steam Controller $49.99
Uh-oh...my wallet is in trouble.
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.
These sound absolutely amazing but it all depends on the price.
if the Steam controller is on par with a new 8bitdo then I would definitely pick it up.
The steam machine sounds intriguing but there is already a big market for mini PCs and I don't know if consumers would go out of their way to buy a steam PC box. I'm most skeptical about this one
Steam Frame looks fantastic but I really hope it's cheap enough to compete with the Meta Quest 3 and isn't just another ~$1000 headset for enthusiasts
There could never be a better test for the hypothesis than this critical moment where people are fucking pissed at Microsoft.
people can still just buy a $500 mini PC and install Linux on it
The part where they have to install the OS itself is going to be a major deal breaker for mass market.
GPU performance, unknown OS compatibility issues, performance profiles for normies.
I love NUC like devices and I already run linux, but i'm confident the steamos implementation will just work on their hardware because they're building it for it.
If you're on an AMD GPU and not at least dual booting linux you're missing out imo. Only a handful of competitive online games need windows for anticheat/drm.
Even with my Nvidia GPU (didn't know I'd be moving over to Linux when I got it), Linux is still the better option for me, a gamer. Windoze blows!
The overwhelming majority of consumers will never install an OS on a system.
They will only ever use the OS that came pre-installed.
Folks that would/could do that are not the folks this seems geared towards IMO, and I think it may whoosh a lot of us on Lemmy because in general we like to tinker and figure tech out, that's obviously not ubiquitous, but the vast majority of people(read consumers) do not want that at all. I also suspect the Steam Machine will be priced right around $500 to compete with the PS5, depending on their sales expectations they could legit make this a loss leader.
More likely geared towards the average PC gamer that just wants to play games and doesn't give a fuck about OSS or Linux in addition to lifelong console gamers that prefer controllers on couch gaming but are interested in all the other perks/freedoms that PCs offer. I was in the latter group about a year ago when I bought my deck.
I don't think they will. The problem is that the hardware is open.
Closed-system console vendors can sell at a loss because if you've bought the console and don't buy games from them for it, you're going to have limited use of it. It's maybe an expensive Blu-Ray player or something. Not a sensible purchase. You're gonna buy games for it.
So they can just crank up the price of games and make their return over time from games.
But if the Steam Machine is sold at a loss, then people will also buy it to use it as a regular mini-PC, and Valve doesn't make a return from them.
If the performance and price is comparable to rolling your own mini-ITX rig then why not?
Steam Machine feels more like a console that happens to also be a PC. If reasonably priced, the question is why anyone would want to buy Xbox or PlayStation when Steam Machine has a bigger library than both combined - on launch.
Because normies can't get Fortnite running easily on linux (afaik anyway), or other popular competitive titles like battlefield 6 or call of duty 2025 to run at all.
Most of the normies probably already have a console with some licenses that will carry over. PC gamers have a desktop system (often in addition to a console.) It's just not the same.
Consoles just work. You don't need to understand much. The deck has definitely not been a painless process but obviously it's pretty good, especially if you stick to green checkmark titles. Having to research what games will work, how well they work, and how to make them work if not by default is too much for a lot of people.
I'm glad it's coming though. More people running linux means better support overall from hardware vendors and software developers. Gaming on linux is in a great place today but it feels more like how gaming was 20 years ago where you sometimes have to look something up to get something working, and installing an OS is simply too much for a lot of people.
That’s right. I forgot there are ”normie games” with kernel anti cheat
The dream is that these "niche" hardware starts to gain momentum and these dumb anti cheat kernel start to disappear... Like I said, a dream.
The worst part are all the games that have anticheat that totally works fine on linux, but they simply don't allow it to function in their game. At least there's a list https://areweanticheatyet.com/
PlayStation is probably going to still have exclusives, or at least timed exclusives, driving some sales. But this announcement may be the final nail in Xbox's coffin.
You might not be the target audience. I'm comfortable building an HTPC and putting an OS and all on it and configuring it, but the benefit of a console is that someone just gets an all-in-one setup that works out-of-box. Well, and that game developers are specifically testing against.
Like, if it weren't a barrier, you'd probably just have everyone using PCs instead of consoles in their living room. Might open the gates to let console-only folks do Steam.
Linux is a shit show for general purpose normies. You still have issues for days if you don't buy the correct hardware. This will smooth the experience giving a known good start.
I think the mass market would still rather buy a console, so I assume most people interested in the steam machine specifically want a PC box. Now that I looked at the specs it doesn't seem that powerful, and I doubt it will be cheaper than a PS5.
Digital Foundry's analysis of it is that it could retail for somewhere between $400 and $500, but it will be slightly less powerful than a PS5, and therefore, it wouldn't be as attractive at $500 retail. Valve probably knows that, too.
I had a horrible flashback to the Ouija, that thing traumatized me
Oh man, the Ouya. That's a blast from the past. Play mobile games on your TV using a controller made out of cardboard and balsa wood and sized for a Roswell alien. Good times.
The VR looks interesting. I had bought the HP reverb G2, but Microsoft pulled the plug on windows mixed reality, and I've since moved to Linux, so this might be a good replacement.
Yes but …
Still, it’s good obviously, not having to rely on BigTech. This was also possible before though as I pointed out in https://lemmy.ml/post/38899489/22202786 with e.g. Lynx XR1, as a rooted Android standalone HMD with no account required.
Anyway IMHO the big questions for VR on Linux more broadly is what changes upstream on KDE in terms of immersive UX? Is KDE Plasma becoming a VR graphical shell? Does it have 3D widgets? Does it impact freedesktop in any way?
(copy of https://lemmy.ml/post/38899489/22202838 as I posted there first)
I’ll buy the VR headset if, as well as streaming games, you can also play video/mirror your desktop. I know that’s not the market they’re going for, but it seems to me that those are the main use-cases of VR headsets aside from gaming and to my non-tech way of thinking it doesn’t seem harder than streaming a game.
Doubt I would ever do the VR headset. I simply don't play the kind of games that work well with (or even need) VR. Although come to think of it, a VR Civilization VI game would be wild.
But the Steam Machine would be interesting to replace the old laptop I currently have running as my multimedia box on my television (streaming, retro gaming, steam mirroring, etc...) It would be more powerful than the well worn old dude I'm currently using.
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.
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.
Been waiting for this vr headset to release for years, only to find they’ve used lcd’s instead of OLED screens. I’m so disappointed and pissed.
gabe can have my firstborn
He will likely introduce them to gambling anyway.
The new controller and headset have
stressedaddressed every issue I had with each directly.It killed me that the original Controller didn’t have a second analog stick. A lot of people tried to claim that the trackpad was a viable replacement, but I just could never get used to it. Loved all the other features.
On top of that, no more light towers! I’ll finally be able to bring it friends’ places to demo! Plus the fact that the headset supports native gaming means no tower needed for some titles. I’d imagine the vast majority of VR-focused titles will run just fine since they almost all target low-spec anyway.
I think maybe based on the rest of your comment, you intended to write "addressed"?
God, I hate autocorrect.
I have it off on my phone at the moment because my soft keyboard is enaging in shennanigans, and I will say that I didn't appreciate how many errors that I make on tiny phone keyboards that it fixes until now. I mean, damned if you do, damned if don't.
Thumb-key is the solution.
https://github.com/dessalines/thumb-key
Thanks, but I don't think that it'll do it for me. I've tried similar packages before, and the problem is that I also want the ability to input a bunch of Unicode characters and use keys in terminal emulators and so forth. Even Anysoft Keyboard, which I'm presently using, is occasionally lacking, and it's pretty comprehensive. I've considered doing a soft keyboard myself, even, but I just can't work up the will to go develop for Android with Google slowly closing some stuff. I think that my long-run trajectory is to move what I can to a Linux laptop and hope that GNU/Linux phones eventually become a practical alternative to Android.
If you submit a patch with a custom layout you can do this pretty easily
i have almost no dev experience and managed.
Try thumb-key
My impression of the original Steam Controller was that it was designed for games I don't want to play on controller, at the expense of being terrible for games I do want to play on controller.
See it was the lack of dpad for me. The touchpads+gyro finally made high fidelity controller aim possible and fun, but no dpad meant I still needed a regular controller for 2d games
I'm disappointed in the screens they used but it unfortunately makes sense that 4k microOLED isn't feasible. I wish the new controllers supported Lighthouse tracking too. If the new controllers really are proprietary to just this single HMD that's a big failure in my opinion.
The only other major PC oriented inside-out system, Windows Mixed Reality, allowed controllers and headsets from all brands participating in the program to freely intermix. I'd doubt Valve would be dumb enough not to also follow this path, if there are ever successive iterations of this hardware.
Given their history with input devices and the fact that it runs an ARM version of SteamOS I would bet that controller support will be good
I wonder if the steam machine supports hdmi cec.
let's hope they sell these globally this time.
I will buy the VR headset immediately
Didn't Steam already have some home console like hardware a few years ago? That flopped so badly I don't even remember the name
Real glad I can soon ditch the DualSense Edge and its only half-functional gimmicks !
I will miss the adjustable triggers, but I will NOT miss the randomly incorrect button mappings, and "extra buttons" that get fucked up if you ever connect it to an actual PS5
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).
I give exactly zero fucks about any of this until they show prices.
All I got to say is that the new Steam controller better link to devices as a controller and not a mouse. The current steam controller shows up as a mouse when I connect it to mobile devices via Bluetooth, so I can't use it with games that have controller integration build in to the game, since they think I am connecting a Bluetooth mouse. The only reason I don't use my current steam controller as my main controller is because of the mouse issue.
Rip loud circle touchpads.
Heart emoji
Indiegames cube!
Hope this work great, gaming industry really needs that
So excited!
Bit disappointed to see only 4 tracking cameras. Willing to bet tracking is gonna be horrid when at waist level still. That's an issue that has been plaguing VR headsets with inside out tracking since the beginning, and it's frustrating it looks like they still didn't bother fixing it on a headset that almost certainly isn't gonna be cheap to start with
Valve's strategy here seems to be to build physical inertial tracking into the controllers as well. They both have an IMU built in which presumably gives them a pretty decent ability to guess where they've been moved in physical space even if they're outside of the cameras' field of view. I don't know if anyone has accurately assessed how well that works in this case.
My old WMR controller had that too, but it only tracked for a few seconds before losing the controller location again because it eats battery. And that's with 2 AA's. Unless this one is newer and super efficient, on one battery, I imagine it'll run into a similar problem to not have them die in only a couple of hours
Yeah, I'll never be able to afford any of that stuff, no point me even looking at it sadly.
It's for middle class people who have piles of cash to burn :-(
Would love to see Valve do a SteamOS Linux Phone next.
With it coming with an optional phone gaming accessory to use your phone as a controller (with same design/gaming usage as Steam Deck/Steam Controller)
For use with any Valve hardware/software through the connected accessory (Bluetooth/Dongle/Wired)
Don't have an extra controller? Use your phone with the add-on.
Sidenote: Wonder if PostmarketOS will add support for Steam Frame overtime. Sadly it does not have call support I think but otherwise it would technically be a different kind of device that could function as a phone tok
I've been keeping some money set aside for a newer VR system, specifically one that supports wireless connection to PC. Was considering one of the newer HTC models but Linux support seemed... spotty. In glad I waited and have already wishlisted the Frame
It's interesting that the VR headset is ARM based. Maybe that's a sign that 2027 will be the year of the ARM desktop
Love it!
I really hope Steam OS comes out for more than just 2 devices though. That would be AWESOME.
Big picture mode is great but certain games + controller + hardware combos still have issues with it. Whereas the steam deck has a fantastic time hooking into things.
Why do you want SteamOS and not just linux?
I swapped over to pop a couple months back and things just work. Gaming stuff outside of steam works too.
There's other immutable distros for people afraid of messing up their system but in the modern world of flatpaks, lutris prefixes and wine/proton I have found I really don't need to mess with my system too much. I find it hard to justify the immutability because of that.
I doubt SteamOS will ever support most hardware versions. Nvidia by itself is still not where they need to be on the linux side, and that's the majority of gamers' hardware today (and why all steam hardware is AMD gpu based.) Then there's all the weird audio and network gear that has very limited support because a system integrator chose some oddball model or brand that nobody else uses.
I've seen other people request SteamOS-as-a-general-OS on here too, which also surprised me.
I'm thinking that it's one of two things:
People just want something that they're sure is easy to use.
People want an HTPC-oriented configuration.
I think there's also some overall ignorance about how linux works with drivers too. They assume they're going to have a steam deck-like experience that is easy and just works, but they don't realize the valve chosen hardware's drivers are built into the OS by valve.
Everybody wants an OS that "just works" - it's the least interesting part of computing for users. It's simply the thing that lets you actually do what you want to do with comptuers. Be it a HTPC, a console-like experience or something else. Drivers ruin all of it though especially when you're bringing your own hardware.
I don't see any likelihood that we're gonna leave the existing driver-hell for a more streamlined experience either. It's definitely gotten better over the years but for all of microsoft's attempts at getting it to "just work" on their own OS, it constantly breaks. They released AMD drivers earlier this year with weird fucking versions that fucked people with AMD GPUs, requiring some manual intervention of DDU + Reinstalling a proper driver version. I've seen the same thing over and over again in userland for Intel graphics, intel audio and wifi and other popular and unpopular brands too. It's one of the biggest reasons I swapped to linux, because there's no fucking windows update lol.
Digital Foundry's guess is somewhere between $400 and $500, and they think it will be a harder sell at $500 for the power it's offering.
4k60 is optimistic at best, as well, without some serious FSR deg in most newer games.
I'm sure there are vast swaths of older games that will hit 4k60 though. Me, personally, my TV is still 1080p, so I'm confident I'll hit my full resolution without breaking a sweat, haha.
I could also just play 2d isometric all day at 4k60 or cs1.6 at 240 🤷♂️
It's dishonest advertising. A 5 year old 3080 couldn't reliably do 4k60 on modern at the time graphic intensive games. This slower GPU with 8gb of vram certainly ain't doing it on anything today modern and graphically intensive.
Sad about the monochrome passthrough but otherwise pretty hyped for more VR hardware. The Index was a disappointment to me so glad to see it's more in line with the Quest 3, especially the controllers. They look perfect.
Does it run on electricity or do you have to throw coal in it somewhere?
NOled :(
Somebody really needs to make a modern xr wayland compositor...
Probably never coming to asia :)
So this is the "Extend" step of PC gaming control by Valve. We'll see how open the Steam ecosystem will stay.
Im currently playing a game from Epic on my Steam Deck, I've recently played games from GOG, and of course Steam. The biggest drawbacks with non-Steam games are having to go to the desktop to install them, and not having my time in big picture mode tracked for those games. So, not seamless, but exceptionally playable. I've even customized button maps for non-Steam games, and also had to do nothing at all to have them work well.
If Steam keeps extending like this, people will stop buying Windows for gaming. I will acknowledge that my gaming requirements aren't as extensive as some, and I've never installed Fortnite or Roblox for my own use.
EDIT: Now, when Steam updates, sometimes that breaks the plugins, but once they are updated, it shows my Play Time again. It may not stay updated depending on you playing those non-Steam games, but I just like a general number. Even some of my PC desktop played games are wrong on the time (pause menu to get up to do something for awhile while leaving the game running.)
There are some Decky plugins for the Play Time issue you are describing! I have over 300 hours logged on ES-DE (EmulationStation Desktop Edition) that was installed through EmuDeck.
I am not currently with my Deck, but I can find the actual name for you later if you need it!
Interesting, I'll have to look it up. Not having times isn't world-ending for me, but I do like having them. And achievements are nice, too.
I was hoping to find a better page to share than this, but time is limited. Here is what I assume is the proper website to at least see what plugins they support. For what it is worth, I use:
CSS Loader
Pause Games
Audio Loader
Memory Deck
Animation Changer (my favorite of all of them)
SteamGridDB
PlayTime (The one I think you are looking for!)
Off topic, but I also use Synchthing (not from the Decky plugins) to get my emulation game saves all in one area, then onto my server, which is then uploaded to my cloud provider for access across all my devices. :)
Shit, these are all the things I'm looking for. Now I have something to do this weekend. Do you run SteamOS beta? I do, and it's been pretty good, but I'm not sure how the plug-ins feel about it.
Good for those people. Unfortunately, Windows has other use cases outside of gaming, and I'm not planning to switch to Linux because it won't be able to cover those for me.
I just don't want to see something like "Half-Life 3, built first for Steam Hardware" in an announcement five years later, and ending up having some issues on Windows because that was not a priority. So far, Valve only keeps improving their platform to hook everyone on the Steam ecosystem, but we can't be sure of their next steps. No one is immune to increasing profit margins, even Valve.
The vast majority of the software updates they do appear to be open sourced, which makes it really hard to lock the market using anti-competitive measures. And making Linux more mainstream makes it better for everyone, not just gamers. And if Valve makes games that are optimized for their hardware spec, how is that any different than an XBox, Sony, or Nintendo game, except for the part where it will also work on other PCs without having to wait for a port?
It's reasonable to be cautious about any actor, especially one as powerful as Valve. But nothing I've seen, except for the loot box stuff, has been actually anti-competitive, to the point where my GOG and Epic games work well enough on Linux these days that even the games that warn me I'm on an unsupported platform work just fine.
I'm not gonna argue, cause honestly we've seen way too many companies follow this same shitty pattern.
Still, I'm hopeful! Valve has been an absolute bro thus far - if the steam deck is anything to go by, I think we've got a lot to look forward to!
They've released a version of every one of these before. Steam Controller, Valve Index VR set, a line of Steam Machines some time ago....