Phoronix article: https://www.phoronix.com/news/Steam-Machines-Frame-2026
Also listed here: https://store.steampowered.com/sale/hardware
Valve has already sent support for the new Steam Controller upstream: https://www.phoronix.com/news/New-Steam-Controller-SDL
Since the Steam Machine is more like an entry PC and not a console (and will be priced as that), does that mean that SteamOS for desktop will be officially supported?
2026 Year of the Linux desktop?
Surely this will bring over a lot of people to Linux
Year of the Linux living room
Not gonna lie the controller looks ass but maybe it feels fantastic so I‘ll wait with my final judgement. I‘m interested to see how they will try to push VR since most users are still incredibly uninterested in it.
I’ve wanted to get into VR for the longest time but they all seemed like extremely walled gardens. This sounds awesome to me.
For most of my life VR has been, ‘VR is a great way to experience shitty games and you just have to pay a grand or more for this interactive tummy ache, and your unit may not be supported next year! Buy!’
I’m going to hold out until I can pick up one of these at the pawn shop for a bill.
I got an Index for cheap last year and was very excited to play a number of my favorite games with optional VR mode. Turns out:
- the Index ecosystem is more accessible than expected. 2) the games I was looking forward to all played like ass and made VR seem like a stupid gimmick. 3) In a desperate move that felt like sunk cost fallacy, I tried several VR-only games, and got TOTALLY hooked on modded Beatsaber. This itself made the buy-in worth it.
Edit! I’m a 90s kid, and I’m really disappointed that VR hasn’t taken off the way scifi suggested it would. Back then, being absorbed in pure information sounded awesome, but now it is just going the way of 24/7 misinformation advertisements and micro transactions.
I’ll hold off on VR until there is a decent open source unit that isnt $800.
‘VR is a great way to experience shitty games
Have you tried Half-life: Alyx?
I recommend you give that, or something equivalent, a go without even buying any hardware. Either ask a friend or go to an arcade. You don’t need to shell out a grand to try.
If you hate it, move on.
The problem is to really make an informed decision you have to try it first-hand. The sensory experience unlike any other device, so descriptions aren’t super helpful, video doesn’t convey what it’s actually like, so you really have to experience it to understand it.
Also given how common it seems to be anecdotally to get sick from it, no one wants to jump in just to have to jump back out.
And unless you know someone that already jumped in and can try theirs, a lot of people like me just don’t want to commit sight unseen. (I mean I’m also broke, but this would be true anyway)
I don’t have a way to try it out, so until I do it’s not on my radar to care. I’m very curious about it. Even if I don’t like it I do really want to see what it’s like at least once. But I’m not gonna pay for that chance. It’s gotta impress me without effort on my part (more than driving to it anyway).
Also given how common it seems to be anecdotally to get sick from it, no one wants to jump in just to have to jump back out.
you can build a resistance to it. It takes time, and it was the case for me
Maybe so, but you probably need to enjoy your first exposure to want to drop money on an entire setup for it.
It’s already crazy enough to drop that money just hoping you like it, but if you drop it hoping it stops making you nauseous, that’s a much bigger ask.
I’m still hoping I won’t have that problem. I do get car sick on meandering drives, but not even close to as bad as I did 10-15 years ago, but the worse the drive gets, the more I have to stay staring out the car windows.
I assume the VR effect would be similar, given it’s a similar symptom, but backwards. (In VR you don’t feel motion, but you see it, whereas in a car, you feel it, but either don’t see it from not looking, or if you have wide visibility it looks like you’re not moving as much compared to the background)
As someone who used to get sick in cars and boats, I got it, so you might as well
If the technology interests you, then sick or not, you’ll probably like it. Won’t play every day, but it’ll be a nice experience.
Start with games with not a lot of motion (beat saber for example), then move to more intensive games. You’ll get sick after 15mins, then 20mins, then 25… until you last for a couple hours, and at this point you’ve built your resistance.
Just stop playing when you feel sick and try again an hour later when you feel better or a few days later
But yea, VR isn’t straightforward or an obvious purchase. It requires time and will, and money, obviously
It’s clearly a luxury and you need to have too much money or be really motivated to purchase it
I really want to love VR, but it’s just not for me. And i don’t think i’m alone with that. To me, VR is something you try in a mall for 20min and think it’s cool and not something you want to play around with home.
There’s a reason we don’t see any big Let’s Players do more than a couple episodes of VR games.
That doesn’t mean they’re not having fun, but it’s quite physically demanding and the experience just doesn’t translate to 2D.
Looks can be deceiving. Coming from someone who uses the steamdeck, that layout looks exactly how I hoped and imagined it would be. The steamdeck is incredibly comfortable to hold and this looks like it would be the same!
The controllers have battery compartments! 🔔 🔔 🔔
So, I’ve been wanting to buy a controller to play classic games.
After doing some research I got an 8bit Do classic 2, which looked and felt great, but I guess couldn’t work with my Bluetooth.
Should I just get an Xbox controller, or hold out for this new Nintendo tech (I only game on PC and Switch, currently).
I’ve bought three controllers for my PC over the years, and none of them have been universally usable.
If you want to play just controller games, this one is probably overkill and maybe a bit bulky. I guess the HD haptics are neat.
Then again, it likely won’t be any more expensive than the scam amount of money microsoft charges for their basic, non-HAL effect, non-gyro, basic haptics controllers.
Hopefully, this means an official release of SteamOS Desktop. I want to switch away from Windows 11 IoT, if I can get a flavor of Linux with official backing from an 800lb gaming gorilla. While I can try out Bazzite or Cachy, I would prefer to have only one Linux for the rest of my PC’s life.
Would have stuck with Windows, if it weren’t for the fact that Microsoft has been channeling the spirit of an overly controlling parent.
official backing from an 800lb gaming gorilla
Eh… aren’t most of the largest corporations contributing to Linux already? I’m not sure what you need beside Google, Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, Oracle, Samsung, etc https://www.linuxfoundation.org/about/members
Those companies aren’t exactly releasing consumer-facing distro’s, though.
Those contribute to Linux, but not Desktop Linux and not at all gaming on Linux.
I’m a bit too lazy to check for the entire stack I admit but I bet a lot of those actually do. Still to do a quick check Google for examples is on https://ev.kde.org/supporting-members/
I was a pretty big enjoyer of the design of the first Steam controller, so adding a second stick and keeping the touchpads sounds great. Also mine broke, I can’t remember exactly what gave out, but it was just destroyed, and using a touchpad for a second stick felt awkward af.
I didn’t even mind the way it bent “backwards”, the fact that the stick and buttons were tiny, or its weird shape. Actually thinking about it, it was the right trigger that broke and just caved in, Spring broke, plastic tab snapped off, just basically a hole left there. I wasn’t about to attempt a repair, either. I don’t have the skill for that.
Anyway, this looks nice. A lot of people seem to call it ugly, but I don’t get it. Sturdy and functional are a good look, so this looks great. And if it functions just as well as the Steam Deck controls, (and of course it will, since it’s basically the same parts except switching out magnetic sticks instead of regular ones)
Here’s hoping the triggers are better on it. It’s definitely on my radar for next year.
I don’t like the look of this controller… I’m still gonna get one. Everything else I love.
Especially that SteamOS is apparently going to become available on ARM devices.
Same, but at least it feels like the focus was on usability rather than looks. Keep it humble, Steam!
Arch linux ARM (the base of such steam os) has existed for a while now. Not to diminish Valve efforts, just putting in some context.
Fex works for most games now! This is amazing.
And now there are arm systems that are powerful enough to compete with consoles easily (consoles probably already using ARM?)
I’m running it on my raspi but it seems like the repos have been frozen for a while now?
Hopefully the Frames can compete with the Meta Quest in both price/performance. It will be good to have relatively affordable VR headset not made by Facebook.
Wish I didnt have to wear glasses, otherwise I’d use my Index alot more.
Inserts?
@[email protected] @[email protected] it would certainly be good for it to be relatively affordable but they’re really not promising it will at the moment since they only said aiming it to be cheaper than an Index.
They missed the chance to call the machine the Steam Engine
I thought the GabeCube was even better.
But they did name it after a daft punk song
banger
Huh, neat. Til.
Fuck, they did! 😫
Steam Frame is interesting. Would love a non-Meta VR headset that doesn’t cost $1k and also doesn’t have a million wires and base stations.
It’s most probably gonna be around $1k, I saw someone say they expect it to be $900, but nothing concrete yet
16GB RAM, tho?
Yeah… hopefully upgradeable. I’m sure Valve is shooting for a certain price point.
Most likely not, my guess is that it’s going to be super fast unified memory like in the Framework Deaktop
It’s 16GB DDR5 + 8GB GDDR6 for the GPU.
24GB total, non-unified.
Gamers’ Nexus video says it’ll be laptop-type memory and upgradable.
does being “super fast” matter here though? It’s a gaming machine, not for AI, and for that normal ram is also super fast.
You might be right. Are they using the same AMD chips?
The announcement did not include Copilot? No mention of 300 useless AI features being shoved down our throats??!
It’s wild how by virtue of the fact that Valve isn’t a publicly traded company beholden to shareholders, the same Valve which has a history of putting out half-baked goods and which has an always-on DRM client called Steam, seems poised to surpass most of its competitors both in the user privacy and hardware hardware spaces with just straightforward products. They have a product to sell, and that’s it. They don’t need to micro-optimize for bullshit like seemingly every other large tech company does.
It feels like just yesterday that VR was the big hype tech.
That’s because they make an insane amount of money by taking 30% of every sale on their platform, which nearly everyone uses because they’re a near monopoly and the alternatives are terrible. Around $3.5 Million per employee, nearly 5x the next highest company, which is Facebook at around $780,000 per employee.
You‘re getting downvotes for no reason. Also anyone who ever had to contact Steam support felt how criminally understaffed they are so it makes sense they make tons of money per employee I guess.
Around $3.5 Million per employee, nearly 5x the next highest company, which is Facebook at around $780,000 per employee.
that’s a bullshit metric only useful to incite hatred. why the fuck do you want to say that valve is “this many times worse than facebook!”? it is obviously false.
only thing this proves is that they have relatively few employees. which also probably means that most of them do real work instead of being overloaded with managers
The numbers just show that they are 8x as efficient. I only referenced Facebook because they’re the next closest company for comparison.
I never said they were worse than Facebook. That’s your assumption, reading what you want, not what’s actually being said.
Their efficiency is largely due to their flat organizing structure. They have no real hierarchy to speak of.
Which is also one of the reasons so few new things get done, and why they (until now) haven’t been able to count to 3.
To get anything done you either have to be able to do it entirely by yourself which is unlikely, or get enough others organized and on board to make it happen.
What? Valve released CS2 like last year? They do stuff all the time. They have like three games they’re actively maintaining while making HL3 and three new pieces of tech? This is a wild, unfounded take and feels ideologically bound.
I should note that 30% is incredibly standard in the industry, and Valve offers a LOT more for that 30% than literally any other digital publisher. Physical publishers take substantially more, and the only digital store that offers less is EGS, which is simultaneously absolute dogshite and also has been trying very, very hard to astroturd the ‘30%’ thing for ages.
Nintendo, Sony, and Apple all take 30%. I think MS does as well, but don’t quote me on that one.
don’t forget google. that applies to all paid apps, in app purchases and donations on the play store, not only for games. google also forbids you from showing any other donation option on your website if you link to it from your app.
Fwiw, GOG has no DRM for their titles (its own niche space, not competition). Not sure if they charge 30% too, but even in such case they’re giving you more because of the lack of DRM.
Steam is quite virtuous, they gave us Proton. But is far from being based.
It’s fucking wild. Like, I love Steam, don’t get me wrong, but holy shit just suck less (edit: than other stores do) and charge less (edit: of devs) and you could gobble up a lot of that market share. But none of them do.
Most other competitors charge less than steam, but steam has a clause which prevents devs from putting their games cheaper elsewhere. This is the real big shitty move made by valve, otherwise they do mostly everything right. I hope someone challenges this clause in a court of law someday, it looks very monopolistic to me
Notably Epic charges less than 30% (something like 12% IIRC) to try to get more of that market. They even give away games. But their app is still inferior so it gets less use.
company: “I want what steam is making and more” shareholders: “brilliant”
“I want what steam is making but I’m not willing to improve service OR charge less!”
There are a lot of specs missing from what the streets were hoping for from the holy grail of VR headsets, but I’m starting to believe that they are not going for that. It seems they want to win in the mid-range market competing directly with Meta. Honestly, “Quest 3 without Meta” is already very compelling. I guess it’s not all down to how competitively they decide to price it. “Cheaper than Index” is already good news for my wallet at least.
I don’t see it in the hardware design, but from a software perspective the groundwork is there for modularity. Offloading the core compute to the PC frees up onboard processing to run peripherals like full color front cameras (onboard are black and white / IR) and more advance proximity detection, hell hook up lidar and go nuts with full body tracking.
That said, all of that would depend on decent I/O. 2x USB4 ports would go a long way.
”Quest 3 without Meta” is what I’ve been dreaming about. I feel like Steam Frame could be my entry to the VR space, if the price is decent.
I believe the cost of Meta devices is also subsidized by surveillance capitalism, so if this costs more, doesn’t spy on you, and lets you do whatever you want with your own hardware, then it’s worth voting with your wallet. If Valve somehow is able to price this similarly to a Quest 3 while having better specs and without exploiting their customers like Meta does, then all hail the great and mighty Gabe.
Personal privacy is always worth the cost. The ‘subsidies’ can go away anytime, so better to not be locked into an expensive spyware platform to begin with.
I just recently upgraded from my OG Vive because I didn’t want an inside out tracking or wireless, but… let’s see what the price is and if the thing is actually as good in real world conditions as Linus makes it look. I might just try those pancake lenses (because the Vive Pro 2 lenses are bad).
And yeah, I will never give Meta money. Not directly, and indirectly as little as I can.
But what about the steam carrots and broccoli?
Or the Steam(ed) Dumpling.
Or the steamed hams
