Following on from the success of the Steam Deck, Valve is creating its very own ecosystem of products. The Steam Frame, Steam Machine, and Steam Controller are all set to launch in the new year. We’ve tried each of them and here’s what you need to know about each one.
“From the Frame to the Controller to the Machine, we’re a fairly small industrial design team here, and we really made sure it felt like a family of devices, even to the slightest detail,” Clement Gallois, a designer at Valve, tells me during a recent visit to Valve HQ. “How it feels, the buttons, how they react… everything belongs and works together kind of seamlessly.”
For more detail, make sure to check out our in-depth stories linked below:
Steam Frame: Valve’s new wireless VR headset
Steam Machine: Compact living room gaming box
Steam Controller: A controller to replace your mouse
Valve’s official video announcement.
So uh, ahem.
Yes.
Valve can indeed count to three.
I’m just excited to see the Steam Machine actually existing.
And we’re sure that Steam Frame isn’t like a Batman Forever thing.
I have zero doubt gaben has an island off the coast of WA where he sits on a throne absorbing community memes through an ominous wireless connection to the neural implant on the back of his head that looks like a red handwheel.
Yay GabeCube™.
I.
Want.
An actual valve, that goes along with the Frame.
The first time I saw that guy turn around, I damn near pissed myself.
That would actually be sick, a spigot on the top of steam box that functions as an on/off switch.
I’d actually love it as a detachable accessory for the Frame, just for fun. Have it snap onto the back of the VR headset strap or something. The strap has something on the back (probably a battery pack) so it could just mount directly to that. Sell it as an optional accessory for like $10-15, and they’d be printing money.
I can almost guarantee someone will end up 3d printing this themselves.
The Frame does actually have a uh, back unit on the rear strap, some of the hardware is in the faceplate, some of it is on this part thats on the rear/center of the headstrap.
So, assuming it wouldn’t fuck up the thermals too much, you can just 3d print something that’d clip or strap onto that part.
I’m watching the Gamers Nexus breakdown at the moment, I may have misunderstood something, but I think that’s right?
EDIT:
For clarity, I’m not talking about the Machine, the desktop/living room device, I’m talking about the Frame, the VR headset.
The wirelessly streaming VR headset, that does not need base stations, because it uses monochrome/IR cameras in the headset to model the space you are in.
Images you can hear
Could use it as the wheel that tightens the headband!
Kinda missed opportunity to call it the companion cube 😅
But I am sure there will be a custom skin for it that will make it look like one.
Well, I mean, they’re also referencing a song.
Fairly popular song with a lot of Millenials, those of us who were around when the old memes were first put to old YouTube, like Daft Bodies.
But yes, I am also sure that if not Valve, someone will be making a companion cube kit for it, all Valve has to do is release the externally relevant .stl file.
The thing I’m most intrigued by is the Steam Frame. I’ve been running a second hand Quest 2 with WiVRn to stream my VR games on Linux to it and it works well, but I hate having a headset made by Meta.
Can WiVRn be used to use the Quest headsets without a Meta account?
Probably if you jailbreak it.
I hope the bazzite devs grab a dev kit and ensure day one support. I’ve been holding off on VR since there just wasn’t a solution that seemed straightforward.
WiVRn is actually really easy to use. Install Flatpak, add a launch option to VR games, and hit launch. Works for me pretty much perfectly every time.
The controller is a day 1 buy, if the price is right maybe the cube. 16GB RAM 8 VRAM seems a bit low though.
Yeah, I’m genuinely excited about the new controller. My biggest complaint about the Steam Deck has been the lack of touch-enabled controllers for mouse control. Because even in Big Picture mode, there are still some games that occasionally need to use the mouse. Launchers, random in-game menus, emulator menus, etc… I have the original Steam Controller, and use it occasionally, but it has a few big flaws… Notably, the lack of arrow keys, which makes playing certain console games (or emulators) on it difficult.
The PS5 controller at least has a touch pad, but there’s no easy way to scale the mouse sensitivity for the controller’s touchpad, and the default sensitivity is way too high. Barely touching the pad has the mouse cursor zipping across the screen. Hitting tiny options on a “1080p launcher on a 4k TV” drop-down menu is nearly impossible. There’s also the issue where you need to hold the PlayStation button to enable mouse mode, but holding the button for ~15 seconds turns off the controller. It’s a laughably dumb oversight, where you have to do all of your (completely unscaled, way too sensitive) mouse movement in ~10 second increments, or else you’ll accidentally turn your controller off.
A lot of the problems you mention with Steam Deck can be addressed by taking the time to set up like a uh, a universal control scheme set up.
Start with the default ‘desktop mode’ layout template, tweak it around to work as you like.
Like uh, I’ve got the left pad as mouse movement, and then either middle mouse or a desktop zoom bind for left pad click.
Right pad I made a dpad, broke into up/left as left click, down/right as right click… i made a bunch of common ctrl + whatever commands happen on the abxy buttons, when im holding the ctrl bumper…
Reworked the abxy buttons to do like, enter, escape, space, backspace/delete, when not being affected by ctrl bumper… maybe have em trigger a turbo after being double clicked or held for so long, to be able to like, backspace a bunch quickly without a million taps…
Either double bind the dpad to controller up dn lft rgt, and the keyboard up dn lf rt, or via a button chord or mode shift… maybe also enable a turbo by some rules, so you can move along a typed string, or navigate some UI…
Moved keyboard up to the hamburger menu, the sort of PiP button is now either alt or tab…
Made touch right stick + bumpers scroll up/down, touch left stick + bumpers volume up/down…
And have some kind of bind remaining to be able to alt+tab, win/super, maybe ` for console access, maybe a kill current window, pc key combo bind for if something locks up or blows up gamescope…
Anyway, do something like that, save it as a template, maybe give it some alt layouts for a pure controller typed scheme, but throw in the ability to pullup the keyboard and also use the mouse, for situstions where a typing prompt of pc type UI appears, have those layouts switch able via back face buttons…
Now you’ve got a multi tool template, assign that to whatever weird thing you’re trying to launch, then modify it from there for that specific game/program, that way everything is always at least close to whatever your universal template is, and you wont lose your mind with 48493 totally different control schemes.
Yeah I’m holding judgement till pricing too, but… cautiously optimistic this thing could be comparable to a 1440p crushing, soldered on chip , small form factor pc, for maybe roughly the same price as doing a minisforum based sff build.
I am guessing that yeah, the Machine will be capablr of 4K60 the way a PS5 is (aka, its not, it does 2K and then checkerboards it), but, if you target roughly that level of hardware at 1440p, take advantage of a semi custom chip achitecture…
Could be good, no real way to know without testing.
But hey, Science is Fun!
4K 60 with FSR. Of course they don’t mention what level of FSR.
Should be perfect for 1080p gaming
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Yeah I’m trying to find real hands on reviews especially on 4k TVs without variable refresh. RDNA 3 doesn’t leave me hopeful on games like Indiana Jones. Who knows, maybe eGPUs will be supported
Not likely as it’s supposed to be an all in one solution
There might be a single USB4 but everything routes through the CPU IO and there is no chipset.
Definitely not going to be anything more than performance/quality FSR or native 1080p
Good enough for my needs. I’ll start saving right away.
I am intrigued, though sceptical on their 4K gaming claims.
The VR looks neat, will be waiting on reviews.
4K (with FSR). It’ll be 1080p upscaled to 4K.
That said, that’s not necessarily a bad thing for something they’ve said is targeting just above a traditional console’s price tag.
Yeah, it can upscale.
Consoles tell us they can do 4K60 as well!
They just weren’t honest enough to actually say “via upscaling” in the marketing for the most recent generation, or bother to explain that 2K checker boarded up to 4K, after being upscaled from roughly 1.5K… is not really 4K the same way a $4000 PC can do 4K.
It literally says in the video “4K with FSR”. They weren’t really hiding it.
That’s what I’m trying to say, they bothered to specify it can hit 4k60 with upscaling, console marketing tends to just skip that qualifier part, misleadingly.
Ps5 even advertises 8k, because some easy to run indiegame might be able to be run at that res lol.
Ah yes lol, for all the average consumers with 8K TVs, who really need full 8K detail to notice the subtle variation in vector widths in like, Silksong.
… 8K is an actual scam, holy shit, you can do the angular resolution math, and 8K basically only even theoretically makes sense in a VR headset, and thats before you even think about price.
They should lean into the porn games and sell a waist mounted haptic device call it the “Steam Plower”
We’ve already got
laptopfacetop terminology going on, so…Just affix a giant silicone ass to the faceplate, so you can have your face sat on, very uh, immersively.
… God, and to think, while Valve is doing this, Nintendo…
Nintendo re-released the Virtual Boy.
No real upgrades.
Just, here’s the Virtual Boy, again.
You know, that gimmicky flop from the mid 90s?
…smh…
Controller is a day one buy for me probably, although I don’t like the charging solution much, might wait for a proper dock, first or third party.
I might bite the bullet with the headset too. Haven’t got into VR since Oculus DK2 and I’m itching for it again.
I’m really excited about that Frame and Controller. Hopefully they’re not too expensive.
Announced the Steam Controller? Hello 2015! The one they released in 2015 was pretty awesome, hopefully this one is just as good.
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You realize that your own description is… kind of contradictory?
It should handle every mainstream console without issue, but also, its not going to run 4K.
Eh?
So, when mainstream consoles say they are running 4K60, what that actually means is they are:
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Turning the graphics down to what PC players would call high/medium, but, with some raytracing.
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Rendering at between 1K and 2K, using FSR/DLSS to upscale to 2K, if necessary.
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Then, checkerboard expanding 2K, up to 4K.
Something roughly like that.
Like… yeah, no console can run 4K60 the way a $3000 to $5000 desktop PC can, with balls to the wall raytracing and also graphics turned up to ultra or whatever is beyond that.
But, all these console makers just say “4K60!” anyway.
Valve at least specified “with FSR”.
While I am skeptical its going to be comparable to a 4k60 PC, Digital Foundary went more in depth into the actual hardware specs, Moore’s Law notes that going from RDNA 2 in the 7600M to RDNA 3 does make a difference in terms of what those CUs can actually do…
Moore’s Law is saying its roughly going to be comparable to a PS5, slightly better in some scenarios, slightly worse in others… generally, maybe slightly worse than a PS5 in games that are constantly streaming in or out tons of assets, roughly comparable in other games.
Largely, because FSR 4 is probably going to be working on RDNA 3 next year.
… Moore’s Law also has a cost to produce estimate of $425 for the 512GB variant, and he guesses that Valve could price them anywhere between $600 to $450, depending on how much margin they want vs how much they want to basically cripple MSFT.
For reference, from my location, right now, Best Buy is giving me:
PS5 Slim Digital: $500
PS5 Slim: $550
PS5 Pro: $750
Xbox Series S (512GB): $400
Xbox Series X (1TB): $600
So… uh, if a price range between $425 and $600 is the ballpark, well that’s basically game over for MSFT Gaming, and its also competetive with PlayStation.
Moore says the Steam Machine is about twice as powerful as a Xbox S… and it could cost basically the same amount, I think the S is still MSRPing at $450 from MSFT, but Best Buy has dropped the price because they can’t sell them.
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