t’s certainly been a journey for Valve. A week prior to the Steam Frame’s launch, we spoke with two engineers at Valve about the project: Joy Lyons, hardware engineer, and Jeremy Selan, software engineer. The memory crisis and the price were a big part of that conversation. From that chat, we can confirm that Valve had aimed for a lower price point than the one it’s launching the Frame for today.
Here’s Lyons on the memory crisis:
“We set out to design this hardware with one particular price in mind, but we’ve made choices to make sure that we’re making a product that is choiceful, that people can purchase, they can upgrade with different features later. But we wanted to make sure we had a base product with really great performance. Then that price target shifted due to the ongoing RAM crisis around the world.”
Lyons also said that forecasting for the cost of certain components used in the Steam Frame is an ongoing challenge.
Not exactly boding well of the Steam Deck 2.
Better lens and better screen resolution.
What you seem to be saying is that you want to pay an entry-level price for an enthusiast tier device, and like… yeah, we all would, but we don’t realistically expect anyone to sell it to us for that price.
Ah misread that. I thought they meant the Quest 3S which has the inferior lens and screen resolution. The Quest 3 resolution is very close to the Steam Frame and I can get one for around $300.
Sure - the primary strikes against the Quest 3 are the absolutely egregious privacy concerns, and the closed ecosystem. If neither of those are dealbreakers for you, go get one.