Steam Frame, Steam controller and Steam Machine Revealed

In for that Steam Controller. I disliked the first one although I do still own it, It's been stuck in a cabinet for years. This fixes everything about it and is exactly what I was hoping for plus a bit more with those sensors. I was just telling my brother how I really hoped it would have built in haptics outside of the trackpads the other day due to it being weak, and BAM it is there, nice. Fingers crossed someone makes a good program for it for PC gamepass games.

Pricing? I'm guessing it will be $79.99. I feel that is what they'll go for. I'm personally wanting it to be $59.99 though haha...

The Steam Frame looks awesome, but I got a Quest 3 that gets the job done, but I love there's more comp now and hopeful for a ton more good quality VR games.

Not really interested in the Steam Machine. Already got my PC setup with my TV that's slightly more powerful (12600k/3070ti)l. I do really hope it is successful though so I can get rid of Windows on my PC.

This seems like a logical upgrade from my 3080, and allow me to play pc games on my couch.

No brainer.
Sorry to say, but it will be a bit weaker than your 3080 is.
 
Dont care for the hardware but if Valve can get that steam os up and running for regular Nvidia desktop pc then we are golden. The peoples OS.

The Rock Wwe GIF
 
Probably only a matter of time before Valve officially deploy SteamOS for desktop.

If so, I think that's actually the biggest news here, honestly. It's what many have been asking for, and it's probably one of the things Microsoft was hoping wouldn't happen or at least would be way further down the line. Basically if you want better performance than Windows for PC gaming but think the specs in a Steam Machine are too low, there's nothing stopping you from getting that better performance (SteamOS) in whatever spec build you want it to run on.

So, you effectively have zero excuse to still stick with Windows for PC gaming outside of arguably Game Pass and a very small number of games without Linux versions due to anti-cheat (which is more a reflection of the dev teams not wanting to implement a form themselves, as other games have system-level anticheat on Linux distros). Even in those cases, I can see many still installing something like SteamOS for dual-booting alongside Windows.

The reason I say it's one of the things Microsoft didn't want to see happen, is because any amount of usage a user has in SteamOS means less Windows usage, meaning less time for MS to push their AI services and ads onto said person. Users can sidestep those avenues for the majority of their PC usage now if they mainly play the 99% of modern games compatible on Windows & SteamOS, and/or productivity software usage of the same.
I would bet a huge amount of people won't use the pc stricly for gaming (as is my case and all my friends for example).I still need to run other software with a reasonable amount of trust it's not going to shit the bed.
 
How is LCD low latency and low persistence? Isn't it slower than OLED for ghosting and response times?
I've seen many times that it's considered more of a mixed bag for VR purposes than some tend to claim here... for instance, this comment sums it up well:
VA54T7.jpg


tl/dr (and this seems to fit with what DigitalFoundry said in the video):
- better raw response times may be possible on OLED screen, yes, for general (non-VR) purposes
- but not always as possible or easy to do truly low image persistence where you actually can strobe with black between frames, at least at these already higher framerates (without backlight toggling you'd have to at least double the framerate to do black strobing, yes? and that just ends up cutting down on the brightness anyway so then you waste a lot of the OLED power);
- this actually matters for VR, where you can be very affected by artificial motion;
- plus, there are (as many PSVR2 reviews pointed out) major complications with "MURA" effect for VR, which many users would is a far worse annoyance than having less constrast

My sense from listening to these conversations is always that the OLED vs LCD thing is a trade-off with various complications. Other choices apart from the sceen, like pancake lenses and very custom factored LCD shape (they discuss a bit the panels in the Valve headset), may have a greater impact than the nice OLED contrast, and there are various OLED factors that cut both ways as far as its speed, depending on how it is used and the overall setup.

At the very least, DF seemed to acknowledge that there are trade-offs here and there isn't any easy solution to pick.
 
Last edited:
I refuse to believe the Steam Machine is DOA. Valve knows PC gaming inside and out. I trust their choices when it comes to specs, and if there's any company capable of reshaping the market, it's them. Today's a huge day
 
Just watching Valve discuss the Frame. Disappointed to find out that for local PC gaming, the Frame is less powerful than a Steam Deck; while presumably running at a higher resolution. I imagine if you are going to playing your Steam library locally, you are going to want to stick to indie titles or high frame rate competitive games.
 
I refuse to believe the Steam Machine is DOA. Valve knows PC gaming inside and out. I trust their choices when it comes to specs, and if there's any company capable of reshaping the market, it's them. Today's a huge day
And to those saying that the original Steam Machines failed: that was well before Steam Deck.

I'm sure Valve has learned a ton from that experiment, too.
 
Ordered Play for Dream MR, 4k oled per eye. Dissapointed but now that Frame is out in wild it means 3k/4k headset for cheap won't happen until probably Quest 4 in 2027 and that too probably will be just 3k.

- plus, there are (as many PSVR2 reviews pointed out) major complications with "MURA" effect for VR, which many users would is a far worse annoyance than having less constrast

My sense from listening to these conversations is always that the OLED vs LCD thing is a trade-off with various complications. Other choices apart from the sceen, like pancake lenses and very custom factored LCD shape (they discuss a bit the panels in the Valve headset), may have a greater impact than the nice OLED contrast, and there are various OLED factors that cut both ways as far as its speed, depending on how it is used and the overall setup.

At the very least, DF seemed to acknowledge that there are trade-offs here and there isn't any easy solution to pick.

PSVR2 does not have mura. The mura reviews are talking about (like mura in PS VITA) is just screen door effect that is hidden very well on PSVR2 until you hit scene that goes into gray color like shadows where suddenly you can see SDE which looks like mesh on your whole screen. It is slight effect nothing huge.
The difference is that on PSVR2 you can't normally see SDE like on Quest3 or Pico4 which is there all the time.

Mura from PS Vita days is blotchiness on completely dark screen where some pixels don't switch completely. IT was defect of PS Vita oled panel.

----------------

The whole persistence thing comes from early days of VR when people were figuring out what was causing sickness. While persistence does contribute to it a little, the problem was solved by better tracking of head + all other stuff like better game design, proper FOV management etc.

LCD was used not because it was better display but beacause it was cheap display. mOLEDs are still too expensive to use them with pancake lenses at low price. If not mOLED then normal OLED but those require aspheric or fresnel lenses which are thick and heavy.

They could go with beyond 2,5k per eye screens but again, they probably wanted cheap LCDs and save money for better chipseat.
 
Last edited:
I refuse to believe the Steam Machine is DOA. Valve knows PC gaming inside and out. I trust their choices when it comes to specs, and if there's any company capable of reshaping the market, it's them. Today's a huge day
I don't think anyone said that, but it's fair to compare with Deck itself, and it's not like the sales are stellar
 
I've seen many times that it's considered more of a mixed bag for VR purposes than some tend to claim here... for instance, this comment sums it up well:
VA54T7.jpg


tl/dr (and this seems to fit with what DigitalFoundry said in the video):
- better raw response times may be possible on OLED screen, yes, for general (non-VR) purposes
- but not always as possible or easy to do truly low image persistence where you actually can strobe with black between frames, at least at these already higher framerates (without backlight toggling you'd have to at least double the framerate to do black strobing, yes? and that just ends up cutting down on the brightness anyway so then you waste a lot of the OLED power);
- this actually matters for VR, where you can be very affected by artificial motion;
- plus, there are (as many PSVR2 reviews pointed out) major complications with "MURA" effect for VR, which many users would is a far worse annoyance than having less constrast

My sense from listening to these conversations is always that the OLED vs LCD thing is a trade-off with various complications. Other choices apart from the sceen, like pancake lenses and very custom factored LCD shape (they discuss a bit the panels in the Valve headset), may have a greater impact than the nice OLED contrast, and there are various OLED factors that cut both ways as far as its speed, depending on how it is used and the overall setup.

At the very least, DF seemed to acknowledge that there are trade-offs here and there isn't any easy solution to pick.
Gaming LCD monitors and LCD TV's can also use backlight blinking to eliminate image persistence. It's a pretty common thing actually and has been around a long time. Blinking the backlight simulates the natural brightness degradation inherent in CRT displays of a bygone era, the reason CRT's always had perfect motion resolution was because the phosphors on a CRT would be illuminated by the electron gun but immediately fade back to dark the moment it passed by

Technically you could also do this with OLED panels by blinking the individual pixels off and on between each refresh, but it's not commonly done because you would need to illuminate each pixel element much brighter to accommodate the effective brightness loss and this greatly accelerates burn-in and therefore destroys the panel very quickly
 
Last edited:
I refuse to believe the Steam Machine is DOA. Valve knows PC gaming inside and out. I trust their choices when it comes to specs, and if there's any company capable of reshaping the market, it's them. Today's a huge day
The specs are more than fine for pc gaming (despite what you may see spoken in DF or among enthusiasts here). The thing they have to get right is the price.
 
I don't think anyone said that, but it's fair to compare with Deck itself, and it's not like the sales are stellar
I don't think sales numbers matter that much. Valve is building an ecosystem, positioning itself as the leading company guiding Linux, something that's always been missing in the distro world. I believe this is all part of a long-term plan where, in the future, Valve becomes a major name in the PC world for pre-built hardware (handhelds, desktops, VR), beyond the software/store where it already dominates, and possibly even turns into the face of Linux... finally challenging Microsoft's long-standing dominance in operating systems
 
PSVR2 does not have mura. The mura reviews are talking about (like mura in PS VITA) is just screen door effect that is hidden very well on PSVR2 until you hit scene that goes into gray color like shadows where suddenly you can see SDE which looks like mesh on your whole screen. It is slight effect nothing huge.
The difference is that on PSVR2 you can't normally see SDE like on Quest3 or Pico4 which is there all the time.

Every report I have seen, from very credible people in the VR field, report that many PSVR2 headsets suffer from varying amounts of mura due to inconsistent lighting of the pixels. I've never heard your explanation that states this isn't the case. I'm not saying you are wrong, but could you point me to a source that corroborates this assertion?

Edit: I also want to point out that the artifacts these people see are irregular and not uniform, which is quite different than uniform grid pattern that we describe as the screen door effect. I was able to find some through the lens footage of a PSVR2, and the mura was indeed visible.
 
Last edited:
Every report I have seen, from very credible people in the VR field, report that many PSVR2 headsets suffer from varying amounts of mura due to inconsistent lighting of the pixels. I've never heard your explanation that states this isn't the case. I'm not saying you are wrong, but could you point me to a source that corroborates this assertion?
Whatever it is - it's a put off. The lack of clarity and bloom outside of a small sweet spot. The original did not suffer from this 🤷‍♂️
 
I don't think anyone said that, but it's fair to compare with Deck itself, and it's not like the sales are stellar

What are we calling "stellar" here? Keep in mind, the PC market has an incredible number of hardware options. Steam Machine isn't going to dominate sales like a console that is only one or two available options. If it comes in under $500, however, then the folks who fit the most typical hardware configuration per Steam hardware survey very well may be interested. This is a PC with 3060/4060-ish GPU, 8GB VRAM and 6 core CPU. That is checking a lot of boxes for what many gamers are fine buying in the PC realm.
 
I'd actually prefer a tiny cube that has a steam deck inside it without the screen 8a hdmi out not just the usb video out thing.

I'd love that form factor.
 
Steam Machine won't outsell Steam Deck.
It doesn't have to.

The base idea here isn't about having a high marketshare of one device. The goal here is to increase the addressable market of SteamOS users.

If this gets big enough, then devs can begin targeting SteamOS releases all on their own, and when that happens, things start getting very interesting for the industry at large.
 
I suspect, like the Steam Deck, if successful, will encourage 3rd parties to revive the SteamBox / VR push to households now they they've reach the point where they can have a device that pretty much play the latest titles without Windows.

Also, it's nice to to have a tech announcement without some bullshit AI feature forced in.
 
Whatever it is - it's a put off. The lack of clarity and bloom outside of a small sweet spot. The original did not suffer from this 🤷‍♂️
I can see it on my OG PSVR, but my mind doesn't have trouble blocking it out.

Edit: I should specify that I can only see it in dim scenes.
 
Last edited:
Just hit me what a hardware powerhouse Valve is at the moment and they are leading the way.
If the Steam Deck's impact is any indication, we're likely going to see Asus & Lenuvo throw their hat in the ring with similar even more powerful Console form factor PC machines. With SteamOS or Windows.
 
I'm interested in the Steam machine but it'll depend on the price. I play mostly indie games on Steam so I have no doubt this will play them fine and it would be nice to have a box to hook to the TV as I have the old steam link and controller but I would prefer a dedicated box for the TV. Controller does nothing for me but that's fine I have enough controllers.
 
Steam machine has 9 tflops but it's rdna3
How does that compare to ps5 10 tflops being rdna2?

It's more efficient, but that isn't going to translate directly into better performance so really can't say either way. There are also a lot of other variables such as the APIs being used. The only real way to compare is with actual gaming benchmarks.
 
Watch Sony do a 180 on PC ports.
I'm just laughing at them right now.
newChallenger.gif
 
I'm all in on the GabeBox, day one.

ram is upgradable, sodimm, standard m.2 which seems to be more accessible directly at base, 30 or 80 sizing. It's just a mini PC, with the 12v PSU built into the form factor - niiiiiceee. Really excited to see steamOS attempt to puncture the market a bit. i'll probbly be bazzite / steamOS only within the next few months. swallow it hard, winblows.
 
Yeah, that isn't happening. This will be $499.99 minimum, but expect $599 - $799 depending on the SKU. I don't see this selling well with those specs at a $500 price point.

Also, yes Switch 2 is $449.99, but it has exclusive Nintendo games so people will pay whatever for Nintendo exclusives.

After thinking about it, yeah that $399/$349 was too bullish. That could be a reduced price in the future after 2-3 years, but likely only either when sales reach a certain threshold or volume scale dramatically increases where the intent is to push install base for the device.

But Valve have said they want this to be affordable, so I'm expecting $499 - $599 for the 512 GB version and max $799 - $849 for the 2 TB model.
 
Marketing is one hell of a thing.

As long as Valve doesn't market this thing as good and as strong as PlayStation. SteamMachines will always be a fart in the wind.

This little PC/Console thing sucks ass. MiniPC makes a better computer for the fraction of the price.
 
Top Bottom