Steam Frame, Steam controller and Steam Machine Revealed

Kacho said:
You can set the LED light on the front to show download progress

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John Cena Mind Blown GIF
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Yeah that's definitely how I'll use it if I get this thing. Super cool idea.

Just gotta get that brightness down about 50% lol
 
The RX 7600 has similar performance to the 6700 (which is equivalent to the PS5's GPU). The good thing is that it makes it easier to create a PS5-based customization for the Steam Machine.

 
DavidGzz said:
It's PC gaming simplified. Steam has a lot of advantages. No pay to play online, countless Indy exclusives, and early access games like Titan Quest 2 for example, and even PS studios games for those who care(TLOU2, GoT, etc). There are console gamers who are intimidated by shopping for a gaming PC. My daughter would totally get this. She could care less about power and it will play most anything flawlessly, anyway. Even the Deck is fine power wise and this is a lot more capable(6x the power?).

There is a reason Steam had 41.6 million concurrent users as a recent record. It's awesome.
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Exactly.

I think a lot of the people naysaying the Steam Machine aren't realizing the big picture. Yes its lower specs than the new PS or Xbox will be. Yes its just a medium spec PC in a small fixed form factor. The upside is when someone purchases a Gabecube they will have day one access to many tens of thousands of games via Steam. On day one this thing will have a game library larger than the PS5, Xbox, and Switch 2 combined. All in an easy living room format, ready to plug into your TV in front of the couch with no effort at all.

There is a market for this. While it probably won't outsell the PS nor Switch, my feeling is it will sell very well just like the Steamdeck has.
 
Sorcerer said:
I doubt the Steam Controller 2 will be subject to a lawsuit. However, I wonder if people are going to buy them up (just in case) and leave them boxed because they see how much the original can go for nowadays because they think these will also be discontinued.
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Was that why they discontinued to orig? I thought valve just dumped them because they didn't want to support it anymore or it was an end of life type of thing. I remember getting a bunch of steam controllers and steam links from valve a long time ago for like $10.
 
DavidGzz said:
It's PC gaming simplified. Steam has a lot of advantages. No pay to play online, countless Indy exclusives, and early access games like Titan Quest 2 for example, and even PS studios games for those who care(TLOU2, GoT, etc). There are console gamers who are intimidated by shopping for a gaming PC. My daughter would totally get this. She could care less about power and it will play most anything flawlessly, anyway. Even the Deck is fine power wise and this is a lot more capable(6x the power?).

There is a reason Steam had 41.6 million concurrent users as a recent record. It's awesome.
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My 6 year old is already going on about PCs :messenger_tears_of_joy: A gen 2 version of this coming out in 4 years time will be the perfect piece of tech for him.
 
I like the Cube, same as both Series consoles, boring blocks are just what a casing needs to be. (and the replacing the front is great for aynthing custom) The only other shape I would think is ok, is a cylinder, just following a fans diameter, every other shape is a company trying to design something and not just following the function of it.
The specs are rather low though, I guess it will aim more in the Series S 2.0 realm than actually be high end. They shoud have gone with a 140mm fan. At least as a second more powerful/ more expensive version.
Not liking the Pad much, the touchpads are just too low and it kinda reminds me of the n64 trident, just trying too hard being everything. But overall might still be a good controller.
The Frame seems underpowered already. I would have hoped they would match Radmagic's 11 Elite X ingredients with a cooling that is much easier in a naturally bigger headset. Phones aren't evolving much the past years anyway, so progress was rather limited there for a while now. Should make chips cheaper if there is less need to do something new every year and just chrun out the same or refresh chips for years.

Valve moving PC space more into console territory, while MS tries to blur console and PCs too. Sony also dancing on both parties. So only Nintendo still being an exclusives machine maker, but also relying on Nvidia's parts. Weird times. But when the almost same components are shared already making separate spaces makes hardly sense anymore.
 
Beechos said:
Was that why they discontinued to orig? I thought valve just dumped them because they didn't want to support it anymore or it was an end of life type of thing. I remember getting a bunch of steam controllers and steam links from valve a long time ago for like $10.
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From what I understand they lost the lawsuit, and they had to stop making them, so they just got rid of them entirely. Of course, the Steam Controllers were part of a bigger failure anyway, so it was inevitable anyway I suppose.

Funny enough, the ruling was overturned sometime after the fire sale if I recall correctly.
 
Haint said:
All VR displays use the strobing you're talking about to improve persistence, including AMOLED and mOLED's, all the way back to the OG Vive and Rift. This is not Index and Frame specific functionality, nor is it limited to LCD's. You are quoting what are effectively marketing bullet points from Valve trying to cast cheap LCD's in a favorable light to sell the headset, or perhaps justify an unexpectedly high price tag. Did they not quote a microsecond range of the OG Vive? Seems a curious ommission if they're trying to extol the virtues of LCD's at the expense of OLED's. Regardless, high end mOLED panels are capable of over 5,000 nits at the display, leaving ample amounts of headroom to lose to pancakes and low persistence strobing while easily delivering 100 nits to the eye.

I'm not even arguing whether LCD's may or may not have a theoretical microsecond advantage in persistence, I'm saying it's completely moot as a practical matter if you're only trying to deliver the 100 nits the Frame is outputting, and that as trade offs go, it isn't even in the same Galaxy as the image quality trade off between a 500:1 70% SRGB IPS LCD and an Infinity:1 100% P3 OLED. You're under the impression we're arguing about what size square tires to put on a Ferrari when I'm actually telling you to use round ones.
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Not "marketing points" — I extensively quoted the actual DigitalFoundry take on it — which is

- choice of OLED/LCD is not about price, so much as it is technical trade offs
- Valve targets unusually low persistence, heavy focus on this for motion clarify and comfort
- to get these levels of microsecond persistence, OLED tech just "isn't there yet"
- why? Because of its inherent hold-based rendering, and you can't fix that with extremely fast backlight toggle as you can on LCD;
- instead with OLED you'd have to insert a lot of black frames — not even every other but more like 20 per frame to get to this level
- doing that reduces the effective light dramatically, so with that and pancake lenses, you just can't can't reach the level needed with current OLED tech
- indeed this means worse contrast and black levels, but it's a distinct choice and perfectly in line with Valve's longstanding emphasis on motion clarity over other factors

Their analysis of it is perfectly accurate, and you just can't accept the idea that OLED isn't actually a silver bullet, and that its lovely advantages in contrast are not totalizing.

I think it's totally reasonable to disagree with Valve's choice and where they drew the line on different aspects. But to claim it can only be LCD due to their cheapness, or that OLED is better in all aspects, is factually wrong.
 
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pepeno said:
I am the source. I had PS Vita so i know what perfectly mura is while other reviewers probably never saw Vita in their life, I had PSVR1, I have PSVR2 I also have right now Pico4 and had Vive, Rift, Quest 2 and 3. And I just ordered Play for Dream MR as I was waiting for Frame to see if it will sport at least 3k per eye but didn't so PFD it is.

PSVR2 "mura" is the same exact thing as PSVR1 had. It's not mura it's just how their screen door effect works. Both PSVR1 and PSVR2 are completely black when pixels are off like watching black screen. There is no mura there like on PS VITA where you had blotches of slight green tint on parts of screen when you loaded up completely black screen in pitch black darkness.

Essentially as your display moves toward gray part of spectrum you start to see SDE more and more because in bright conditions it is pretty much invisible. That's just how sony display works how they structured spaces between pixels and etc.

But it is really SLIGHT effect occuring mostly on gray parts of display. And it was the same exact thing on PSVR1 just a bit stronger since PSVR1 had lower res but back then you had it too in bright parts of screen as well again due to much larger space between pixels. But even with that PSVR1 had still the best SDE of all GEN1 vr headsets.

In my opinion it is just some kind of coating or polarization layer that scatters light. This is why for example PSVR2 image is slightly blurrier than what resolution is supposed to give you because that polarization or coating layers scatters light effectively stretches light to neighboring pixels hiding black spaces between pixels. This works great when you display bright stuff but when there is no enough light like in gray situation suddely that coating/layer might not work at all and puff you see SDE.

The difference here is that on Pico4 and Quest 3 you can see SDE all over the screen all the time. They have good res but you can still slightly see it. On PSVR2 you can't see normally SDE it's only when you display picture changes toward gray when you start to see it. It's improvement over Quest3 type devices.
And then you have OLED colors and blacks that just shit all over LCDs in Quest3/Pico and this upcoming Frame.

If Sony had better drivers for their controllers on PC i would reccomend it over Quest3/Pico4 any day of the week but alas Sony can't into BT drivers and every BT dongle has some kind of issues.
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So you are making it up... or don't know what mura is, gotcha
 
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The timing of this Steam Box couldn't be any better. You know that Gabe doesn't run such a successful business for no reason.

Microsoft feel like they were totally played by Sony and Valve this is insane. They rushed in the trap and put their games on Playstation. And they are going to offer a PC box, except that it will run on shitty Windows. Sony in the meantime gets all Xbox games and is going to grab a piece of the cloud/tv/subs market with their own products.

And then you have the Steam Box here, which is clearly going to be a great choice to access to all the games, and is likely to have a more favorable ratio price/power than whatever Microsoft will do with their own Windows Box.

Microsoft are so fucked as a manufacturer.
 
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Walliwallipaloo said:
The stick spacing on that controller looks terrible. The shape - everything. It looks like a thousand hand-cramps compressed into thirty minutes of gameplay... like instant carpal-tunnel.

And the D-Pad on those VR controllers? Like... that makes so little sense.

I hope these are fake.
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It's the Wii U stick placement which is just the playstation placement but upwards. I had a Wii u it worked very well.
 
Mengy said:
Exactly.

I think a lot of the people naysaying the Steam Machine aren't realizing the big picture. Yes its lower specs than the new PS or Xbox will be. ...
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It's lower spec (except for the CPU) than the CURRENT PlayStation and Xbox (not including the XSS). The PS6 and whatever the next Xbox is will utterly destroy it.
 
FoxMcChief said:
Controller looks like a step backwards from the first.
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Nope I owned 3 steam controllers and this one is an absolute upgrade. Steam controller has 1 analog stick this one has 2 which is standard. Steam controller had 2 back buttons this one has 4 which is essential for being able to move aim and use buttons at the same time (otherwise you only have the 4 shoulder buttons available without leaving the aiming stick).
 
RoadHazard said:
It's lower spec (except for the CPU) than the CURRENT PlayStation and Xbox (not including the XSS). The PS6 and whatever the next Xbox is will utterly destroy it.
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That's true, but it still doesn't negate the fact that the Steam Machine on launch day will be able to play many tens of thousands of games instantly. Sure it won't be competitive with the PS6 nor next Xbox, but does that really matter? People buying a Steam Machine will probably own one of the next gen consoles alongside it, just like many PC gamers today also own a console too.

Its not designed nor intended to compete with the next gen consoles, its meant to supplement them or target an audience who doesn't need the "next best thing" but rather desires a huge, massive library of games. Cheap games. Games which regularly go on sales. And tons of new games every month too, unique and odd games, games you simply can't find on consoles anywhere.

I think there's a market for this thing, a good sized market.
 
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Mengy said:
That's true, but it still doesn't negate the fact that the Steam Machine on launch day will be able to play many tens of thousands of games instantly. Sure it won't be competitive with the PS6 nor next Xbox, but does that really matter? People buying a Steam Machine will probably own one of the next gen consoles alongside it, just like many PC gamers today also own a console too.

Its not designed nor intended to compete with the next gen consoles, its meant to supplement them or target an audience who doesn't need the "next best thing" but rather desires a huge, massive library of games. Cheap games. Games which regularly go on sales. And tons of new games every month too, unique and odd games, games you simply can't find on consoles anywhere.

I think there's a market for this thing, a good sized market.
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You're not wrong. But I don't personally think the audience for this is very big. Most people don't care about those 10K old games, they want to play the hot new stuff, and that stuff will run better on a PS5.
 
Rosoboy19 said:
He mentioned the HDMI 2.0 port having been "tested" at 2.1 speeds but lacking a few features that would allow it to be called HDMI 2.1. Does that mean it will still have the bandwidth for 4k120fps ?
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Maybe? Their specs state up to 4K @ 120hz and there's no weird wording like up to 4K and 120hz which implies the two are the max but not at the same time. Their wording states it supports 4K @ 120hz.
 
RoboFu said:
everyone should watch the Linus video as he goes through a lot of what the controller can do. it apparently has some thumbtsticks that are better than HALL and everything is capacitive touch not just the pads.

roosnam1980

Post in thread 'Steam Frame, Steam controller and Steam Machine Revealed'

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Not to discount the video but most of that was already known and in the original video Valve posted.


They talk about the TMR sticks barely over a minute into the video and talk about the capacitive grips shortly after.
 
Something like this would've sat a bit better imo:

SteamMachine ($399)
- 4.5GHz CPU
- 28/32 CU GPU
- 12GB LP5X
- 12GB G6 (4+2 Clamshell, 16Gbps) @ 256GB/s
- 1TB SSD (Embedded)
- M.2 Expansion Slot

SteamMachine+ ($599)
- 5.0GHz CPU
- 32/32 CU GPU
- 16GB LP5X
- 16GB G6 (4+4 Clamshell, 18Gbps) @ 288GB/s
- 2TB SSD (Embedded)
- M.2 Expansion Slot
- Premium Faceplates & Pre-loaded Game
 
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One downside of the controller i've noticed is no headphone jack. This is invaluable for me on the PS5 for late night gaming. But I imagine bluetooth headsets would work tethered to the console.
 
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