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.
it literally runs linux itself? what about the Frame is unsupported from linux?
Right, but from what I’ve read, Linux streaming is unsupported at the moment, so if you’re not using Windows for your gaming rig, you’re supposedly SOL for now. I’m sure that will change in time, especially given how many improvements they’ve made to the Steam Deck.
Edit: This is not the article I originally read about this in, but I found another post talking about it https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49706428 and it references Linux Tech Tips from 2 days ago, so if it’s been fixed, it was fixed recently.
Can you cite a source for this? I would be streaming from my Linux PC and I haven’t seen anything from Valve saying that streaming VR (or even that foveated streaming specifically) is Windows exclusive, and if it was that would really surprise me.
Looking for the article now, so far all I found was an old X post from August 24. I’ll edit this comment with the link when I can find the article.
Like I said earlier though, I can’t see them not fixing it (I am assuming it hasn’t been fixed yet, which may no longer be correct).
Edit: This is not the article, but I found another post talking about it https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49706428 and it references Linux Tech Tips
Gotcha, thanks! That’s the only source I could find as well.
And if (BIG if, granted) this Reddit post is to be believed, it seems effectively debunked: https://www.reddit.com/r/virtualreality_linux/comments/1welkhs/steam_frame_confirmed_by_linustechtips_to_not/
Cool, I’m thinking about picking one up despite the price so if I do I’ll test it on Bazzite to see how things go. Thanks!
I’m gonna try to get one too so I’l be dealing with whatever comes up on CachyOS with it!
Looks like it’ll be a while for me: I have been waitlisted.