No prices yet. I may never financially recover from this.
Would love to see Valve do a SteamOS Linux Phone next.
With it coming with an optional phone gaming accessory to use your phone as a controller (with same design/gaming usage as Steam Deck/Steam Controller)
For use with any Valve hardware/software through the connected accessory (Bluetooth/Dongle/Wired)
Don’t have an extra controller? Use your phone with the add-on.
Sidenote: Wonder if PostmarketOS will add support for Steam Frame overtime. Sadly it does not have call support I think but otherwise it would technically be a different kind of device that could function as a phone tok
It’s interesting that the VR headset is ARM based. Maybe that’s a sign that 2027 will be the year of the ARM desktop
When I look at this announcement, the hardware is very exciting, for sure. But it is Valve’s dedication to Linux that really has me smiling. I don’t see three hardware devices to buy. I see two big proclamations for which the hardware is the message:
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SteamOS on desktop! It seemed inevitable but it’s still great to see.
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STEAM VR USING LINUX AS ITS TARGET PLATFORM?!?!?
I will grant that it’s very possible I buy all three pieces of the hardware, even though I like building my own PCs. I will also grant that Valve’s support for linux probably would not be what it is without the enshittification of Microsoft’s ecosystem. But in this world I’m gonna go ahead and accept the imperfect good news.
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Did Valve just announce THREE of something?
Valve remains committed to an open PC ecosystem
happy noises
I’ve been saying for years that VR can get off my lawn until I can buy Linux native hardware. I guess I’m interested in VR, now.
“I may never financially recover from this.”
is well said.
I need to buy all of these.
why is this thing not called Steam Engine?
If Valve makes ARM Linux work properly as a gaming/desktop OS, I will uhh hmm.
I will buy this thing.
I wonder if they’re still using Arch for the basis of this. Its ARM version is kinda not so great, although not terrible either.
Where’s my Steam Phone Gabe ?
Really excited for this and hopefully that means steamvr on Linux will actually start working better! The current Beta build is much better but still lots of work to do.
I’m definitely getting the frame as upgrade from quest 3 which I rarely use due to it being attached to Meta. The controller is no brainer considering that old steamdeck controller is still one of the best controllers on the market. Not sure about steam machine mostly because I just built my own PC - would have totally waited for it if I knew it was coming but it looks so slick.
Very excited for Linux in 2026!
Uh-oh…my wallet is in trouble.
Where steamphone
Hmm this makes me wonder if the Steam Deck 2 will be ARM. If the Steam Frame works well, that could be a way for Valve to push more performance/battery life out of the deck
With Valve talking about open ecosystems so much, I have glimmer of hope that they’ll move to RISC-V.
Probably not gonna happen though… At least not yet
That would be amazing, but given how speculative the Framework and other RISC projects are I feel like that would be a massive headline for Valve.
As someone who works in assembler a lot, RISC-V is probably my favorite.
If anyone knows a useful open source project where people like me can contribute to this future happening, please do respond to this comment !
I’ve followed RISC-V development. It is so promising and so cool. But it is also under-cooked right now, I don’t think it is ready to carry such a product. It might get better in the future, but as it stands it takes way too much effort to release a hardware product using it, never mind a high performant one like a gaming console. My hope is that the EU and FOSS initiatives can take a stronghold on the standard up to the point that it becomes a feasible competitor to Qualcomm and it retains it’s openness. It is the only way stuff like a truly spyware free and privacy respecting smartphone can exist. Linux will never thrive with the hostile hellscape that is ARM hardware. Valve themselves have had to fight with the stubbornness of a myriad consortiums that want to gatekeep their modules and refuse to offer open source software. RISC-V just needs a lot of love and care for now to grow into a competitive standard. Many cool developers are working on it but it doesn’t have the same financial effort behind it that ARM has.
But then, isn’t that kinda where linux was at before steamOS kicked this revolution off?? Like, I had kinda dabbled in various linux distros here and there prior to steamOS and was always left feeling like it lacked complete polish - VR, gaming, easy app installs (outside the terminal, for normies)… All that has never seemed so well rounded – until steamOS blessed me with KDE, and since then I’ve mained Debian w/ KDE on all my machines (hopefully I can even main deb on my phone, one day!!)
Point is= maybe if a company like valve (or even valve themselves) pulls a similar approach with RISC-V that we’ve seen them do with steamOS, we aren’t wrong to hope for the same sort of outcome for it as well!
But, that’s just a dream I suppose 😅 here’s hoping!!! 🤞🤞
Yes, and that is why I’m hopeful for more RISC-V development. One day, maybe, there will be first party manufacturers making open devices that work easily with any software of choice instead of proprietary vendor lock-in.
If they shared the same processing unit it could also cut their costs down.
I don’t ever see this happening, with Proton being x86, and games also predominantly being x86.
Seems like you haven’t looked at today’s commits to proton bleeding edge.
I seems to have not, but, how many games are compatible with ARM now? Surely it’s similar to the situation with game support on Windows ARM or MacOSX?
Edit: Hmm ok, they have a new “FEX” Translation later for ARM now. Interesting but I’m still not convinced that this will have better game support than Proton on x86.
I hope the Frame is as cheap or cheaper than a Meta Quest 3. It’s almost identical in the specs, but goes back to monochrome external cameras instead of full color. But also has eye tracking which the Q3 does not. I want eye tracking so fucking bad… I set up cameras for it before I was like “Hold up… They can’t see my eyes with the headset on 😬” lol
No way it is as cheap as a q3. All valve have said is that they are aiming for < the price of a valve index full kit. https://www.uploadvr.com/valve-steam-frame-hands-on-impressions/
@Kolanaki@pawb.social @ampersandrew@lemmy.world @games@lemmy.world
Some important differences in the specs. It’s not the same SoC, should have like 20-30% more GPU power, then there’s their whole wireless streaming system (comes with the dongle). Could potentially do something better for audio but it certainly cannot be Index quality in that regard.
At the end of the day Meta does still do the console thing of subsidizing the headset with the software and Valve doesn’t always do that so how close or far it lands in price is going to depend on that too.
You have to remember, the price isn’t only due to the hardware.
We often still think of “hardware” as if it’s some tool we actually own like a wrench or a hammer that we can freely use how we like, and the price of it should depend only on the cost of manufacture.
But in the modern world, the electronic hardware we buy is subsidised through gated ecosystems, and by profiting from slurping data and selling ads.
The reality is that Meta hardware is priced aggressively low to encourage adoption - on the basis of all the money they expect to make later from your data. Same with smart TVs and everything else with a similar business model.
Valve’s hardware will seem expensive, but that’s just the price you have to pay in the modern world for some small amount of control and privacy.
Personally, I’ll pay it gladly.
steam deck is still incredibly good for what you get. i have on of the original ones with a 64 gb ssd and although i have some hangups with that i just put in a 1.5 terabyte sd card and it runs almost everything i throw at it. just discovered the other night it can do vr very poorly with a beta steam client and beta steam vr while streaming to my quest 3s with steam link. we really live in a new era.
I could have had one and didn’t get it because I never really go anywhere other than work. But boy did I regret it when I was at BLFC recently. My hotel roommates all had one and were playing Helldivers and Rocket League every night 😩
I could have brought my Quest… But I don’t have anything for the stand alone system; all my VR games are on Steam.
The cameras can’t track eyes with the headset on …Unless they make it like the vision pro, where your eyes show up on the headset’s outer screen. ಠᴗಠ
The VR looks interesting. I had bought the HP reverb G2, but Microsoft pulled the plug on windows mixed reality, and I’ve since moved to Linux, so this might be a good replacement.
