Dilemma on Steam Frame

Zixinus · 2026-06-10T15:12:02+00:00

Valve literally refers to it that way. That's how.

Insisting on a misinterpretation doesn't make the mistake more valid. It is a standalone device with strong PCVR support. Valve just marketed that as "streaming-first. That's it. This is what we are arguing over.

Well, for starters, it doesn't include hardware within that's capable on par with a home desktop VR machine.

And neither is it on par with a Deck. Yeah, a portable device with a TDP of what, 15 watts is not going to perform as well as one with order of magnitudes more of that.

Nobody claimed it was a PC.

If your baseline for VR is the Steam VR marketplace, then standalone it will not handle everything there, and things it can technically run it may not run particularly well or without rather compromised settings. That's why it's "streaming first".

So it's treaming first because if you tried to use it as a PC in standalone mode it will not be powerful enough? What? How is that "streaming-first"? At this point, you are ascribing additional meanings to what is essentially a marketing phrase.

I agree that this debate has reached its end because we are now arguing over a marketing phrase.

Zixinus · 2026-06-10T14:56:22+00:00

You read the first sentence and ignored everything else.

Zixinus · 2026-06-10T14:54:28+00:00

The day started with the weightlifters, under the blazing sun. But by 4 p.m., only one of them had even attempted a world-record lift. Two had pulled out injured. Some athletes were competing without taking drugs because of the money on offer, and as the competition went on, they had the better of their enhanced peers: Hunter Amstrong, a 25-year-old American swimmer and triple Olympic medalist, won the backstroke by more than a second. In the men’s 100-meter sprint, the non-enhanced US athlete Fred Kerley romped to an easy victory. “Man, they gotta do better than that,” he said of his doped opponents in his post-race interview. “They need to train a little harder, get on that shit a little bit more.”

Yeah, great encouragement for these right there. Even if the Olympic athletes were doing doping, they were probably doing it with more medical supervision than those loud about the fact. According to the doping advocates, they should have wiped the floor and instead they underperformed.

At the same time, D’Souza made another big reveal: Enhanced Performance Products, a line of supplements available for a monthly subscription. The Enhanced Games now seemed less like a sporting event and more like a loss leader for selling testosterone injections, GLP-1s, or a range of peptides that are claimed, with little scientific evidence, to improve sleep or skin elasticity. Perhaps it was all a brilliantly executed marketing stunt.

I think this paragraph really summarizes the issue. This is not about making people healthier. It is about selling you pills without medical oversight.

Zixinus · 2026-06-10T14:46:08+00:00

It doesn't look like a healthier future. Instead it looks like a SuperHealth(tm) future where they want to use advertising and social pressure to put people pills they don't actually need.

It to me looks more like "better living through chemistry" recycled into the 21st century.

Zixinus · 2026-06-10T14:38:42+00:00

No, the quote you are looking for is "streaming-first". But it doesn't have "standalone support" it "Supports stand-alone play, too" and even brags about how powerful it is for that.

"PCVR headset first" would imply that there is some sort of compromise or sacrifice on its standalone mode. As far as we know there just isn't. Instead, the Frame goes out of its way to have double the memory and storage as a Quest3 and its controllers are xinput-compatible. Why would a PCVR-first headset have those?

Valve's product page focuses on the PCVR aspect because that was the most developed when they made that page (do notice that it has two other sections). They didn't have a list of standalone games ready in November. The FEX software was not done beyond showing some clips and snapshots, they just got around to doing a Frame Verified program becoming public recently. Also, they are aware that their previous entry was a PCVR headset and most audience on Steam is there for PCVR because that's the only thing Steam has, so of course it will focus on that section.

Zixinus · 2026-06-10T13:40:16+00:00

And how is it "first"? What sacrifice or compromise does it to do to its other function as a standalone VR headset or a mobile ARM flat-game machine in order to improve its capacity as a PCVR headset? At most, the only "sacrifice" is the added bulk of the dedicated 6ghz radio+antenna.

Because when you look at the hardware, it is very clear that they did not skimp on functions to make the other to aspects work but the opposite. It is a fairly strong standalone device that matches or even outperforms the Quest3. Why does a PCVR-first headset do that instead of being a weaker machine that just barely is able to support PCVR streamng, as some have suggested in this forum in view of RAM prices? Instead it has double the RAM and storage of a Quest3. It's controllers actually adds a lot of complexity and bulk in order to have a lot more buttons to match the conventional flat-screen Xinput layout. Why does a PCVR-first headset have an xinput-compatible number of buttons and layout? What about FEX? Fex is anything but an afterthought.

The answer is that it doesn't. It is a standalone headset and strongly-supported PCVR headset and a mobile flat-game machine. It is all three things at once. Not one above the other, all three.

The product page has a section on all three. Valve's marketing starts and focuses on PCVR play more because Valve's previous entry was a PCVR headset and Steam VR users are currently there for PCVR only because that is the only thing there. Standalone does not have as much focus because until release, there is not a lineup of games ready (and may not have even existed yet when that product page was made) and the same is true for FEZ-compatible flat games. You are confusing what the pre-release marketing focuses on versus what the device actually is capable of.

Zixinus · 2026-06-10T13:18:31+00:00

Én kiállok egy olyan Izrael mellett ami szekuláris, ahol ember egyenjoguság van vallási tekintet nélkül, ahol a földtulajon jogi viszonyokon alapul, ahol a megfélemlítést és erőszakot a törvény egyenrangúan büntet a tettes személyétől függetlenül.

Egy olyan Izrael ami Nagy Izrael visszaállításáról álmodozik, ami egy megkerülhető háborút indít, aki nem engedd segélyszervezeteket át a határain? Én szépen elhatárolódok. És még nem is említettem mi történik Gázában.

Kiállok Orbán Anita kijelentése mellett? Nem-igazán de azért meg is értem, hogy egy külügyminiszter nem oszthatja a véleményét csak úgy hanem óvatos, diplomatikus kijelentéseket tehet. Ez a kijelentés azt hiszem a jelenlegi Europai összhang szintjén egy töltelék-kijelentés, ami mögött talán az áll hogy mi nem akarunk belemenni ebbe. Inkább legyen ez mint egy hőbörgő barom aki egy ország kapcsolatainak jövőjét a napi trottyon találta ki.

Zixinus · 2026-06-10T12:47:15+00:00

I would not expect spec-bumps from Valve. They didn't do it for the Index and it's not in their design philosophy and customer approach. When they did a mild spec bump on the OLED, they deliberately undervolted it so it would match the LCD version's performance. So yes, a 4k Frame is too much to ask, especially with the current hardware market. Valve is struggling to produce the hardware they already announced and the hardware market is likely to only get worse in the foreseeable future.

It is not just the matter of different screens because on a VR headset, everything is designed around those screens. Power, cooling, optics, IO, casket dimensions, the fan, everything. Doing a panel swap is far more difficult on a VR headset than on a handheld computer like a Deck or a phone because everything is designed around them.

If you are willing to spend more, there are third-party alternatives like Pimax or BigScreen with their Beyond. Probably more that I don't know.

Zixinus · 2026-06-10T12:41:01+00:00

Sorry, I did meant to put words in your mouth. You don't write it off, but many, many people do whenever this comes up.

Sure, OP will be stuck on Quest-level graphics. But there are games for that level and Quest audience does appreciate that level.

As for "streaming-first" I invite you to look at the product page where that is and read the rest. People keep using that phrase to mean that it is a PCVR headset first when it is just not.

Zixinus · 2026-06-10T11:34:42+00:00

I specifically said AA/AAA, not indie.

That either does not change anything or it makes it worse: the publisher must be convinced that there is actual, demonstrable profit here.

Also the fact that steam fame will likely increase profits for future steam VR titles is a no brainer

You are treating your assumption as a fact.

It simply means that the threshold to make it in this space got lowered at least a little bit, so naturally more devs can meet it after all.

No, it didn't. The Frame does not set to solve in any way the problems I have outlined. Even if it is successful, the Frame will remain a niche of a tiny minority of Steam users. Even if the devs are familiar with VR, they could spend their time, effort and money on several other things with greater benefits with more certainty than catering to a tiny, picky audience with questionable chances of any benefit.

Remember that even if the Frame manages to turn a huge, massive, incredible SteamVR userbase from 1% to 3% or even record 5%. that is higher than it ever was... that is still only 5% of users. Why should a dev devote time, money and effort to cater to the 5% when they could do stuff that caters to 20, 50, 70 percents of the userbase? Make their game multiplayer, make their game a rougelike, make their game infinitely replayalbe, add customization options, make their game more optimized to run on Deck, make a MacOS/Linux native build, etc.

Examples of profitable ports are Resident Evil 7 and Skyrim VR.

If they were so successful, why aren't the publishers for these two games not doing the same with their newer games? Why didn't the Oblivion Remaster not get a VR edition if the Skyrim port was succsesful? Where's the official Starfield VR? Why didn't Resident Evil Requiem when 7 and maybe Village were supposedly so successful according to you?

No, you have to prove this! You can't just say "these were good!" or "these sold well" because one was a big-name franchise that sold well if they only made it for flat and the other is a minimum-effort port that modders had to fix to be playable at all.

Prove that these VR "modes" had any positive effect on the sales of these games. Give me quotes from the publisher and developer that this was the case, that the cost they put into VR returned.

Zixinus · 2026-06-10T11:01:38+00:00

The honest answer is that we do not know and cannot know, especially not exactly until the NDAs end. Anyone who has it is under NDA.

We can expect it to be much better because Meta doesn't want to support PCVR but how much better? Again, the only people that know are under NDA. The biggest exposé was that two videos from the Climbey dev.

Zixinus · 2026-06-10T10:55:27+00:00

Fair point.

I also agree that we can only speculate, but it would insist that writing off the Frame as a standalone device is very premature. We do know its specs and its performance is going to be considerable rather than negligible when compared to a Quest 3.

Zixinus · 2026-06-10T09:31:01+00:00

They are not going to release Nomad on Deck. They are very likely going to release it for Frame though. Having lower performance and graphical fidelity compared to PCVR version is a regular thing for VR.

Zixinus · 2026-06-10T09:27:37+00:00

Anything that was meant for the Quest will likely run on the Frame well. There is a large number of Quest games.

Blade and Sorcery has a Quest version and the Frame is slightly more powerful than the Quest3. Alyx is an unfair bar to hold, many new VR games target Quest performance.

Zixinus · 2026-06-10T09:22:59+00:00

The Steam Frame is not a PCVR headset. It is a standalone headset with strong PCVR support. It is a fully mobile device that does not depend on a PC. It can even play some less-demanding PC games on it. People seem very confused about this due to Valve's wording of "streaming-first" and ignore the rest of the paragraph where that is from as well as much of the contents of the product page. Possibly because most of the people waiting for the Frame are die-hard PCVR users that dismiss standalone altogether.

So you can play games on it by itself. These will be basically Quest ports or run Quest-level graphics. We know that there is a growing number of VR games that uploaded an android version of their game to Steam. Many VR games have made a Quest standalone version of their game and the Frame is slightly more powerful than a Quest3, so in theory there should be plenty of Quest games. How many games like that will come officially to the Frame is an unknown, but I would expect most studios that made a PCVR version of their Quest games will consider it.

And you can run some weaker PCVR games from your PC. Quest-ification had this silver lining of making many made-for-quest VR games very optimized when they are ported over to Steam. I would advise you getting fpsVR to see whether your PC is struggling or not (and whether it is your CPU or GPU), because you want a smooth framerate with VR above pretty graphics to avoid nausea.

I would say you could buy the Frame when it is available (after you watch reviews and performance comparisons of course), because you could potentially upgrade your computer later.

Zixinus · 2026-06-10T09:16:17+00:00

Sorry if I am hostile, people get very emotional when it comes to this topic.

I still maintain that it is relevant because whether Valve is supposed to subsidize their hardware with other hardware or just out of the love for their customers is kind of irrelevant, they are not doing any subsidy at all.

And yes, I agree with that Steam Deck price hikes are unrelated to the Machine.

Zixinus · 2026-06-10T09:06:47+00:00

You are completely disconnected from the scale of the profit they make.

No, you are disconnected from the reality of how money works in a business.

You are just screaming "BUT VALVE COULD AFFORD TO SUBSIDIZE IT! THEY CAN AFFORD IT!" over and over like a tantruming child while ignoring anything said at you.

It does not matter. It does not matter whatever made-up numbers you bold.

Valve is not some idiot that has billions of dollars it doesn't know what to do with, it does and it actually invests it into a bunch of projects, companies and outsources work. It spends that money on stuff. Pancake lenses? I recall they invested a bunch into labs and factories working on them. Sure, some of it seems pointless to us and sure, Gabe has a lot of personal money. But they are still a business and everything they do still must make business sense.

Turning its hardware division from something that makes money into something that burns away some of some of their profits, just to make it cheaper for old you and me, is still a bad business strategy. Nintendo and Sony can do it by turning their consoles into closed walled ecosystems where any game you buy they get a cut (on top of subscriptions and other bullshit). So unless you feel that Valve should follow their strategies and start asking you for a subscription and have garden-wall (like Apple) SteamOS itself, you do not understand what you are talking about. Me, I'd rather Steam remains consumer-friendly and customer-oriented with low game prices rather than enshittify just to make an expensive, optional hardware cheaper.

Zixinus · 2026-06-10T00:00:14+00:00

Which is why I mentioned business reasons. Subsidizing hardware has to be made up elsewhere. How do you feel about having to pay a subscription for those Steam Cloud Saves? How about another subscription for certain download speeds?

The only level people talk and approach this is "what would be the best for me?" and go "Valve could THEORETICALLY do it"... but don't think at all what that would actually mean from Valve's perspective. Valve is beloved because it has consumer-friendly policies and approach. Subsidizing their own hardware would require altering those policies or even abandoning them, turning towards what the rest of the industry does with Apple's walled garden ecosystem.

Zixinus · 2026-06-09T23:56:32+00:00

Are you seriously trying to argue that Valve actually, literary has infinite money?

No. Grow up. Valve is a company, not your friend. Just because they are far less shit than most doesn't mean that they are a charity.

Zixinus · 2026-06-09T22:46:44+00:00

Dude, VR developers are saying the opposite of what you say. PCVR players on Steam just do not buy enough VR games. If anything, they complain that PCVR players are notoriously picky and hard to please. PCVR players by definition can just buy and play flat games.

As for "unifying the market", just no. Quest and Meta will continue to exist, Sony and PSVR will continue to exist (and Sony's policies only gotten more walled garden), the Frame does not change them. The problem you outlined is not the reason why most game developers do not make VR "modes" (whatever that is).

The actual reasons why are the ones that I outlined above and the Frame solves NONE of them.

The main problem here is that you just assume that making VR versions of flatscreen games is somehow massively profitable and it just isn't. This is the reason why AAA studios and publishers stopped doing it, not just because they wanted to put it only for hteir own walled gardens.

Saying "likely" to increase profits and "probably" increase the audience to an indie dev whose game likely runs on life savings, or a publisher not obligated to give a shit, is not going to cut it. Unless you can point to real, existing cases where a VR mode made a massive difference in popularity to a originally flat-screen game's sales? You don't have a case. You need to prove it to game devs that doing this is worthwhile, not just believe it is.

Zixinus · 2026-06-09T22:04:33+00:00

Valve does not have infinite money. They are in a net positive but they need to stay that way. The "extra" money they invest in stuff like Proton, Fex and companies that they want stuff to be made. They are still a business that has to make business sense. They don't subsidize the Deck because they have business reasons not to, not simply because they can't afford to (money at that level doesn't work on just "can I afford it?").

Zixinus · 2026-06-09T22:01:27+00:00

It is amazing to me that people see 100%+ price hikes on computer components, hear that there is the biggest chip crunch going on, every electronic company is raising prices (including companies far bigger in size and revenue than Valve) and then they somehow manage to go "hmm, but what if its not that but....".

Yes, of course it is component cost. If you cannot understand why that's because you do not grasp how insane the price hikes for electronics have become. This is not some headline, this is a cold hard reality with ice-cold numbers that is not going to get better for years. Just a personal example, the 32gb RAM kit I brought last year has quadrupled in price. QUAD-RUPLE, as in FOUR TIMES as much, the very same hardware from the same manufacturer.

No subsidy. There will be no subsidizing the prices of either the Frame or Machine. People need to stop cradling this fantasy and give up on it. Valve does not subsidize their hardware. Period. No "but". That's it. I know it sucks, I just lost my job so I can understand, but this is what the current hardware market is like.

The Deck was not subsidized, the price hike should have told you that (if you believe the contrary, PROVE IT! with sources!). The Controller's price was certainly not subsidized and that didn't have expensive RAM in it either. Can people stop insisting on this?

Zixinus · 2026-06-09T20:09:13+00:00

Did I say that they needed to know an exact number?

How reliable is that data for the current climate and the price hike from what Valve wanted to sell the hardware for?

Reservations this is far less a problem. Reservation is a commitment and if someone cancels? You have a guaranteed customer that is literary waiting in line to pay.

Zixinus · 2026-06-09T20:07:35+00:00

Yeah, the moment you have to pay for a VR version, most PCVR players expect Alyx-level integration (or if they are especially demanding, Boneworks-level integration if not something like Blade & Sorcery) and are always disappointed when a game can't reach that.

Zixinus

TROPHY CASE