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Steam Frame pricing and release date revealed by Valve - it's a lottery again (www.gamingonlinux.com)
submitted 1 month ago by to c/pcgaming@lemmy.ca
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  • Steam Frame 256GB: 1,059 USD / 1,529 CAD / 1,049 EUR / 889 GBP / 1,609 AUD / 4,539 PLN
  • Steam Frame 1TB: 1,299 USD / 1,859 CAD / 1,279 EUR / 1,089 GBP / 1,969 AUD / 5,549 PLN
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[–] 18 points 1 month ago (9 children)

The integrated computer killed it.

If it were just a headset that depended on the Steam Machine/PC it could have been significantly cheaper. Adding enough RAM to make it a useful computer was probably most of the price.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 month ago (5 children)

    How would you do wireless streaming without some kind of compute to handle the networking and video decoding? The frame is primarily a wireless streaming device

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  • [–] 3 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    Thin client vs full computer.
    Essentially it ahould have been an extreme edition chromecast that can decode the 6ghz datastream. Nothing more.
    But it can boot and run cyberpunk (in shit quality but whatever). That was not neccessary.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 month ago

    The capacity is like half the Steam Deck, which is years old. It's an older mobile chip. All the magic comes from foveated rendering.

    They could've saved maybe a hundred dollars from a cheaper chip, a little more with less storage and RAM. Then it wouldn't be able to compete with the Meta Quest while being more expensive still. It would just have had slightly better tracking and controllers.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago (2 children)

    There are third party wireless streaming devices that function with the Index. It doesn't take much compute to operate wifi and process minimally compressed video.

    A headset with Chromebook equivalent hardware would be significantly cheaper than a headset with Steam Deck equivalent hardware.

    They wanted a device like the Quest that would let people play decent VR without needing a strong PC. I think that was the right decision when it was being planned. But now that we're mid-RAM apocalypse, the better move may have been to iterate on the Index and not try to make a new platform.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago (1 child)

    I didn't know this existed, but a quick Google found nofio, but looks pretty pricy and doesn't have great reviews... https://www.reddit.com/r/ValveIndex/comments/1b9hc7i/im_a_backer_for_the_wireless_nofio_adapter_many/

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago

    It was finicky to get setup and their company was overwhelmed with support requests for months. One of the guys in my makerspace had one and we managed to get it working (it helped that they were EEs). Outside of some rare dropped frames it was pretty smooth without any noticeable latency increase.

    The Frame just uses standard Wifi7 which can push around 17-20Gbps, more than enough for low latency compressed video. It would take minimal hardware to connect to Wifi, and run the video through some hardware decoder.

    I understand why they're competing with the Quest, I'm buying one because it's a good standalone that isn't made by a data vacuum company (not yet, at least). The privacy aspect and Linux solidarity are what got me (I'm also selling my Index, so it's a 'cheap' upgrade)

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  • [–] 3 points 1 month ago* (2 children)

    Let's say they removed the onboard capability, and doing so halved the price.

    You're then left with a device which costs basically the same as a Quest 3 but also requires a PC to do anything. I'm pretty sure that would be reviewed a heck of a lot worse than even the current situation is.

    A self-contained unit that matched the Quest and wins on not price but privacy was the only reasonable direction for Valve here.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 month ago

    You're then left with a device which costs basically the same as a Quest 3 but also requires a PC to do anything.

    That's basically a wireless Index without the lighthouse, which is all a LOT of us were asking for. I don't see the problem and would love that.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago

    A self-contained unit that matched the Quest and wins on not price but privacy was the only reasonable direction for Valve here.

    I do agree that the niche they've chosen to fill is valuable, having a good self-contained unit free of Meta's spyware was the entire selling point for me.

    I know a lot of people who were looking into PCVR but didn't buy an Index because they didn't want to spend $1000 on a VR headset. PCVR is a niche of a niche audience, so I'm not surprised that they didn't release a product that was just Index v2.

    Maybe, in the future they could offer a low-end SKU that was PC-only, without onboard gaming hardware.

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