> When we announced these products in November, we planned on being able to share specific pricing and launch dates by now. But the memory and storage shortages you've likely heard about across the industry have rapidly increased since then. The limited availability and growing prices of these critical components mean we must revisit our exact shipping schedule and pricing (especially around Steam Machine and Steam Frame).
Oof.... sounds like they are all going to be $$$. That sucks and really steals the thunder from the steam machine. Gaming HW is going to suck for many years.
Yes thats why I said China needs to reach parity on node size once they do then production will ramp up. Currently they are behind so just supplying to local captured China market and not competing for market share outside China.
Not just gaming hardware, everything where the electronics are a predominant part of the unit cost (read: all gadgets) is going to be seeing a big crunch in the next ~2 years (optimistically).
Approximately 100% of RAM manufacturing capacity on Earth has been reallocated to feed the slop machines; anything consumers get is effectively a production cast-off.
> Can I play non steam games with the Steam Controller?
> The controller can work with any game compatible with the Steam Overlay.
Ughhhhhh. Looks like they're doing the same nonsense as the last controller, and it won't work without Steam running. Such a disappointment; have to hope someone makes an open-source driver.
It'll probably work like the steam deck in desktop mode when steam isn't running- a basic default profile takes over. To change anything on that profile or to have any advanced features would require steam input.
valve upstreamed support for it in SDL3 already which I assume means basic inputs should work, but I imagine it probably still needs an app like sc-controller to use the touchpads for anything more complicated than mouse input.
> and it won't work without Steam running. Such a disappointment
I assume it will be like Steam Controller 1: Given no Steam and no special driver, the Controller is a Mouse + Keyboard, also referred to as "lizard mode".
I am also anti-DRM, but I don't think this can be solved easily. Consider the Dual Shock 2: Either it's explicitly supported or requires a custom diver to emulate into XInput or DirectInput. Even using XInput directly is cross platform a driver nightmare.
Valve has done good work I think with their libSDL based Steam Overlay, becoming a kind of universal Input equalizer, going so far as to patch their games with updated tutorial input prompts based on controller like Dual Shock 2 vs XBox Controllers.
A firmware level solution is not really realistic at this point. Controller Manufacturer 8BitDo went this approach, with many device restart firmware modes per target platform. It's just not a good user experience.
I think the other point is that an open source driver from Valve would be nice. Unlike say the Linux kernel driver for the Steam Controller 1 which were reversed engineered.
8bitdo did contribute open source code for SDL's support of their controllers.
If the alternative is pretending to be a 360 controller or Switch controller with limited features in either mode, as most controllers do, then I much prefer this. I'll second that I hope something like sc-controller can support it, though.
Yeah I was really frustrated the other day to find that my steam controller doesn’t work with my LG TV as a standard XInput device, either on BT or receiver. Assumed it would.
> Our goal of shipping all three products in the first half of the year has not changed.
This goal was previously stated as "early 2026". I think they're retconning a bit here.
That said, they're in a very tough situation. Most other manufacturers are either: hedged, have long term supply contracts, past their peak sales, or haven't announced a product yet. Valve are in a particularly awkward spot having announced and (implicitly) extent set expectations about pricing, while likely not having all the contracts finalised to meet that pricing.
> Will Steam Frame support other streaming services?
>SteamOS has a built-in browser, and we expect streaming services to work in a theatrical browser mode.
Does this mean they're actually bringing a touch/controller friendly browser tab to SteamOS finally? (Yes, i know about the decky browser plugin)
Since there's not enough info on the steam controller release date, does anyone know how well the PS5/PS4/Clone controllers with trackpad work with the steam os ui?
Security seems to be less considered on headsets, but I definitely don't want anything in unlocked SteamOS Game Mode to have access to my Google/Chrome credentials (which are also what logs you into YouTube).
I have a Legion Go, which has a touchpad on the controller. Any questions I can answer for you?
I was waiting for the steam controller because it would let me play point and click games using it's touchpad and also do some light web browsing and even be useful in the desktop mode (like how it works now on my deck).
But with this playstation clone controller will i get the same functionality?
The Linux drivers for PS4/PS5 controllers actually do map the touchpad as a mouse by default. With clicking it mapped to mouse button left. Might have to manually load the drivers if the controller's USB vendor and product ID don't match Sony's.
For anything more complicated (or Windows), you'll probably need a remapper like Steam or sc-controller running.
Yeah, but right now, I just have that set for Desktop Mode. Hoping a browser will have its own setting, so I don't have to add a PIN for regular usage.
I use firefox on the steam deck, and am pretty pleased with the UX
You use touchpads on the Steam Controller or deck to move a mouse cursor and there are good gestures for scrolling. I use https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/gesturefy/ in Firefox to quickly switch tabs and other features without keybinds I struggle to remember or moving the mouse. I've used gestures exactly like this in firefox since 2004.
The keyboard using two trackpads is also pretty good.
What are you expecting to be different? What are you hoping for and why?
The real question IMO is what browser? Is it Chrome? Will DRM content work out of the box? Will high resolution streaming work?
I don't understand how foveated tracking won't cause a sense that peripheral vision is fuzzy. Or how it will track saccades, and so avoid fringe effects.
But, the "I don't understand" is strong in this. it doesn't mean "it can't work" but I don't understand how it avoids the problems.
Maybe the size of the computed foveal coverage area is made big enough, to cover the movement? But if you move your eyes suddenly, there's got to be some lag while it computes the missing pixels. So you'd see the same as when Netflix ups the coding rate: crude render becomes clearer. Banded would become smooth transitions.
Imagine watching Netflix out of the corner of your eye. You wouldn't notice those transitions at all. Your eyes and brain are mind bogglingly good at making stuff up.
Do you know you have a big hole in your vision in each eye where the optic nerve is? It's about half the size of your fist at arm's length, and 35 degrees to the side. Your fovea happens to be roughly the same size. It's the HD part of your retina, and it's where essentially all of your vision happens. It's the only section of the retina that sees color, for instance. The periphery sees motion and that's about it.
Saccades top out at around 700 degrees per second. At 120 frames per second that's only about 6 degrees in either direction. Compared to the FOV, that's tiny. Overfill it!
I had to edit the code and change scale from 90 to 300 to see it easily in full screen landscape on my phone. I have presbyopia and often need reading glasses to see small things.
Well that's both unsettling and informative. It would explain why I seem to be a better gamer on a good sized monitor unlike the oversized one I have now. (I am ignoring the aging factor here, deliberately. Denial isn't only in Egypt.
Sufficient additional coverage + predicting the trajectory of your eyeballs. As far as I know, all of the journalists invited to try it were unable to see the low-res periphery, despite actively trying to break it with fast eye movements.
Speaking as someone who has been using HMDs since '05, and periodically checks in on dynamic foveated rendering every year or so, the frustrating thing is that sensitivity to it varies significantly.
Some folks experience the image pretty much continuously and don't notice the edge blurring. Others see it every time they move their eyes left/right. This is on the same headset.
Part of it is driven by differences in eye geometry, and even color (as this impacts the effectiveness of the camera track of the eyes). I've seen the raw camera buffers for eye track on a couple headsets and they're.. a mess.
Honestly that the feature works at all, for anyone, is still mind boggling to me.
I don’t have an answer for you, but take some applause from me for spelling this out :)
It’s very difficult for most people to intuitively understand that what they could not figure out after five minutes of thinking might not necessarily be impossible.
You're thinking about foviated rendering. They're just doing foviated streaming. So it renders at full resolution, and only streams the parts that you're looking at with full resolution on the stream.
Your eye is just another input source, if you don't feel the controller lag from streaming games otherwise, you're probably not going to feel it here either. It's not like an additional round trip or anything, your eye is here and the joystick is here can be sent at the same time, and you get back the rendered frame in return.
As for peripheral vision, any gradation being smooth probably helps, but there might be more tricks to make it look normal. I'm reminded of how jpeg images and some sound codecs only store information that we can actually perceive.
I was really happy about the Frame coming out but I don't think I will be able to afford it now :'(
Oh well, at least we can now generate meme videos of cats riding a skateboard while doing the lambada. That has never been done before. The tremendous intellectual progress of humanity is worth a few hundred percent hardware price increase.
Hard disagree. The Nintendo Switch and Steam Deck are both loved for their expandable storage, the "target market" just wants to play games and doesn't protest when they get extra features they won't use.
I wonder how they plan to work around HDMI cartel's refusal to provide documentation on terms that are compatible with open drivers. If they reverse engineer that garbage it would be very cool though.
I would take all the ai-related research and infrastructure destroyed forever in exchange for just the steam frame alone getting released at a price that it actually costs.
> When we announced these products in November, we planned on being able to share specific pricing and launch dates by now. But the memory and storage shortages you've likely heard about across the industry have rapidly increased since then. The limited availability and growing prices of these critical components mean we must revisit our exact shipping schedule and pricing (especially around Steam Machine and Steam Frame).
Oof.... sounds like they are all going to be $$$. That sucks and really steals the thunder from the steam machine. Gaming HW is going to suck for many years.
Hopefully China catches up in node size and crashes the market for ram and SSD.
https://www.digitimes.com/news/a20260204PD210/market-dram-na...
Doesn't sound likely
Yes thats why I said China needs to reach parity on node size once they do then production will ramp up. Currently they are behind so just supplying to local captured China market and not competing for market share outside China.
> Gaming HW is going to suck for many years.
Not just gaming hardware, everything where the electronics are a predominant part of the unit cost (read: all gadgets) is going to be seeing a big crunch in the next ~2 years (optimistically).
Approximately 100% of RAM manufacturing capacity on Earth has been reallocated to feed the slop machines; anything consumers get is effectively a production cast-off.
> Can I play non steam games with the Steam Controller? > The controller can work with any game compatible with the Steam Overlay.
Ughhhhhh. Looks like they're doing the same nonsense as the last controller, and it won't work without Steam running. Such a disappointment; have to hope someone makes an open-source driver.
It'll probably work like the steam deck in desktop mode when steam isn't running- a basic default profile takes over. To change anything on that profile or to have any advanced features would require steam input.
valve upstreamed support for it in SDL3 already which I assume means basic inputs should work, but I imagine it probably still needs an app like sc-controller to use the touchpads for anything more complicated than mouse input.
https://github.com/libsdl-org/SDL/commit/1998b650452bdf0bee5...
> and it won't work without Steam running. Such a disappointment
I assume it will be like Steam Controller 1: Given no Steam and no special driver, the Controller is a Mouse + Keyboard, also referred to as "lizard mode".
I am also anti-DRM, but I don't think this can be solved easily. Consider the Dual Shock 2: Either it's explicitly supported or requires a custom diver to emulate into XInput or DirectInput. Even using XInput directly is cross platform a driver nightmare. Valve has done good work I think with their libSDL based Steam Overlay, becoming a kind of universal Input equalizer, going so far as to patch their games with updated tutorial input prompts based on controller like Dual Shock 2 vs XBox Controllers.
A firmware level solution is not really realistic at this point. Controller Manufacturer 8BitDo went this approach, with many device restart firmware modes per target platform. It's just not a good user experience.
I think the other point is that an open source driver from Valve would be nice. Unlike say the Linux kernel driver for the Steam Controller 1 which were reversed engineered.
8bitdo did contribute open source code for SDL's support of their controllers.
If the alternative is pretending to be a 360 controller or Switch controller with limited features in either mode, as most controllers do, then I much prefer this. I'll second that I hope something like sc-controller can support it, though.
Yeah I was really frustrated the other day to find that my steam controller doesn’t work with my LG TV as a standard XInput device, either on BT or receiver. Assumed it would.
Yeah, the big FOSS defenders aparently aren't.
mob of angry people with pitchforks "Release the networking firmware for the Steam Deck, you cowards!"
> Our goal of shipping all three products in the first half of the year has not changed.
This goal was previously stated as "early 2026". I think they're retconning a bit here.
That said, they're in a very tough situation. Most other manufacturers are either: hedged, have long term supply contracts, past their peak sales, or haven't announced a product yet. Valve are in a particularly awkward spot having announced and (implicitly) extent set expectations about pricing, while likely not having all the contracts finalised to meet that pricing.
You have to account for Valve time when looking at their initial estimate.
> Will Steam Frame support other streaming services? >SteamOS has a built-in browser, and we expect streaming services to work in a theatrical browser mode.
Does this mean they're actually bringing a touch/controller friendly browser tab to SteamOS finally? (Yes, i know about the decky browser plugin)
Since there's not enough info on the steam controller release date, does anyone know how well the PS5/PS4/Clone controllers with trackpad work with the steam os ui?
I wonder if there will be PIN support.
Security seems to be less considered on headsets, but I definitely don't want anything in unlocked SteamOS Game Mode to have access to my Google/Chrome credentials (which are also what logs you into YouTube).
I have a Legion Go, which has a touchpad on the controller. Any questions I can answer for you?
Good point about the pin.
I'm looking at buying https://www.amazon.in/gp/aw/d/B0D3LK3DYX/ for my living room "diy steam machine".
I was waiting for the steam controller because it would let me play point and click games using it's touchpad and also do some light web browsing and even be useful in the desktop mode (like how it works now on my deck).
But with this playstation clone controller will i get the same functionality?
The Linux drivers for PS4/PS5 controllers actually do map the touchpad as a mouse by default. With clicking it mapped to mouse button left. Might have to manually load the drivers if the controller's USB vendor and product ID don't match Sony's.
For anything more complicated (or Windows), you'll probably need a remapper like Steam or sc-controller running.
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1675200/view/3216142...
Yeah, but right now, I just have that set for Desktop Mode. Hoping a browser will have its own setting, so I don't have to add a PIN for regular usage.
I use firefox on the steam deck, and am pretty pleased with the UX
You use touchpads on the Steam Controller or deck to move a mouse cursor and there are good gestures for scrolling. I use https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/gesturefy/ in Firefox to quickly switch tabs and other features without keybinds I struggle to remember or moving the mouse. I've used gestures exactly like this in firefox since 2004.
The keyboard using two trackpads is also pretty good.
What are you expecting to be different? What are you hoping for and why?
The real question IMO is what browser? Is it Chrome? Will DRM content work out of the box? Will high resolution streaming work?
I don't understand how foveated tracking won't cause a sense that peripheral vision is fuzzy. Or how it will track saccades, and so avoid fringe effects.
But, the "I don't understand" is strong in this. it doesn't mean "it can't work" but I don't understand how it avoids the problems.
Maybe the size of the computed foveal coverage area is made big enough, to cover the movement? But if you move your eyes suddenly, there's got to be some lag while it computes the missing pixels. So you'd see the same as when Netflix ups the coding rate: crude render becomes clearer. Banded would become smooth transitions.
Imagine watching Netflix out of the corner of your eye. You wouldn't notice those transitions at all. Your eyes and brain are mind bogglingly good at making stuff up.
Do you know you have a big hole in your vision in each eye where the optic nerve is? It's about half the size of your fist at arm's length, and 35 degrees to the side. Your fovea happens to be roughly the same size. It's the HD part of your retina, and it's where essentially all of your vision happens. It's the only section of the retina that sees color, for instance. The periphery sees motion and that's about it.
Saccades top out at around 700 degrees per second. At 120 frames per second that's only about 6 degrees in either direction. Compared to the FOV, that's tiny. Overfill it!
Look at this shadertoy to get a sense. It’s crazy.
https://www.shadertoy.com/view/4dsXzM
if at first you don't see anything, try making it full screen!
And then you should notice some movement/rotations. Look around, and find out where that rotation is!
I had to edit the code and change scale from 90 to 300 to see it easily in full screen landscape on my phone. I have presbyopia and often need reading glasses to see small things.
This is incredible. One of the most shocking optical illusions I've seen.
Well that's both unsettling and informative. It would explain why I seem to be a better gamer on a good sized monitor unlike the oversized one I have now. (I am ignoring the aging factor here, deliberately. Denial isn't only in Egypt.
Sufficient additional coverage + predicting the trajectory of your eyeballs. As far as I know, all of the journalists invited to try it were unable to see the low-res periphery, despite actively trying to break it with fast eye movements.
Speaking as someone who has been using HMDs since '05, and periodically checks in on dynamic foveated rendering every year or so, the frustrating thing is that sensitivity to it varies significantly.
Some folks experience the image pretty much continuously and don't notice the edge blurring. Others see it every time they move their eyes left/right. This is on the same headset.
Part of it is driven by differences in eye geometry, and even color (as this impacts the effectiveness of the camera track of the eyes). I've seen the raw camera buffers for eye track on a couple headsets and they're.. a mess.
Honestly that the feature works at all, for anyone, is still mind boggling to me.
> won't cause a sense that peripheral vision is fuzzy
it won't because your eyes literally doesn't have enough sensors in those regions to see it.
> it doesn't mean "it can't work"
I don’t have an answer for you, but take some applause from me for spelling this out :)
It’s very difficult for most people to intuitively understand that what they could not figure out after five minutes of thinking might not necessarily be impossible.
I guess it would work like the PSVR2 solution, just not implemented at game rendering level but at system streaming level.
What I don't understand is how this will work with every game automatically? Wouldn't this need support from the graphics pipelines in each games?
You're thinking about foviated rendering. They're just doing foviated streaming. So it renders at full resolution, and only streams the parts that you're looking at with full resolution on the stream.
Your eye is just another input source, if you don't feel the controller lag from streaming games otherwise, you're probably not going to feel it here either. It's not like an additional round trip or anything, your eye is here and the joystick is here can be sent at the same time, and you get back the rendered frame in return.
As for peripheral vision, any gradation being smooth probably helps, but there might be more tricks to make it look normal. I'm reminded of how jpeg images and some sound codecs only store information that we can actually perceive.
[dead]
I was really happy about the Frame coming out but I don't think I will be able to afford it now :'(
Oh well, at least we can now generate meme videos of cats riding a skateboard while doing the lambada. That has never been done before. The tremendous intellectual progress of humanity is worth a few hundred percent hardware price increase.
> Steam Machine's SSD (NVMe 2230 or 2280) and memory (DDR5 SODIMMs) are both accessible and upgradeable.
So, you're saying you can still ship on time without including these things and we just add them ourselves? Cool.
That really seems not like the target market for a product like this, though.
So its unlikely a launch like this could be successful and would just result in the new Steam pc/console being dead on arrival..
Hard disagree. The Nintendo Switch and Steam Deck are both loved for their expandable storage, the "target market" just wants to play games and doesn't protest when they get extra features they won't use.
Good luck finding DDR5 for better $$$ than Valve.
this also aligment Stable Mesa RADV 26 (RT Improvement) and Proton 11 (NTSync) Possibly Default
And hopefully 64bit Steam Client.
(which isn't a thing yet on Linux)
> In the meantime, we are working on HDMI VRR
I wonder how they plan to work around HDMI cartel's refusal to provide documentation on terms that are compatible with open drivers. If they reverse engineer that garbage it would be very cool though.
It has already happened.
https://www.phoronix.com/news/AMDGPU-HDMI-Gaming-Features
Now they only need to reverse engineer HDMI 2.1 so we actually have the bandwidth to make use of this. At least adapters can work until then.
Nice, I wasn't sure if it was their effort or not.
I would take all the ai-related research and infrastructure destroyed forever in exchange for just the steam frame alone getting released at a price that it actually costs.
TL;DR no pricing. no launch date