Steam Frame (Valve Index 2)
- Thread starter ShiWarrior
- Start date
The swimming pool needs more money in it.
Wonder if he bought that on his AMEX as well....
Soldato
- Joined
- 23 May 2006
- Posts
- 8,941
I agree that, thanks to meta's incredibly aggressive pricing £800 may seem a lot. Also there is a lot of wasted hardware in there if all you want it for is PCVR.
but if you look at the hardware you get in a high end standalone headset then i dont think £800 would be overpriced..... not when you consider the R&D costs, the huge increase in prices of just about everything lately but especially RAM.
i think some people on here have unrealistic, and somewhat unfair expectations.
cant have it both ways, either you pay the genuine costs of the hardware from a company who dont want to sell at a loss............................ or you buy from a company like meta who are prepared to subsidise their headset with a view to making their money back elsewhere, such as via software sales or using your data for "nefarious purposes".
Me?.................. I consider my privacy went out of the window sometime late last century, even sainsburys probably know everything about me that i have shared on my meta account, so i am happy to sell my soul to meta to get a cheaper headset....
but just look at the money meta's VR division is spaffing through. you cant expect valve to sell their gear at meta prices imo.
They could always go full Apple and charge their prices!. Now that would give some justified complaints!... but if they can keep their hardware under £1000 then i dont think they will be making a greedy profit off their headset.
Last edited:
TBF, I don't actually know enough about VR tech to make an assumption, I was just messing about. That said, I see no OLED and my interest vanishes.
Last edited:
Soldato
- Joined
- 23 May 2006
- Posts
- 8,941
it would seem OLED displays do not play nice with pancake lenses.... pancake lenses offer better sweetspot and allow a more compact design, as well as getting rid of god rays etc then using zonal dimming to try to mitigate some of the LCD downsides. I suppose its considered a reasonable compromise. I do agree however it would be nice to experience a bright but still OLED headset with pancake lenses.
This is mainly driven by the fact I've played Elite more than anything else on the Q3, I want space to be dark
As Big Mike has stated, OLED does have its downsides when it comes to lenses, Q3 lenses are amazing but they are helped by the Q3 having an LCD panel, OLED displays are smaller and the lenses need to magnify more and this creates issues etc, and then there's increased glare. Having recently experienced 4K OLED I still think the best image I've seen overall is with my Q3 because of the whole image being a sweet spot and almost no glare, but the OLED did have significantly better colours and resolution. When supersampling my Q3 to 4K resolution the image clarity was surprisingly close between that a native 4K display.
Last edited:
- Joined
- 20 Oct 2002
- Posts
- 34,909
- Location
- Oxfordshire / Bucks
Valve Says Steam Frame Development Started Even Before Index Was Released
In March 2019, Valve surprised the VR industry with the tease of ‘Index’, its first self-made VR headset. Index would go on to launch later in May 2019 and be seen as the enthusiasts’ choice in PC VR headsets for many years to come. Unbeknownst to the world, by the time Index was released, the …
www.roadtovr.com
Soldato
- Joined
- 23 May 2006
- Posts
- 8,941
i cant help but feel this is an attempt to try to steal credit from other companies. Valve making it sound like it was them who started working on pancake lenses 1st despite other companies having released headsets with pancake lenses actually in them years ago........
These guys all have prototype headsets on the go many years in advance. I hope i am wrong as i would love the steamframe to do to PCVR what the steamdeck has done to hand held PC gaming, but it all just reads to me a bit of a (desperate?) attempt to make what may be a fairly average headset by the time it comes out, coming in at significantly more than some of the current headsets relevant.
For most of its life steamframe wont be up against the quest 3 generation of headsets, it will for the most part be up against the next generation.
These guys all have prototype headsets on the go many years in advance. I hope i am wrong as i would love the steamframe to do to PCVR what the steamdeck has done to hand held PC gaming, but it all just reads to me a bit of a (desperate?) attempt to make what may be a fairly average headset by the time it comes out, coming in at significantly more than some of the current headsets relevant.
For most of its life steamframe wont be up against the quest 3 generation of headsets, it will for the most part be up against the next generation.
Last edited:
True, but convenience and ease of use can be a bigger factor than features or price. Meta is driving people away with shonky updates, and a store that hides good games, and seems focused on AR glasses.
The other high-end headsets are often heavy, or uncomfortable, or janky, wired, or compromised in weird ways - like the GalaxyXR not shipping with controllers.
There really isn't a mid-range VR headset that can compete with Meta for PCVR, and the high end headsets require monster PCs with 5090's to run them.
It all comes down to how much the Frame costs in the end. If it's too expensive, then yes, it won't gain enough market traction as it'll be competing with the higher end headsets on price, but not be able to compete on visuals.
Soldato
- Joined
- 14 Jun 2004
- Posts
- 7,808
Valve compatibility layer for running Android games on Linux gets official name in Steam documentation
Valve compatibility layer for running Android games on Linux gets official name in Steam documentation
Lepton is the name of the compatibility layer for running Android on Linux. Its development looks to be linked to the upcoming Steam Frame.
www.pcguide.com
Last edited:
Does anyone here actually believe that the Steam Frame will be $599?
As for the video. I am sorry, but it's terrible. He is all over the place.
1. He says that we can learn a lot about the Steam Frame price from the Steam Machine pricing. I guess he is right, We know nothing about the Steam Machine Pricing so we know nothing about the Steam Frame price either. But that's not the way he meant it. He seems to think we can infer something about the price of the Steam Frame from Linus's guesswork about the Steam Machine's price. Which is rubbish, they are aimed at two completely different markets. Which brings me to point 2.
2. He seems to think that the Steam Frame will be priced less than the Steam Machine. He actually says there will be zero chance of the Steam Frame been priced higher than Valve's flagship console. What is this guy smoking? The Steam Machine is been aimed primarily as a PC type console for the ease of use in the living room. Whereas the Steam Frame is been marketed as a Premium VR headset. The only way the Frame is going to cost less than the Steam Machine is if the Steam Machine is stupidly overpriced.
3. His pricing estimates are probably fine, but his conclusions based on those estimates and his own previous statements in the video are whack!! He says that Valve isn't like Meta and won't be selling hardware at break even. He then does the price break down of the Steam Deck and Quest 3. First he does the Quest 3, estimates costs to build at $400, Meta sell at $499, which he says is just breaking even or maybe even a small loss. Then he does the Steam Deck costs, which works out at $300 and sells for $399. But in this case, it's a 30% markup?? Surely the Quest 3's price is a 25% markup? Neither device is going to be making much, if anything at those prices. Beside, Gabe said that hitting the $399 price point was a pain, so we know that there was no 30% margins there. And we also know that Valve won't be doing that this time around.
4. Just an extension of point 3 and his Steam Deck and Valve Index price break downs where he makes that 30% markup claim and says that the Steam Frame will be more than likely the same. Remember he has already said that Valve aren't like Meta and won't be selling at a break even price. So he does all his price estimations and for the base model arrives at a cost to make of $520-$530. Fine, but based on that price estimation, he concludes that the final price of the base model headset will be $599? LOL WUT?? What about all the stuff you said earlier in the video? If a $100 price difference between cost to make and sale price is barely break even on a $499 headset, then $70 is definitely making a loss on a $599 headset. And what about the 30% markup that he says Valve puts on hardware? He doesn't even include that. His price guess just goes completely against everything he said earlier in the video.
Lastly, and this is a bugbear of mine, He says that Valve are going to sell that Steam Frame at less than $1000 because they said they would. NO, that's not what Valve said at all. They made no commitment to sell it below the price of the Valve Index. They actually said that they hope to sell it below the price of the Valve Index, but they are making no promises.
