Yeah, the Steam Frame is one of those things where no matter what it'll end up costing (realistically) I'm going to buy one.
this post was submitted on 30 Dec 2025
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Steam Hardware
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i feel like steam is gonna sell them at a good price even if they are gonna make a loss on them, because gaben is tuff like that
They are definitely not selling the Gabe cube at a loss. The steam deck could be sold at a loss, because people will buy steam games for it, but the steam machine is a PC, and there would be nothing stopping, for example, corporations buying thousands as cheap workstations that will never see a single steam purchase.
The post (and replies) are about the VR headset (steam frame), not the gabecube.
There's actually a huge thing stopping corporations from buying them in bulk as workstations:
They're only sold on Steam, directly by Valve, then shipped to you.
Just like all other Valve hardware.
You... need a Steam account.
And they can very easily just say 'one per person!'
People need to stop with this 'companies will buy them in bulk and fuck everything up!' line of logic.
It makes almost 0 sense.
A company would only be able to do that by setting up a system of fraudulent accounts on Steam, which would violate the TOS individually, and potentially be quite illegal collectively.
You won't be able to buy a new Steam Machine, at Valve's MSRP, at Walmart, or Best Buy, or NewEgg, or MicroCenter.
You might be able eventually find some on Amazon, or Walmart's online stores, something like that, but those will be from resellers of dubious sourcing methods, and they will be charging more than MSRP.
EDIT:
Also, by your own logic, Valve could sell the Steam Machine at a loss, and make it up on increased game sales... if they could do that with the Steam Deck.
To what precise extent, who knows... but ... that is your own logic there, and it still works for the Steam Machine too.
Or, they could kind of do the inverse and give you I dunno, $50 or $100 steam bucks for buying steam games, alongside buying a frame.
Basically just your Machine comes with a Steam Gift Card.
To totally clarify: I have not heard anyone official say they are or could do that... but... they could, its hardly impossible.
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Unless the price is ridiculously low, corporations are not buying thousands of anything without a support contract. Next day repairs/exchanges and priority support are a must when dealing with hardware at scale, and Valve is not going to offer that.
Dell/Lenovo/HP are already more expensive than consumer-grade hardware from Best Buy unless you are a very large customer. Companies pay for reliability, warranty and support.
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Most corporations just buy laptops and then the world's cheapest docking stations. So would have to be cheaper than a mid-tier laptop and I can't see that being likely.
Yep and once warranty is finished they sell off the hardware allowing me to pick up solid used Thinkpads to run Linux on. Warranty service is too important to corporations.
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At the moment that statement applies to all 3 products.
Me too. From what I've heard meta hardware is great, but I wouldn't take one for free.
I'd rather go without VR than get a meta headset which is why I haven't had one for years despite interest in it. I plan to get steam frame. Not sure if at launch if price is too steep, but eventually if it gets discounted after a year.
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ELI haven't been following VR at all (because i haven't). Why is Quest trash, specifically? It sounds like Frame is little more than a VR display for the Steam Box/gaming PC. Am I grossly misunderstanding the situation?
The frame is a gaming computer in its own right but can also be used as a display. There's nothing wrong with the Quest from a technological standpoint. It's just that you're forced into the closed Meta ecosystem in order to use it. Many people don't want to be there these days. Steam hardware tends to be open and moddable. Let's hope they keep that up with the upcoming products.
The only thing I open in the Quest Home is Virtual Desktop, which then opens any PC game through Open XR or Steam VR fine. That said, I'll probably get a frame as soon as they're available in Aus. as well as the new controller.
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Meta does all kinds of creepy shit, like using the cameras to compile a list of items in your home. I'd rather not do VR at all than use Meta, no matter how good it is.
I fucking hate mine but I can't stop playing beat saber. I only play the pc version with wivrn over wifi. It keeps forcing me into the little virtual scene thing when I would only ever want passthrough, some updates make tracking worse and beatsaber unplayable, controllers are super slippy and easy to drom/throw, management phone app spams you with ads/'reccomendations', never remembers my window setup and always forces me on to the store or socials by default and I have no friends that would use any fb/meta gaming socials, default face gasket is awful and I tried an alt strap and lost the original when the most comfortable setup I've since tried on someone else's headset was alt gasket and default strap. Probably other stuff I've forgotten.
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My Quest 2 is fucken garbage when using Steam Link and it never was before. No idea whats going down. I cant wait for the Steam Frame and Controllers. Its going to be so wonderful gaming on Linux.
Every update just breaks something a little more. I literally only want a Frame for the software. If I could flash the Quest 3 to run the Frame's OS? I'd risk bricking my headset to do so. Fuck Meta.
yeahhhh. i hope the controllers wont beak as easily as my quest ones. my controllers have the opposite of stick drift where until i push it rlly hard, the sticks wont input, if they even input. also they like to force my chaarcter backward when im pushing forward on my stick so yeah. movement based games aint that good on my quest anymore.
Try wivrn if you're on Linux (or alvr as a fallback).
Every time I see a post about it, I'm hoping the pre-orders opened. Fucking take my money already!!
Hey, you do realize that the steam frame isn't going to have enough horsepower to run full pcvr vrchat on it's own right? You'll still be about to run the Android version, but that's just the quest version still.
Now if you plan to stream from your full gaming PC it'll be great, but realize that the frame itself is a little less powerful than a steamdeck which can barely handle full PC VRChat in desktop mode.
Don't get me wrong, day one purchase for me too.
Bruh, my PC designed for VR barely runs VRChat.
100% accurate.
ok so do you want me to get the steam frame or not
I just want you to understand what it can and can't do, if you buy it expecting to get a full pcvr experience out of it without streaming from a PC then you are going to be disappointed.
Are you sure? It's 3 times more powerful than the quest 3, and the quest 3 can do some cool stuff
The steam frame, while seemingly really cool, just won't be able to handle the worst of pc vr chat because it's 100% guaranteed to be worse than a dedicated pc. Dedicated pcs already struggle with vr chat. It's because there's a million people with custom unoptimised player models everywhere.
VRChat has many many options to deal with that. My PC only has an RTX 2060 and it manages ok.
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I've never had a VR headset, and this is the first one I am considering as it feels like we are finally out of "First Gen" VR and we have moved into the product space of VR that is not clunky and burdonsome.
With that said - convince me to get one.
I have a killer PC for playing at my desk, and a Steamdeck for playing on my couch. What will I actually gain? I don't really have the space in my apartment for things that require moving around, and I don't really care for VRchat type social experiences. Is there anything about the platform that I will actually use, or will it become an expensive dust collector hanging on the side of my desk? I have a hard time coming up with something that will actually add value. The only thing I really want to play is Half Life Alyx because I love the series and it's the only thing I haven't played.
if you dont get one i will come for you in your sleep
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I think (just like with the Deck) I'm going to wait for a year or two and let you brave Guinea Pigs let me know if they're worth getting.
You can also wait for an impulsive guinea pig to sell it to you "as new, barely used" by then. Even cheaper if a successor is out.
Some finance stuff fell through recently for me and I will no longer be getting any of the steam hardware when it comes out. Maybe next year.
Was interested in a Steam Machine, but it will probably cost $1000 with the way parts are going. Looks like I'll be sticking with my old hardware for the foreseeable future!
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Uh......what was that about a snuggle session? LOL.
Also, people kick out others for being on Quest? Why not just launch VR Chat via SteamLink to your Quest? You can launch all SteamVR games via SteamLink to the Quest headset. I have a Quest 2 and use it for pretty much only streaming from my PC over WiFi from my Linux PC.
"Why not just launch VR Chat via SteamLink to your Quest?"
oh if it where only that simple my sweet summer child :(. my laptop cant... run anything lol
Well the Steam Frame is mostly going to be a streaming headset from a gaming PC with the possibility of running things local, so you're going to need a gaming PC to run things like HL: Alyx.
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Same. Just sold my Index in anticipation
Why tho ? They'll have to remove my knuckles from my dead hands!! I plan to make the knuckles work with the frame in any case. But yes. I'm buying the frame and the controller, no doubts about that either
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I feel the exact same. I have a Quest 3S, and I can’t wait to dump it immediately as soon as I get a Frame.
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I might get one aswell, as long as it's not too expensive. Haven't been able to play Half-Life Alyx yet.
I have held off on buying any VR rig, but now I am SO READY.
I am also hyped for the Frame. I've got an Index that's a few years old now. I'm a little sad my FBT won't natively run, but I'm sure something will come up; not too worried.
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